Legal Unlimited Game Downloads?

Does anyone know if there are any sites that offer legal unlimited game downloads for PC for a monthly fee? Sure there are ways to get unlimited games (which I can't get into on these forums...), but game developers don't get paid if you download games that way and you can't play online with pirated copies. I don't think there are any... It would be really sweet to get legal unlimited game downloads for around $20 a month. If there aren't any, I wonder what it would take to start a service like that? Sites like GameFly offer game rentals for consoles, why not do something similar with downloads on the PC?

 

Something similar in format to Rhapsody for music?

 

Yeah. ten char

It's a lot better than paying $40-$50 a game.

 

PSP blender is one for PSPs.

But the closest thing you will come to for a PC is DirecttoDrive.com and that is a pay as you go.

To start something like that will cost alot of money and you have to talk to all of the game makers to approve of the selling of there games. If you want to start one it will be very very hard.

 

I'm trying to find Doom, Doom 2, and Final Doom for PC without spending $30+ a copy.

 

That'll never exist for PC, and i'll tell you why:

On consols, there's no CD keys, you just put the game in, and play. The copy protection is built into the CD.

Now on windows games, if this service existed, you could just swipe the cd key, and send the game back... Then if you did download the game illegally, you'd be able to play online, because you have a legal CD key... Do this for a month, then cancel, and you'd get unlimited online games, for $20, which would not cover the developer's costs. Plus you'd be able to sell the CD keys on ebay.

This would only work if a company got together with the developer, and made some sort of "one time" CD key, which gets deactivated when you send the game back.

 

isent the first Doom free bsd?

 

There is no such service for games that I know of. Sorry.

 

PSP Blender is illegal, it's just a peer-to-peer service which is no different than what you'd find for free.

 

I'm talking about downloading games. Each game downloaded would come with DRM, which would be deactivated when you cancel your account, the same way other download subscription services work.

 

I'm actually considering starting one in a few years. I already have plans on how the system would work and how to make it appealing to people who buy games on DVD, who pirate games, etc. I actually thought of a system that wouldn't require me to pay almost anything, but still get the service up with tons of games from big developers.

 

All downloads are legal, it's the serial to activate it from the demo version that's the problem.

Unless the downloading, of course, consists of a crack or cracked versions.

 

Then you would have to be online every time you started the game, as it has to check if your account is still "active". Thats more annoyance than its worth.

If you want cheap games, just buy something a few months old on eBay or half.com... Play it for w/e length of time, then sell it back on half.com... There are no listing fees. I've been doing it for years, and have saved tons of money.

IMO DRM is a horrible invention, it makes it so much harder to actually be able to use it, that people who pirate their music get BETTER copies (IE they can be more flexible with their music, and play it on anything). They're punishing people who actually get their entertainment legally.

 

You can use online DRM protection methods to cirumvent this. Case in point: Team Fortress 2. After every major update (Pyro, Medic, Heavy, etc), Valve offers a free weekend of TF2 where people can download the full game and play it for free during a determined interval and once that time frame is up, the game no longer activates thus rendering it useless until you purchase it.

 

Wrong... Bittorrent isen't legal (well downloading cop material on bittorent), because you have to share in order to use it... Once you share a single piece, its considered sharing copywrited material.

 

I don't think somebody who pays for an online game downloading service would mind if a game needs an internet connection to start.

 

Having to be online to play a game isn't that big of a deal. You wouldn't be able to play online without a valid account, same as it is now. No offense, but you obviously don't understand how DRM works.

 

Nowadays demos are almost never an entire game with only a few features/levels unlocked. They're only a certain portion of a game. Downloading a full version of a copyrighted game (even without a key) is illegal.

 

Do you guys know if GameTap offers all of its' retail games to their subscribers? It doesn't say anything about it on the site, but they have a pretty good collection.

 

Thats not my point... i'm saying i'd have to be online to play, even if I want to play offline. I understand quite well how DRM works, but lets say i'm at someone's house, and they don't have internet, and I wanna play a game... I woulden't be able to with this system.

 

I could see someone setting up a service that will let you play offline as long as you're within your subscription period, though it would need some really good DRM. The same as how music subscription services don't need to connect online every time you play something.

 

1. Who doesn't have internet nowadays?
2. All it would require is a quick check when the game boots up and then you can be disconnected
3. That's just the price you'd have to pay for such a service. If you want to play the games offline then buy the retail copies. It's not too much to ask of an INTERNET SERVICE to have to connect to the INTERNET to function.

 

You really think that nobody's thought of this before? or gamefly hasn't thought to go PC?..
There's a reason, you're not as unique as you think (no offense).
Go ahead and try it, you'll see what I mean.

 

GameFly isn't a download service, they send the games to your door Netflix-style. They don't include PC games because you would need a unique serial number for every five subscribers. DRM would work fine for a download service, though.

 

Gamefly could just as well have a PC department that deals with DRM and downloading. and i'm sure they've talked about it before... its a HUGE thing to overlook if you think nobody has ever mentioned it there.

Since all video games are different, DRM would have to be developed by each manufacturer separately. This adds quite a bit to the development cost of a game, and woulden't necessarily bring in more revenue (a few exceptions may be true). If your only paying $20 a month, thats not going to bring in nearly as much money as a guy paying $50 to play a game, especially if that $20 is spread off a few different games.

 

What does this comment have to do with anything? Where did I say that I was special or better than you or anybody else? I was providing reasons why such a service is possible and what it would entail and you see that as an indication that I think I'm better than you? Instead of countering by attacking my character, why don't you provide some thoughts on how this could work besides "don't require internet connection" because that's pretty illogical.

Most likely the biggest reason why such a service doesn't exist yet is because digital downloads are still in their relative infancy. Services like Steam and D2D have not been around that long and haven't been mainstream for very long either. Hell, even a major unlimited download service for videos (which seems more plausible given that many of the music and video companies are owned by the same parent companies) hasn't taken off yet. Besides, downloading games would require tons of bandwidth and decent internet speeds unless you really want to spend two days downloading a game and crippling the rest of your internet in the meantime.

 

The service DOES exist.. It's called

Steam Cafe, and has been around for awhile.

https://cafe.steampowered.com/

It's intended for people who operate Lan centers, but there are alot of people also using it for themselves.

I do believe the Doom games are included as well, along with everything valve has made. As it says, there's over 100 games. It is a pay per month service.

oh, and then there's gametap..

 

Point me to where I said "your not better than me"
Lemme look what I said over again... hmmmm... nope didn't say that anywhere.

Thats a good point about the internet connection thing, didn't think of that, but does does further explicate my point.

also, downloading movies would only work if they enabled DRM DVD/blueray players... and downloading a blueray movie would take forever, even on a good connection, unless your downloading a compressed, DRM enabled, MKV, which most computers don't have the power to play anyway.

People aren't gonna want to pay $20 for a movie they can only play on their computer. Plus, if it was a one time watch thing you could output it to a TV with an hdmi cable, and record it on a DVR.

 

I don't think that it would take most people two days to download a game direct from super-fast servers. If the service pays for enough bandwith, most people these days will see anywhere between 600kbp/s-1.5mbp/s in speed, which could easily download a game pretty quickly. I was thinking that a service like that should optimize games so that they could be "streamed", downloading while you play. You could have the first GB of the game downloaded, than the system could seamlessly download the rest with a small framerate hit. This could work especially well if the games were compressed (all games come compressed on their DVDs, it wouldn't have a hit on quality).

 

now your just being redulous.
The entire programming of the game would have to be changed to run similar to guild wars (which downloads textures and stuff as you need it). You really think you can convince the huge developers to do that? not a chance.

 

It really sucks that Steam Cafe and GameTap (which I've known about and checked out again, still sucks hard) don't have games that I'd actually want to play. Is it really that hard for these services to get more games? They won't really get more subscribers unless they have every big game that comes out. GameTap and Steam's interfaces are horrible, too...

 

It isn't that big of a deal to do, but it can take some time on the service's part (not the game developers'), if it's done right, it should work fine. GameTap already offers this for most of their games (which isn't where I got the idea from).

 

yeah, but my point is the big developers won't jump onto your ship unless you can prove that your service will work... OR (more likely) you pay them enormous amounts of money to do this, and hope that you get a bunch of subscribers. You're comming to them, with 0 subscribers... what do you think they'll say to you unless you offer them some security in their investment?

 

are there that many games being pumped out that people would actually be willing to pay $20/month? is there a game released that's worth $20 EVERY month of the year on average?

i dunno.. for me there are about 3-4 games that come out each year that i'm willing to pay money so $50x4 = $200 while $20x12 = $240. i personally like having a wide collection of games at home since most games that come out each year aren't worth the time or money. and if you're looking for older games then you should be able to find them even cheaper.

 

They wouldn't have to do anything (the service would add DRM and do any kind of optimizations that they need), just put give the service rights to have their games on the service (including getting rights for upcoming games, a service like this wouldn't get anywhere unless it has every big game title out). Then, we could agree to pay them a certain amount over the next two years. A service like this, with a monthly fee of somewhere around $20) should at least get around 50,000 people in its' first month if it;s marketed right. Considering the massive appeal of subscription services on the PC, MMORPGs can get around 500,000 subscribers in their first month, something like this has a huge potential to get a lot more people and become very successful, if everything is done right.

 

I'm sure if you had a subscription to some kind of marketplace, you would try a lot more. I could think of at least ten games that I would only want to try if I got a chance to just press "download" and have it. One thing I was thinking of was having a selection of games becoming free for subscribers to keep after having the service for a year or two.

 

Subscription service sounds like a great idea. I mean people pay $15/month for things like WoW - one game only!

$240 / year sounds reasonable. That's equal to 5-6 games per year at retail price ($40-$50). I know I easily spend $240 per year on games. Plus you get a chance to trial games that you might be hesitant to buy in the first place, even if it is only $25 or $30.

You really need the backing of some major publisher to get this started (like EA or Ubisoft). But I wouldn't doubt if Steam eventually decided to take this route. They're perfectly set up for this kind of thing.

 

This system should be possible if the creator of the site creates a system to deal with it all, say if 1 subscriber pays for 3 game downloads in a month for 30 dollars (there can be other prices for more downloads), and when the subscriber downloads a game, the system atomatically transfers say 5 dollars to the game developer of that game, the system shouldn't be unlimited or else the developers would just lose money.

 

I'd figure that I could get some kind of budget for this by selling applications for the iPhone and the iPod Touch over the next two years. That would be great because then I would be selling applications and games in the same marketplace as big game developers. Then, the year after I could find a team willing to design a UI for the game client and help optimize a DRM. I should be able to make enough in advance pay convince a few game developers to give me rights to put their games in the service, and then pay them more over the next few months/year(s).

Obviously, this all a concept now, but I could make it happen.

 

That would completely ruin the point of the system. You're paying $20 for unlimited game downloads, not $30 to rent three games. You would have to keep the service to keep playing the games, and I wouldn't doubt that most people would at least keep it for around six months to a year.

 

So yeah, there is a fairly large subscription based game service, though they don't tend to have FPS games. I used to have a subscription. It's called TotalGaming.net, from Stardock, the people that make games like Political Machine and Galactic Civilizations and published Sins of a Solar Empire. They have dozens of games available. Pretty sure they still have the subscription model.

EDIT: nm, looks like they are nuking the subscription service because devs and publishers don't like the business model. That sucks...

 

To me this is the biggest issue...getting game publishers on board.

Or in a coup de gras, it would probably have a better chance if you(this proposed concept company) became the publisher and got rid of the middleman.

The only problem with this idea is you have the EA/Biowares, Activision/Blizzards etc. of the world that would never allow this to happen, or never jump on the band wagon, and you need guys like this or the concept will never work.

I would think you would have to start out with (mostly) independent, upstart game developers looking for a way to get their games to a mainstream audience. You and they could get lucky and have a good first game (Divine Divinty, Sacred) that becomes a commercial success and spawns sequels. Or you could have all out busts of games.

Additionally, any game that comes out new is $40-50 plus. Companies are responsible for giving out swag and gimmick sales via collector's edition sets. Game manuals have to be thought about. And the BIGGIE!!! What about support? Who is going to support the games? The developer/publisher of course. But who is going to catch *** because some knucklehead's under-performing pc that doesn't meet minimum requirements and wasn't installed correctly or bugs out for whatever reason?

Why, that would be you "Mr. PC game download company owner guy"
And you say to Mr customer, "sorry, you'll need to contact the company that made the game to correct that issue", and they will say "F*** you Mr owner guy, I got the game from you". Just one ****-poor example, but you get the point.

And despite all my negativity, I still think it is a cool idea. I just think it is HIGHLY AMBITIOUS, not very doable, and would take much faith and dollars to get off the ground. SPONSORSHIP money is key. So you need a good business plan to get the backing...don't think selling iPod apps is going to do it for ya. But good luck, you bring a good concept to the table and I'll buy in.

 

Beautifully written. + Rep.

 

You'd need no less than $100,000 to even think about starting something like this... If you can get that kind of money somehow, great, but you won't do it selling iphone apps.
Programming is a very specialist job, and you'd need to pay them well, probably no less than $40/hr each, of probably a team of at least 10 programmers... Not to mention you'd need a business dep, human resources, and much much more. Actually, you'd prob need well more than 100 grand to start this up. But as they say, you gotta have money to make money.

The first thing i'd do is patent this, as then you'd have plenty of time to get it afoot. Just keep in mind, 60% of startups fail within the first year. This is a huge gamble to your time and money, but if you somehow succeed, and get bought out by some huge corp like Microsoft, the rewards will be huge.

Best of luck.

 

Honestly, I think I could make more than $100k selling iPhone apps if they're good. Apps that are at the bottom of the top 25 apps make $10k a week, which will only increase as more people buy iPhones and iPods. Thanks for all of the responces. I think one of the major things I could mention that could convince game developers to include their games in the service: Piracy. A lot of people say that they pirate games because they like being able to download as many games as they want, and they say that games are too expensive. With a service like this, they would be able to legally download games, support the developers, play online, download games much quicker, won't have to rely on cracks, browse a huge marketplace of games and download as they want quickly and instantly, etc. All for $20 a month. With the right marketing, I really think that a lot of people that never pay for games at all will join, along with people who do. It'll really appeal to every PC gamer.

BTW, that was written on an iPhone .

 

The only thing I disagree with is the "downloading games much quicker".... If the users know how to pirate correctly, either will max out their connections... This will hold true to most filesharers though, so I guess it would work out..
The only question is... Are you willing to gamble with so much money?
If you can make 100k selling iphone apps, why not keep that money

 

I would keep half of the money I make and use the other half towards developing other iPhone apps and games, and starting a service like this. If I can make $100k selling iPhone apps, why not try pushing it further and expanding into a huge business with it? I don't think that it's as much of a gamble as everyone is calling it. Looking at the market now, I think that the service could get at least 100,000 subscribers in its' first month, if it's marketed correctly. Judging from the way that popular MMORPGs have been getting 400k-500k subscribers in their first month, I think the service would get a lot more than 100k subscribers in its' first month. At $20.99 a month, that would come out to about $2.1 million.

Let's pretend that there's 15 new, big titles in the service and I'm paying each developer $90,000 a month for the next two years, that would be $1.35 million a month. That should cover every newer popular game that's been released. Then, there's 40 older games that I'll pay each developer roughly $10,000 a month for the next two years to have in the service. That would be $400,00 a month. Not a bad turnaround, there would still be $350,000 left for the first month. $100k would be spent to pay for new servers and server maintenance (more or less), $40k on support,and $150k on the staff (mostly developers) that help optimize games, DRM, and the client itself (myself included). Then, I still have $60k left to do whatever I want with. I would deal with getting licenses for all of the games, so I don't need a whole department working on that.

That's obviously all made-up, but based on how the market's doing now, these are very likely figures. As the service expands and we get more subscribers, we would be able to pay developers for every title that comes out over the years, and figures would only get better all-around for everyone. We would also sell games (with most of the money made going to the developers, and about 10% going to us), so we could make a nice amount more than that.

 

pspblender is a scam. sorry.


http://www.pspfanboy.com/2006/11/23/watch-out-for-the-psp-blender-scam/

also, does it make ANY sense that they can offer these games for $20 a month or whatever? there's no way they can put DRM on a psp game. pspblender just gives you links to ISO's.. which you can get off torrent anyway. game dev's are NOT paid at all so you're just paying for piracy you couldve done for free

 

i have my own personal idea for legal game sharing..

a site buys.. 200 copies of a game when its first released. it then "sells" it to a member for the full purchase price. the member gets the game, does whatever he wants (burns it, ISO's it), repackages it, and sells to the next member in a queue for the full purchase price. this goes on and on.

legality of this? legit. there are no rules against making personal backups of a game. also, you are allowed to sell your game to other people.

 

First of all playable downloadable game rental service would require an internet connection on a regular basis. Perhaps get a half dozen game starts before having to connect to the service again and download a new "key" file or whatever.

And BTW r3rp3rex - ummm, your "theory" has a big hole in it. Of course you can make a backup for your own purposes if you OWN the game. Once you resell it you no longer have that right to own the backup either.