Why is there debate about used games?

[Asehujiko]

Escapists, please help me understand something: why are people arguing that used games are bad? like any other product, you pay money for them, then they are yours, and you can do what you want with them.

By what jump in space-logic does anyone think there is justification for trying to stop you from excercising your ownership of a game?

I understand the companies, at least: they are just fishing for bigger profits. But why do people accept this blatant thievery on the part of publishers? Why are people so accepting of getting ripped off? it just does not make sense to me.

Because of the cult of personality the gaming community has built around developers. And one of those developers called it "worse then piracy" to justify their own abuse of DRM to circumvent the first sale doctrine and now you are Hitler reincarnated for not decrying something "related" to piracy.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Used game are fine, you can find some awesome old titles. My issue is shops keep trying to sell you a second hand copy of a brand new title when you want to buy it brand new. Shops dont want to sell brand new copies as they dont make much profit on them. They want to sell you the second hand version which saves you a whole $/£5 but the shops makes 100% profit off them. Basiclly the people that made the game get less profit and thus go bankrupt or decide to make a cheaper game that is like COD instead of an original title.

Now im not against the used market. The shops are within the law and making money - which is the point of shops anyway. I buy second hand titles off Amazon and rent alot of games from Blockbusters. I guess the issue is game makers suffer because game shops are always peddling there "you save $5 if you buy it used" when your shiny new game to the counter.

 

[veloper]

Not bad so much as stupid, when you're letting a middleman like gamestop rip you.

Trading games with others gamers is the socially smart thing to do, but the pool has become rather small, because of all the anti-socials who would rather drive all the way to a shop and get a terrible deal.

 

[Baralak]

Used game are fine, you can find some awesome old titles. My issue is shops keep trying to sell you a second hand copy of a brand new title when you want to buy it brand new. Shops dont want to sell brand new copies as they dont make much profit on them. They want to sell you the second hand version which saves you a whole $/£5 but the shops makes 100% profit off them. Basiclly the people that made the game get less profit and thus go bankrupt or decide to make a cheaper game that is like COD instead of an original title.

Now im not against the used market. The shops are within the law and making money - which is the point of shops anyway. I buy second hand titles off Amazon and rent alot of games from Blockbusters. I guess the issue is game makers suffer because game shops are always peddling there "you save $5 if you buy it used" when your shiny new game to the counter.

That's the store's job, to advertise. It's your responsibility as a consumer to decide if you'd rather save $5 used, or buy it new.

 

[Magnicon]

The reason there is a debate is because major studios will find every reason they can to complain about reasons they aren't making as many hundreds of millions or billions as possible.

The used game market does not, and has never had a negative effect on the industries profits. It has been proven endlessly that the used game market and piracy are a POSITIVE for the industries profit margins.

It really boggles my mind when I still see people agreeing with the giant greedy corporations. Just do some research, the information is there.

 

[D3boy510]

To me it seems its not just the used games market that's a problem, the issue is that most large game retailers are making TONS of money from the used game market and publishers are not. If it was a bunch of mom and pop shops making some cash from used games it would not be a big issue but now if you go into a gamestop/EBgames the biggest thing there most of the time is a sign talking about trade in 3 get it free, even their flyer is focused on what games have the largest TIV for the month. Yes sometimes used game sales can help make new customers but for me and I know a lot of people who do this also it means rarely having more then 5-6 games at any given moment because BIG names are coming out almost yearly, and lets face it when most see 3 games they're not going to play again for a LONG time they're going to trade them in for the newest game and save that $60. whatever happened to the days of renting games every Thursday (that was the day I used to go to beat all the Friday people) and only buying every big release or so I mean we have gamefly doing its thing and yet no one is saying it kills yet (AFAIK)

These are just my [a sleepless 15yo's] thoughts on the matter sorry if I went off topic

Also why don't publishers have a trade up program like I think its BFG does could help them out quite a bit

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I think its easier to explain like this.

Your a shop owner, you have 6 new copies of COD and 2 used copies of COD. Everytime a person wants to buy a new copy you get them to buy a used copy instead. You sell your 2 used copies and buy back 3 more used copies, these you also sell for extra profit. An the whole cycle continues. After a week your figures show COD was a success, you sold 20 copies of the game, except those same 6 new copies are still sitting on the shelf.

Developers etc made no money but the shop has made a lot of profit.

I agree its your game, your property and you can do as you wish with it. But maybe shops are abusing the used game business. Everytime I buy a game new I have the shop person trying to sell me a used version. Its a difficult topic to solve. They have the £10 thing with the free DLC for buying new, which is good. Maybe they just need a law that would state a one month grace period before shops can sell used titles. But with the internet, any law would be difficult to uphold.

 

[everythingbeeps]

I have no problem with used games or people buying used.

What I have a problem with is people who ***** and whine when publishers take measures to combat used sales, which absolutely cut into their new sales.

Things like day-1 DLC and online passes. People object to those because they interfere with the used market. They can't trade in their game for as much, and you miss out on those things if you buy used.

But why the hell does the publisher need to care about the used market? Why shouldn't the publisher be allowed to do whatever they legally can to recapture money lost to the used market?

People think that just because shit like multiplayer has traditionally been "part of the full game", that they're forever entitled to that stuff as part of the full game. Those days are gone. Online functionality is now, for a lot games, a separately-sold add-on. It's just that if you buy the game new, you get that add-on for free.

Except you're wrong. For a used game to exist, it HAD to be bought new. The developer did get paid for that copy of the game. If I sell my now-used game, I'm not stealing from the developers, because it was bought new. With piracy, that doesn't happen. What happens with piracy is that someone goes into the developers network, steals the game, then puts it up for everyone to get for free. There's a big difference there. The developers are being greedy, entitled morons.

Well no. It's actually YOU who are wrong.

Yes, a used game was originally bought new. But think about the person who buys that game used. They're NOT buying it new. THAT is a lost sale. It's not about the number of actual copies of a game. It's about the number of times a game is "bought". There might be 1 million copies of a game "sold", but those 1 million copies might be traded in and resold 3 million times. Those are sales effectively "lost".

If there were no used games market, isn't it safe to assume that many of those used buyers would go ahead and buy new? Of course.

Yes, piracy is worse, if only because of the numbers. The actual acts are fairly similar. With used games, a publisher is being paid once for a game that gets sold and resold and resold multiple times. Gamestop gets all that profit while not doing a lick of actual work. They're not a middleman, they've instead stepped directly in front of the publisher and is siphoning a lot of the publisher's profit. If you can argue that this is their right (and you can, I won't dispute that), you must also accept that it's the publisher's right to do what they can (again, legally) to recapture some of those lost profits.

 

[Saxnot]

I have no problem with buying used games at all, but from the developers perspective used game sales have the exact same effect as pirating. You can argue it increases awareness of developers, advertisement and all that, but the same applies to pirating. Logically speaking, if you're against pirating you should also be against used game sales (assuming of course your reason for being against pirating is that it denies the developer profits from the game itself). You could also argue that with second-hand games there needs to be an initial purchase, but this doesn't really hold water either since the fact remains that a given individual is playing the game without giving any money whatsoever to the developer. From the developers perspective, its the same as pirating.

It's a bit of a paradox really, if you're against pirating because it denies developers profit then it's hypocritical to be supportive of used game sales. Hypothetically speaking, if i'm pirating all my games and my friend is buying all his games second-hand, both of us are reaping the benefits of being able to play the game cheaply and neither of us are supporting the developer.

The argument that publishers should benefit from every sale of a game is based on a mistaken assumption: that a publisher not getting payed for a product they have no ownership of is comparable to a publisher not getting payed for someone distributing their product without compensating them. One is the buying and selling of products, the other is thievery.

second hand:
The publisher has already been payed, they have transferred the right to one(1) of their games to the buyer. The buyer now owns it and can do what he wants with it.

Piracy:
They haven't transferred the right to the making or copying of that game. If you do copy it, you are doing something illegal.

This is piracy. The fact that you are transfering ownership of a product more times than you have ownership of a product.

 

[D3boy510]

Maybe they just need a law that would state a one month grace period before shops can sell used titles. But with the internet, any law would be difficult to uphold.

Yes and no. To the large majority of gamers this would work, but as you said there will always be the few who will do as they please

 

[Worgen]

If they didn't want to encourage used games then they shouldn't have made games such a disposable commodity, back in the snes days if you traded in your game you were also giving away all your save data, plus those games tended to come with nice instruction manuals that did more then just tell you what button did what and if you wanted to trade your game in without the instructions then that was an automatic 5 bucks off the value, nowadays you tend to get a single page that tells you to look in the game for things and it is infinitely disposable, hell the cases now are made just for that, they are making physical copies of games worth less and less to collectors so they feel less desire to hang onto then.

 

[Magnicon]

What I have a problem with is people who ***** and whine when publishers take measures to combat used sales, which absolutely cut into their new sales.

This is 100% incorrect. Please do some research on the subject and stop spreading misinformation.

Yes, piracy is worse, if only because of the numbers.

Again, 100% incorrect. Where have you gotten your information from? Are you just believing what the huge corporations are telling you?

The facts on what effects these things actually have are surprisingly easy to find on the Internet. You might want to look into it.

 

[everythingbeeps]

What I have a problem with is people who ***** and whine when publishers take measures to combat used sales, which absolutely cut into their new sales.

This is 100% incorrect. Please do some research on the subject and stop spreading misinformation.

Yes, piracy is worse, if only because of the numbers.

Again, 100% incorrect. Where have you gotten your information from? Are you just believing what the huge corporations are telling you?

The facts on what effects these things actually have are surprisingly easy to find on the Internet. You might want to look into it.

It's not debatable. It's simple fact.

You buy a game used, that's a game that's NOT being sold new. That's a lost sale. How is this shit so complicated for some people?

 

[targren]

If there were no used game sales, more people would have paid that money directly to the developer to play the game. Instead, the opportunity to play a game comes cheaper, so that option is chosen and the profits from a used game go to a corporation (Gamestop, Best Buy, Gamefly Used Games, etc.), not the developer/publisher.

Right, like 9999/10000% of the games in question aren't developed and published by "corporations." I don't think I've seen an indie game on physical media since 3.5" floppies went by the wayside.

It's a cash grab, plain and simple. The publishers don't like the middle men (who does?) so they piss and moan about how they're entitled[footnote]Hey, that's the word the industry cheerleaders and astroturfers all over these forums love to use about gamers! Amazing![/footnote] to a cut of something they've already sold when it gets sold again, in perpetuity. As a result, they've started doing all sorts of stupid things to ransom that cut, including screwing over the customers (such as any customer who happens to share a console but not an account with a sibling, for example...)

The apologists (including, at times, The Escapist itself) who routinely lambast "t3h ebil pirat3s!11!" will, for some reason, defend this as the publishers having the "right" to do whatever they can to get the best return for themselves (but, by gum, fuck those damn dirty legitimate customers and their rights under the First Sale Doctrine!).

These days, you're better off being a pirate than you are playing by the rules![footnote]For the thickies getting ready to hit the 'report' button, this is NOT advocating piracy. It's calling out the bullshit that does nothing to STOP the pirates while screwing over those of us dumb enough to PAY for our games[/footnote]

 

[Baralak]

I have no problem with used games or people buying used.

What I have a problem with is people who ***** and whine when publishers take measures to combat used sales, which absolutely cut into their new sales.

Things like day-1 DLC and online passes. People object to those because they interfere with the used market. They can't trade in their game for as much, and you miss out on those things if you buy used.

But why the hell does the publisher need to care about the used market? Why shouldn't the publisher be allowed to do whatever they legally can to recapture money lost to the used market?

People think that just because shit like multiplayer has traditionally been "part of the full game", that they're forever entitled to that stuff as part of the full game. Those days are gone. Online functionality is now, for a lot games, a separately-sold add-on. It's just that if you buy the game new, you get that add-on for free.

Except you're wrong. For a used game to exist, it HAD to be bought new. The developer did get paid for that copy of the game. If I sell my now-used game, I'm not stealing from the developers, because it was bought new. With piracy, that doesn't happen. What happens with piracy is that someone goes into the developers network, steals the game, then puts it up for everyone to get for free. There's a big difference there. The developers are being greedy, entitled morons.

Well no. It's actually YOU who are wrong.

Yes, a used game was originally bought new. But think about the person who buys that game used. They're NOT buying it new. THAT is a lost sale. It's not about the number of actual copies of a game. It's about the number of times a game is "bought". There might be 1 million copies of a game "sold", but those 1 million copies might be traded in and resold 3 million times. Those are sales effectively "lost".

If there were no used games market, isn't it safe to assume that many of those used buyers would go ahead and buy new? Of course.

Yes, piracy is worse, if only because of the numbers. The actual acts are fairly similar. With used games, a publisher is being paid once for a game that gets sold and resold and resold multiple times. Gamestop gets all that profit while not doing a lick of actual work. They're not a middleman, they've instead stepped directly in front of the publisher and is siphoning a lot of the publisher's profit. If you can argue that this is their right (and you can, I won't dispute that), you must also accept that it's the publisher's right to do what they can (again, legally) to recapture some of those lost profits.

Actually, no. There have been a ton of games I've bought used that I would have never bought new. Everything from Mass Effect 2, to Saint's Row 2, I got used. I would have never bought them new. Except for MK vs DC Universe ($20 new at Walmart), I haven't bought a single PS3 game new. Why? Because most aren't worth the $60.

Besides, it's been proven MANY times over that a used market is good for the new market. As other people have said, buying used increases new sales. I loved Mass Effect 2, a game I bought used. I'm going to buy a new copy of Mass Effect 3 on release. That's a sale that BioWare wouldn't have had at all. Going off your logic, every person selling their games on Craigslist needs to be punished. Should I call the police on them, under "theft of sales" or something? What about when my friend tells me " I don't want my copy of Final Fantasy XIII any more, I'll give it to ya for $20." Should I tell him " No, your copy isn't good enough for me! I'm going to buy it new! Stop tempting me into stealing from those poor, starving artists at Square-Enix!!!"

 

[Magnicon]

What I have a problem with is people who ***** and whine when publishers take measures to combat used sales, which absolutely cut into their new sales.

This is 100% incorrect. Please do some research on the subject and stop spreading misinformation.

Yes, piracy is worse, if only because of the numbers.

Again, 100% incorrect. Where have you gotten your information from? Are you just believing what the huge corporations are telling you?

The facts on what effects these things actually have are surprisingly easy to find on the Internet. You might want to look into it.

It's not debatable. It's simple fact.

You buy a game used, that's a game that's NOT being sold new. That's a lost sale. How is this shit so complicated for some people?

I see. Your assumption that people who buy used games would otherwise buy them new and full price makes it a "simply fact". Aged old ignorant though process. It's also nowhere near that simple.

Seriously. You are wrong. This has been studied endlessly. The information is available. You might want to look into it.

 

[Shpongled]

I have no problem with buying used games at all, but from the developers perspective used game sales have the exact same effect as pirating. You can argue it increases awareness of developers, advertisement and all that, but the same applies to pirating. Logically speaking, if you're against pirating you should also be against used game sales (assuming of course your reason for being against pirating is that it denies the developer profits from the game itself). You could also argue that with second-hand games there needs to be an initial purchase, but this doesn't really hold water either since the fact remains that a given individual is playing the game without giving any money whatsoever to the developer. From the developers perspective, its the same as pirating.

It's a bit of a paradox really, if you're against pirating because it denies developers profit then it's hypocritical to be supportive of used game sales. Hypothetically speaking, if i'm pirating all my games and my friend is buying all his games second-hand, both of us are reaping the benefits of being able to play the game cheaply and neither of us are supporting the developer.

Except you're wrong. For a used game to exist, it HAD to be bought new. The developer did get paid for that copy of the game. If I sell my now-used game, I'm not stealing from the developers, because it was bought new. With piracy, that doesn't happen. What happens with piracy is that someone goes into the developers network, steals the game, then puts it up for everyone to get for free. There's a big difference there. The developers are being greedy, entitled morons.

Yes, a grand difference of a whole 1 game sale.

I have no problem with buying used games at all, but from the developers perspective used game sales have the exact same effect as pirating. You can argue it increases awareness of developers, advertisement and all that, but the same applies to pirating. Logically speaking, if you're against pirating you should also be against used game sales (assuming of course your reason for being against pirating is that it denies the developer profits from the game itself). You could also argue that with second-hand games there needs to be an initial purchase, but this doesn't really hold water either since the fact remains that a given individual is playing the game without giving any money whatsoever to the developer. From the developers perspective, its the same as pirating.

It's a bit of a paradox really, if you're against pirating because it denies developers profit then it's hypocritical to be supportive of used game sales. Hypothetically speaking, if i'm pirating all my games and my friend is buying all his games second-hand, both of us are reaping the benefits of being able to play the game cheaply and neither of us are supporting the developer.

The argument that publishers should benefit from every sale of a game is based on a mistaken assumption: that a publisher not getting payed for a product they have no ownership of is comparable to a publisher not getting payed for someone distributing their product without compensating them. One is the buying and selling of products, the other is thievery.

second hand:
The publisher has already been payed, they have transferred the right to one(1) of their games to the buyer. The buyer now owns it and can do what he wants with it.

Piracy:
They haven't transferred the right to the making or copying of that game. If you do copy it, you are doing something illegal.

This is piracy. The fact that you are transfering ownership of a product more times than you have ownership of a product.

All this doesn't change the fact that the end result for the developer is exactly the same. I pirate, i get to play the game, developer recieves nothing. You buy second-hand, you get to play the game, developer recieves nothing.

Just to reiterate, i have nothing against buying used games.

 

[Saxnot]

I have no problem with used games or people buying used.

What I have a problem with is people who ***** and whine when publishers take measures to combat used sales, which absolutely cut into their new sales.

Things like day-1 DLC and online passes. People object to those because they interfere with the used market. They can't trade in their game for as much, and you miss out on those things if you buy used.

But why the hell does the publisher need to care about the used market? Why shouldn't the publisher be allowed to do whatever they legally can to recapture money lost to the used market?

People think that just because shit like multiplayer has traditionally been "part of the full game", that they're forever entitled to that stuff as part of the full game. Those days are gone. Online functionality is now, for a lot games, a separately-sold add-on. It's just that if you buy the game new, you get that add-on for free.

I understand it's their legal right. I'm wondering about the morality of it. They claim used games should be stopped because it is unjust that they are not being payed for them. But this claim is wrong. Those games are not theirs anymore.

My problem it that they're trying to pass it off as if they are being wronged here. It would be different if they just said 'we're trying to increase profits by making you pay for things that used to be free.'

I still wouldn't like it, but at least they're not lying to me then.

Except you're wrong. For a used game to exist, it HAD to be bought new. The developer did get paid for that copy of the game. If I sell my now-used game, I'm not stealing from the developers, because it was bought new. With piracy, that doesn't happen. What happens with piracy is that someone goes into the developers network, steals the game, then puts it up for everyone to get for free. There's a big difference there. The developers are being greedy, entitled morons.

Well no. It's actually YOU who are wrong.

Yes, a used game was originally bought new. But think about the person who buys that game used. They're NOT buying it new. THAT is a lost sale. It's not about the number of actual copies of a game. It's about the number of times a game is "bought". There might be 1 million copies of a game "sold", but those 1 million copies might be traded in and resold 3 million times. Those are sales effectively "lost".

If there were no used games market, isn't it safe to assume that many of those used buyers would go ahead and buy new? Of course.

Yes, piracy is worse, if only because of the numbers. The actual acts are fairly similar. With used games, a publisher is being paid once for a game that gets sold and resold and resold multiple times. Gamestop gets all that profit while not doing a lick of actual work. They're not a middleman, they've instead stepped directly in front of the publisher and is siphoning a lot of the publisher's profit. If you can argue that this is their right (and you can, I won't dispute that), you must also accept that it's the publisher's right to do what they can (again, legally) to recapture some of those lost profits.

This isn't how the economy works. you buy something, you own it, and the previous owner has nothing to do with it anymore. They have transferred their right to that game. They are trying to tell us they should see profits from games they dont own.

I can claim i own every car in the world but if i don't actually have the right of ownership to those cars i'm talking nonsense.

What they might or might not have lost because people buy second hand is beyond the point. They do not own those games anymore

 

[blipblop]

Don´t get it its like the car companys would get mad on people that buy and sell used cars or clothes company wold get upset on secondhand stores

 

[everythingbeeps]

Actually, no. There have been a ton of games I've bought used that I would have never bought new. Everything from Mass Effect 2, to Saint's Row 2, I got used. I would have never bought them new. Except for MK vs DC Universe ($20 new at Walmart), I haven't bought a single PS3 game new. Why? Because most aren't worth the $60.

Besides, it's been proven MANY times over that a used market is good for the new market. As other people have said, buying used increases new sales. I loved Mass Effect 2, a game I bought used. I'm going to buy a new copy of Mass Effect 3 on release. That's a sale that BioWare wouldn't have had at all. Going off your logic, every person selling their games on Craigslist needs to be punished. Should I call the police on them, under "theft of sales" or something? What about when my friend tells me " I don't want my copy of Final Fantasy XIII any more, I'll give it to ya for $20." Should I tell him " No, your copy isn't good enough for me! I'm going to buy it new! Stop tempting me into stealing from those poor, starving artists at Square-Enix!!!"

So you're the rule then? Just because YOU have a philosophy of "used or bust", that means EVERYONE has it? You're honestly suggesting that if the used market disappeared tomorrow, all those used game buyers would just stop buying video games entirely? That's absurd. A lot of those used buyers buy used because the option is there. Take away that option, and many of them would (grudgingly) buy new.

And I'm not even going to respond to your second paragraph, because you're just making shit up now, deliberately misrepresenting me, and missing the point entirely.