Used games sales are BAD! (long term)

here's one well articulated video on defending online passes and dying of used games:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G_f8YBy39M

And to be hones I am convinced. I don't remember, when I bought used game for my PC (all hail steam and green man gaming)

and PS+ spoiled me about my console gaming. so it kind of makes sense, that in the long term no used games can be consumer-friendly

This is youtube spam, right?

Console game prices hardly change at times. If its a well selling series don't expect Call of Duty to go any less that 80% of the full price. While on PC you could end up nabbing that thing in a sale for less than 50%.

Along time ago the CD key was used on pc to stop Piracy which was and IS rampant on PC. It wasn't an attack on used games it was a defense against Piracy. Meaning getting a pc online with a unique CD key or downloaded means only better convenience and as time went on you simply cant buy many games on pc in store. Even then used games on pc wasnt common place. Even then PC prices would go as low as Steam anyways.

The world of PC games is just the same except the greater deals you can get with steam straight to your pc.

Piracy on consoles is such a hard task (not impossible) its far from rampant. Meaning this kind of attack on used games it purely to edge out used games as its physical media and hurts the people with low income. I myself have only been able to buy new console games the last 3 years by trading. If used games are gone I CANT buy new games and thus I shouldn't buy a that console.

Why cant I buy Console games? Because they are and can continue to be stupidly expensive vs a PC even THE SAME pc game. If anything I will just go PC and buy the same games on steam for better prices.

you can take it as such. as I am not eloquent enough to articulate myself in support for online passes and such, i thought, that video would represent my view in decent manner

Man, we're not going to watch a 28 minute video.

I don't know how anyone could make an argument that used game sales help the games industry, but I think people react negatively when game publishers try to place all the problems of their industry on used games eating a share of the market. And people just want to pay less for stuff, so they don't like that the option to do that may be going away. Pretty simple.

Oh, man. Total Biscuit.

Why take 5 minutes to explain something when you can ramble for 30 minutes?

Didn't watch the video but I can say that anyone portraying the console makers and publishers to be the "bad guys" is crazy talk. With that kind of logic I guess retailers like EB/GameStop buying your used game for $5 and then re-sell it for $55 makes them total saints, right?

used games are fine.........

No really if I buy a game it becomes MY property not EA's or Microsoft's its MINE. That being said don't I as a consumer have the right to do what I want with my property(within reason of course)? what does it matter what I do with it? The developers have my money, and I have my game what more do they want?

I am too lazy to write up a long and angry post saying effectively what these two posts from Gaf said, so I'm just going to link them here and encourage everyone to read them and consider the debate closed:

I don't think I can put into words my disgust at this demeaning display of groveling at the feet of your game developer overlords. Even a die-hard laissez-faire capitalist would not be so subservient, because even a capitalist would accept that sometimes industries die and that's the way the world works. As much as I enjoy games, there is no inherent good in this industry. The ends do not justify the means here; there is nothing that makes the gaming industry inherently worthy of preservation, not to the point that would justify carving out a special exemption for them where used games are somehow magically not OK when they are OK for every other packaged good on the planet. Just because your favored set of content producers couldn't properly adapt does not justify rewriting the rules of what "property ownership" means and fundamentally removing the ability to preserve, inherit, pass on, lend, and share its products.

The industry does not come first; consumers do. I have no sympathy for an industry that cannot properly stumble its way around a viable secondhand market like every other mature industry in the world. Sometimes your old product just isn't good enough, and the way you solve it is by making a better product, not by forcing consumers to adapt to your archaic and myopic business model with your dying breath. If this industry can't find a way to make money off the primary market -- even with DLC and exclusive pre-order content and HD re-releases and map packs and online passes and annualized sequels and "expanding the audience" and AAA advertising and forced multiplayer -- then, if I may be so blunt, fuck it. It doesn't deserve our money in the first place. If an entire industry has its head so far up its ass, is so focused on short-term gains, and has embraced such a catastrophically stupid blockbuster business model in the pursuit of a stagnant market of hardcore 18-34 dudebros that it thinks it has no choice but to take away our first-sale rights as its last chance of maybe, finally, creating a sustainable stream of profits, then it can go to hell. It doesn't need your protection, it needs to be taken out back and beaten until it remembers who its real masters are.

I especially have a hard time having any sympathy because so many of the industry's problems are of its own making. They chose to focus on shaderific HD graphics over long-lasting appeal and gameplay; they chose to focus on linear scripted cinematic B-movie imitations that were only good for one playthrough instead of replayability and open-ended design; they chose to pour so much money and marketing into military porn and fetishized violent shootbang Press A to Awesome titles, exactly the kinds of games that hardcore gamers, the most likely gamers to trade in games quickly were prone to buying and reselling; and perhaps most galling, they chose to give Gamestop loads of exclusive pre-order bonuses while they knew exactly what Gamestop would say to those customers once in the store. They kept making insanely lavish and nonsensical displays of spectacular whizz-bang, despite that being exactly the kind of game most susceptible to trading after one week because there was nothing left to do with it. And now they're discovering that putting so many insanely expensive eggs into one fragile and easily breakable basket is maybe not the most sustainable business model ever.

So forgive me if I find myself not caring one bit when the industry complains that it's just so hard to sell six million copies of Gears of Medal of Battle of Uncharted Angry Dudes VII in the first week and that's why they need to take away used sales for the entire platform. No, the problem isn't at this end. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=59545309#post59545309

#2:

No, here's the problem. Tomb Raider sold 3.4m units in the space of a month and it's a "failure" because it will fail to recoup its budget.

THREE POINT FOUR MILLION FUCKING UNITS FOR WHAT IS ESSENTIALLY A B-TIER FRANCHISE AND THAT'S STILL NOT ENOUGH TO MAKE ANY MONEY.

And killing used games would have solved this how? Would it have made the execs at Squenix who thought throwing $100m budget at a franchise that's been irrelevant since the turn of the century suddenly get a clue?

Oh, but no, they argue "GAMERS PUSH FOR HIGHER AND HIGHER BUDGETS AND WE HAVE TO GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT! THEIR ENTITLEMENT COMPLEX CAN'T BE SATIATED! WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO LET BUDGETS SPIRAL OUT OF CONTROL!" and that's lovely, but since when did they ever give a fuck about what we actually thought?

.......

But no, it's all used games that did this. Used games made Capcom make some horrible design decisions on DmC and piss off the entire fanbase. Used games made Activision and EA flood the market with guitar games and accessories long after people stopped caring. Used games made Microsoft make a fourth Gears of War game that nobody asked for from a developer nobody cares about. Used games made Sony pump out another God of War game after they spent the past few years flooding the market with HD remasters. Used games made Sony make a Smash Bros clone with no appealing characters to help sell it. Used games made Bizarre Creations make James Bond and racing games no-one wanted. Used games make publishers shutter studios the moment the game they were working on goes gold, before they've even had a chance to sell a single new copy, let alone a used one.

I could go on. And on. And on. You could write a book about every single executive level screw-up this gen and yet these same people with their million dollar salaries and their shill puppets still try to insult our intelligence and blame used games and awful, entitled consumers for companies shutting and talented people losing their jobs.

So please forgive our cynicism when we don't want to buy into the bullshit you're spouting.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=58841589#post58841589

I work there. We take your game for $25 to $30 and sell it for $50 after the discount. Is it a lot of profit? Yes, totally. Is it the reason EB/Gamestop is basically the only games exclusive retailer left? Yes. Also, independent shops have basically the same values from what I've seen. If we take your game for $5 we typically sell it for $15. Not to mention how off-topic you are.

There are only 3 points about used games you need to concern yourself with.

• They don't exist on PC because of CD keys though this is unrelated to "used sales"
• Used sales hurt developers - they don't see the money from that game sale, it goes to GameStop, EB, etc. and not the people who created it.
• Used sales will continue to be a problem until consoles fulfill two things: Digital day-one delivery, sales.

The Xbox One is taking a very steam-like approach to games this generation it seems. If they get into sales then all this bitching and moaning about it destroying the used games industry will be forgotten in time.

@bluefish: Would your store even exist without used sales? I like seeing people employed, but I hate that it's such a rip off to people. Then there are things like when GameStop ripped open all those copies of Deus Ex and removed those fliers for OnLive which is totally inexcusable. And are there other game related things that you think Game Stop (or like retailers) could do that would allow them to stop doing this but still thrive? Would it be too weird for them to take up stuff like board games too?

this http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7370-When-The-Starscreams-Kill-Used-Games

Maybe I'm an outlier, but used games are one of the reasons I care enough about gaming to continue spending money on it, even as the time I have to spend on it continues to diminish. I didn't have my own income until about five years ago. Before that, the games I got were either gifts or things I bought with gifted money.

There is no direct correlation between the the money I spent on the half of my Gamecube library that was previously owned, and the money I just spent on the eighth Humble Bundle. All you can draw from this is that I thought gaming was worthwhile enough to continue supporting as a pastime back then, when I had no income. And that I still think it's worth supporting now, with an actual income.

That copy of P.N.03 I bought months after launch and the copy of Deus Ex HR I bought at launch? You can't make any conclusions there. How could you? But I'd be interested to see if people who bought used games years before are spending more money on the industry now, because that's certainly the case for me.

And here is Jim Sterling telling you why that is an awful idea. I usually don't like Jim but man if he doesn't hit a home run with this video.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7370-When-The-Starscreams-Kill-Used-Games

By those costs and return rate I'd assume you're in the US. In Canada the most you would ever get for a brand new game not even a week old is $15 and it would be re-sold for 3-5 dollars less than a brand new copy. That extra profit goes right into EB/GS pocket. That's straight up shady business.

I really don't see how I'm off-topic. Used games are horrible. Online passes are also horrible. If next gen consoles are going to function in a way that supress used games sales and put an end to online passes then I'm all for it. Thanks to Steam, used games are a non-issue on that platform. I'm no business major nor do I claim to be, but purely from a consumer's perspective I can say that Valve is doing it right.

Used games benefit no one except the retailer that "buys" and re-sells.

You will never convince me giving up ownership of my property to kill used games is a fair trade. I own 92 current gen games and bought over 80 of them new. But that is my choice, to take away the choice of the consumer is unacceptable. If you are willing to give up ownership to protect publishers you are insane. I know people love to say "You don't own it now." Explain please, because I can play it, sell it, trade it, or anything I choose except copy and sell it.

Oh I hated this thread until I saw it was TB, carry on. Indifferent to Used games except in the sense that it will kill the "games as a relic" market, but non existent physical materials will do that anyway. I'll always have my copy of Vagrant Story to tide me over while I play the various digital versions of it that I own.

I really can't stand his whole holier than thou approach the majority of the time. His whole argument seems to revolve around, "I play games on PC. Steam already does this to us. Deal with it.jpg." Even though I game the majority of the time on the PC the fact that most of my games are locked behind Steam has always bugged me. At any moment they could decide to be pricks and completely remove access to the things that I bought and rightfully own.

Are used game sales bad? Sure. You're taking money away from the manufacturer. However they already got their cut, sometimes two, three, or even four different times they get to dip into your wallet. The second you walk out of the store with that disc is the second that you own it, and if you own something you should be allowed to do whatever you want with it. The online pass thing worked perfectly fine, even if I did think that even that was bullshit. I'm willing to accept a necessary evil. This whole thing is them wanting MORE money when they already get the game sale, plus DLC, plus online passes, plus now microtransactions.

Gamestop is the highest point of evil. What Microsoft is doing is a lesser evil, but still evil. In game theory the lesser of two evils almost always leads to more evil. Simple as that.