Microsoft’s reversal of its always-online DRM and used game policy for the Xbox One and what it says about the state of gaming -- and the Internet too!

In a blog post on June 19th, 2013 Don Mattrick, former president of Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, announced that the company would be rescinding its highly criticized always-on DRM and used game policy for the Xbox One. These features would have required a connection to the Internet once every 24 hours and limited the reselling and exchanging of Xbox One games (a full explanation of Microsoft’s always-on DRM and used game policy can be found here).

This sudden one-eighty by Microsoft came as a direct result of pressure being put on them by gamers and industry professionals alike. Rumors of such policies have been floating around on various gaming websites for the better part of a year and both gamers and reporters have been aggressively vocal about their skepticism toward such ideas.

The final nail in the coffin for Microsoft came at Sony’s press conference at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 for short), where CEO of Sony Entertainment of America, Jack Tretton, announced that the PS4 would not restrict gamers ability to buy, sell and exchange used games. This somewhat overt attack on Microsoft and their restrictive policies was the last straw and just over a week after Sony’s E3 press conference, Microsoft announced the full removal of its restrictions on used games and its once-a-day Internet requirement.

What interests me about Microsoft’s change in policy is not what it says about Microsoft or Sony or which console is better or worse. What interests me is what Microsoft’s reversal says about gamers, the gaming community and people in general. It seems to me that with the next generation of Xbox, Microsoft is finding itself in an awkward position; a position between the tangible and highly ingrained world of disc based gaming and the inevitable future of cloud powered and digital gaming. In an effort to satisfy both, Microsoft has adopted many of the policies regarding the reselling and exchanging of games that digital-only gaming communities, like Steam, have been using for years, while attempting to maintain a sense of familiarity by continuing to provide hard copies for each Xbox One title.

It is partially due to these ‘in-between’ circumstances that I believe both gamers and industry professionals have been so adamantly against Microsoft’s original DRM and used game policy for the Xbox One. The restriction of reselling used games is not a novel phenomenon in the digital world. As previously mentioned, the gaming site, Steam implements a similar method and while Steam does not require an Internet connection to access the offline single player content of a previously purchased game it does restrict the reselling and loaning of used games. And gamers are fine with that. In fact, many gamers regard Steam as a wholesome white light in the increasingly corporate gaming industry.

What is new, however, is the controlling of hard copies of games in the same way as digital copies and it is here where Microsoft’s policies have rubbed gamers the wrong way. We feel exponentially more attachment to a physical thing than we do a digital copy sitting on the cloud. Thus we feel a stronger breach of privacy when someone seeks to control our physical copies in the same way they would our digital ones. So, even though the policies may be similar to gaming sites like Steam the weight of these policies in fact are felt very differently when applied to physical and digital objects.

Do you remember those anti-piracy ads from the mid 2000s that said things like “you wouldn’t steal a car,” in order to make the point that pirating online media was stealing? I remember thinking those ads were so obnoxious; especially after I found out that the music used in the ads had actually been pirated from the Internet. But as cheesy and hypocritical as those ads were I find myself coming to a similar conclusion. The resistance voiced by the gaming community to the Xbox One’s policies regarding DRM and used games is essentially dealing with the same issue those anti-piracy ads were; a perceived difference between the physical world we live in and the digital one we access from our computers on a daily basis.

It is this perceptual dichotomy that Microsoft was hoping to address with the Xbox One’s progressive push towards the digital era. And as we move closer to this inevitable outcome our perception of ownership will need to change. Unfortunately poor communication by Microsoft served to muddy their vision and stir up uncertainty among gamers who felt their rights were being trod upon. All of this, however, is but one piece of a much larger picture; a picture that I will more thoroughly explore in part 2 of this blog series where I will examine the way our own personal identities inform our consumer habits. Stay tuned!