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Fable III Dev: Used Game Sales More Costly Than Piracy
eldavojohn writes "A developer working for Lionhead, the studio behind Fable III, told Eurogamer that piracy is 'less problematic' than used game sales, from a business perspective. Mike West, the lead combat designer for the latest Fable, said, 'For us it's probably a no-lose even with piracy as it is. But, as I say, second-hand sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days.' So downloading a game is bad, but apparently stopping by a second-hand store to pick up a licensed physical copy of the game ends up hurting them even more."
Ford, Toyota, etc. would LOVE it if the only option was to buy new.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Isn't this true of any industry? If I buy a used couch instead of buying it from the manufacturer, don't they take the same "loss"? It's amazing that now used games sales are being considered "loss" in the same manner as piracy.
And of course, the thought of making a game good enough and non-buggy enough that people do not want to just sell it off, never occurs to them.
No value is "lost" in the second hand market. A lot of people find buying a game for $69.95 to be ridiculous, and will never ever do it. Those "sales" are already "lost" because the producers are placing the price higher than the value. Make games a better value and you will get more sales.
A used copy can only exist if someone has already bought a new copy and then chosen to sell it on. The supply of such copies very shortly after a new game is released is likely to have a very close relationship to how poor and overhyped that game is...
Very few people are going to buy a game for $70 by choice and then sell it for a fraction of the price a day later. If someone does that, then they were effectively tricked into making that purchase in the first place.
If anything, the purchaser should have a window in which they can return the game for a full refund, especially if they bought something which didn't live up to its advertising.
Retailers should be able to resell used copies of games as soon as they have used copies to sell, to place an arbitrary delay hurts end users and hurts retailers.
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Funny you should bring up Steam in this discussion, since Steam is a blatant attempt, at least in part, to forever destroy the secondary game sales market. You can't transfer games from one account to another, and if you try to sell the account, and Valve catches you, they just ban the account forever and NO ONE ever plays those copies of the game again.
There was a story awhile back about Valve catching someone, and banning their account, which had something like $2000 worth of games on it.Flush. Watch it swirl down the drain.
Oh, it's worse than that. The person who downloaded it might have decided that the game was really good, and might then decide to actually buy a new copy. It's safe to say that someone who buys a used copy will not buy a new copy.
So yes, used sales are a lot worse than piracy from pretty much every perspective except one: there are a limited number of used copies of a title, whereas the number of pirated copies is unbounded. To that end, piracy has the potential to be more harmful than used sales when the number of people who pirate a piece of software who would otherwise have bought it exceeds the number of people who buy it used. In practice, this means that used sales are worse than piracy across the board.
That doesn't mean that used sales are bad, mind you. Then again, in some cases, neither is piracy, but only when "I wouldn't have bought it anyway" is more than just an excuse for being a cheapskate.
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The problem is that when you plunk out your money to buy the shiny new, it is not a sale. Legally, you're buying a "license" to use the game, which gives game companies the ability to dictate and/or change the terms of those license at their will.
Let me tell you a story. This story didn't actually happen in the real world. It only took place in a fantasy world that software companies wished they lived in.
I went into a store that sells software. (Pick your favorite - GameStop, Target, Office Depot, whatever.) They had lots of boxed software on the shelves. I selected the one I wanted, took it up to the register, and said, "I'd like to buy this." The cashier replied, "I'm sorry but that isn't for sale. If you'd like to license it, though, please read this agreement and sign here."
Like I said, that didn't really happen. Here's what actually happened.
I told the cashier, "I'd like to buy this," and they replied, "That will be $30." So I handed over my credit card, they scanned it, and I signed the receipt. Then they handed me the software back and said, "Here you are."
At this point, the sale was complete. The purchase agreement was concluded. So I took the boxed software (which I now owned, since it had legally been sold to me) home and opened it up. Inside was a piece of paper covered with tiny writing that I did not bother to read, since it obviously contained no information of value. But if I had read it, I would have discovered it to be mostly incomprehensible legalese. If I had then taken it to a lawyer, they could have translated it for me as follows: "You know that software you just bought? You didn't really buy it. You actually just licensed it, and if you want to use it, you have to agree to all these other terms we didn't tell you about before you bought it and before we took your money."
The only reasonable response, of course, is "@#$% you! I do not agree to any of your terms. Nonetheless, I will continue to use this software, because it belongs to me and I have every right to use it." A purchase it a contract. Once that contract is complete - once they have taken my money and given me the software - it's too late for them to rewrite the agreement and add in new terms.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
You don't need a "fair use" exception. The needed exception is already written into copyright law in most countries. In the US, it's 17 USC 117 (a) (1) .
That copy onto the hard drive and then the copying into RAM, each is definitely "an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine". As such, these are legal copies if you own a legal copy of the software (like if, for example, you walked into a store and bought one). The law is solid in this case.
The bit I don't understand is why a court would ever rule an EULA to be an enforceable contract given that the majority of them grant one party (the licensee) absolutely no rights which they don't already have. Why would the court ever support such a one-sided contract as being enforceable?