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Nvidia Stops Promotional Game Resales By Tying Codes To Hardware (arstechnica.com) 120

Posted by BeauHD from the second-source-of-income dept.
Nvidia is putting a stop to the resale of bundled promotional game keys by tying them to a specific graphics card purchase, according to Ars Technica. Users will now have to redeem codes via the GeForce Experience (GFE) app, which is directly linked to third-party services like Steam and Uplay. Users must also ensure that the requisite graphics card is "installed before redemption." GFE then performs "a hardware verification step to ensure the coupon code is redeemed on the system with the qualifying GPU." From the report: Previously, retailers sent promotional game codes to customers that purchased a qualifying product. Those codes could then be redeemed on Nvidia's website, which spit out the relevant Steam, Uplay, Origin, or Microsoft Store key. Since the promotional game codes were not tied to a specific account, many users took to either gifting spare keys to friends or selling them on eBay in order to offset the cost of the graphics card purchase. [Ars Technica has updated their report with additional information:] Nvidia has confirmed that while GFE checks to ensure a user has installed a qualifying graphics card like a GTX 1070 or GTX 1080, the game itself is not permanently linked to the hardware. GFE's hardware check is based only on the wider product range, and not on a specific serial number. The company has also confirmed that the redemption process permanently adds the game to the appropriate third-party service. For example, if users redeems a promotional game key through to Steam, that game will be useable on any other device, just like normal Steam games. Users can also opt to uninstall GFE, or install a different graphics card, once the promotional code has been redeemed and still retain full ownership of the game. A full set of instructions for redeeming codes is now available on Nvidia's website.
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Nvidia Stops Promotional Game Resales By Tying Codes To Hardware More

Nvidia Stops Promotional Game Resales By Tying Codes To Hardware

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  • Why do they care? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hij ( 552932 ) on Friday February 03, 2017 @08:05AM (#53794431) Homepage
    Why do they care what they do with the supposedly "free" gift that they give me. The only reason to do this is to assert their power over me and make me do what they want. WHen someone gives me something then it no longer belongs to them and is none of their business what I do with it.

    • Re:Why do they care? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Friday February 03, 2017 @08:14AM (#53794465)

      They didn't actually "give" you anything. Welcome to the joys of the era of clouds and downloadable content, where convenience matters more than the first sale doctrine.

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        And thus why you should just pirate it.

        • Well, I guess I am just going to be the sucker that pays for your pirate habits. Obviously, the world needs suckers like me otherwise there would be nothing to pirate.

          You're welcome.

          • Well gee if there was nothing to pirate people would have to settle for playing all the free and open source games out there, and use operating systems that are likewise. Whatever would we do?
            • Well we would play Team Fortress 2 on any PC OS we wanted to i guess.. Valve has shown Free to Play games can be golden gems.. TF2 DOTA
    • We really need to change the way we look at downloads. The "intellectual property" analogy more or less worked when each copy was tied to an actual physical object. Transfer the object, and you transfer the copy. There were still flaws but it largely did what it was intended to do.

      Now, when a large proportion of data is sold in an intangible, trivially copyable format, the analogy just falls over. It makes no sense to treat the data this way.

    • Re:Why do they care? (Score:5, Informative)

      by supremebob ( 574732 ) <`moc.seiticoeg' `ta' `yknujemeht'> on Friday February 03, 2017 @08:26AM (#53794519) Journal

      I'd think that it's pretty obvious why they care. Game publishers don't like it when someone gives a promotional game download code to a friend, so they can install the game for free. Their suits probably consider that to be a "lost sale", where the person might have otherwise paid 50 bucks get the game themselves if they weren't given a download code.

      Of course, most of the games that are bundled with video cards often aren't worth anywhere near their retail prices to purchase. The suits probably wouldn't want to admit to that in public, though.

      I'd also imagine that Nvidia also doesn't like the idea of someone using the game download codes that they paid for being used on other systems with AMD and Intel graphics, but this probably doesn't bother them as much as the game publishers. They still got paid for the hardware that got purchased, anyway.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        I'd think that it's pretty obvious why they care. Game publishers don't like it when someone gives a promotional game download code to a friend, so they can install the game for free.

        Now it changes to.... Hey, bud.... I can give you this Promo game, if you let me know your Steam password.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by phorm ( 591458 )

          If it's for an actual friend, just let him/her login to steam once on your system (with the perquisite card) for the initial install/verification. If will kill resales though.

          Still a douchy move from NVidia. Also, I'm not sure how this affects the game publisher. I'm pretty sure that Nvidia (or AMD for their promos) is giving some form of kickback to the publisher for the coupons they include with cards. Hell, they aren't even for full games a lot of the time but rather discounts these days.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mysidia ( 191772 )

            What about resales where the merchant says upfront, they'll need to temporarily provide your steam password, so we can verify hardware and redeem the promotion?

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by phorm ( 591458 )

              Providing your password to a third-party is dumb (and often a breach of contract) in most cases.

              There are Steam API's that allow one to login via an OpenAuth interface however (does not provide the password to the third-party).

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The codes can only be used once. People sell them because they don't want to use them themselves, perhaps because they already own the game or because they just don't like it. If they can get 20 quid for it, that's effectively 20 quid off the price of the graphics card.

        The games companies don't like it because they factor in a certain percentage of buyers not using the code when setting up the promotion. If more codes than expected get used, they think they lost sales.

        Effectively, nvidia added whatever the

      • More than anything its to force usage of GFE. Nvidia wants its little storefront on PC too.

    • Why do they care what they do with the supposedly "free" gift that they give me. The only reason to do this is to assert their power over me and make me do what they want. WHen someone gives me something then it no longer belongs to them and is none of their business what I do with it.

      From TFA:

      "retailers sent promotional game codes to customers that purchased a qualifying product."

      Hope that clears up any confusion about how this is not a "free" gift.

      And in the era of your digital privacy being raped in exchange for "free" apps and social media services, there is no such thing as "none of their business". Humans have become a very valuable product. That would include you, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, other than living off the grid in a mountain shack somewhere.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      Why do they care what they do with the supposedly "free" gift that they give me. The only reason to do this is to assert their power over me and make me do what they want. WHen someone gives me something then it no longer belongs to them and is none of their business what I do with it.

      Because people where finding ways to steal them in bulk and reselling them on sites like G2A.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Falos ( 2905315 )

      It's not yours, nothing is yours. Welcome to the 21st century, where the only property you'll ever have is a license to operate. Welcome to the 21st century, where you must ask permission to use anything. Oh, and you won't be asking a human, you'll be asking an automated system designed with less than zero contingency foresight. Not all are digital, some are simply red tape.

    • Because they get those games from the publisher at a discount. The publishers have an irrational hatred of game reselling. So Nvidia promises to prevent such game reselling and then they get better deals and more access to better games to promote their own products.

  • Why though? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, 2017 @08:10AM (#53794455)

    Why?

    Seriously, nvidia, why do you even fucking care whether I redeem the game or a friend of mine redeems it, possibly because I already have it or don't fancy it?

    Of all the petty, moneygrubbing, mean spirited, trivial things I've seen massive companies do lately, this has to rank up there with one of them.

    How about I just don't buy anything from you in future, and go to AMD instead?

    • or don't fancy it?

      So what you're saying is there's a lost sale. You don't want it so you wouldn't buy it, but someone else does want it and by giving them your code they won't buy it and everyone in the world is a dirty copyright infringer and the industry will make $100tn more if people stopped sharing codes.

      But in all seriousness, yes. The fact that you don't fancy it is exactly the reason.

      How about I just don't buy anything from you in future, and go to AMD instead?

      Do you often buy video cards based on which game comes bundled? It's hard to blame NVIDIA for this when frankly they don't give a shit,

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ChoGGi ( 522069 )

      AMD does verification as well.

      https://www.amd4u.com/amdgamep... [amd4u.com]
      "Download the AMD Product Verification Tool and follow the instructions to redeem your game."

    • Grey market.

      It's not about what one person might do. It's about unscrupulous retailers buying a bunch of cards with bundled games, and reselling them separately.

  • Windows only! (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Friday February 03, 2017 @08:13AM (#53794463)

    So Linux and mac gamer don't get the codes or is nvidia ok with them trading the steam codes.

    • Mac gamers can't even buy/install that hardware anyhow.

      Those games don't run on either platform, so what would the point be?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        External GPU enclosures are going to become more and more commonplace because of thermal design constraints plus it is natively supported now via the connection ports we have in machines USB 3 Type C mode.. whatever... I forget their complicated naming scheme offhand now (but the newest revisions) has DMA and you can (not so easily right now b/c of Apple driver issues, but I expect that to be fixed in the future) plug things like the Razer External GPU enclosure into your machine (be it mac, linux, windows)

  • The GeForce Experience.... money-grubbing and buggy.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by aliquis ( 678370 )

      Nvidia; they way you're meant to be played.

    • All of my Linux machines have Nvidia graphics, and I use the proprietary Nvidia "blob" driver, as its FAR better than the clusterfuck that is the opensource driver, but I'll tell you one damn thing.. The day they mandate this bullshit "GeForce Experience" spyware crap on Linux installs is the day I join Linus with his middle-finger "FUCK YOU" gesture to Nvidia and dump Nvidia for good.. They may get away with forcing that shit on naive Windows users (look at those who use Windows 10 for a clue), but most Li

  • Never sold a 'free' key from a GPU bundle, but would like to think I could if I were so inclined. This just strikes me as an unnecessary shot in their customer's balls by nVidia, who is racking in money hand over fist (anyone seen their stock price this past year?)

  • Remember Linux Torvalds giving Nvidia the bird?

  • "GFE's hardware check is based only on the wider product range, and not on a specific serial number."

    You guys are magnanimous.

  • I'd like to see what they plan to do for all those people who get free games with a DOA graphics card.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      I'd like to see what they plan to do for all those people who get free games with a DOA graphics card.

      And you think those people would keep the game but not return their DOA card for a replacement??? "Well my $600 graphics card doesn't work but I got my free copy of For Honor, that's all I really care about!"

  • I cant believe Uplay is still a thing (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It was such a horrible abysmal failure of a gaming network. It didnt update games, it didnt provide any extra info or features, its just an advertising platform.

    It was so bad it convinced me to never buy another ubisoft game ever again. And i loved some of their series.

    How is Uplay still a thing? Have they fixed it & now its somehow worth using? Or are people just that much in love with assassins creed that theyll install adware on their system to play it?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      I believe even games purchased on steam from Ubisoft force you to create an account. I'd hazard that both Origin and Uplay probably hurt PC game sales for those publishers, I'm sure I'm not alone in not being interested in using multiple services and dealing with multiple friends lists etc.
      • If someone could make a service that is an umbrella for all of these, I bet it would be popular. "MetaPlay"... although it would be nice to have something similar for social networking too, not just games. Combine my Facebook, Google and LinkedIn networks... maybe under the same umbrella as Steam and UPlay. I imagine it could turn out really crappy, but if they did a really good job, maybe even linking contacts across networks if they were the same person, I'd be interested. Of course then I'd want more con

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by guises ( 2423402 )

        I'm sure I'm not alone in not being interested in using multiple services and dealing with multiple friends lists etc.

        This is a universal problem. There are only two ways to around it: give a monopoly to a single company, thereby allowing them to charge whatever they want and set any rules they like on which games they'll allow to be sold. Or second: do the same thing but with a nonprofit consortium, who will handle all of the distribution for the for-profit publishers. This second option shuts out independent developers, allowing the companies which control the consortium to charge whatever they want to those too small to

    • Some games are only available on UPlay; that's the only reason I use it. I think I got some Humble Bundle games that required UPlay. Also, they gave away something like 7 games in 7 months last year. I now have the following games for free (guess there were some I didn't even bother claiming):
      • Assassins Creed III
      • Beyond Good & Evil
      • Rayman Origins
      • The Crew

      I actually haven't played any of them since getting them on UPlay, but I intend to play some of them.

      If you love some of their series, the lack of

  • This is another misguided attempt to push GeForce Experience spyware down our throats.
  • Apparently, it's been renamed 'Nvidia GeForce Experience'. Nvidia should sue.
  • What I expected didn't happen. On the plus side, it was all about Greek

  • yesterday to use as a GPS device when 4x4'ing If I saw this I would have bought something else. Can you get any more petty?

  • So if I want to keep playing my game I can't upgrade my GPU.

    • Try reading the summary next time.

      The company has also confirmed that the redemption process permanently adds the game to the appropriate third-party service. For example, if users redeems a promotional game key through to Steam, that game will be useable on any other device, just like normal Steam games. Users can also opt to uninstall GFE, or install a different graphics card, once the promotional code has been redeemed and still retain full ownership of the game.

      • and still retain full ownership of the game.

        Ownership? I think not. The AAA game companies have been quite clear that you don't own shit. You're only renting.

      • I see, my bad. Assumed that this was like back in the day when my copy of Game X flat out refused to start if there was no nVidia GeForce 2 driver detected.

        Correction appreciated

  • when it started requiring a login to use it. I could see no reason to create a login just so I have slightly easier drive upgrades and notifications as to new versions.

    So instead of creating useless account #3434309 I just said fuck it.

  • As far as I'm concerned, this is the same thing as Nvidia ceasing promotional game distribution altogether.

  • It's not about giving a game to your buddy or trading a key with them for another key. It's people taking this license and then reselling it online that they are trying to stop. And I can't totally disagree with them on that. (You are entitled to your opinion, this is just mine.) But if they want a compromise, then why not just have a form online that allow you to transfer the license to your buddy? You put in the key and your serial number and the recipient's info. They transfer the license and eve

  • Emulation?

  • That is all. They have the right. It is a bonus. Once redeemed it is yours forever, whatever video card you use in the future.
  • About 6 months back, I built a new gaming rig. I bought two GeForce 1080 cards to run in SLI on it. Each card came with a code for a free copy of Gears of War 4, which was cool. I wouldn't have paid for the game, but for free? Yeah, I'll play it! Only thing is, what would I do with two copies of the game? I only need one. What did I do with the second one? I gave it to a friend. It certainly wouldn't have done me any good.

  • This really does sound like a violation of anti-tying provisions and a nice attempt at violating our right to first sale privileges.

  • I almost only buy games via codes. For example, I've been looking at the new Doom since before it came out, but $60 for a game is just too damn much to me. Snagged a code on eBay for $24. It was well worth that. I did the same thing with the Arkham series. The Steam store prices are ridiculous.

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