Why are used games an "issue"?
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[QUOTE="thesikho"]new cars don't sell at a loss books don't cost $40 million dollars to make and imagine if you sold lets say 1 million copies at $60. some of those games were traded in....about 5k was resold. so thats 5k x lets say $24 to the developer. thats 120k that they never earned because of used games. imagine if lets say the numbers were bigger (no one can really be accurate at how many copies get sold used) then thats how much business they don't even see because of used games. You put your funding and effort on the line to make a product. That is the risk you take in order to turn a buck. Once you sell one unit of your product, it no longer belongs to you, and thus you have no right to make another cent on that one unit regardless of whether you paid an author $40,000 to write a novel or an entire development team $400,000 to develop a videogame. The amount of money it costs to produce, like the amount of money in the used market for it, doesn't enter into the issue at all.How is selling a game secondhand different to selling almost any other product?
I don't understand why some people think it is bad to sell used games, or that it is cheating the developer/publisher of money. This isn't an issue in any other industry.
When you buy a house secondhand, you don't send money to the architect or the builder. You don't send money to the car manufacturer when you buy a secondhand car; they also have very significant research and development costs, like games.
Imagine if we treated books as we do games; when you go to the library, should you send money to the author of every book you borrow? Or shoud you buy every book you ever need new, and then keep them forever? And can you imagine the cost of education if every time you wrote a paper you had to buy every copy of the book brand new (many textbooks are hundreds of dollars)? Every university paper would cost you thousands of dollars, for books you will likely only use once, for a few hours. Yet books are creative works, just like games. What's the difference?
Why is the publisher/developer "owed" money from the sale of used games? I do not understand the reasoning.
jsmoke03
Devs like money. The don't make money from used games.unrealtronDevs don't make any money from new games, either. They get paid for creating the game. The publishers get paid by the sale.
Well excuse the hell out of me for assuming that the purchase price of a game is for the complete game. Now that I know I need to pay more, I'll stop b!tching so much. /sarcasmYet, the cost of making the game has gone up and gamers refuse to pay more for a complete game.
wiouds
Selling a game or two to a friend isn't where publishers are wanting to stop the sale of used games. WhiteKnight77The problem with that is that the publishers, by trying to stamp out the used retail market, will also make it impossible to sell, trade or lend your games to your friends, or to strangers on your own online.
[QUOTE="WhiteKnight77"]Selling a game or two to a friend isn't where publishers are wanting to stop the sale of used games. El_Zo1212oThe problem with that is that the publishers, by trying to stamp out the used retail market, will also make it impossible to sell, trade or lend your games to your friends, or to strangers on your own online. Oh, and just like a used car will run just fine until it breaks down, so too will a used game. It may come on slowly, in the form of an intermittent restart due to an "unreadable" error, and it may start happening more frequently until the game refuses to play any more. Plastic discs containing fragile digital information do not have an indefinite lifespan any more than a used car does.
When you buy a book (or magazine), you own the cover and the pages in between, but you do not own the content on said pages, that is owned by the writer or publisher. While you can sell it, you cannot copy large portions of it, or worse, copy it and sell it as your own. When you purchase a game, you are buying the right to play said game (just like you buy the right to read said book or magazine), but you only own the disk it is on, not the content on said disk.
While used books are sold and there is no problem with said sale of those books, used book stores are not selling them at a price that is just under the cover price of a new book like GameStop does with their used game sales. They are making billions of dollars in profit for little outlay of funds and make more money on the sale of used games than they do new games. This so called attack on used games is actually attack on the dealers of said used games. If GameStop only sold used games for a couple of dollars apiece and only make .01% of their profit on the sale of used games, I don't think publishers or hardware manufacturers would object to the used game market.<./p>
Now as far as online passes go, gamers who purchase used games haven't paid the publishers any money to use the servers that the publisher runs. Want access to their servers to play online, pay the piper for such access.
When you buy a book (or magazine), you own the cover and the pages in between, but you do not own the content on said pages, that is owned by the writer or publisher. While you can sell it, you cannot copy large portions of it, or worse, copy it and sell it as your own. When you purchase a game, you are buying the right to play said game (just like you buy the right to read said book or magazine), but you only own the disk it is on, not the content on said disk.
Same thing with games- you can't bootleg games and sell them yourself to turn a buck. That's theft and piracy. But just like you said with the book, you do have the right to sell it. [QUOTE="WhiteKnight77"]While used books are sold and there is no problem with said sale of those books, used book stores are not selling them at a price that is just under the cover price of a new book like GameStop does with their used game sales. They are making billions of dollars in profit for little outlay of funds and make more money on the sale of used games than they do new games. This so called attack on used games is actually attack on the dealers of said used games. If GameStop only sold used games for a couple of dollars apiece and only make .01% of their profit on the sale of used games, I don't think publishers or hardware manufacturers would object to the used game market.<./p>
It doesn't matter how much they charge for a used game, just like it doesn't matter how much of their business comes from used sales. What matters is they deal in something people want and can charge for it whatever they like- just like they can pay for their inventory whatever someone is willing to sell it to them for. If you can buy something for 25% of what you eventually sell it for, that's called good business. Did you read what I wrote earlier about greed being an integral part of business? Well the difference between GameStop and the publishers is that GameStop's greed upholds my consumer rights and the publishers' greed wants to do away with them.The piper was paid by the first person who bought the game- the online servers bear no extra burden on account of the person who bought the game used, as the person who bought it new is no longer taking up server space. But that isn't the only issue I have with online passes- I bought Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine the day it launched. When I cracked it open and looked at the pamphlet inside, what I understood from it was that by entering it, I would skip to MP level 6. Well, I wanted to start from level one, so I never bothered to enter it. I also never played the multiplayer this past December. In March last year, two-thirds of my game library was stolen and I needed to replace them. When I started playing Space Marine online, I realized that what the online pass actually meant was that I would be unable to progress beyond level five without entering the code. Well, the used copy of the game I bought to replace my stolen copy didn't have the code, so I was forced to pay an extra ten dollars to get full access to the multiplayer. This happened, of course, all because of an incredible run of bad luck, but it did happen. And if it weren't for this online pass nonsense, I wouldn't have had to pay an extra ten bucks to play online.Now as far as online passes go, gamers who purchase used games haven't paid the publishers any money to use the servers that the publisher runs. Want access to their servers to play online, pay the piper for such access.
WhiteKnight77
This so called attack on used games is actually attack on the dealers of said used games. WhiteKnight77The problem with that is that the consumers are caught in the crossfire.
[QUOTE="Blueresident87"]
[QUOTE="GeoffZak"]
There really isn't any issue with used games. Developers and publishers are just butt-hurt, greedy and corrupt, so they're trying to make it seem like there is.
They'll do ANYTHING to get as much money as possible out of the consumer.
Anyone who says buying used games hurts the developers has their head up their ass. They've been fooled by the developers who cry: "why won't you guys support us!? DX"
Getting rid of used games will HURT the gaming industry. A lot of people will discontinue their support by not purchasing new games/consoles anymore.
I definitely will if this anti-used game tech becomes a reality. We shouldn't continue to support this bullsh*t.
wis3boi
I am growing very tired of the industry, and it is hurting my overall interest in video games. Even the marketing, the awful Dead Space 3 trailer with the Phil Collins song I thought was a joke, is getting to a point where it gets under my skin. I hate it, it's all about money and when something reaches that point quality takes a back seat to quantity.
Basically why I stopped buying consoles last gen. On PC, I find a lot less bullsh!t and many more games and devs who put effort in the right places.
yet most won't let pc games be resold....so im not getting the point here
Used games aren't a issue, only publishers/devs make it seem like an issue. A good portion of their sales are from retailers like Gamestop and Amazon which sell used games.
[QUOTE="WhiteKnight77"]Selling a game or two to a friend isn't where publishers are wanting to stop the sale of used games. El_Zo1212oThe problem with that is that the publishers, by trying to stamp out the used retail market, will also make it impossible to sell, trade or lend your games to your friends, or to strangers on your own online. And god forbid that something ever happens to your console 3 or 4 years after you purchased it, and then the hundreds/thousands of dollars that you've invested in games over the years instantly goes down the trash. Now you can't even just buy another console and pick up where you were, your entire game library is gone and you've gotta start all over from scratch. And...seeing as how the used game market no longer exists, getting your game library back is going to be a nightmare. You can't just track down used copies for cheap. And since most of these games are mostly likely no longer in print, new copies are going to be either extremely expensive or impossible to find. You're absolutely right. The argument for blocking used games doesn't rest on the "little guy", it rests on big corporations like Gamestop. But the little guy is gonna get hurt all the same, because there's no difference between a used copy on a Gamestop shelf, and a used copy that you just want to lend or give away to a friend. The attempt to fight back at Gamestop DOES screw over consumers, even if that isn't the intent. And f*** that. Because I as a consumer am not just collateral damage in the battle between these huge companies. If they want to fight it out, then they'd better fight it out without f***ing me over in the process, otherwise there's a good chance I'll just take my money elsewhere.
[QUOTE="El_Zo1212o"][QUOTE="WhiteKnight77"]Selling a game or two to a friend isn't where publishers are wanting to stop the sale of used games. MrGeezerThe problem with that is that the publishers, by trying to stamp out the used retail market, will also make it impossible to sell, trade or lend your games to your friends, or to strangers on your own online. And god forbid that something ever happens to your console 3 or 4 years after you purchased it, and then the hundreds/thousands of dollars that you've invested in games over the years instantly goes down the trash. Now you can't even just buy another console and pick up where you were, your entire game library is gone and you've gotta start all over from scratch. And...seeing as how the used game market no longer exists, getting your game library back is going to be a nightmare. You can't just track down used copies for cheap. And since most of these games are mostly likely no longer in print, new copies are going to be either extremely expensive or impossible to find. You're absolutely right. The argument for blocking used games doesn't rest on the "little guy", it rests on big corporations like Gamestop. But the little guy is gonna get hurt all the same, because there's no difference between a used copy on a Gamestop shelf, and a used copy that you just want to lend or give away to a friend. The attempt to fight back at Gamestop DOES screw over consumers, even if that isn't the intent. And f*** that. Because I as a consumer am not just collateral damage in the battle between these huge companies. If they want to fight it out, then they'd better fight it out without f***ing me over in the process, otherwise there's a good chance I'll just take my money elsewhere. My name is El ZoRRo, and I approve this message. I fully expect that all of this hullabaloo over anti used game measures will end up just being pie in the sky, and quickly forgotten once the systems come out without any of it. But on the off chance it is true, not only will I not buy the new system, but so help me God, I will buy every 360 game I ever wanted and every upcoming game I'm looking forward to USED. In the case of new releases, I will pay 56 bucks for it as soon as it becomes available. And I will pay it with a smile on my face and a grin in my soul. For years, people have been saying over and over again, "vote with your wallet." If this comes to pass, I won't just vote with my wallet, I'll wage war with it.
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