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What Happens To Your Used Games?
silentbrad writes "GameStop's bosses are obviously tired of hearing about how used games are killing gaming, about how unfair they are on the producers of the games who get nothing from their resale. One astonishing stat is repeated by three different managers during presentations. 70 percent of income consumers make from trading games goes straight back into buying brand new games. GameStop argues that used games are an essential currency in supporting the games business. The normal behavior is for guys to come into stores with their plastic bags full of old games, and trade them so that they can buy the new Call of Duty, Madden, Gears of War. GameStop says 17 percent of its sales are paid in trade credits. The implication is clear — if the games industry lost 17 percent of its sales tomorrow, that would be a bad day for the publishers and developers.'"
Just as used car sales are bad for auto manufacturers, and home resales are bad for builders, and garage sales are bad for retailers, ... and ..., ... and ...
I'm tired of hearing it as well - because other businesses with narrower margins have survived some form of First Sale Doctrine for literally centuries at this point.
When people buy stuff, sometimes they sell it. You don't get that money, because you already sold the product. Suck it the hell up.
Don't all these Games players have infinity deep pockets and can all afford to buy new and just throw away?
Artists and companies both share a toddler's idea of ownership: "if I thought about it, it's mine."
The syllogism goes something like:
1. Someone, somewhere, is making money from something I am tangentially involved in.
2. Therefore, THEY STOLE IT FROM ME!!!!!!
The economic notion that you can't capture all the value you create if you want to maximise your take appears a bit complicated for them.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
70% of nothing is still nothing. The complaint is that Gamestop is making fat wads off of used games by paying out nothing and selling them for only slightly less than the new price, while pushing used games sales instead of new ones. No one cares what Joe Gamer does with the pittance that he makes.
Of course, while Gamestop's behavior here is contemptible, leveraging its monopoly to undercut the very industry that supports it, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with used game sales in general. No more so than used books or other media. The real shame is that this is the direction that the big publishers are trying to push the debate into - blaming used game sales for their declining profits, to justify more and more DRM.
Just as used car sales are bad for auto manufacturers, and home resales are bad for builders, and garage sales are bad for retailers, ... and ..., ... and ...
This is a fairly poor analogy in the same way that calling file sharing "theft" is a poor label. The value of the game isn't the physical cartridge or disc on which the game comes -- sure, the manual and external artwork to the packaging may have some value to you and especially to collectors. But the real value of a game is that copyrighted information and artwork and writing stored in a digital manner on whatever medium.
I still think you should be able to sell secondhand copyrighted information, I really do. But I also think it's a poor comparison when the value of the car isn't so much the intellectual property but more so it's got X lbs of steel and other materials specially arranged to get you from point A to point B. Games are artwork, not vehicles.
Better comparisons are books and DVDs. Of course, I'm sure those industries want secondhand sales abolished as well to keep their sales up and I totally disagree with that considering how much I shell out for said objects.
Me, personally, I've learned my lesson. I sold my Ocarina of Time collectors games a while ago and now truly regret it (I had thought that one day N64 cartridges would be as unplayable as NES cartridges but they appear to work for much longer). So I maintain a library next to my books and movies. Sure you might think it looks "tacky" but I think that attitude will change in the near future. I played my dad's pong game, my kids will probably play my Zelda games.
My work here is dung.
In 2010, the video gaming industry made 66 BILLION. Saganesque billions and billions and they can't turn a healthy enough profit?
The business model for gaming has failed. The answer isn't digital either. Digital distribution only makes it easier to fail in the market place and do it faster too.
The problem is management. Management is failing in a big way. Even with Valve, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Google and Apple's pound of flesh, there's no way in hell margins so thin that used game sales threaten it can be considered "healthy." Even in volume. Maybe especially considering the volume that some games sell at.
Where the fuck is all that money going? Is it a matter of creative Hollywood accounting or is there bigger costs involved with pushing pixels through silicon?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I'm tired of hearing it as well - because other businesses with narrower margins have survived some form of First Sale Doctrine for literally centuries at this point.
Of course, some of them have not. And, crucially, that's a good thing, too.
...we cannot have people reading copyrighted material for free!
Seriously where is this sort of BS going to stop?
Well, the counter argument to this is that the, let's call them 'informational', goods don't depreciate with use like a tangible product does. A (pressed) game disk will be just as functional in 5 years
And so will a book. In fact, a book will easily outlast CDs and DVDs. That doesn't mean that if I sell a book I have read, I steal from the author (or his publisher's grandchildren, more likely).
First sale. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.