Used Games v. Piracy

[Tibike77]

[...hugesnip...]
Or, god forbid, the game publishers would wise up and be forced to adopt a Steam-like pricing model, and oh, look at that, the same end-effect would be achieved.

That's 100% correct, congratulations. Or was that supposed to be an argument against my point? Because I don't see how this in any way conflicts the customer behavior I explained.

If you want to change things you simply have to undercut the used games market and go with the customer's expectations.
Simply punishing people who buy used games does not have the same effect, because it decreases the value of the used product, reduces the demand for used games and as a result reduces the value of a new game.
A smarter pricing policy like steam, i.e. incremental price drops is the best solution. It decreases the amount of people who buy on launch day because everyone knows that the game will be much cheaper later on, but in the end more people will buy the game "new" and more money goes to the publisher.

Just because we do believe the same alternative solution to be a good solution doesn't change the disagreement over whether the used games trade practice is actually good or bad overall for the game makers.

You do not have a very strong argument that the used games sales actually improve total spending that reaches the game makers in a long enough time run, in fact, quite the opposite is more likely to be true instead.
You MIGHT be right (humans are not perfectly rational animals afterall), I'll grant you that, but it's by far not guaranteed, and not immediately obvious either. As for the actual math arguments against your position, see my previous posts.

 

[TheDooD]

Here's a fun fact: People who buy games, even used, buy DLC more then people who pirated the game.

Secondly, Gamestop bought over a billion dollars worth of used games last year. $750 Million of that by consumers went towards purchasing new games. That's right. So that money went towards publishers pockets directly.

This is what a lot of people don't realize all those used games go directly into them getting new games, guides, consoles, controllers, etc. It supports them greatly because of the used market. IMO the publishers and developers are basically biting the hand that feeds them. Gamestop have pre-order benefits that they indorse having people buy new games and it works. How do that expect them to get more games without selling used games since Gamestop isn't like Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. The Used market isn't piracy and those that think that are fools, the used game market is more or less recycling a product. If people, developers, and publishers keep thinking that the used market is nothing but pirates. All they're gonna do is not buy used and just pirate because they're not getting respected. When this happens everybody hurts because of it.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

And what about rentals? Why aren't they attacking those?

Because the rental copy was itself bought new. If a game is popular and the demand for renting it is higher, the rental store will purchase more copies which means more sales. And someone who rents a game is not a potential buyer, it's a different market. Renting does not equal a lost new sale, whereas a used sale does equal a lost new sale.

 

[oplinger]

If everyone bought new, would the servers stay up forever? No? Then you entire point is meaningless. I say again, charging multiple times for a single copy of the game is a money grab.

That's actually a pretty hardcore logical fallacy. I was never implying that.

Jimmy buys a game new, plays it online for 3 and a half years then sells it because he's going off to college.

Joe Bob buys Jimmy's copy, and plays it online for 3 more years.

That's 6 and a half years of server uptime if they have a large enough fanbase to appease.

Crapsoft only projected the game would be popular for 2 years, so they budgeted that amount. They have to either eat the costs and gain the respect of over a million people, or destroy whatever shred of love their fans had for them, and close the servers. Any reasonable company would rather keep their fans, in order to sell more games later down the road.

Does that make any more sense to you? or are you going to mention how they still don't have to, even if they lose a million fans? And therefore a 500,000(if only 50% of the current fans buy used) drop in unit sales. ...Please don't start a company.

 

[numbersix1979]

I cannot think of any game with true artistic merit, but I do see alot of craft in games and that is valuable also, if not moreso.

Think of it this way then, when the game you play makes the publishers enough profit, the game developers get to keep their shitty jobs.

Shadow of the colossus.
BAM! Your mind = Blown

I'd like to add . . . Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Grand Theft Auto IV, even Call of Duty (1, not the Modern Warfares, calm down). The number of games with true artistic merit have come in hand over fist for fifteen years, maybe you should go play some.

 

[Joseph Alexander]

I'm against this push that the game industry is making towards eliminating second-hand games. What's next? Second-hand books? Films? Furniture?[footnote]Yes, I know that in the case of books and furniture there is the whole wear-and-tear thing, whereas games, being digital, don't have that. (beyond scratches to the disc and missing manuals.) But music CDs and film DVDs are also digital; are they exempt somehow? 'Cos I haven't heard any hubbub from the music and film industry about second-hand sales.[/footnote] There's a second-hand market for practically everything, but for some reason games have to be the exception?


Second-hand games are a good way for people who can't afford to pay full-price for every single game they buy. Either that or patiently wait for the right sale to come along.

/2 cents

I'm actually with this push seeing as i want to see game devs at the point they can experiment and not resort to cheap tactics or just remakeing the same online multiplayer game every year to stay afloat.
this ensures some portion of income from resales.
if you want to blame anyone for these type of things don't look at devs or publishers, look at gamestop and the hyenas that run it.

as for your footnote: largely because movies make the large bulk of their profit off of theater sales in the first few weeks.
and as for music they have learned a way around this buy embracing the digital downloads in a way video games can't due to how large they typically are, by selling ad space and playing ads before the music plays.

 

[MetalDooley]

Ugh, that's a pretty disgusting idea. Imagine having to sell 1.5 MILLION units of a game, and still not break even. Most games don't even break 1 million. Or even 500,000.

Products being cheaper for consumers is a disgusting idea?Must be nice to be rich

It's not really about being rich. Plus games are not a need.

It's about companies still being around to make games. If they sell a game for half price, and still spend 25 million dollars on the project they have to sell more units. More units for a market that has not increased in size. If they don't make profit, or break even, they go into debt, file for bankruptcy, and cease to exist.

Granted it's mostly for bigger titles, indie games are generally 90% pirated anyway in some cases.

Yes but let's face it ?60 (or whatever currency where you live)is a serious amount of money for a lot of people.The fact that so many people are willing to wait to save ?5-10 on a used copy is evidence of that.A slightly lower launch price(personally I don't think half price would be realistic)could entice a lot of these potential used sales to buy new instead.A lower launch price also pushes games into the impulse buy category which could benefit non blockbuster games particularly

 

[00slash00]

god this is such a first world problem. "how DARE this company ask me to pay full price for something!" i remember a day when used games didnt exist and we had to pay full price for all our games...and we had to WALK to our game stores, through 10 miles of SNOW. most of my games are used, but what rage is doing doesnt bother me at all and from their standpoint, it makes perfect sense. someone uses a product they created, without paying them, then they dont get to use some aspects of their product. its a hell of a lot better than what people like capcom have been doing and im sure they would be much less inclined to do this if companies like gamestop would stop pushing used games so much. however, being the mature people that gamers have become, we see a company that wants to see their hard work rewarded (and i dont mean with the smiling of children...and children probably shouldnt be playing rage anyway), and our immediate response is, "this will be the death of gaming, boycott boycott boycott!!!" (i know not everyone who is upset about rage is boycotting it, but there seems to be a lot of gamers who are very quick to boycott over relatively small things). without used games i would definitely buy fewer games, but the games i did buy would be ones that i really really wanted, and isnt that how gaming should really work? if youre only willing to buy a game used, then you probably didnt want it that much to begin with. if you buy games used because you cant afford to spend $50-$60 on a new game, then you probably shouldnt be spending your money on video games right now

 

[Toriver]

Publishers don't seem to realize that the people buying used don't have the means to buy new. Otherwise they'd fucking buy new.

So instead of, say, reducing prices so people can buy new(by, like $10 since apparently $55 is considered a bargain to used buyers compared to $60, somehow), then the people who couldn't buy new can now buy new.

Makes more sense then punishing them for not being able to buy new.

And what about rentals? Why aren't they attacking those?

This. This right here. I have little income and a lot of bills, plus the necessity of moving. I don't have the kind of budget that allows me to afford ANY video games very often, much less new ones. In the past year, I have bought 2, count 'em, 2 AAA games, mostly because that was all I have been able to afford, and one of those was used. I got one other game in the past year, but that was bought from gift cards I got for Christmas, and it was also used. So I have been able to buy only one new game this YEAR. I was able to buy more in the two years before that, but that was because I was making 1.5 times more money (to do the exact same job, or even LESS work, go figure.) And even then, very few of those titles were new. If I want to game now, I pretty much HAVE to buy used to get my money's worth of play time. People like me don't pirate games, but if developers are going to punish people like us for being too poor to buy their game new, I'm afraid they're just going to push more people to pirate. Economics 101 says that if not enough people are buying your product, you drop the price of that product to a level where both consumers and producers of the product are satisfied. And unfortunately, I have to say, if you're spending budgets on games so enormous that no level of sales you bring in are going to make that budget back, it might be time to rethink the level of money you pump into your game. It may just be time to think about cutting costs somewhere. Surely they can find somewhere along the development stream where they can tighten their belts to a degree.

 

[Something Amyss]

Don't get me wrong, I understand that Rage has to make back its money. But why do game companies have to always equate game pirates with used game buyers?

Because they hate used game buyers as much. To them, you are a filthy thief, like that guy who torrented the game. YOU ARE STEALING because they say so, and nothing pisses them off more than that whole first sale thingy.

 

[Frost27]

This is an issue that will never go away. Unfortunately the software companies will win this one in the end. It's not a matter of if, just when. Since the game resale industry has absolutely no method of countering this short of paying the $10 or whatever to buy online passes or the equivalent themselves and packaging them with the game for resale. It will also never cease due to the fact that people who buy resold games have no voice in the issue. If you refuse to buy the game, you only hurt the resale establishment and if you refuse to buy new, well, the developer didn't have your business to begin with so they are totally unaffected.

I do not agree with game companies doing this, personally, and here is why:

1) They have absolutely no right to say what I can and can't do with physical property that I legally purchased and made my own. If I want to resell it to recoup some of what I spent in order to either pay bills, get drunk, or buy another product, that is my right.

2) There are essentially no standards of quality in video game development. A development studio is equally capable of turning out gold and garbage, even within the same genre. As reviews are subjective opinion, few games release demos, and trailers only show you so much (that a marketing department has specially chosen to show you) buying a game is more often than not an act of faith to some degree. That said, there are essentially no retailers where you can return a game you are dissatisfied with due to piracy fears. Often the only recourse when you find yourself totally stuck with a game you are dissatisfied with is to sell it at a resale store. I think it is flat wrong for the games industry to expect me to buy a product that I am unable to return if I am unhappy and to force permanent ownership on me, then turn around and think they can limit what I can do with it after it is, by the standards they approve, irrevocably my property.

3) I sold a 1995 Chevrolet Beretta and purchased a used 2007 Ford 500. I can say beyond a single doubt that neither Ford nor Chevy saw a dime from either sale. Nor should they. The price they asked had been met and ownership had changed hands.

4) It's simply bullshit cash grabbing by the publishers. In a post above, oplinger mentioned the numbers of units needed to be sold in order to not only cover costs but turn a profit for all involved. He was correct. The thing is, a developer and publisher are aware of this fact. They print a certain number of their product and distribute them to various retailers in various regions based on projected sales figures in order to reach their target goal of units sold. A publisher isn't going to publish 5 million copies of a game if they only expect to sell 1 million. The lesson of Atari and E.T. 30 years ago showed the industry early on what kind of problems that can cause. The point of all of this is, a resold game is one which has already been purchased at full price and the game companies have already profited from. They have really lost nothing. The assumption that a person buying a preowned copy of a game for, say, $30 rather than $60 robs them of a sale is just arrogant and wrong. This may be the case in a very small portion of resales, but in the majority of cases, it is due to the buyer not having the money to pay full price for a game to begin with so they buy on the cheap to have something to play. The other major factor is, the game may not be worth full price to begin with. There is a reason my local resale store had Duke Forever on release week. Before resellers became common, game companies were content with the full price sales they received on the initial purchase, now that they see a potential revenue stream there, it's a problem. As evidence of this, one need only consider that the game companies aren't trying to stamp out resale locations by only allowing the original buyer to access the full product and permanently blocking part of the game for future owners, they are selling the used buyer the blocked portion on the side to claw in more money.

As an aside, it is the publishers who generally mandate the implementation of this type of tactic. Most developers got their check from the original sale and are just glad someone else is enjoying the game they poured their blood, sweat, tears, and love into since the original owner wasn't anymore. Besides, why not just work harder developing a game I don't want to get rid of? My library is full of games I don't play anymore but would never sell. Better yet, make me some great DLC and enjoy the revenue from the purchaser of the used copy buying the DLC rather than receiving no money from the original owner who has moved on and won't spend the cash on DLC for a game they don't play.

 

[oplinger]

Ugh, that's a pretty disgusting idea. Imagine having to sell 1.5 MILLION units of a game, and still not break even. Most games don't even break 1 million. Or even 500,000.

Products being cheaper for consumers is a disgusting idea?Must be nice to be rich

It's not really about being rich. Plus games are not a need.

It's about companies still being around to make games. If they sell a game for half price, and still spend 25 million dollars on the project they have to sell more units. More units for a market that has not increased in size. If they don't make profit, or break even, they go into debt, file for bankruptcy, and cease to exist.

Granted it's mostly for bigger titles, indie games are generally 90% pirated anyway in some cases.

Yes but let's face it ?60 (or whatever currency where you live)is a serious amount of money for a lot of people.The fact that so many people are willing to wait to save ?5-10 on a used copy is evidence of that.A slightly lower launch price(personally I don't think half price would be realistic)could entice a lot of these potential used sales to buy new instead.A lower launch price also pushes games into the impulse buy category which could benefit non blockbuster games particularly

It's not so much that people will wait for a 5-10 price drop, it's the sale mentality. You wouldn't buy something, until it was on sale...then you contemplate buying it.

Look at steam sales, I know a lot of people won't touch a game at all. In fact they'll say it doesn't interest them at all...steam sale comes a long, they save 2 dollars. Buy it as soon as they can.

I'm not saying you're wrong...60 dollars is a lot of money to some people. However the savings might not be because 50 is a fair amount. It just might be because it's a sale..

---

On the other hand, most new sales will be on release, in which they will try to maximize profit, so they sell it at a higher price in order to make it easier for them to reach their goal. Selling it for a lower price probably would not get them more units sold either. If people want something...they'll find a way to get it if they want it bad enough.

If they lower the price soon after release (2 weeks..a month) people will just...not buy it on release, and they'll still have to sell even more units. That's why they have to do things like..pre-order bonuses (you get more stuff, they get the maximum profit) or day one DLC that people who buy new get for free. They have to struggle to break even sometimes.

..Before you say that they're probably rolling in cash anyway and can take the loss, I just need to mention one word: Investors.

 

[Joseph Alexander]

ok boiling this down to the basic point:
they don't get any money from your purchase, you don't get the whole game.
alot of the time the game will be available for first purchase cheaper later down the line.
in other words you don't have the money to buy new right off the bat? then you have to wait a bit to buy the whole game.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

why do game companies have to always equate game pirates with used game buyers?

Because from the standpoints of the game developers, publishers and distributors (so, basically, anybody NOT dealing in used games), there is basically no difference whatsoever between an used game buyer and a person who pirates the game.
Whether that means for you that used games should be considered bad or piracy considered not so bad, that's a different and uglier story.

But let's say you personally think used games and piracy are radically different.
Please, DO TELL, how exactly is an used game buyer any different from a pirated copy anyway ?
The fact that he pays some cash ? Well, buying a bootleg version is pretty much the same too (from a user perspective, awareness of bootleg status not being all that relevant), and I doubt you'd be endorsing that.
So what makes used games so special that they deserve an exemption ?

I can explain the difference

A used Game buy bought a game someone else bought so it's still that one copy being sold and accounted for it's just in someone else's hands. A pirated game is a copy of that one game so multiple people get that one copy.

10,000 copies sold and 3,000 sold to gamestop and if those people bought those 3,000 games it's still 10,000 games being played. If someone pirates one of those copies more then 10,000 copies are being played.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

I'm against this push that the game industry is making towards eliminating second-hand games.

Are you also equally against that push of the game industry towards eliminating software piracy ? Why ? It's practically the same thing. Feel free to explain the radical difference you believe exists between buying used and pirating.

So in your eyes is buying a car second hand the same as grand theft auto?

 

[Joseph Alexander]

This is an issue that will never go away. Unfortunately the software companies will win this one in the end. It's not a matter of if, just when. Since the game resale industry has absolutely no method of countering this short of paying the $10 or whatever to buy online passes or the equivalent themselves and packaging them with the game for resale. It will also never cease due to the fact that people who buy resold games have no voice in the issue. If you refuse to buy the game, you only hurt the resale establishment and if you refuse to buy new, well, the developer didn't have your business to begin with so they are totally unaffected.

I do not agree with game companies doing this, personally, and here is why:

1) They have absolutely no right to say what I can and can't do with physical property that I legally purchased and made my own. If I want to resell it to recoup some of what I spent in order to either pay bills, get drunk, or buy another product, that is my right.

2) There are essentially no standards of quality in video game development. A development studio is equally capable of turning out gold and garbage, even within the same genre. As reviews are subjective opinion, few games release demos, and trailers only show you so much (that a marketing department has specially chosen to show you) buying a game is more often than not an act of faith to some degree. That said, there are essentially no retailers where you can return a game you are dissatisfied with due to piracy fears. Often the only recourse when you find yourself totally stuck with a game you are dissatisfied with is to sell it at a resale store. I think it is flat wrong for the games industry to expect me to buy a product that I am unable to return if I am unhappy and to force permanent ownership on me, then turn around and think they can limit what I can do with it after it is, by the standards they approve, irrevocably my property.

3) I sold a 1995 Chevrolet Beretta and purchased a used 2007 Ford 500. I can say beyond a single doubt that neither Ford nor Chevy saw a dime from either sale. Nor should they. The price they asked had been met and ownership had changed hands.

4) It's simply bullshit cash grabbing by the publishers. In a post above, oplinger mentioned the numbers of units needed to be sold in order to not only cover costs but turn a profit for all involved. He was correct. The thing is, a developer and publisher are aware of this fact. They print a certain number of their product and distribute them to various retailers in various regions based on projected sales figures in order to reach their target goal of units sold. A publisher isn't going to publish 5 million copies of a game if they only expect to sell 1 million. The lesson of Atari and E.T. 30 years ago showed the industry early on what kind of problems that can cause. The point of all of this is, a resold game is one which has already been purchased at full price and the game companies have already profited from. They have really lost nothing. The assumption that a person buying a preowned copy of a game for, say, $30 rather than $60 robs them of a sale is just arrogant and wrong. This may be the case in a very small portion of resales, but in the majority of cases, it is due to the buyer not having the money to pay full price for a game to begin with so they buy on the cheap to have something to play. The other major factor is, the game may not be worth full price to begin with. There is a reason my local resale store had Duke Forever on release week. Before resellers became common, game companies were content with the full price sales they received on the initial purchase, now that they see a potential revenue stream there, it's a problem. As evidence of this, one need only consider that the game companies aren't trying to stamp out resale locations by only allowing the original buyer to access the full product and permanently blocking part of the game for future owners, they are selling the used buyer the blocked portion on the side to claw in more money.

As an aside, it is the publishers who generally mandate the implementation of this type of tactic. Most developers got their check from the original sale and are just glad someone else is enjoying the game they poured their blood, sweat, tears, and love into since the original owner wasn't anymore. Besides, why not just work harder developing a game I don't want to get rid of? My library is full of games I don't play anymore but would never sell. Better yet, make me some great DLC and enjoy the revenue from the purchaser of the used copy buying the DLC rather than receiving no money from the original owner who has moved on and won't spend the cash on DLC for a game they don't play.

1. yes they do , no you didn't games are a digital property, and yes you can sell your copy's disc.
2. and? its called compiling your own preveiw.
3. a car is a physical property it can't be copied with out materials/time/machines/etc.
4. yes and no, this is a coping tactic to deal with the massive increase of resales thanks to huge corporate game stores like Gamestop.
overall you have no clue what your talking about.

 

[esperandote]

Pirate:
Illegal
No chance of developers getting money
Less likely to buy DLC
Less likely to buy new games if the market was stopped.

Used:
Legal
Developers get money if the seller sells the game to buy another
More Likely to buy DLC
More likely to used buyers buy new copies if this market was stopped.

---

For those who say that for the developers there's no difference between used and pirate and therefore whoever support used should, in that logic, support piracy too, the not buying any games is the same so they should fight people that dont buy games too (i'm being ridiculous but that's the logic some are using) and you would say that the difference is that then you're not playing the game, the developers dont know that either, for developers there's no difference (allegedly) between used, pirate and not playing.

 

[TheDooD]

snip

I completely agree with this and I like how detailed it is.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

So I was reading the Escapist's article on the new ridiculous tactics the Rage dev team is using to make sure that people buy their game new, namely locking off certain sections of the single player campaign to people who buy the game used. Now, I realize that it's supposedly a small portion of the game, that most people won't see anyway. My rebuttal to that is that A) Of course the Rage team has to say that, so everyone won't pitch a fit and boycott the game, and B) If this practice is allowed to go on, where could it end up? Larger and larger sections might end up being cut from future games.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that Rage has to make back its money. But why do game companies have to always equate game pirates with used game buyers? When will they see that the first step towards a more approachable clientele, from a marketing standpoint, is to stop treating their paying customers like criminals? The game companies need to realize that people who buy games used are generally on a budget, and making it harder and harder for them to enjoy the games they buy used will make them less likely to buy the game at all, not more likely to buy the game new. It really exposes the developers as not really giving a damn about the artistic statements of their game, just obsessive over how much money they can wring out of the consumers.

The short story is this: Why are used game buyers equal to pirates in the eyes of game companies, when it's an awful policy that doesn't work for anyone involved?

You want to know the real reason they do it? It's because they can. They've managed to get the courts to buy their lie about software licenses, and somehow managed to get consumers to do it as well. What's more, somehow their PR teams are so good that they've managed to get consumers to come to the defense of some of the most anti-consumer tactics seen since the end of the age of robber barons. This thread is proof enough of that. There is no reasonable defense for why they do it, just the knowledge that they can, and that there are enough people out there who will either buy it new, or buy it used and then buy the DLC. Morality doesn't play into it at all, except as a PR tactic to get gamers on their side.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

Therefore I say to you, Feel free to explain the radical similarities you believe exists between buying used and pirating.

Both DO NOT directly contribute any cash to the game makers.

Both DO contribute to indirect potential losses of revenue for that game, by having some of the people that would have eventually purchased the game new to adopt this alternative, cheaper version that makes no money for the game makers.

Both also DO contribute to some degree to potential gains in revenue for that game (or at least that game company) through word of mouth advertising.

Not enough similarities for you ?

The only noteworthy differences are that with pirating, used game resellers make no profit from it, while end users get their games essentially at negligible costs, so there's a whole lot more of them around.

A dubious distinction goes to per-used-game-buyer DLC purchases which are allegedly much higher than per-pirate DLC purchases, since there's a chance that overall (as in, the grand total sum), pirates might actually spend more money on DLCs they don't manage to download than the combined mass of second-hand game purchasers - I don't even know if anybody ever tried to collect that sort of data at all.

I like how people act like all pirates don't buy their games, I can't tell you how many games I may have missed out on if it wasn't for me "evil" ways. Never would have tried Etrian Odyssey cause I hated those types of games, now I can't put it down; some with Monster Tale thought it was stupid now I love it and bought it new the next day I tried it. I don't know where this whole "all pirates don't buy their games" come from, cause my friends will call me a pirate but I own wwwwaaayyyyyyy more games then they all do.

Also if used game sales are like pirating how come the RIAA isn't attacking Blockbuster for loss of sales, I mean those guys will sue you to death if you pirate one movie. Funny how they don't seem to care (because it's legal in the US)