Should buying used games be illegal?

After all, the game creators don't get paid for it.SpaceMoose

[QUOTE="SpaceMoose"]After all, the game creators don't get paid for it.rragnaar

But with a game just about the entire price you are paying is for the abstraction of intellectual property. With a car, you are buying a physical object. There is a difference.

After all, the game creators don't get paid for it.SpaceMoose

EDIT: I decided to make my post a little more thorough.

The company in question did get paid for the copy once, and the licensing scheme for in those instances in which a game is sold on hard physical media attaches the license for use with the copy of the game so long as it stays in its original medium. So when a copy is sold, the license gets sold with it, and the seller loses his rights that were associated with the license. So yes, it should be legal, and yes, developers and publishers DID get paid for it.

There are special rules with that type of license for use, and copying with the intent of distributing, or freely using copies of the same software from other sources are not among the rights and privileges granted in that type of license. You'll find that companies use many different forms of licensing for their games. XBOX Live Arcade, Virtual Console/Wii Ware, and Playstation Store software downloads use a different licensing scheme that attaches rights and privileges to the original owner of an account, or a specific physical machine. Copies can only be made for backup purposes in some of these cases (Wii VC), but are not allowed to be played on any other user account or on any machine other than the one to which they are assigned.

The purpose of going into that detail is to demonstrate to you that when you buy a copy of a game, you are not literally buying the software, is if you were now an owner of the IP with the same rights and privileges as the developers or publishers. You are buying a license, which grants you the right to use that software in a limited capacity. To use the car analogy from earlier, it is very similar to a lease against a car vs. owning the car. You have specific rights defined in that lease, but your ownership isn't complete. To make it even clearer using the car analogy, buying a Ford Mustang doesn't give you any kind of rights to the Ford Mustang design or name, and so reproducing new Ford Mustangs and selling them to willing buyers would be theft of intellectual property and justifiably illegal.

I can see that this was intended to be a slam against laws protecting IP and perhaps Gamespot's policy forbidding promotion of pirated ROMs, but the analogy breaks down VERY quickly. Pirated copies don't supply the companies that own the IP with any income for their property -- ANY. It blatantly treats their intellectual property as public property to be claimed by whoever is passing by. As such, it IS theft, period, from the very beginning.

[QUOTE="rragnaar"][QUOTE="SpaceMoose"]After all, the game creators don't get paid for it.SpaceMoose

But with a game just about the entire price you are paying is for the abstraction of intellectual property. With a car, you are buying a physical object. There is a difference.

On some level, I wish it was deemed illegal, if for nothing else than the look on the faces of Gamestop suits when they realize that their brick and mortar money traps just got neutered. I consider Gamestop one of the main things wrong with gaming today, and because of that, it's a tempting thought to want to see this happen.Iszk

1. People weren't waiting to find used copies of games/waiting for pricedrops

2. Game prices were lower to accommodate the people listed in #1.

On some level, I wish it was deemed illegal, if for nothing else than the look on the faces of Gamestop suits when they realize that their brick and mortar money traps just got neutered. I consider Gamestop one of the main things wrong with gaming today, and because of that, it's a tempting thought to want to see this happen.Iszk

I wouldn't have an ethical objection if publishers and developers went that route for future games by issuing licenses which weren't attached to particular media and which did not transfer. Really if you think about it, digital downloading services, which seems to be where the industry is inching towards, work exactly that way.

I do have a personal problem with it though. I prefer hard media, and I prefer having an ownership right in the license, at least in the ability to transfer such a thing to another user when I am ready to.

I would also have a very EXTREME ethical and personal objection to attempts to reinvent the licenses for games already sold after the fact. Making it illegal to sell games that were already released with these types of transferrable licenses would be an absolute violation of the consumers who bought those games under their original terms.

I do have a personal problem with it though. I prefer hard media, and I prefer having an ownership right in the license, at least in the ability to transfer such a thing to another user when I am ready to.m0zart

I agree, it's just a shame that to do that, we have to keep feeding the beast.

[QUOTE="SpaceMoose"]After all, the game creators don't get paid for it.rragnaar

[QUOTE="rragnaar"][QUOTE="SpaceMoose"]After all, the game creators don't get paid for it.zeppelin_64

I guess that was sorta my point. Saying that people shouldn't sell or buy used games leads to the silly idea that something can only ethically be sold once. That idea runs counter to how humanity has bought and sold things for as long as they've bought and sold things.

On some level, I wish it was deemed illegal, if for nothing else than the look on the faces of Gamestop suits when they realize that their brick and mortar money traps just got neutered. I consider Gamestop one of the main things wrong with gaming today, and because of that, it's a tempting thought to want to see this happen.Iszk

How very elitest of you. Not everyone can afford $60 a game you know.

On the other hand, I would support a law that prevented a single store from selling both new and used games.Oilers99

To what end? What would this achieve? That statement is incoherent at best.

No, buying used copies shouldn't be illegal. But they should lower the games price, specially in Europe and Australia, then maybe there wouldn't be so much people waiting to get a used copy of games.Tykain

Hell i wait years for games to come to a price i see fit.

After all, the game creators don't get paid for it.SpaceMoose

No.If the devs make games that are fun and you just have come back to you won´t sell it.Sounds simple,but I think thats the whole point.Why should I keep a game thats finished after 5h and played not even half as good as it has been worth?If a good commercial sells a game to you but you´re disappointed because its not what you expected...why should anyone else who´s gotten blended pay full-price and give the dev money for crap thats only well marketed???

[QUOTE="Iszk"]On some level, I wish it was deemed illegal, if for nothing else than the look on the faces of Gamestop suits when they realize that their brick and mortar money traps just got neutered. I consider Gamestop one of the main things wrong with gaming today, and because of that, it's a tempting thought to want to see this happen.MarcusAntonius

How very elitest of you. Not everyone can afford $60 a game you know.

How very short-sighted of you. Do you realize that one of the big factors for the $10 jump this generations of games was beause of used games being sold? Companies need to factor in "lost" revenue from used games.

Theres nothing elitist in his statement and hever mentioned or suggested that game should never depreciate in value over timer, like they already do. Not everyone needs to play a game when it comes out.

[QUOTE="MarcusAntonius"]

[QUOTE="Iszk"]On some level, I wish it wasdeemed illegal, if for nothing else than the look on the faces of Gamestop suits when they realize that their brick and mortar money traps just got neutered. I consider Gamestop one of the main things wrong with gaming today, and because of that, it's a tempting thought to want to see this happen.XaosII

How very elitest of you. Not everyone can afford $60 a game you know.

How very short-sighted of you. Do you realize that one of the big factors for the $10 jump this generations of games was beause of used games being sold? Companies need to factor in "lost" revenue from used games.

Theres nothing elitist in his statement and hever mentioned or suggested that game should never depreciate in value over timer, like they already do. Not everyone needs to play a game when it comes out.

I'll say this as civilly as I can, please don't pull figures out of your ass if you can't post any proof. Its as lame of an excuse as piracy. There is no lost revenue from used games. You see, when a game appears on store shelves, the developer already got their money.

If you made resale of games illegal, which would involve reshaping copyright law and infringing upon First Amendment rights by the way, you would be subjected to ever inflated game prices with no alternative. I could say that guy's statement was a lot of things, which would probably get me moderated, but I will say that it wasn't an intelligent comment. His comment was very much anti-consumer.

Buying used games should not be deemed "illegal."

His comment was very much anti-consumer.

MarcusAntonius

It was also very much not a serious comment. I don't want used games to be made illegal, it would just be the best way to collapse gamestop, so in terms of just teasing the idea, it is a very tempting thought. I'm fine with shops that buy and sell used games, but I think Gamestop is too big for it's own good these days, and needs some good old fashioned competition. I used to have three unique game retailers in a ten mile radius. I now have three Gamestops. I thought I made it pretty clear it was just a thought, a tempting one, but just a thought all the same. Next time I make that kind of reply, I'll be sure to throw on about a dozen tongue smiley emotes, and spare you the need to indirectly call me an anti-consumer idiot.

I'd also like to think about EA collapsing, to fantasize about the look on the face of the EA suits who keep gobbling up and ruining good devs. But it's only a fantasy, because realistically, it would mean a lot of well meaning people out of work in a tough economy. The bad would definitely outweigh the good.

Used stores are fine, but what I don't like is GameStop trying to convince people who want new games to buy used games, not because it's better for the customer (because it isn't)Oilers99

Tell me again how paying less for a game at the cost of some wear and tear not actually better for me...

Not really, a disc is still a tangible object. I'd argue that for lots of folks owning the box and disc is as important as owning the intellectual property, and as m0zart says, stealing the game means that the developers never got paid. At the very least the developers got paid once for the used copy.rragnaar

But can you tell me the ethical difference between downloading a game for which there are many used copies available and buying said game? I know that the western mindset in general seems about this issue seems to be tied to legal precedent more than anything else, and thus making a copy of copyrighted material is "stealing." What really gets me is that it is still considered so even if the creator is no longer selling the material and has no plans to. It can even be considered so if the creator and their spouse are deceased in some cases.

Theoretically, if some rich person had some kind of weird vendetta against old games, they could buy the rights to many of them for the sole purpose of making sure nobody can ever get them again, unless they can get their hands on a used copy. Downloading or something would be considered to be "stealing" from the copyright holder, which is kind of odd, but then copyright law is rather odd. I understand the reasons for copyright law and why it is necessary to some extent, but it still doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of logical sense much of the time.

whomp whomp. true.

[QUOTE="SpaceMoose"]After all, the game creators don't get paid for it.rragnaar

whomp whomp. true.

[QUOTE="rragnaar"][QUOTE="SpaceMoose"]After all, the game creators don't get paid for it.ocdog45

Most people don't buy a car with the intention of having a few hours of fun with it, and then never touch it again. Also, a new game is not functionally different from a used one. Again, there is a difference between buying a physical object and buying a series of ones and zeros which happens to be on a physical object.

(I don't actually think buying used game should be illegal, but that's not the point.)

The creators already got their part, so of course not....Junior_AIN

Okay, so I go on ebay and let's say there are a thousand people selling a game which I'll just call Amazing Old Game. Amazing Old Game came out fifteen years ago, and Amazing Old Game hasn't been sold for nearly as many years. In fact, the people who actually made Amazing Old Game don't even work anymore at the company that holds the rights to it. If I buy this game, that's fine and no harm done. But if I download it somewhere (and I don't have a physical copy of it), I've apparently done something "wrong" according to some people (and the basis of that seems to be little more than that technically speaking it is illegal, which I'm sure is an argument made entirely by people who have never done anything illegal, such as underage drinking, but I digress...), so the question is if I download it IN THIS SCENARIO, who have I wronged and in what way exactly?

[QUOTE="Junior_AIN"]The creators already got their part, so of course not....SpaceMoose

Okay, so I go on ebay and let's say there are a thousand people selling a game which I'll just call Amazing Old Game. Amazing Old Game came out fifteen years ago, and Amazing Old Game hasn't been sold for nearly as many years. In fact, the people who actually made Amazing Old Game don't even work anymore at the company that holds the rights to it. If I buy this game, that's fine and no harm done. But if I download it somewhere (and I don't have a physical copy of it), I've apparently done something "wrong" according to some people (and the basis of that seems to be little more than that technically speaking it is illegal, which I'm sure is an argument made entirely by people who have never done anything illegal, such as underage drinking, but I digress...), so the question is if I download it IN THIS SCENARIO, who have I wronged and in what way exactly?

Oh goody, it's turning into a piracy debate. The difference here is that one's a moral argument (depriving the poor developer) and the other's a legal argument (against the law). Pick whatever is convenient at the time for you to use.

But can you tell me the ethical difference between downloading a game for which there are many used copies available and buying said game?

SpaceMoose

What part of the developer already got their money when the retail store put the new game on their shelves don't you seem to understand?

With copyrighted media there is the right of resale, its in the law. This statement of yours is like a dog chasing its tail.

f the developer already got their money when the retail store put the new game on their shelves don't you seem to understand?

With copyrighted media there is the right of resale, its in the law. This statement of yours is like a dog chasing its tail.

MarcusAntonius

And whether I buy that used copy or not does not affect the fact that they already got their money for it. What part of that don't you understand?

[QUOTE="MarcusAntonius"]

f the developer already got their money when the retail store put the new game on their shelves don't you seem to understand?

With copyrighted media there is the right of resale, its in the law. This statement of yours is like a dog chasing its tail.

SpaceMoose

And whether I buy that used copy or not does not affect the fact that they already got their money for it. What part of that don't you understand?

Ok, so what's your problem then?:?

And whether I buy that used copy or not does not affect the fact that they already got their money for it. What part of that don't you understand?

SpaceMoose

You've had all of this explained to you before in this thread, i.e. in the "who it hurts" department. It isn't just about the developers, it's also about the publishers and gaming companies in general. This material is THEIR property -- it can't just be claimed by passers-by whenever they feel appropriate, like something left in a trashcan. Reproducing their work, distributing it, or using it without a license IS theft. There just is no way around it. Anything less, and you are left with the notion that intellectual property isn't real property, and property rights are invalid whenever you feel like treating them so.

We live in a society that is built on property rights and other rights that stem from those. It HURTS property owners when their rights are not abided by. If you really need a utilitarian or consequentialist argument in place of a moral one, whenever property rights are violated, it greatly reduces the motivation of individuals, developers, publishers, and producers in general from producing new works that they essentially in such a situation would retain no rights to. What part of that don't *you* understand?

Buying used games should definately not be illegal. Firstly if they were i wouldn't have any games as I tend to buy used games more (I only own a PS2).

Secondly the makers of the game have already made a fortune from the game selling around the release date brand new. So they don't need to make more money surely.

Buying used games should definately not be illegal. Firstly if they were i wouldn't have any games as I tend to buy used games more (I only own a PS2). ColdRush88

That part I agree with.

Secondly the makers of the game have already made a fortune from the game selling around the release date brand new. So they don't need to make more money surely. ColdRush88

That part is completely missing the point. This isn't about "needing" to make more money. Property rights aren't built on need. They own the games as IP, and they have a right to make as much money off of it as they like.

That doesn't mean that they can circumvent the licensing scheme they already published under and claim that used games can't be resold (which would violate the rights of the current owners of those licenses games), but they can certainly redistribute those games under other licenses if they choose, making more money in the process, and can fully expect that individuals will not be able to redistribute that software without their express consent, even by force of law.

In my mind, this whole thread is just about Sace Moose justifying to himself that it is ok to steal... My own moral compass goes as follows: Any time I have to throw logic out the window to justify my own actions, it probably means I'm doing something wrong... I'm sorry, but the whole, 'I wouldn't buy it at the new price, so why buy it at the old price?' mentality just doesn't work. In my mind, a big part of being a responsible gamer is supporting the people who make my games. Piracy doesn't fit into that view.rragnaar

So let me get this straight:

If a game is no longer being prodcued or sold by it's creator, I'm supporting them by buying a used copy of it instead of downloading it. Care to elaborate on how I'm supporting them?