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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.'"
Let's say I buy $GAME second hand for $30. Perhaps I'll like it enough to buy the sequel $GAME_2 new, full price, when it comes out and not wait.
There's nothing stopping major game publishers from creating their own chain of used game stores, and contracting (or just buy a majority share in) gamestop to manage them for the publishers. This seems like a pretty easy fix.
moox. for a new generation.
Sony was going to have each game be locked to a single PS3 thus preventing the resale of the game.
Sony decided against it when the fans made a stink.
Lets not say that its "impossible" to stop the selling of used games. Its quite possible and they will do it when they feel they have to.
Game companies should progressively lower prices of their games as time passes. This would eat up the used game market.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Honestly, the argument against being able to buy used games is not one I understand. It's no different than buying a used car and as soon as someone suggested there be sanctions against reselling cars, there would be a public outcry. In both instances you can buy the brand new item for full retail price - or wait a while and get it in slightly worse condition and maybe not with all the extras that originally came with the item. In both cases the reseller (we'll say Gamestop and your local car dealership) make a profit over what they bought the used item for. In both cases the customer is paying more than they otherwise would if they bought it directly from the person selling it to the reseller. And in both cases you're dealing with shady, underhanded people.
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.
Anyone who describes selling used anything this way is clearly so out of touch with reality that their opinion on the subject isn't worth listening to.
The primary reason that game developers (and marketers) should shut up about used games? It's not because it may act as advertising for their future games, although that's a valid economic argument. It's because if you buy something, you own it, and it is yours to do with as you wish. Don't talk about "selling" people games if you're not willing to, you know, sell them. Rent them out, whatever. But when you agree to have your products on store shelves (store, not rental facility) or listed as "for sale" in online catalogs, you are giving up the right to control what people do with the physical media after they buy them. Period. End of story. Game over, man, game over.
Movie studios, music labels, book publishers: you too.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But this is how the game publishers see it:
5 million people are playing my game.
500k people are pirating it.
1 million people are buying it used.
I get $30 for each new copy sold.
Ergo, I am LOSING $15 million to piracy, and I am LOSING $30 million to second-hand sales.
The key is that the publishes don't view the second-hand sales environment as free marketing. That is to say, they don't see the benefits of having a wider audience exposure, which in turn causes overall sales and first-sales to rise. Instead they look at second-hand sales as missed opportunities, assuming that they should have been first-sale purchases, and scream that they are losing revenue. Complete bullshit way of thinking about it, but when all you care about is the bottom line, then your goal is to have the absolute maximum number of people paying you the maximum price.
Of course the used-market game retailers put the price of the used games barely less than the new ones (compare to a pawn shop for example) which only further reinforces the mentality that the retailers are trying to screw the publishers.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Developers and publishers are under the, mistaken, impression that they're missing out on huge revenue stream through used games. Let's assume that I buy a game for $60. Once I'm done with it, I sell it, either through Gamestop or Amazon for about $20 net. They take a $10 commission and sell it to someone else for $30. In this scenario developers seem to think that they've missed out on a single $60 from the person who bought it at $30 used, but that just isn't the case.
First of all, the person who waited for a used copy at $30 isn't going to spend $60 in the absence of a used copy. They're going to wait until the new copies are about $30 and buy it then. Giving them fewer choices of how to spend their money does not magically give them more money to spend. Also, the person who bought the game at $60, didn't just buy a game. They bought a game that they knew they could sell for ~$20. By stripping out the ability to resell the game you lower the value of the game to the initial buyer as well. So without the used option, the developer doesn't get two $60 sales, they get one $40 sale and one $30 sale. But they have to pay for all the production, shipping, packing, etc... costs for a second copy of the game as well. So at the end of the day the net gain is more or less zero.
"It may feel like a rip-off to some, but you've got to admit that paying $30 for a used IKEA couch sure beats paying $60! Couch manufactures and craftsmnet may not like it, but people are going to buy new couches and those old couches will be sold back to other people. There's nothing couch manufactures can do to stop them, and people who hold garage sales or use craig's list continue to laugh all the way to the bank. In an article at Cheap Buys, Dave Thomas, eating Wendy's burgers from the grave, dissects one of the most critical issues in furniture today: used furniture merchants (online and brick-and-mortar) who specialize in this 'age old practice of selling used items.'"
On one hand, they want to act like "the thing" is the media upon which the games are distributed. This is why they don't want to replace media that has been damaged at any reasonable cost. On the other hand, they want to act like "the thing" is also the software license and not the media itself and so they want to deny the license to resell the media by asserting that users are not allowed to transfer the license to use the software and data within.
You can't have it both ways. If the media is the thing, then they don't need to replace my damaged disks for a reasonable fee but they can't prevent me from selling them either. If the software/data contained is the thing, then they should offer media replacement services at a reasonable cost FOREVER or at least offer a means to back up the data and to play the backup copies. (They should not be allowed to back out of this by saying a game is discontinued and replacement copies are no longer available... they can just print more! And any company that buys the original company and copyrights to the software/data should ALSO be required under the same licensing agreement...) and then they can disallow the right to resell the media.
At the moment, the paradigm appears to be in favor of the media being "the thing" as the behavior of the game publishers and the console makers seem to bear this out. (That is to say, no backup copies are playable and no replacement guarantees are available.) And since the media is the thing, they can't restrict what I do with it and damn the DMCA as it is an unjust law and I will violate it every time it gets in the way of my fair use.
You can't "sell" just one digital copy of anything, since each digital copy can be reproduced AND distributed at essentially zero cost to anyone. The concept of buying and selling goods applies only to tangible goods with a fixed lifespan. How can you "sell" just one digital copy of something and have it retain a tangible quality? You can't. The idea that a used game can sell for anything says that the economy is strong. If piracy really applied to digital media, then there would be no used market whatsoever. Furthermore, the tangible item (a disc) is exactly why game makers shy away from digital distribution -- DD removes the only tangible good they are selling and destroys the ability to control any of the distro rights (i.e. the main income stream).
stuff |
I can't stand places like gamestop. $60 game (brand new). They buy it back for $10 to $15. They resell it at $55. No wonder they are laughing all the way to the bank - they are ripping off their consumers.
Craigslist/Ebay and other similar sites is the way to buy used games.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
The entities complaining that used game sales are costing them money need to do the same thing as all whiners - face the reality, and do something that actually has a shot of working.
Enough with this trying to cherry-pick the characteristics of physical and non-physical products that suit your current business model the best.
In the case of used game sales, they simply need to get in on the action. Forget resale of discs; that's a lost cause. In the near future, even where those items still exist, they'll be linked to an account anyway.
They need to get in on resale of digital purchases. Say I'm done with a game I bought on Steam. I put my "copy" of the game up for sale, for some percentage of the current "new" price. Some other user decides to buy it, and pays that price. I get a substantial chunk of it in credit - at least half. The rest gets split between the publisher and Steam. The publisher and the developer can then work out what they do with that bit.
Mind you, eventually I'd like to see an end to paying for individual games at all. Instead, I pay a monthly subscription, and play whatever games I want. In turn, the developers for those games get a percentage of my subscription fee, based on how much I (and other subscribers) play their game.
So let me get this straight -- you're trying to tell game developers they don't deserve the money they're lawfully entitled to?
They're not lawfully entitled to used-game sales. Once they've received the check for the games they sell to retailers, their deal is done. They got their money. The game DVD is no longer property of $Game_Developer. That property was sold. The developer still has the rights to print the game, and make more copies, but they don't have the right to harvest cash after they've already received full compensation for the property.
Second, if they charged less, the games would suck badly enough that they'd no longer be worth even a slashdot post lamenting the lack of availability.
How much mercury did you drink before you started believing this? Until developers have access to time machines, retail price of a game will NOT affect the development process. NBA Jam for the Genesis sold for $100 retail. Shenmue had a budget of $70M and turned out mediocre. Too Human had a budget of about $100M, and was received even worse. You said yourself that price is not indicative of value, but it's an indication of what the game developer feels they "deserve" for their contributions to a superfluous entertainment industry.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Let's say Santa Claus is real and brings me the game that he had his elves construct in his workshop. Then no one gets any money at all, but are you really against Santa Claus?
Alice has $90.
Bob has $30.
No used:
Alice buys Gears of War.
Money given to studios - $60
With used:
Alice buys Gears of War.
Alice sells GoW to Bob.
Alice buys GoW2
Money given to studios - $120
Used stores allow people who don't have enough to buy games new or don't want to buy games new to funnel their money to those who do.
Additionally it exposes more people to games sowing the seeds for future full price purchases when their spending habits and/or income changes.
I find being offended by me offensive.
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.
The only problem I see here is that me and my friends will whoop your ass at L4D because you don't know the maps the way we do since we've been playing from November. Sure you'll be fine against a group of no-mics, but me and my 3 friends will beat you and your 3 friends, hands down, every time, for the next few months... It's the same reason I wouldn't get into WoW now...I don't know what any of the shit does or how to effectively use it...
Like there are any.
The Demopublican Party in the US is owned by its largest contributors, not the voters. Both wings of the party are, therefore, fully invested in "preserving intellectual property rights".
Since, unlike places where your vote might count (Germany, for instance, with proportional representation in the Bundestag), the Demopublican Party has managed to set up gerrymandered districts across the US to be sure that no new party can obtain a significant presence in any legislature, nor can enough independent legislators be elected to have significant input to the process.
I like computers... I make my living fixing them... I thoroughly enjoy video games... But I really hate what digital media has done to the concepts of property and ownership.
Used to be that I'd buy a book, or a record, or a board game, or a deck of cards - and nobody would question for a moment that I owned those things. They were my property. I could do with them whatever I wanted. After I finished reading the book I could donate it to the local library, or hand it off to a friend, or sell it to a used bookstore. If the original author of that book showed up at my garage sale and complained that I was selling his book he would have been laughed at.
These days, however, we don't actually own anything. We've just been given a temporary license to use the thing. And when I'm done playing my video game, or done reading my ebook, or done listening to my MP3, I'm not really able to do much with it. Sure, I can sell a video game to someone else... But the DRM involved is making it hard just to re-install the game on your own computer, much less transfer ownership to someone else.
The worst part isn't that this is happening... Of course a company is going to do everything they can to make money - that's what businesses do. So I don't blame EA or Microsoft or whoever for trying to prevent the selling of used video games. The worst part is that it is being allowed to happen. Nobody is laughing at these guys. Their arguments aren't being rebuffed. They aren't being thrown out of court. These folks are claiming that the $60 I paid for a video game didn't actually buy me a video game, and everyone just kind of shrugs and nods and goes along with it.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
That's why I hate steam. Try yourself to sell a used game that is curently registered in your steam account (like Half Life 2)....
-- dnl
Had it not been such a crappy console, I would never have bought one. :)
-- Fuck Beta
Developers aren't the problem. People keep saying 'developers' in this thread when they mean 'publishers'. Developers write code and debug physics engines, they don't set prices or worry about second tier markets.
You are thinking of CEOs, who are whiny bitches regardless of the industry they are in...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!