Used Games v. Piracy

[Epona]

Omega]

If companies aren't willing to support a single copy of a game for as long as the servers are up, then they shouldn't have an online option at all or they should charge extra for the online to all players. Maybe they could sell a new game for $60 with 1 year free online multiplayer and $10 a year after that while charging $10 to go online when you buy used. It's stupid to separate single player from multiplayer but that's the only way it makes sense to charge multiple times for a single copy.

Think of it like this:

Game sells new for $60. Publishers, Retailers and Distributors take a cut of that money. The Development team then has to pay the people who made the game (or repay investors who provided the upfront capital to pay the employees in the first place). Whatever is left over is what the company can use to not only maintain their own workplace equipment they use to make the game but also to support the recently released product (which means you pay the employees again).

With a used game the Publisher and Developer get no money to pay employees, support the game, etc. In this case the retailer keeps all the money from the used sale. Online multiplayer is expensive to maintain, even for a game that has dedicated multiplayer servers, it gets exponentially more expensive for the company to host the servers themselves. Servers are generally reliable but like everything that is used consistently, it eventually breaks and needs to be repaired or replaced. Also you must factor the bandwidth costs, not only at release but over the life of the game. Additionally you have to keep large data storage centers with redundancy if you have completely online content to ensure that someone who stops playing the game a month after release can pick it up 2-3 years later and continue progress where it was left off.

I will concede the point that one does have to look at single player games differently than multiplayer games. An exclusive single player game like Fallout 3/NV would require significantly fewer resources from the developer than WoW. A subscription based model would work for an online game but outside of WoW and CoD: Elite (I am sure there are other examples of this) the developer is still not receiving money for the online play. On the PC and PS3 there is no user fee for online gaming (aside from your own internet connection you pay for) and X360 to my knowledge you pay Microsoft more than you do the developer.

In short there really is no perfect solution to the "problem" of used games and nearly everyone is at fault. The developers and publishers need to provide incentives for purchasing new products (free day 1 DLC, some sort of collectible, etc), the used retailer should be liable for providing a portion of the proceeds of a used sale to the people who made it (similar to the French system for art (Droit de suite). The artist (or their descendants) would receive a percentage of the sale price in recognition of the effort exerted to create it. Consumers are not really at fault for purchasing a game used as when money is as tight as it is, people can hardly be put at fault for seeking out the best deal in a capitalist free market.

The perfect solution is for the game industry to stop thinking it is special. It isn't.

If I can buy new and have free online multiplayer for the life of the servers, then transferring my ownership and letting another person play online (while I can't any longer) shouldn't be a problem. This idea that people will get tired of the game and stop playing online after a while is not a certainty and because of that it's foolish for game companies to depend on that happening.

 

[oplinger]

No, you're really bad at capitalism. Value is what the market will bear. If costs are so high that the market won't buy what you need to charge to stay in business, you will go out of business. That's just the way things work.

Oh, by the way, nice ad hominem there. I'm not self entitled; if anyone is, it's the people who don't know enough about the value of a dollar to understand just how much $60 is, because they've clearly never been anything but rich.

Income-expenses=net profit.

Movies: Avatar (2,000,000,000[theatrical]+190,000,000[Just DVD sales, not blu-ray.)-237,000,000=$1,953,000,000

Games: GTA4 1,000,000,000-100,000,000=900,000,000

Now, i'm not a math expert, but that's still a difference of 1 billion dollars. And that's the full statistics for the game, assuming every copy sold for 50 dollars. I don't have blu-ray sales for Avatar, or TV syndication profits. Or the re-release data. the 3D release data, and the video game profits they made off of it.

That's basic capitalism. revenue minus expenses. Supply and demand determines value, producer determines supply..

Either way they have to make up their expenses at least. I think 60 bucks is fine for a game. I'm glad you think I'm rich though. Makes me feel all warm inside.

 

[Baresark]

How many of these threads are there?

 

[hermes]

so instead of giving 60 dollars to the company ... you chose to give 55 dollars to gamestop

People actually do that? Seriously?!

When I think of used games, I think of buying a whole bunch of games from a few years ago for the price of a single new release, not an almost-new title for almost-new price.

You can buy new games from retailers at a fraction of 60 dollars. Those games actually count towards the sales numbers of publishers. Gamestop has them, but also Amazon, Best Buy and other retailers (even the sales on Steam count). Publishers have no issue with games devaluation or promotional sales.

However, most people that complain here about things like online passes are people that want to buy a used game two or three weeks after its release (after all, what is the point of playing online to Madden 2008 now), and the savings for such games are not worth the hassle (as low as $5 for LBP 2 or Black Ops used). That, and the fact that 100% of the money goes to gamestop and nothing goes to the people that made the game. From that perspective, those are no better than those that buy bootleg versions.

 

[Braedan]

I know the used car analogy is used all the time, but it still stands.

No, it doesn't.
Cars are mostly physical goods (with some IP stuff too).
Games are mostly IP goods (with some physical stuff thrown in).

If you steal a car, nobody gives a damn about the IP part, and the damage is done by the absence of the physical form from the previous owner.
"Stealing" the IP part of a car (or any other mostly-physical-good) is called counterfeiting, and there ARE laws against that too.
If you pirate some software, nobody cares one bit about the physical support it's on (because it doesn't even change hands), with the only noteworthy point being the copyright infringement // "IP theft", and the "lost sales" figure (which is not equal to the unit price times pirated copies, but that's a different story).

Companies should reward players for buying new, not punish them for buying used.

What's the difference ? I'll tell you what : the terminology you use when looking from a different vantage point and nothing else.
Rewarding person A for event X which is mutually exclusive with event Y means you ARE punishing person B for doing Y.
In this case, X is "buy new" and Y is "buy used".

How exactly do you propose game makers should reward those that "buy new" in a way that NOBODY would feel it "punishes used game buyers" ?
I'm really curious what you could possibly come up with.

The car analogy is always used in regards of selling owned property, not piracy so it absolutely stands up.
Would you actually feel like you stole from Logitech if you were to sell your speakers?

I'm sure paid professionals could think up a perfectly reasonable way to reward customers better than I could in the next 5 minutes, so I'm not going to waste my time.

While it isn't much of a difference between punishment and reward, it is there, and its important that the customer FEELS rewarded rather than punished.
If Ford decided that the air conditioning and cruise control wouldn't work second hand unless you paid 300$ people would be pissed.
Getting an extended warranty for buying a new car is a reward, You don't deserve free oil changes, but you'll notice a lot of people buy new cars for the warranty because they don't want to piss around with repairs.
And hell, most car companies are good enough to transfer the warranty to the next owner!

 

[Racecarlock]

Shit, I just want to save some money. I don't want gamestop keeping it all, but there's nothing I can do. 2 new games cost $120, whereas used games are priced at $20 to $5, that's alot of money. And games are not necessarily a luxury, there are tons of freeware games out there for PC users at least. Why should I buy new every time? Why should everything be so ridiculously expensive? Why should gaming be expensive? Why should I not be allowed to save money? I bet if there wasn't a used market, games would probably be selling at $120 a game, or probably even $1000. They're just too lazy to compete, hell, they don't even want to reduce the damn price by 10 or 5 dollars. So I shouldn't be able to buy more games per year? What's the logic here? I'm not evil for wanting to save money. It's not my fault gamestop keeps it.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

No, you're really bad at capitalism. Value is what the market will bear. If costs are so high that the market won't buy what you need to charge to stay in business, you will go out of business. That's just the way things work.

Oh, by the way, nice ad hominem there. I'm not self entitled; if anyone is, it's the people who don't know enough about the value of a dollar to understand just how much $60 is, because they've clearly never been anything but rich.

Income-expenses=net profit.

Movies: Avatar (2,000,000,000[theatrical]+190,000,000[Just DVD sales, not blu-ray.)-237,000,000=$1,953,000,000

Games: GTA4 1,000,000,000-100,000,000=900,000,000

Now, i'm not a math expert, but that's still a difference of 1 billion dollars. And that's the full statistics for the game, assuming every copy sold for 50 dollars. I don't have blu-ray sales for Avatar, or TV syndication profits. Or the re-release data. the 3D release data, and the video game profits they made off of it.


That's basic capitalism. revenue minus expenses. Supply and demand determines value, producer determines supply..

Either way they have to make up their expenses at least. I think 60 bucks is fine for a game. I'm glad you think I'm rich though. Makes me feel all warm inside.

Except that GTA wasn't a huge seller, just hugely expensive (for a videogame; like I said, it's par for the course for film.) A better example would be Modern Warfare 2, which only cost about $50 million to make, and wound up being the most profitable entertainment item of all time -- yes, even more profitable than Avatar.

Besides, if these games are as profitable as you're saying they are, the game companies have nothing to complain about from used sales.

Let's look at the math:

MW2 sold 7 million copies on day one source. That means on day one, the margin you were talking about looked like this:

$50,000,000-(7,000,000*60)

= $50,000,000-(420,000,000)

= 370,000,000 in profits in the first day of sales.

The final number was much higher, but it should be pretty blatant that, with profit margins like that, blockbuster videogames don't need an equivalent to a theatrical release. Let's look at it at $20, which is what I'm saying should be a reasonable price:

$50,000,000-(7,000,000*20)

= $50,000,000-140,000,000

= $90 million in profit from 7 million sales on the first day.

Heck, lets look at how many they would need to sell just to break even at $20 a copy.

$50,000,000-20X=0

$50,000,000=20X

X= 2,500,000 sales.

That is a tiny number of sales when you think about what is generally considered a flop, especially when you consider that $50,000,000 is on the high end for the cost of a AAA game, and $20 is on the low end for what people would be willing to pay for it. If you lower the cost to $30 million, and raise the asking price to $25, (both of which are pretty darned reasonable), it's even better: you get a number of 1,200,000 to break even. If a game doesn't sell that much in its first day, it's never going to turn a profit anyway, so I don't see what the problem is here.

Edit: oh, by the way: at lower prices, more people will buy. So the game companies are really crazy for not trying to find a better price point.

 

[JET1971]

I think with second hand games the only limitation should be in online play. You buy that when you bought the game, but the rights do not transfer if you sell it. I have no issue with that even if the used copy player and the original costs the same for online at first glance. Its second glance that must be considered.

1. Original buyer buys the game and plays it, he gets bored or a new must have game comes out and puts the game on a shelf and stops playing. Game company pays less for online services over time.

or.

2. Original buyer buys the game and plays it, he gets bored or a new must have game comes out and he takes the game to gamestop and sells it and buys a new game. second hand buyer buys it and uses the online services. Game company must pay more for the services over time such as maintaining higher bandwidth, and having more servers.

From an economic standpoint #2 would be stupid for a company to agree to. and all other used whatever markets do not suffer from these issues. take used books as an example, there is no bandwidth used everytime someone reads a book, there are no servers used when someone reads a book. when someone buys a book and puts it on a shelf or sells it there is no additional cost or savings to the publisher or author because they do not pay anything. Used books, movies, music, cars, bicycles, microwaves etc etc are not costing companies anything because there is nothing they pay for with the original buyer to begin with. argument using them as an example is invalid, null and void like the warranty that came with your product once you sold it.

So I happen to agree that game companies have the right to go with:

3. Original buyer buys the game and plays it, he gets bored or a new must have game comes out and he takes the game to gamestop and sells it and buys a new game. second hand buyer buys it and uses the online services after paying for a new online key. Game company does not pay more for services over time.

or

4. Original buyer buys the game and plays it, he gets bored or a new must have game comes out and he takes the game to gamestop and sells it and buys a new game. second hand buyer buys it and cannot use the online services because it is tied to the original buyers acount. Game company does not pay more for services over time.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

No, you're really bad at capitalism. Value is what the market will bear. If costs are so high that the market won't buy what you need to charge to stay in business, you will go out of business. That's just the way things work.

Oh, by the way, nice ad hominem there. I'm not self entitled; if anyone is, it's the people who don't know enough about the value of a dollar to understand just how much $60 is, because they've clearly never been anything but rich.

Income-expenses=net profit.

Movies: Avatar (2,000,000,000[theatrical]+190,000,000[Just DVD sales, not blu-ray.)-237,000,000=$1,953,000,000

Games: GTA4 1,000,000,000-100,000,000=900,000,000

Now, i'm not a math expert, but that's still a difference of 1 billion dollars. And that's the full statistics for the game, assuming every copy sold for 50 dollars. I don't have blu-ray sales for Avatar, or TV syndication profits. Or the re-release data. the 3D release data, and the video game profits they made off of it.


That's basic capitalism. revenue minus expenses. Supply and demand determines value, producer determines supply..

Either way they have to make up their expenses at least. I think 60 bucks is fine for a game. I'm glad you think I'm rich though. Makes me feel all warm inside.

Except that GTA wasn't a huge seller, just hugely expensive (for a videogame; like I said, it's par for the course for film.) A better example would be Modern Warfare 2, which only cost about $50 million to make, and wound up being the most profitable entertainment item of all time -- yes, even more profitable than Avatar.

Besides, if these games are as profitable as you're saying they are, the game companies have nothing to complain about from used sales.

Let's look at the math:

MW2 sold 7 million copies on day one source. That means on day one, the margin you were talking about looked like this:

$50,000,000-(7,000,000*60)

= $50,000,000-(420,000,000)

= 370,000,000 in profits in the first day of sales.

The final number was much higher, but it should be pretty blatant that, with profit margins like that, blockbuster videogames don't need an equivalent to a theatrical release. Let's look at it at $20, which is what I'm saying should be a reasonable price:

$50,000,000-(7,000,000*20)

= $50,000,000-140,000,000

= $90 million in profit from 7 million sales on the first day.

Heck, lets look at how many they would need to sell just to break even at $20 a copy.

$50,000,000-20X=0

$50,000,000=20X

X= 2,500,000 sales.

That is a tiny number of sales when you think about what is generally considered a flop, especially when you consider that $50,000,000 is on the high end for the cost of a AAA game, and $20 is on the low end for what people would be willing to pay for it. If you lower the cost to $30 million, and raise the asking price to $25, (both of which are pretty darned reasonable), it's even better: you get a number of 1,200,000 to break even. If a game doesn't sell that much in its first day, it's never going to turn a profit anyway, so I don't see what the problem is here.

Edit: oh, by the way: at lower prices, more people will buy. So the game companies are really crazy for not trying to find a better price point.

And you just know people who are against you are going to find ways to explain why your wrong, I just stop responding because they won't change their minds. They will keep yelling more and more at the other side on how the game devs will never make all the money they are owned.

 

[Xanthious]

Companies should reward players for buying new, not punish them for buying used.

What's the difference ? I'll tell you what : the terminology you use when looking from a different vantage point and nothing else.
Rewarding person A for event X which is mutually exclusive with event Y means you ARE punishing person B for doing Y.
In this case, X is "buy new" and Y is "buy used".

How exactly do you propose game makers should reward those that "buy new" in a way that NOBODY would feel it "punishes used game buyers" ?
I'm really curious what you could possibly come up with.

How do you reward people that purchase new? It's not hard. You offer a code for exclusive demos, you offer cheap knick knacks or a code to download the soundtrack or maybe beta access to another one of the company's upcoming games. Hell you could start a program that awards a certain amount of free DLC after you purchase X number of new titles from a certain publisher or developer. There are tons of ways you could go about it.

I will say this again, when my room mate worked at Gamestop when Lego Batman came out he pointed out how crazy that game was selling new because people wanted those damn lego keychains of the Batman characters. Many of the above ways are free or cost little at all. However, what you don't do is take away part of the game it's self. That is punishing the person who buys used.

Offering any of the above mentioned thing in no way punishes the used buyer while at the same time rewarding the new buyer. The used buyer still gets a complete game but the new buyer gets a little something extra as a token of appreciation for buying new. Kind of a way of saying "We know you had a choice, thank you for your support". When you try and force people to do something they dig in and resist. However, you'd be amazed how far a little positive reinforcement goes in getting people to do things.

Just imagine if a company came out and said "Our games will be the same regardless if you buy them new or used, but if you buy them new then we'll give you X". As long as X isn't content already on the damn disc or part of the game that should already come with it you would cause two things to happen. First off the amount of goodwill they'd receive from the gaming community would be significant. On top of that people would feel appreciated for choosing to buy new instead of feeling forced into it to avoid being punished for buying used. Again it's all about leading with more carrot and less stick

 

[kasperbbs]

Being a PC gamer i cant even remember when was the last time that i bought a used game, but if i had to deal with this kind of nonsense i would probably get that missing content illegally if possible. I have a lot of used stuff, but i was never required to buy certain parts of it seperately because the manufacturers wanted more money for the same item..

 

[StriderShinryu]

No, you're really bad at capitalism.

lol Can't say I was actually reading the debate point by point, but that needs to be quoted.

Shit, I just want to save some money. I don't want gamestop keeping it all, but there's nothing I can do. 2 new games cost $120, whereas used games are priced at $20 to $5, that's alot of money.

Sorry, but what Gamestop sells a new copy of a game for $60 and a used copy of the same game for $5 to $20? This is where the "I buy used games to save money!" argument falls apart because, unless there's faulty pricing or tags haven't been adjusted, no Gamestop does that.

The argument that used game trades help more money go to new sales is true, but not really convincing. A pirated copy leaves that gamer with more money than a used trade, which could potentially but not necessarily be spent on a new game. Therefore Used game sales are equal to or worse than piracy.
I realize that the above statement is very much an "Honor System" sort of thing, but then so is the assumption that a trade in goes towards new games.

I'm not condoning piracy, i'm condemning used game sales.

And stop bringing up books and music, they cost much less to produce and can survive on fewer sales.

A pirated game may leave a consumer with more money in their pocket.. but I still find it hard to believe that if they willingly get Game A for Free that they will actually pay for Game B. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I've always seen piracy as something of an addiction that way, despite what many "pirates with good hearts" like to post on their favourite message board to make themselves feel better.

And Books and Music are perfectly valid comparisons.. if you're using them to show how the videogame industry runs completely differently than the book and music industries.

 

[Baresark]

so instead of giving 60 dollars to the company ... you chose to give 55 dollars to gamestop

People actually do that? Seriously?!

When I think of used games, I think of buying a whole bunch of games from a few years ago for the price of a single new release, not an almost-new title for almost-new price.

You can buy new games from retailers at a fraction of 60 dollars. Those games actually count towards the sales numbers of publishers. Gamestop has them, but also Amazon, Best Buy and other retailers (even the sales on Steam count). Publishers have no issue with games devaluation or promotional sales.

However, most people that complain here about things like online passes are people that want to buy a used game two or three weeks after its release (after all, what is the point of playing online to Madden 2008 now), and the savings for such games are not worth the hassle (as low as $5 for LBP 2 or Black Ops used). That, and the fact that 100% of the money goes to gamestop and nothing goes to the people that made the game. From that perspective, those are no better than those that buy bootleg versions.

I can't disagree with what you are saying at all. Buying cheaper new, still pays the publisher, though "common knowledge" dictates this also aids the developer, conventional business wisdom denies this as pure speculation with no factual basis. Though, if a game sells well, the publisher looks better for future projects (an indirect benefit to developers).

In all honesty, the online pass thing makes perfect sense as a way to get some added money for the Publisher from used game sales. As a PC gamer, used games haven't really existed for quite a while. What will happen is game stores will simply lower the prices further so they sell a used game for $45, then a pass for $10, making the deal still cheaper for the consumer. This will most likely lead to further complaints from them when this system gets adjusted too.

 

[Baresark]

Then make a better game for cheaper to entice people to hang onto their games rather than trade them in. Make it seem like less of a loss to buy it in the first place. Is it any less legal to not be able to return a game if it is too bug free to play? Or simply a terrible game? Since when are game developers not able to be held accountable for their shoddy work?

That would be a straw man. That point has nothing to do with the core fact that a used video game sale and a pirated copy of the game have the same end impact on a developer. Please, attack the point directly instead of using a straw man if you wish to debate.

Seriously, stop using your speculation of the industry and how developer pay works to keep using this to defend the developer. The developer is taken advantage of long before a game is released. Developers get paid the bulk of the money they are contracted for long before the game is released.

Used and pirated are not the same thing, I hate when people vastly over simplify this subject like that.

 

[JET1971]

I know the used car analogy is used all the time, but it still stands.

No, it doesn't.

Companies should reward players for buying new, not punish them for buying used.

What's the difference ? I'll tell you what : the terminology you use when looking from a different vantage point and nothing else.
Rewarding person A for event X which is mutually exclusive with event Y means you ARE punishing person B for doing Y.
In this case, X is "buy new" and Y is "buy used".

How exactly do you propose game makers should reward those that "buy new" in a way that NOBODY would feel it "punishes used game buyers" ?
I'm really curious what you could possibly come up with.

The car analogy is always used in regards of selling owned property, not piracy so it absolutely stands up.
Would you actually feel like you stole from Logitech if you were to sell your speakers?

If Ford decided that the air conditioning and cruise control wouldn't work second hand unless you paid 300$ people would be pissed.
Getting an extended warranty for buying a new car is a reward, You don't deserve free oil changes, but you'll notice a lot of people buy new cars for the warranty because they don't want to piss around with repairs.
And hell, most car companies are good enough to transfer the warranty to the next owner!

Used car analogies do not stand at all.

Does Ford pay for the air conditioner or the brakes everytime they are used? NO.

Do game companies pay for servers and bandwidth everytime a player plays online? YES.

Thats where the analogy breaks. Warranties are a completly different issue bearing no relavance.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

Companies should reward players for buying new, not punish them for buying used.

What's the difference ? I'll tell you what : the terminology you use when looking from a different vantage point and nothing else.
Rewarding person A for event X which is mutually exclusive with event Y means you ARE punishing person B for doing Y.
In this case, X is "buy new" and Y is "buy used".

How exactly do you propose game makers should reward those that "buy new" in a way that NOBODY would feel it "punishes used game buyers" ?
I'm really curious what you could possibly come up with.

How do you reward people that purchase new? It's not hard. You offer a code for exclusive demos, you offer cheap knick knacks or a code to download the soundtrack or maybe beta access to another one of the company's upcoming games. Hell you could start a program that awards a certain amount of free DLC after you purchase X number of new titles from a certain publisher or developer. There are tons of ways you could go about it.

I will say this again, when my room mate worked at Gamestop when Lego Batman came out he pointed out how crazy that game was selling new because people wanted those damn lego keychains of the Batman characters. Many of the above ways are free or cost little at all. However, what you don't do is take away part of the game it's self. That is punishing the person who buys used.

Offering any of the above mentioned thing in no way punishes the used buyer while at the same time rewarding the new buyer. The used buyer still gets a complete game but the new buyer gets a little something extra as a token of appreciation for buying new. Kind of a way of saying "We know you had a choice, thank you for your support". When you try and force people to do something they dig in and resist. However, you'd be amazed how far a little positive reinforcement goes in getting people to do things.

Just imagine if a company came out and said "Our games will be the same regardless if you buy them new or used, but if you buy them new then we'll give you X". As long as X isn't content already on the damn disc or part of the game that should already come with it you would cause two things to happen. First off the amount of goodwill they'd receive from the gaming community would be significant. On top of that people would feel appreciated for choosing to buy new instead of feeling forced into it to avoid being punished for buying used. Again it's all about leading with more carrot and less stick

Atlus does this a lot, I bought SMT: Persona on the PSP and got a two disc complete OST free of charge for buying it new, they love giving out mini sound tracks or art books for buying the first shipment.

No, you're really bad at capitalism.

lol Can't say I was actually reading the debate point by point, but that needs to be quoted.

Shit, I just want to save some money. I don't want gamestop keeping it all, but there's nothing I can do. 2 new games cost $120, whereas used games are priced at $20 to $5, that's alot of money.

Sorry, but what Gamestop sells a new copy of a game for $60 and a used copy of the same game for $5 to $20? This is where the "I buy used games to save money!" argument falls apart because, unless there's faulty pricing or tags haven't been adjusted, no Gamestop does that.

The argument that used game trades help more money go to new sales is true, but not really convincing. A pirated copy leaves that gamer with more money than a used trade, which could potentially but not necessarily be spent on a new game. Therefore Used game sales are equal to or worse than piracy.
I realize that the above statement is very much an "Honor System" sort of thing, but then so is the assumption that a trade in goes towards new games.

I'm not condoning piracy, i'm condemning used game sales.

And stop bringing up books and music, they cost much less to produce and can survive on fewer sales.

A pirated game may leave a consumer with more money in their pocket.. but I still find it hard to believe that if they willingly get Game A for Free that they will actually pay for Game B. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I've always seen piracy as something of an addiction that way, despite what many "pirates with good hearts" like to post on their favourite message board to make themselves feel better.

And Books and Music are perfectly valid comparisons.. if you're using them to show how the videogame industry runs completely differently than the book and music industries.

Been known to "try" a game from a series and not only buy that game but buy more from that series if I liked it (it not I just move on I don't waste my time on crap) (It's how I got into Dragon Quest, Etrian Odyssey, Izuna, Disgaea, and Monster Tale which is a under the radar gem if you love Metriod. You don't have to believe what I say, I'll let me massive game collection speak on that behalf, but I don't condone piracy cause most people who do it don't buy the game just finish and move on and I don't see it as an addiction just gamers being cheap and claiming it's to fight against a company they are boycotting. I'm boycotting EA and companies who pull stunts like this for consoles yet you don't see me pirating their games, I just don't play them. But you are right most gamestops don't sell used games 20 dollars less, it's always 5 bucks less (X-5; X=price of game).

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

I know the used car analogy is used all the time, but it still stands.

No, it doesn't.

Companies should reward players for buying new, not punish them for buying used.

What's the difference ? I'll tell you what : the terminology you use when looking from a different vantage point and nothing else.
Rewarding person A for event X which is mutually exclusive with event Y means you ARE punishing person B for doing Y.
In this case, X is "buy new" and Y is "buy used".

How exactly do you propose game makers should reward those that "buy new" in a way that NOBODY would feel it "punishes used game buyers" ?
I'm really curious what you could possibly come up with.

The car analogy is always used in regards of selling owned property, not piracy so it absolutely stands up.
Would you actually feel like you stole from Logitech if you were to sell your speakers?

If Ford decided that the air conditioning and cruise control wouldn't work second hand unless you paid 300$ people would be pissed.
Getting an extended warranty for buying a new car is a reward, You don't deserve free oil changes, but you'll notice a lot of people buy new cars for the warranty because they don't want to piss around with repairs.
And hell, most car companies are good enough to transfer the warranty to the next owner!

Used car analogies do not stand at all.

Does Ford pay for the air conditioner or the brakes everytime they are used? NO.

Do game companies pay for servers and bandwidth everytime a player plays online? YES.

Thats where the analogy breaks. Warranties are a completly different issue bearing no relavance.

Mass Effect 2 is not a multiplayer game and it used this method. Also when talking online the person who bought the game transferred his license to someone else to play. Both people ARE NOT PLAYING only one is playing,

http://angryjoeshow.com/2011/04/homefront-angry-review/

Joe talks about the same thing near the end of this review (it's 8 minutes in),

 

[Frost27]

Alright, here's a better argument for that: if the end result for the developer is the same whether someone pirates a game or buys it used, how is piracy all that bad? No industry in the history of the world has been outcompeted by its own used market, so if piracy is really only as bad as that, it should be a non-issue, right?

Or alternatively, piracy is worse because, you know, pirates introduce new copies of the game into the marketplace and drive the value down, while used markets require each copy to be sold new at some point, and helps it to sustain a higher initial value, because people are able to recoup some of their initial investment by reselling. One of the two.

Better. The unfortunate reality of used games is that it cuts a developer out of a sale. That's the ultimate point I am trying to make. It's harmful to the industry, just like piracy is harmful. If games aren't profitable, then people will stop making them. It's the simple as that really.

The thing about used games that your argument fails to capture is that a used game can be re-sold and re-bought multiple times. There's nothing stopping someone from selling a used game back, so it can in turn have the same impact as piracy, i.e. multiple people playing the game even though the developer only received profits from one unit.

I'm not really trying to say used games are BAD, but it's difficult to deny that the industry itself is damaging to the people making and distributing the games. Hence is why you are seeing more and more publishers and developers fighting used games as well as piracy.

You are making the assumption that the vast majority of people who buy used would have made the same purchase at full price if the used version weren't available and that is just not the case. I bought Prototype used because it isn't, to me, worth $60. I walked in to the store with the mentality that I had $30 to drop on a game and I wanted to see what was out there and I had been wanting to try out Prototype for a while. Had it not been there, even if I had $60 in my pocket, I wouldn't have paid that for a game that has been out that long. Side note: had I paid full price for prototype I would have felt cheated and disappointed, it's pretty much awful.

The underlying issue here is that game publishers whining about resales hurting them being the reason for day 1 DLC and online passes is a smoke screen for them while they seize on the used game market as a potential revenue source.

To equate buying used game sales with piracy is also a very uninformed opinion.

If I torrent a copy of New Vegas, install and play, along with 500 others, 501 people are now playing the game on a single $60 copy. That's a single $60 paid to the companies that released it.

If I and 500 others all over the country hit up our local Gamestops and buy used copies of New Vegas, guess what? That's 501 people playing the game on copies that those who released it got full price for and mad the money they were asking. Bethesda was perfectly happy with the sale.

What SHOULD happen at that point is, Bethesda should thank Gamestop sincerely. There are 501 people who might very well buy the DLC regardless of whether or not the original owners of the discs bought them or not and the full price copy in the rack at Wal Mart that they didn't buy is still there with the potential to be sold for full price.

Now, if game companies take steps like day 1 DLC and online passes being purchaseable by those who buy used for the low price of $10, but they spend money to crush and prosecute pirates and remove them completely, then I don't see where you can compare the two, because the publishers sure don't.

 

[aarontg]

Until they develop some type of media format that turns into gold and teleports back to their respective publisher within a year I don't see them stopping this kind of non-sense. All the used games have to go somewhere and they don't seem to be acceptant of the fact that there are people out there that simply can't afford day one releases and have to rely on older used games if they want to stay with the hobby. I don't know much about the economy or how gaming marketing works but I don't see why the various publishers can't get some kind of compensation from gamestop or some other large gaming retail chain to make up for used game sales. But at the same time you have to think about them wanting money for used games in the first place. You don't hear about dvds demanding the purchase code in the box or five dollars in order to give you the special features, or paying a rental cost for books at the library. What we need is a new system. it's clear that it's gamestop that's the big problem. Of course a person is going to get the used copy of a recently released game if it means a few dollars savings unless they prefer mint condition. I can't think of anything else to say at the moment but Id'e like to take the time to recommend the "project ten dollar" episode of extra credits to anyone who wants more information on the matter.

 

[xcgillx2]

Why their equal in the eyes of the creators etc: because whether you buy used or pirate it the creators get no money for it.

An Actual difference: nobody gets money for piracy but when its bought used it is noticed by the game store which influences what games they buy in the future as stock for example if they do well on pre owned games with input or involvement from a company like Deep silver the store thinks something along the lines of " most of our money is from pre-owned sales, the best sellers for the pre-owned chart all have been produced by deep silver, therefore any games by deep silver must be good and good games sell well if they become pre-owned."