Why do you buy games that you think suck? That's not rational human behavior. If you want to send the message that a game sucks, try behaving as though you believe the game sucks. If you want to play it, you must not think it sucks... or you're a crazy person, perhaps? Can't be sure.
It's simple. Until you play the whole you can't know if it's good or not. You have to be confident that you will like the game. Buying a movie or game is a risk as you need assume that you were given all of the relevant data as to weather you will enjoy the game or not. Brutal Legend's demo was a shining example of how you can deliberately mislead a consumer into thinking the game has qualities they will like. I wanted a hack and slash game but indeed I got an bad RTS. They have my money and the only thing I can do to tell them their game sucks is to write a later. But you know how well w letter works? When many of your peers don't car and will blindly buy games over and over a letter means dick because the money says something very different. And you know what else? Maybe, just maybe, I'll get that used game and it will be awesome and I'll buy some DLC and keep it for a while then when the sequel comes out I'll preorder it. The problem is that if you've lost my trust I'm not going to waste my money on you. And if I feel like giving someone a second chance I'm not going support you out right. You're neutral, not a friend and I'm not obligated to be friendly. Just because you don't understand the rationale being my actions doesn't make them irrational. Besides, rationale is, sadly, highly relative and subjective from situation to person.
To what end? Using this data to make the game better won't improve sales if you can get that same "now more awesome" game at used prices. The only way used sales data is useful to a publisher is to answer the question, "How much money are we losing by not ensuring that the new product is more valuable than a used product?"
So very narrow minded. I'm sorry but it is. I mean maybe there are gamers who want to support their developers. At the same time, you know, the less people who trade them in the harder it is to find a used copy. The longer it takes because there is a bounty of used game on the shelf the more new copies you can sell. And, yeah, that adds up. There is always something to learn from data. Are people selling them after beating the single player campaign or after a new game comes out? Maybe they want to beat the game to 100% completion but you dragged it out with too much grind and not enough substance? and the longer that person owns the game the harder it is for people to find used copies. You will never eliminate used sales but can you can make games better so that people keep them longer.
You aren't being treated like "an enemy." You're just not being treated like a friend. There's a difference. If my friend comes to the door, I let him in. If my enemy comes to the door, I swear at him and send him away with a call to the cops. If a stranger, neither friend nor enemy comes to the door, I behave in a more neutral fashion until I tell if he's one or the other.
If you're buying used, you aren't a customer. Not to the publisher. You and the publisher have entered no transaction whatsoever, so you're not even on their radar. Why should they let you in, when you haven't shown them you're a friend?
No we're not being treated like the enemy, you're right, more like expendable and justifiable civilian casualties in a war. These resumes are neither civil or mutually equitable. They're draconian and they won't solve anything. Actually, this particular action might very well reduce the amount of used copies that are sold by making more people pirate the game. And yes, that is the publisher's fault because they have to be aware of this little fact. They understand these things, they're not dumb. They know how people will react and they know not everyone will take the most legal course of actions. They are practically inviting it. i'm not justifying pirating this game or any game but you need to understand the problem and why people do what they do before solving the problem.
