Why cant we rent pc games in the USA? They do it in Canada

[gplracer]

I have a friend that lives in Canada. Before hwe buys a pc game, he usually goes to the local video store and rents a copy to try it out. I have never seen a place in the US that does this. Is there a legal reason for this?

 

[OS]

Actually, my local public library rents out PC games

 

[Prodigy^]

I don't really think renting games helps keeping down piracy

 

[T2T III]

Places that rent PC games might as well rent portable CD burners as a package deal.

 

[piku]

Yeah. And instructions on how to copy the entire game to your hard drive.

Hehe. I remember once i rented that Beavis and Butthead PC game a few years ago from a rental place. I copied the entire game to my hard drive and kept it.

Too bad it wasnt all that fun after you beat it so it didnt last

(edit: clarification and speeling erros)

 

[Blain]

You wouldn't need to rent a CD burner...
Just rent a copy of Norton's Virtual Drive.

 

[Shagga]

Piku - Soz man but you suck bigtime. I mean, the game was crap, why copy it numbnutz.

Jeez and you complain about the prices. FFS.

:|

 

[Vich]

Um they can put a special key on it that it stop workinga fter 2 days or something. So someone would need to make a crack, :/ Or it makes some key gen who knows

 

[apoppin]

What's the difference? Play Station games are rented and copied. It's up to the disk manufacturer to copy-protect the disk.

 

[Train]

they used to rent pc CD Roms in my town for $1 a night, but then i havent seen that since burners came out. not that it matters, i just burn copies of all my friends games anyways.

<edit> for evaluation purposes only of course </edit>

 

[Jabberwocky]

Yes, stores do rent out pc games in Canada, but legally they are very restricted. They cannot rent out games that can be fully installed on the hard drive, nor can they rent out games if the publisher does not consent. For example, legally they can't rent out Electronic Arts products at all.
I'm sure there are some businesses who choose to disregard the legalities, but thats another issue all together!

 

[obeseotron]

With resources like www.gamecopyworld.com it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination. Also there has to be a critical mass to rent games profitably, and consoles have tens of millions of owners, PCs have a few million gamers who buy a lot of games.