Best Buy vs. The Game Makers

An anonymous reader writes "CNN's excellent Game Over column brings word that Best Buy has begun selling used games in select locations as part of a test program. If successful, all of the store's 700 stores could begin doing so in the not-too-distant future. Not so happy about this are developers, including Epic's Mark Rein, who resurrects his 'no used game sales' argument, saying 'To have them resell the games, with developers having no participation, that's just wrong. That's just fleecing us.'"

Comments

Maybe some competition finally

[sycomonkey]

The used game market is way overvalued, margins are huge. Maybe this will make things a bit more reasonable. And the developers have nothing to complain about, reselling something you bought is very clearly defined as fair use in every copyright law ever.

Re:Maybe some competition finally

[Unordained]

First sale doctrine as an exception to copyright law

Oh sit down in your corner.

[garcia]

To have them resell the games, with developers having no participation, that's just wrong. That's just fleecing us.

You already made money on the sale the first time. Regardless of your personal feelings about the issue you have absolutely no rights to money made on subsequent sales. I'm sure your opinion would change drastically if you were charged extra, on top of the sale price, for a used car.

Granted, you probably aren't buying used cars but you get the idea.

Doesn't this happen a lot anyway?

[Kazzahdrane]

What about selling used cars or selling houses? Should the original manufacturer/builder get a percentage of the sale? Of course not. Of course those License Agreements we accept might have some small print stuff in them... Over here in the UK GAME and Gamestation stores have been selling used console games for years. My understanding was that used PC Games were much more legally ambiguous/completely illegal which is why GAME doesn't sell them. However, the Gamestation in my city does which would be pretty good except their whole PC range is about 1/12 of their stock.

Oh, how horrible

[kawika]

'To have them resell the games, with developers having no participation, that's just wrong. That's just fleecing us.'"

Yes, the only fleecing that should be done is first-generation fleecing, where the game developers and distributors get a good chunk of the money before the buyer realizes the game is boring and unplayable.

So why would someone be selling a game? Perhaps because it is no longer interesting to them? Maybe because it became boring to play after a few weeks? Whose fault is that? If the buyer can't even resell the thing without some sort of permission from the game company it sounds like there is less incentive for them to make a "keeper".

Is selling a used car wrong too?

[prezkennedy.org]

Sure, developers aren't making any money the second time around, but neither is a car maker when a used car is sold.

Mark Rein has a point about reselling Microsoft Office and how the MS legal department would attack voraciously, while reselling Halo is just fine.

Personally, I like finding older games I missed the first time around. The used game market simply isn't the same market as the new game market, and developers just need to get over it.

Re:Is selling a used car wrong too?

[duffbeer703]

Buying used cars is unethical as well. How are autoworkers expected to feed their families if you're out there buying cars that were manufactured years ago?

I propose a levy for every car sale, so that the rightful creators of automobiles get their just reward.

Re:Is selling a used car wrong too?

[Jacius]

You weren't kidding, your example is extreme. Downright ludicrous, in fact.

If 1 million people played a game for 10 to 20 hours before reselling it, even ignoring the time it takes to find the next customer, it would take 10 to 20 million hours (or 1140 to 2280 years) for all of them to play it.

If our game is on a standard compact disc, the original disc will long since have degraded (even if all 1 million customers were very careful, and got no scratches, and didn't accidently break it).

Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that the CD is periodically copied to a new CD, so that it remains readable, it is highly unlikely that we will be using CDs even 10 years from now, let alone 1000.

Even if the original console and a television set to play it on, and an electric generator and circuit to power the console and television were all preserved and sold along with the CD (and I hope you won't try to claim that consoles, televisions, generators, and wires do not deprecate), do you think anyone in the year 3505 A.D. would give a rat's ass about a game from 2005? I don't even care about games from 1995!

I find your example to be preposterous, and will propose one slightly more consistent with reality:

A game developer spends 160,000 man-hours to make a game. They sell rights to the game to a publisher for, say, $7 million (this comes out to an average of $43.75 per man-hour for the game developer; the president of the company will of course be paid more than an intern will, because this is a capitalist economy). The publisher makes 250,000 units, at $5 per unit (including disc, box and manual). These units are sold to retail outlets across the U.S. for $40 per unit (a profit of $8.75 million for the sale, and a net profit of $1.75 million for the publisher). The retail outlets sell each unit for $50 per unit, a profit of $2.5 million for the retailer.

80% of the units, or 200,000 units, end up stuffed in the closet or thrown out after the first owner gets done with it. A few months later, the remaining 50,000 units have been sold to a used games retailer at $10 per unit (a loss of $30 for the first customer, or a cost of $2-3 per hour of fun he had). The used games retailer sells it again for $25 (the manuals are all ratty and the disc has some small scratches on it by now), making $15 per unit in the process.

A few months later, 10,000 units have been sold back to the used games retailer at $5 a pop, and sold to a third customer for $20 (the used games retailer has now made $30 per game over a period of 4-6 months). A few months later, 2,000 units are sold back for $3 a piece; 1,500 of them sit on the shelf for 4 months before being thrown out, because the sequel has come out and no one wants to buy them anymore.

(By the way, the sequel makes another $50 per man-hour for the game developer, a net profit of $3 million for the publisher, etc. etc. before the third game in the series comes out 2 years later, repeat ad nauseum.)

I'm sure my figures are a little bit off from the reality, but certainly more accurate than your example.

Your example of lemonade is absolutly useless and does not apply.

Well, you seem to be the expert on absolutely useless examples, so I'll have to take your word for it. For some reason, I thought that a can of lemonade powder (which costs $2 and lasts 3 days of normal use before it is empty, or $0.67 per day of use), could be compared to an automobile (which costs perhaps $15,000 and lasts 10 years of normal use, or $4 per day of use). For some reason, the idea got into my head that selling a used car was similar to selling a half-empty can of lemonade powder.

Thanks for setting me straight.

As for the obvious anti-communist stance I would like to see if you can find me an example of a non-Stalinistic Communism that has be attempted let alone one that failed. I can show you at least a few examples of successful socialized societies.

Are you

Options galore

[yotto]

Great! Now I can choose between pay $10 off the price of a new game for a scratched CD, ripped or missing manual, and no box from EBGames, OR paying $10 off the price of a new game for a scratched CD, ripped or missing manual, and no box from Best Buy!

No used game sales?

[chman]

That's just fleecing us
And annual rehashes of pre-existing content at full retail price isn't fleecing the consumers? Oh dear. I suppose you'd rather we consider ourselves as not taking ownership of the CD/DVD when we buy it from the store? Would you rather we saw your game not as an item we purchase, but as an experience that one can indulge in for a nominal fee just like those found on darkened street corners? After all, once we're finished with your underwhelming offerings, we would be stuck with something we can't get rid of.

I won't buy a used game anyway...

[ajservo]

I know from experience at Gamestop, whenever I buy a used game, despite them having oodles of cases around, they'll never give you one. Even if that's the last one they have in stock, all I ever get is the DVD. I insisted on getting full cases when I bought DDR, seeing as how I was paying $5 under full retail on a no longer made product.

Seriously. This isn't like the NES or SNES days. Who trades in games with JUST a disc?
What happened to the case? Where did it go? There should at least be that. The PS2/Xbox cases should be the most generic freakin cases in the world.

I'll take a beat up case, that's fine, but I'm not paying $5 under retail just because you have a disc. That's what chipped systems are for. Anyone can do that, and go play reburnable ISO's all day long as they get scratched. If I'm buying THE actual game, I expect a case at the very least. New cases are 50 cents a piece (or cheaper in bulk) for chrissake.

Counter-arguments

[alphaseven]

The New York Times ran an article about Amazon selling used books (Reading Beteween the Lines) arguing True, consumers probably save a few dollars while authors and publishers may lose some sales from a used book market. Yet the evidence suggests that the costs to publishers are not large, and also suggests that the overall gains from such secondhand markets outweigh any losses.

This is the paper cited, it's about used books but I wonder if the same arguments could be applied to used video games.

Death of the Game Store

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Of course Mark Rein's comments are self-serving greed. But the importnat thing is that when the Big Boxes start selling used games, small local game stores are dead (if they arnt already).

No fleecing here

[Jtheletter]

It's the doctrine of first sale. Once you sold it, it's out of your hands. Does that mean you have to like it? No. But there's nothing that says you should get another slice of the pie.

Ok, having said that, I can see hwo this is potentially a huge blow to the already struggling games industry, at least as far as smaller develoeprs go. Right now there seems to be this boom or bust tendency with games, and if you don't hit one out of the park on the first try there's little chance of getting another shot. In addition huge development and advertising costs can be hard to recoup for smaller companies, and having such a major outlet as BestBuy resell used games makes it even harder for them to make those all-important first-sales.

As a consumer this also worries me, given the used games policy of GamesStop and EB (before it was bought out) we can probably expect BestBuy to buy abysmally low and sell insultingly high. I'm sorry, but when I know a business is making outrageous margins of upwards of 80% (I did RTFA but my personal experience has been that their margins are much better than the 40% quoted) on these used games it sickens me. Basically the consumer is getting shorted on both ends. Will BestBuy reverse this and actually keep used games margins more reasonable? Probably not. Although even a $5 difference in price between them and GameStop would be a blwo to GS's used game income, and I don't doubt BB has the clout and Money to start a price war, however I do doubt that they could overcome the greed of the high margins to truly start one.

In summary to a lot of rambling, I think this could possibly be slightly good for the used games consumer, bad for the games industry, but totally inline with supply/demand economics and doctrines of first sale. I want the games publishers to do well, but if their only recourse is to legislate against reselling of used games (or reselling w/o a cut to them) I have to draw the line, once I own it I can do what I liek with it, including getting ripped off reselling it to BestBuy.

Developer's best bet

[xenocide2]

Nintendo is probably the first of the large vocal companies who figured out how to deal with rentals and used games. For a long time, they were very upset with the american practice of game rentals. Apparently in their home country of Japan rentals and resale are illegal (without permission, presumably). A very nice priviledge, but it certainly draws much ire from the consumers who discover that they're being denied a second-hand market. Nintendo of Japan's wrath was such that they sued Blockbuster, denouncing the practice as unhealthy to the game market (technically, their legal recourse was only reguarding copying of instruction manuals). They've since made up and become good friends, much in the same way that movie companies now tolerate rental stores because they comprise a heavy section of demand for their product. A couple companies have even released rental only versions of their software! I can't recall whether Nintendo themselves has engaged in the practice, although I do recall a Clayfighters game getting such treatment.

Nintendo has come to the realization that the best strategy against the second hand market was to make games that people want to keep. Most single player games outlast any interest the owner has in the game. Eventually, you've collected all the shines, beaten the final boss and found all the secret endings. Nintendo tries to add multiplayer to every game, whether it makes sense (Metriod Prime) or not (Pikmin 2). The other tactic they've taken is their Player's Choice games. Once demand falls off for a game, lower the price to 20 dollars. This pretty much destroys the used game market margins for the games in the list. For all I know, Best Buy could be trying to get their suppliers (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) to extract more cheap titles by threatening to sell used games. The test run would then be a method of verifying their estimated profits on the endevor. The used game market becomes a form of blackmail whenever wholesale channels can't meet asking price.

So basically, Nintendo's strategy is to trot out Miyamato to talk about innovation and quality, while quietly fighting the second hand market with every available resource. Whether they succeed on either front is an individual opinion.