Why is licensing more of an issue on games than movies?

[_galaxy]

I see so many movies being able to be restored and sold again no problem. The only difficult for movie preservation is purely technical. Meanwhile games don't have the technical issue. Things like the nintendo DS multiple screens can be emulated and some games even run better on modern systems. But a thing like a need for speed game couldn't be bought forward due to licensing. Why can a fast and furious be bought forward though? It also has car licenses does it not? Help me understand this.

[Start_Running]

Money, and more parties involved.
With a movie you basically have the studio owning the rights to the movie in its entirety. SO the rights can be transferred in whole to any party.

Games...you can have the rights split to any nyumber of ways.
Let's take the Transformers games.

The rights to transformers are held by hasbro.
The game and distribution rights are owned by the publisher, and the actual software/source code is the property of the devs

This game can and will not be released again until some agreement can be reached between at least two of the 3 parties. and well. as you can imagine every side is going to try to angle for rthe lion's ashare.

[Leonardo Da Pinchi]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Money, and more parties involved.
With a movie you basically have the studio owning the rights to the movie in its entirety. SO the rights can be transferred in whole to any party.

Games...you can have the rights split to any nyumber of ways.
Let's take the Transformers games.

The rights to transformers are held by hasbro.
The game and distribution rights are owned by the publisher, and the actual software/source code is the property of the devs

This game can and will not be released again until some agreement can be reached between at least two of the 3 parties. and well. as you can imagine every side is going to try to angle for rthe lion's ashare.

This, basically you need licensing rights from both the business that OWNS the concept, and the Dev company that put forth the original game.

A lot of times a game's pulled because licensing rights aren't just "pay one small one time fee" it's "keep paying as long as you're selling copies."

Then there's the fact a lot of dev studios go under, dissolve, or are bought out and then pieced out. Getting compliance from one of those studios is near impossible.

[BJWyler]

Not to mention the fact that devs may also license assets to make the game. That's why it's not so easy to make an offline version of an MMO, or simply hand it over to be run by a player group. If they license music, art or sound assets, that's another layer of red tape that needs to be dealt with.

[Lithurge]

Most films don't license anything. When it comes to 'brands' if a brand features prominently that usually means they've paid to appear in the film. Though of course there are exceptions but they're usually better at negotiating rights to ensure they can monetise films long term.

That's not to say licensing isn't an issue for films and TV, there are a number of them that have either had the soundtrack changed or never been re-released because of expired music licensing rights.

[_galaxy]

Originally posted by Leonardo Da Pinchi:

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Money, and more parties involved.
With a movie you basically have the studio owning the rights to the movie in its entirety. SO the rights can be transferred in whole to any party.

Games...you can have the rights split to any nyumber of ways.
Let's take the Transformers games.

The rights to transformers are held by hasbro.
The game and distribution rights are owned by the publisher, and the actual software/source code is the property of the devs

This game can and will not be released again until some agreement can be reached between at least two of the 3 parties. and well. as you can imagine every side is going to try to angle for rthe lion's ashare.

This, basically you need licensing rights from both the business that OWNS the concept, and the Dev company that put forth the original game.

A lot of times a game's pulled because licensing rights aren't just "pay one small one time fee" it's "keep paying as long as you're selling copies."

Then there's the fact a lot of dev studios go under, dissolve, or are bought out and then pieced out. Getting compliance from one of those studios is near impossible.

It's more complicated. Hot pursuit remastered paid all the car licenses they could (they even got old songs) but they had to remove a few cars because the companies don't exist anymore so the car is in licensing hell.

[_galaxy]

Originally posted by Lithurge:

Most films don't license anything. When it comes to 'brands' if a brand features prominently that usually means they've paid to appear in the film. Though of course there are exceptions but they're usually better at negotiating rights to ensure they can monetise films long term.

That's not to say licensing isn't an issue for films and TV, there are a number of them that have either had the soundtrack changed or never been re-released because of expired music licensing rights.

So there's also a cultural difference.

But really wouldn't burguer king *want* their restaurant in the need for speed most wanted game instead of having EA pay them the rights to it?

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by _galaxy:

Originally posted by Lithurge:

Most films don't license anything. When it comes to 'brands' if a brand features prominently that usually means they've paid to appear in the film. Though of course there are exceptions but they're usually better at negotiating rights to ensure they can monetise films long term.

That's not to say licensing isn't an issue for films and TV, there are a number of them that have either had the soundtrack changed or never been re-released because of expired music licensing rights.

So there's also a cultural difference.

But really wouldn't burguer king *want* their restaurant in the need for speed most wanted game instead of having EA pay them the rights to it?

Lots of companies see movies as a better advertising platform than games.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Lots of companies see movies as a better advertising platform than games.

Ever read up on why Idiocracy did so poorly? A good example of the fear companies have of being seen in movies or even games. Especially controversial ones.

[BJWyler]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Originally posted by _galaxy:

So there's also a cultural difference.

But really wouldn't burguer king *want* their restaurant in the need for speed most wanted game instead of having EA pay them the rights to it?

Lots of companies see movies as a better advertising platform than games.

Plus movie studios have a lot more weight to throw around than your typical dev studio or publisher.

[JPMcMillen]

Originally posted by _galaxy:

I see so many movies being able to be restored and sold again no problem. The only difficult for movie preservation is purely technical. Meanwhile games don't have the technical issue. Things like the nintendo DS multiple screens can be emulated and some games even run better on modern systems. But a thing like a need for speed game couldn't be bought forward due to licensing. Why can a fast and furious be bought forward though? It also has car licenses does it not? Help me understand this.

It happens to movies as well. I remember movies that you can't even get on DVD, let alone BluRay. If you're lucky you might find it on some streaming service, but sometimes that's not even an option. It really depends on how much demand the rights holder thinks there is for the movie and how much it will cost to make it available again. If they don't think the demand will justify the costs, it's just going to sit there.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

Originally posted by _galaxy:

I see so many movies being able to be restored and sold again no problem. The only difficult for movie preservation is purely technical. Meanwhile games don't have the technical issue. Things like the nintendo DS multiple screens can be emulated and some games even run better on modern systems. But a thing like a need for speed game couldn't be bought forward due to licensing. Why can a fast and furious be bought forward though? It also has car licenses does it not? Help me understand this.

It happens to movies as well. I remember movies that you can't even get on DVD, let alone BluRay. If you're lucky you might find it on some streaming service, but sometimes that's not even an option. It really depends on how much demand the rights holder thinks there is for the movie and how much it will cost to make it available again. If they don't think the demand will justify the costs, it's just going to sit there.

That usually means the rights holder really just doesn't care or doesn't see the benefit. Once interest is shown however. Consider how many old time sci-fi series got box set releases and dvd sets after the Science Fiction Channel premiered.

The channel was abble to snag the broadcast righst cheap, but once people got a taste of the stuff they got hungry.

[JPMcMillen]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

It happens to movies as well. I remember movies that you can't even get on DVD, let alone BluRay. If you're lucky you might find it on some streaming service, but sometimes that's not even an option. It really depends on how much demand the rights holder thinks there is for the movie and how much it will cost to make it available again. If they don't think the demand will justify the costs, it's just going to sit there.

That usually means the rights holder really just doesn't care or doesn't see the benefit. Once interest is shown however. Consider how many old time sci-fi series got box set releases and dvd sets after the Science Fiction Channel premiered.

The channel was abble to snag the broadcast righst cheap, but once people got a taste of the stuff they got hungry.

Exactly. Making the master copies, especially in a new format, is costly. So without seeing that there is demand, it's unfortunately up to the rights holder to take a 'leap of faith' and just hope there actually is demand for it.

The big issue is that there are tons of old movies that don't get the exposure needed for the rights holder to decide that maybe it's worth cranking out some more copies. It's even worse when master copies do exist and the rights holder still doesn't think it worth the effort (and cost) of just making more of them. That's why there are many long out of print DVD's that you can't buy new copies of.

One of the things I like about the Netflix Disk-By-Mail service is that they had tons of old and out of print DVD's for movies that just weren't available any other way. And with that closing down in about a month, some of those movies might not see the light of day for a long, long time.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by _galaxy:

I see so many movies being able to be restored and sold again no problem. The only difficult for movie preservation is purely technical. Meanwhile games don't have the technical issue. Things like the nintendo DS multiple screens can be emulated and some games even run better on modern systems. But a thing like a need for speed game couldn't be bought forward due to licensing. Why can a fast and furious be bought forward though? It also has car licenses does it not? Help me understand this.

Movies are seen as advertisements for brands.
Games not. For some reason some companies even see games as being reliant on their brands.

It's actually that simple.
And of course it's utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. How many people would ever have heard of Pagani or Königsegg if it wasn't for racing games.
Or how many people would know about Warhammer 40,000 it if wasn't for Dawn of War or Space Marine? How many people would know Vampire: The Masquerade?

The perception is only slowly changing and most companies rather see it as an advertisment plattform for blatant or ridiculous product placement, like Palace with the new NfS.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

Originally posted by Start_Running:

That usually means the rights holder really just doesn't care or doesn't see the benefit. Once interest is shown however. Consider how many old time sci-fi series got box set releases and dvd sets after the Science Fiction Channel premiered.

The channel was abble to snag the broadcast righst cheap, but once people got a taste of the stuff they got hungry.

Exactly. Making the master copies, especially in a new format, is costly. So without seeing that there is demand, it's unfortunately up to the rights holder to take a 'leap of faith' and just hope there actually is demand for it.

Yup. So they will usually wait until someone else comes along to foot the bill or they see clear indications of major ROI.

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

The big issue is that there are tons of old movies that don't get the exposure needed for the rights holder to decide that maybe it's worth cranking out some more copies. It's even worse when master copies do exist and the rights holder still doesn't think it worth the effort (and cost) of just making more of them. That's why there are many long out of print DVD's that you can't buy new copies of.

There's also the case where the rights a basically never renewed tobegin with This is how a lot of those films can actually slip into public domain, or at least the distribution rights for them.

It's why you can watch The Blob and Beware the Blob free on Youtube. But not the 1988 reboot.

But its not always drama free for movies either. Look at what's going on with the Fridayb the 13th and the Predartor franchaises. This again is what happens where th righst are divided between two parties.

[76561199502155650]

basicly all a license for rights is a way for people to get money from something, its just human greed, they want to be paid if you use it, mean while they should simply be happy you use it and enjoy it, that is the real karma of the world.

take VCR's for example, nobody buys VCR tapes, nobody makes VCR's nobody wants them, i own half a dozen and they haven't been turned on in 20 years, how about Dvd's? same thing, nobody is really buying Dvd's , or even blue rays, mean while the streaming and digital versions of those movies are much better on sales, every time i walk around a store and see Blue rays or Dvds im reminded of how badly that industry failed, and i am curious that if today they just don't put digital down load coupons in for the movies instead of the disc media.

thats how steam does it, infact i got a few games that where nothing but steam download codes in a box, sure there is a cd-rom in the box as well but you can download it faster then the cd rom can install it.