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Why Game Developers Should Shut Up About Used Games
Ssquared22 writes "It may feel like a rip-off to some, but you've got to admit that paying $30 for Gears of War 2 sure beats paying $60! Game publishers and developers may not like it, but people are going to trade in used games for new games and those old games will be sold back to other people. There's nothing game developers can do to stop them, and companies like Gamestop continue to laugh all the way to the bank. In an article at Crispy Gamer, David Thomas dissects one of the most critical issues in gaming today: used games and merchants (online and brick-and-mortar) who specialize in this 'sleight of hand.'"
It is a simple case of seller's remorse. They lure you to the table with the advertising that you are buying a product. A physical good you can re-use, re-cycle, trade, sell, etc. And they make you pay a premium price for that product.
Then they whine that you are trading, re-using, selling and undermining their sales. What they really wanted was for you to pay a product price ($60) for a license.
It's pretty clear that the free market (blockbuster) has established the value of a license at $3-$5 per week. But I don't think the game studios would be happy if they sold ten million physical copies on launch day for $5 a pop either.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
I wont. I'm done paying full retail for games. I buy lots of games when they hit the $19.95 mark. almost no games I own cost more than that. I refuse to pay the stupid $70.00 each for a game. that's nuts.
but then I also am the guy that pisses off the EB clerks and got Fallout 3 for $20.00 when they offered the guy turning it in $10.00 for it.
I slapped the guy a 20 and he gave me the game. I left before the pimple faced manager could stop choking on his burger to yell at me.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You could, in theory, just sell your steam account itself to someone else. Of course, this means selling the entire collection of games in your account so you can't pick and choose. You could just set up a different account for each game you wanted to buy though.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
We should try to extend this to music especially downloaded music. Why is it that I can sell a used CD but, in some coutries, I can't sell a used iPod full of legally downloaded music? I suppose that's a definitive advantage of buying the CD vs downloading (on top of the quality).
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Wrong!
The real solution is to sell games that I would want to continue playing longer than 3 months. If I wanted to continue playing it (because it is still fun), then I don't want to sell it. If I don't want to sell this fun game, there will be no used game market. If there is no used game market, the next game I want, I will buy brand new.
Or the game developers can keep pushing the same old crap and complaining about their customers.
It's not a lost sale because the purchase price of the new game includes the resale value of that same game when it becomes used.
In other words, they get to charge such high prices because users can sell the game later and recoup some of the loss.
but then I also am the guy that pisses off the EB clerks and got Fallout 3 for $20.00 when they offered the guy turning it in $10.00 for it.
I slapped the guy a 20 and he gave me the game. I left before the pimple faced manager could stop choking on his burger to yell at me.
Hell dude, I used to do that as a Gamestop employee.
We did it all the time. New game comes out, we wait for someone to trade it in. No manager around means, "Hey man, the store will give you X dollars in store credit. I'll (as in me personally) will give you the same value in cash."
So, by my book, you paid twice as much as you needed to for Fallout. If the guy turning it wanted to get cash from the store, he'd have gotten $8.00. Hahahaha.
Man, I remember I got a PS2 for trade in value in cash, I bought a portable LCD screen that clicks onto a Gamecube for I think $35 (and the store was going to turn around and price it for $135!!!).
Neon Genesis Evangelion box set for like $60... I sold a brand new Gamecube that I won from a convention to a customer for face value (but no tax so they saved like $20 or whatever)...
And again, this was common practice. Local management looked the other way. Upper management wouldn't have.
It's unrelated, but I feel like telling it: the best was when GTA: Vice City came out.
Hype for GTA:VC was so ridiculously overblown (I remember having to make over 400 reservation phone calls before Gamestop started using automation) that we actually took reservations for the first three shipments of the game. Of course, it's worth noting here that this was kind of ridiculous to begin with because only about 70% of that first shipment's reservation holders will actually pick up, so at some point it was always inevitable that we'd get the go ahead to sell to walk-ins before we began satisfying second shipment reservations...
Anyway, on release day, I got a phone call:
"Hello, will you guys be selling second shipment reservations today?"
"No, first shipment only. Sorry."
"What if I gave you $50?"
So I gave the guy my name and told him to ask for me when he came in, sold him the copy and came up $50 richer. I used this to justify my purchase of the game's soundtrack that night when I also picked up my copy of the game.
The next day, when I came into work, there was a lot of hushed talk about the POS screwing up transactions yesterday. It turned out that whenever someone paid for a transaction on a debit card, the register would actually charge them for whatever value the most recent credit card transaction was charged. For some people it worked out to their disadvantage and if they came and complained we reimbursed them. Some people came out ahead and they got a walk. I was one of those people and I came up about $50.
And it still makes me smile.
Yeah, sort of. The problem with hanging around used game shops waiting to over-bid them, is you are on their private property, effectively siphoning off part of their real estate lease, advertising, and employee costs, which allow anybody to get at least something for their game on impulse. I wouldn't blame EB if they banned you or the guy who sold you the game from their store.
Game companies should progressively lower prices
They actually do, with their re-releasing of hit titles for about half price. This actually started partly to curb the used game market.
But why isn't anyone asking why games are so expensive in the first place? If supply and demand are suppose to govern the market price, then where there is unlimited supply, there should be aggressive price competition to lure in business. Yet, with games (and music), you find indifference.
I thought this was called price fixing and was illegal.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
The summary says Game publishers and developers may not like it, but people are going to trade in used games for new games and those old games will be sold back to other people. There's nothing game developers can do to stop them.
Don't bet on it. C&C:4 will require a constant Internet connection to play. How long do you think it will be before other games follow? And how long do you think it will be before most games have something like Microsoft's so-called Genuine Advantage, where each game comes with a serial number that must be validated before the game will play? Once that serial number is registered, selling the CD doesn't do any good at all. And game companies are under no obligation to allow you to transfer that serial number to someone else. Register the serial number with the server via your PC or with your XBox live account or your PS3 Online account and the media becomes worthless. In fact, they could simply give the game disks away and require you to pay online to receive an activation number or token.
Sure, the system can probably be cracked and it won't stop all piracy, but it will stop legal used games sales in its tracks.
Goodbye Gamestop, we hardly knew ye.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
The solution, I think, is something that'll never come to pass: a waiting period on trading in games.
Solution? What's the problem?
Not everything should be a compromise, especially when talking about freedoms. People have the right to resell something they own.
Ultimately, this isn't a huge issue, but it could exasperate other issues that might be more critical.
It's certainly not an issue. Do you think renting is a "huge issue" as well? Because it's pretty much the same thing.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
"If no one wants to pay for them, no one wants them produced."
BS. If all of those songs, movies, and games weren't wanted, then the whole P2P thing wouldn't exist. Pirates WANT the games, they just don't want to pay for them.
Which means in my book that they're not pirates, but parasites.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
My point exactly, F/OSS gaming is so pathetic you actually put TuxRacer on the list.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
I'm going to take GTA 4, and show you exactly why you are wrong.
If no one wants to pay for them, no one wants them produced. So if no one wants them to be produced... why should you produce them? (Kinda obvious, isn't it?)
GTA 4 sold over 13 million copies. Obviously, people did want it produced. The issue is, of those 13 million people, how many people would individually have the $100 million it cost to produce, and would be willing to spend $100 million to have a game produced, if after it was produced anyone could copy it. Probably none.
They dont have to be produced if theres no market for them. (Kinda obvious, isn't it?)
But there is a market for them, so long as they can't be freely copied so that the investors can get their money back. How else do games sell millions of copies.
How about stopping the production of the product until the people realize (all by themselves, with no censorship and mass punishment laws needed) that they really really really have to pay you to get it?
You should follow that up by wishing really really hard that you can really really alter human nature.
And by the way, the law absolutely doesnt prevent anybody to "duplicate" your product, it just fuck ups the lives (really badly) of the few poor fellas who happen to get caught. The silent majority just keeps copying because nobody, really nobody outside of the circles directly profiting from copying prohibition considers sharing, copying and passing on of culture even remotely wrong or illegal.
Bullshit. How many commercial vendors selling copied media exist and openly operate in the United States. None. How about in China? So the law doesn't work? You might want to reevaluate your notions.
I'll even go so far as to help you out with your next most obvious line of reasoning, and why that won't work.
You don't need one guy to fund it man. Everybody could throw in a little bit of money, man, like a coop, man, and people that had talent could add a little time, and they could work on a game idea. So there wouldn't be any profit man, it would just be totally community driven.
And what happens if the game sucks.
They could all just keep working on it.
Or in the alternative, you could allow investors to shoulder that risk, and in exchange be allowed the exclusive right to distribute and charge for the produced material. This way, if the game sucks, you don't have to spend any money on it. But if the game is good, you've got to give the investor some money to cover his cost, plus some to cover his risk, plus some to provide a return on his investment to encourage him to take the risk to begin with. Of course, if people could just copy it, the investor wouldn't be able to recoup the investment, so he wouldn't be able to do it. So maybe there could be some kind of law for that. But that kind of brings us full circle doesn't it.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill