Cutting out the Middle Man: Nay or Yay?

Digital distribution sounds great on paper. The idea of cutting out the middle man sound convenient.

There's a slight chance that games could be cheaper since developers wouldn't have to pay artists to design box out, then wouldn't have to pay to print it, then wouldn't have to pay for packaging, and wouldn't have to pay for shipping. (Though I'm sure games would still be charged at full price in order to cover "server and bandwidth costs".) It's also nice thinking that people wouldn't have so many games cluttering their houses. (I know that with me right now, you barely tap one of my shelves and games just fall all over the place.)

And, of course, this would be mean that games would always be available as long as the developer chooses to host it. (Like the XBox Originals on Live where you can now download some 'harder to find' XBox games or Steam or the Virtual Console or places like GameTap with games from years ago.)

Though there's a lot of issues that need to be worked out before we jump completely from discs to folders on our PCs.

The first big issue that needs to be settled is piracy. I read an extremely interesting article last night about how anti-piracy movements hurt games a bit more than piracy does itself; and while I do agree with what the author said in his article, I feel that developers aren't going to just say, "Oh ok. No problem." to it.

I suppose the main "fear" (if you even want to call it that) I have with digital distribution is how developers are going to handle the idea of all their games being available virtual. I will admit that I don't know exactly all the technical stuff about game codes but with PC games being pirated already from people hacking into developer data bases or getting the code from where...Just imagine the increase in that if every game was available from an online data base. I guess you could say that I feel that we'd see an increase in titles getting hit with DRM or other forms of anti-piracy or just developers being more strict than they are now.

Right now, piracy seems to be something that only PC developers are facing. (Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's ways to copy console games or be able to pirate those too; I just don't know how.) But that's not really the point I'm trying to make...My point is that as we stand with physical copies, piracy is something that we truly can just brush off our shoulders because most developers can sit comfortably knowing that their disc-copy games are pretty much guaranteed buys. (Does what I'm trying to say make sense?) Of course, this is just speculation and just me kind of guessing what might happen but with DRM already being a hot issues and with some developers already saying they aren't planning on making PC versions in fear of it being pirated, I don't think my guess is too far off from what could really happen.

If anti-piracy and restrictions do end up being worse than they are now, I foresee a lot of problems within the consumer base. Admit it, just how many of you are truly ok with the idea of DRM as it stands now? Would you still be ok with it if they became stricter? How many of you really like the idea of being restricted to only doing so much with a game you purchased? And how many of you can truly say that you'd still buy a game with strict DRM via digital distribution if pirates (the real people stealing it- not you since you actually bought the game) get free passes to do whatever they want with the game and that you wouldn't switch over to pirating it so you could too?

When you take away the item we hold, the real concept of ownership changes. If a developer is hosting the game and uses DRM and says, "You can install it onto three computers", then let me ask you this: who really owns it? Do you own it since you bought it or are you really just "renting" the game from them by downloading it? It's an already hot controversy that I could see only getting worse with digital distribution; I'm not saying that digital distribution is a bad thing, I'm just saying I really would want this issues to be resolved before the only way for me to buy a game is to download it directly from the developer.

Another issue that I think someone brought up is storage. Technically, that isn't a huge issue. With the way the Virtual Console and I believe the Live Arcade is, your games are tied into your account, not really your system. This means that once you buy a game, it shows up in your account as you purchasing it even if you delete it from your system. (The same goes for games on Steam. I either buy a copy in the store or I can download it from them and still uninstall it without worrying about having to rebuy it if I ever want it on my PC again.) At least that would work as long as developers don't throw in something like DRM where you can only redownload a game X amount of times before having to rebuy it...But anyway, this means that they would just need a storage system and that's another issues I see arising. Who's going to make it?

Right now you can download old XBox games on to the XBox360. Ok, that makes sense since it is Microsoft's systems. Right now you can download old PSOne games and PSP games on to your PS3 and PSP. Ok again, that makes sense since it's Sony's systems. Right now you can download variety of older Nintendo games and older games in general onto the Wii and again, it makes sense. But now let's pretend that a brand new game is going to be available via download only and it's being developed by a third-party developer who has no ties to any of the three. What are they going to do with their game?

Are we still going to have Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo making systems with certain specs and still compete with each other for rights as to who gets to let their buyers download a game? And if so...Then shouldn't we all just switch to gaming PCs since that's basically what consoles will become....? I suppose you could argue that consoles are already "gaming PCs that aren't PCs" so maybe it would be true that each company would release their own version of a system for people to download games onto but I would predict that exclusives wouldn't exist in digital distribution since, well, of piracy again. A developer might say, "This game will be available for the Sony Downloading Station only!" but who's to say that no one would steal the code and pirate it if they didn't have Sony's station?

This then brings up the question about retail. If we take away what stores sell, then what would they have to sell? I would imagine that retail chains wouldn't completely vanish; after all, people would need to buy hardware, accessories, and be able to replace parts for upkeep but I would imagine that major electronic retail chains would be the ones to take that over or game-related retail chains might close down a large amount of stores but keep a few open for such a reason.

One thing I don't think people see when they talk about digital distribution is that it also doesn't work economically. Imagine if all gaming retail stores (both local and worldwide) went out of business...That's a lot of people without jobs but it doesn't stop there. Printing companies might have huge lay offs because developers wouldn't need manuals or cover art. Shipping companies might have lay offs since they wouldn't have as many products to ship. (Sure there's always things to be shipped but imagine if you removed an entire market from existence. There would be some consequences.) Developers might have lay offs since they wouldn't need as many people to design cover art, packaging, and to run everything behind the scenes.

The bottom line is...Just because it sounds nice doesn't mean it really is. Could we eventually switch to digital distribution? Possibly. Would it be anytime soon? Probably not.