Jump? I hate that with a passion.

These business models are just based so much on luck, that while you can show me these ones doing okay, there are literally countless that died trying to do the same thing and are probably now working at EA or Activision or THQ or something.

It's your turn to put examples.

The universal argument for capitalism. How can I counter that? The world doesn't work, ergo any wrongdoing is acceptable.

For your information, there is countless game developers trying to finance their games in new and fairer ways that have a higher respect for "the people who play their games". They will fail, obviously, since theiy are not being realistic aparently, but I, like more an more people, will be glad to back them up with my money.

It's greed when you care more for your profits than the game and the people who will play that game. They don't have any problem splitting the experience in as many parts as possible to maximize profit and they don't have any problem to lock some of those parts from players that end up getting a pre-owned copy. Not to mention that loyalty is built on respect and this type of behavior can hurt them in the long term.

As for the rest of your post, please, you all people stop reducing everything to prices, to money. It's not a question of how cheap we can get a game, it's a question of a medium, that of video games, that is full of people who wont move a toe unless they see a 100+ pages report on how many money they will make by moving that toe, it's about a medium in which developers wont even say a word to you unless you show them a receipt of their last game (and I can foresee some of them starting to suggest that if you bought it in a sale you are not a real fan either). You have to understand that unless we stop thinking like businessmen and start asking from developers (publishers are kind of a lost bet here) to respect what they do and their audience the medium will only get more and more sick and soulless.

Obviously what's going on now is that the business of material products is holding back the downpricing of digital products.

I was not making a retail vs. digital debate here, it was something more general.

there is nothing wrong with a developer asking money from every person that makes use of their product

Of course there is, for Christ shake.

Not sure if this has come to this debate already, but to sell a game you need at least two people, the evil gamer that wants the game cheaper and hates the developer and the one that sells the game. That is, those customers you seem to adore that buy the game first hand are the ones that are selling the game too. But he says it very clear: "when it benefits the company". You get all the rage about this Online Pass bullshit because you are explicitly showing that your goal is not for as much people to play your game, that you don't care about the gamers that cannot afford it full price. You are explicitly showing that you only care about the gamers who give you money, you show greed and regular people don't like that.

And this debate should also make people think about the following. Software, like any other digital product, can be copied indifinitely for a negligible cost, which makes it perfect for sharing. Publishers don't like it (becasue, as we have said, they don't care about how many enjoy it, but how many pay for it) and push harder and harder copyright laws and copy protection systems and pretend that digital media is the same as material products. However, material products can be resold. Since this is less money for them, they also constrain it. Not happy with constraining the properties of their games as digital media, they also contrain the properties of their games as material products. Have none of you realized that digital distribution systems like Steam and company could feature a second hand market if they wanted to, with profit flowing directly to the publishers? But they don't. Just to summarize, the publisher obtain all the benefits of games as material products, while we, gamers, obtain none of the benefits of games as digital media. So much fanfarre about piracy and we have not even realized that they are completely abusing the system from the other side.

(and i was planning a short comment, :P)

However, and I want to make this as clear as I can, you, as game journalists, are as much a subject of these bills as anyone else. It affects you too and you have to protest against it too. It's nice that you pretend to be immaculate journalist on this (I'm thinking, for example, on all those articles that weekly appear on this site that are nothing but advertising for a given game), but journalists can and should protest too when their integrity and freedom is on danger. I think you should add yourself to the call against ESA through the E3. I know what E3 means to you, but I think not adding yourself to the call will result in a serious problem of principles for kotaku.

By the way, pennyarcade has not gone black either, >:(