Wipeout HD making me question Sony's ethics and goals

Roughly a year ago I purchased Wipeout HD for PS3. I have always been a fan of the Wipeout series of games, and I have been playing them as far back as their PC and Original PlayStation titles.

An Expansion Pack for Wipeout HD titled "Wipeout Fury" was announced at E3 2009, and I have been waiting eagerly for it's release ever since. It was released on July 23 and I purchased it promptly when I returned home from Europe on July 25.

Wipeout games are not known for being ad-free. To be fair, every Wipeout game to date is packed full of so many advertisements that you would have to be blind not to notice them. However, the advertisements in the game are for fictitious entities. These include companies and their R&D groups often specializing in anti-gravity systems who own the various competing racing teams such as Feisar, Harimau, and Piranha. Some games have included ads for real companies alongside the fictitious ads, most notably of which was for Red Bull energy drink. These ads were integrated into the course, installed on billboards along the track. This flowed very well with the game, keeping the same look and feel as other graphics as well as maintaining the same profile as the other Wipeout universe ads. Wipeout HD, since I purchased it last October, has been completely free of advertisements other than those within thew Wipeout universe.

A few days after the Wipeout Fury Expansion Pack was released, I was alerted that a new update (2.1) was available for download. I like to make sure all the games I have are up-to-date. The updates most often improve gameplay by fixing previously unresolved problems, and in some cases, add entirely new content vastly improving the entire game. I went ahead and installed the update, which was very small (<100MB), which I assumed was most likely bug fixes for the game. Since it was a 2.* update, I found it reasonable to assume it was specifically for issues in Wipeout Fury, as it was released only days earlier.

Once the update was installed, the game launched, and I returned to the game, but the changes made by the update became obvious immediately. Nearly every time I started a race, I had to sit through a ~20 second video. When I first saw the video, I assumed it was meant to give me something to look at while I waited for the course to load. It was flashy, had the stereotypical vectorized look associated with the in-game graphics, and was set in-tune to electronic music. Unfortunately, it wasn't some new eye-candy incorporated into the game; it was an advertisement for State Farm insurance.

The ads were added to the game by Double Fusion, Inc., a company specializing in in-game advertisements for video games. They have announced that they plan to work in cooperation with Sony to put ads in many more popular titles.

My initial reaction was to be a bit peeved, after all, I did pay $40 for an ad-free game. However, after going online and reading the reactions others had to this, I became much more upset. The average loading time for a course on Wipeout HD before the ads were introduced was 7-9 seconds. After the patch, you will have to wait 20 full seconds for the ad to play before gameplay will begin. This is especially frustrating for me as I have upgraded the drive in my system from the 60GB 5400RPM drive that it came with to a 160GB 7200RPM drive. The added hard disk speed allows me to load a course in 4-6 seconds in the rare instances where the ad does not play. For most gamers, the advertisement adds 11-13 seconds to your load time (2x-3x); for those who have upgraded their hard drives to faster models, it adds 14-16 seconds to your load time (3x-5x).

Upon seeing the nearly unanimous disagreement among gamers discussing the new advertisements online, Sony released a new patch removing all in-game ads. However, they say that they plan to put the ads back at a later time in such a way that will not interfere with gameplay or loading times.

While advertisements in software are not something I am particularly against, I feel that there are limits to what a company can impose on a customer. I also feel that the rights of an end user should be the same for software as other forms of commercial media. Here are a few pieces of information that should be taken into account.

1. Wipeout HD was originally released over a year ago and contained no advertisements.
2. Wipeout HD and Wipeout Fury can only be purchased from the online PlayStation Store as software downloads.
3. Wipeout HD retails for $24.99. Wipeout Fury retails for $14.99. A completely upgraded game costs $39.98.
4. Advertisements were installed by a software update pushed through the PlayStation Network.
5. The overview of the update contained no information regarding the addition of in-game advertisements.
6. A game update cannot be uninstalled without reformatting your hard drive or restoring your drive to an earlier state from a backup image.
7. When a game has an update available, it will log you out of your PlayStation Network account when the game is launched, and will refuse to allow you to log in during gameplay. This will continue to happen until you install the update.
8. In order to access the online content of any PS3 game, you must be logged into your PlayStation Network Account.

So, putting all of these facts together, if you have an unpatched version of on Wipeout HD installed on your PlayStation you will see full-screen alert that there is an update avaliable every time you launch the game. If you chose not to install the update at that time, you will be unable to access any online content until you install the update. Whenever you attempt to access online content (or in some cases, the game attempts to do so automatically), you will be presented with the same full-screen dialog informing you that there is an update available. The only way you can access the online content of the game is to install the update. The overview of the update states nothing more than it being a software patch. Once you have installed the patch, you will be presented with intrusive advertisements, and will have no practical way of removing the patch.

Sony is giving their customers who have already paid $25-40 for a game one of two decisions:

1. Play without advertisements, but lose all access to online content, and be constantly pestered by alerts informing you that your software is out-of-date.
2. Run the game seamlessly without annoying system alerts, and have full access to all online content, but have extended loading times due to the addition of in-game advertisements.

Sony gives no alternatives. They will not allow their customers to choose to continue playing the game they purchased the same way they had always been playing. They are forcing Wipeout gamers to deal with inhibited gameplay regardless of their choice to update or not. Given that, I feel that it should be Sony's legal responsibility to allow the consumer to uninstall the game and receive a full refund if they don't agree to only being able to continue playing the game online if they subject themselves to advertisements installed for the sole purpose of boosting Sony's revenue.

Also, due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, even attempting to manually remove the advertisements from the game would be a criminal offense.

While many would argue that there is likely some part of the EULA that gives Sony the right to do exactly what they are doing, try applying such restrictions on other forms of media.

Imagine that you buy a DVD box set for the first 3 seasons of a TV show. A year later, you decide that you would like to watch the show that you purchased, and you put the DVD in your DVD player. The disc loads, and then informs you that a new "improved" version of the DVDs has been released, and you must take the DVDs to your local video store for a free trade in. However, it provides no detail about what has been "improved" in the new version. You skip the message, not particularly worried about trading in your perfectly functional DVDs for new "improved" ones, but, when you try to watch the show, you discover that you get the message before the start of every episode, and you must manually exit the message to continue playback. You also discover that it is intentionally restricting you from playing even numbered episodes of the show.

Frustrated, you go to your local Best Buy, to get the new version, and are unable to get any information from anyone working there as to what has been changed in the new version. Wishing to be able to watch the show, you simply accept it, get your new DVDs, and return home. The new DVDs appear to be exactly the same as your old ones (minus the annoying alerts and restrictions), and they are allowing you to watch all episodes of the show. However, you now have to watch commercials before each episode, as well as during the spot reserved for a commercial break when it originally aired on television, and you have no option to disable them, and you cannot fast forward through them (compare to Hulu's interface and advertisements).

If you return to Best Buy and ask them for a functioning copy of the original version of the DVDs, they inform you that you cannot trade in your new "improved" DVDs for the old ones, and that even if you still had the old ones, there is no way to avoid the alerts and restrictions. Annoyed by this forced introduction of commercials into the DVDs you already paid for, you ask to exchange your new "improved" DVDs for a full refund of your purchase price, in which your are informed that you cannot return the DVDs are not eligible for return.

The idea of a company forcing your to accept alterations your already-paid-for media by restricting the functionality of your content until such alterations are made can be argued to be acceptable when applied to downloaded software running on a proprietary system. However, if you apply that scenario to media permanently encoded onto a physical medium, it becomes more evident that this involves a company taking what was a product, and turning it into a service that must be accepted by their terms. If their terms change, and you don't accept them, they reserve the right to terminate your service without refund. Only, in this case, they reserve to limit or completely restrict the use of the product you paid for without refund.

I apologize for the wordy examples, but compare it to this scenario:

You purchase a Television from a company that offers it's own internet-based TV service, in addition to accepting input from outside devices. It has a lot of online functionality, so it includes an integrated camera. One day, you turn your TV on, and are informed that an update has been automatically installed, and you cannot use your TV until you agree to the new EULA provided with the update. The EULA states that now only 2 people are permitted to view the Television simultaneously, and you must pay $20/month for each additional person you wish to be able to view the TV. If you do not accept the terms of the new EULA, the TV turns off. When you turn it back on again, it simply asks you to agree to the EULA. You cannot use the TV at all unless you agree to the EULA. However, you personally do not agree to the new terms as you have a family of 5, and all 5 of you often watch the TV as a family.

You figure that there is really no way for the manufacturer to force you to pay $60/month simply to license your children to watch television with you, so you agree to the new EULA since you have no other choice. Now, when you are watching TV with your family, if more than two people begin watching the TV, the screen goes blank and informs you that more people are viewing the TV than are licensed, and tells you that in order to continue viewing the TV, you must pay a monthly licensing fee to accommodate for the extra people, or reduce the number of people currently viewing the TV. This restriction is imposed regardless of if you are watching the manufacturer's internet television service, or your attached media devices. You quickly figure out that the TV is using the integrated camera to determine the number of people viewing, but also discover that the TV also recognizes if you are intentionally obstructing it's view, and will inform you that repeated attempts to bypass the limitation will result in the termination of your service and permanent decommission of all functionality of the hardware, as well as possible legal prosecution.

You own all the hardware. You have the right to destroy the TV with a sledgehammer if you so please. It belongs to you, so you can do whatever you want to do to it. Howeve the manufacturer has included a proprietary service that they have made mandatory for you ability to use the system. Because use of the software that allows for the hardware's functionality has been classified as being part of the service, they can restrict your use of the hardware to a EULA and a terms of service. Since you purchased only the hardware, the manufacturer reserves the right to destroy the software on it through their service at their discretion. If the manufacturer installs hardware used to decrypt their signed software, any attempt to remove or disable that hardware, even if you own it, would be a criminal offense under the DMCA.

Services should be legally defined as exactly what they are, because otherwise, companies will be able to make the software that runs on hardware dependant on their service, and can control use of all software on the hardware under the same terms as the service. Applying hardware encryption/decryption allows a manufacturer to make circumventing their hardware restrictions on software illegal under the DCMA, legally limiting your use of software only to what is approved by the manufacturer.

I feel it could only be a matter of time before such tactics are used in all commercial computer products, including PCs.