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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.'"
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.
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