Used Games Pose More Threat Than Piracy

[LVUER]

Earlier this week, Mike West, who is a lead combat designer at the Microsoft-owned Lionhead Studios, told Eurogamer that the secondary games market is a bigger problem than piracy. Seems a bit harsh. Here's what he said:

"Piracy these days on PC is probably less problematic than secondhand sales on the [Xbox 360]," he said. "I've been working on PC games for many years, and piracy is always a problem. There are a lot of honest people out there as well, and if they like your game, they'll buy it. The pirates, whatever you do on whatever system, they will crack it. It might take no time… I think the longest it's taken to happen is two days. Someone will crack it somewhere and there's not much you can do about it."

"It's just a depressing situation we're in that people don't think it's worth spending money on computer games," he continued. "What they're doing is making sure there are fewer games coming out in the future and more people out of work, which is a terrible thing. Unless you sit down and meet a pirate face to face and have a conversation about what it does, I don't think anything will stop them… But, as I say, second-hand sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days."

So, what you guys think about this?

This is the link in case you're interested reading the full article.

[AllegroDiRossi]

It's a problem more complicated than a simple verdict of right and wrong, I think. The thing about the secondhand market is that no profits go to the original creator at all. All the money stays with the reseller. So, if a reseller sells the same copy of a used game 10 times (for supposition's sake), that's x10 the profit for the reseller, but the creator's wholesaler is missing out on 10 sales, hence the creators aren't getting their commission on ten sales either.

Of course, what's best for the consumer is also important, but I think I agree with the opinion that the secondhand market hurts creators and studios way more than anyone would assume.

[Auro-Cyanide]

You could say that about a lot of things though. Books, furniture, houses. Once you buy something than you are free to sell it on to someone else.

If I buy a game and find it is really bad, then does that mean he wants me to be stuck with it? I'm not allowed to sell it? While it makes sense for them, it doesn't make sense for anyone else. I probably wouldn't mind buying a 'licence' for one game but it would have to be way cheaper than what they sell for now. I am not going to buy a $100 game if I am not 1000% sure I will like it and will get plenty of worth out of it. Not selling on second hand games would destroy the casual gamer market and increase the pirate market.

I understand how it is a problem with studios for people to sell on second hand games, but I think that is something they need to look at in terms of their selling price and how they can increase customer loyalty. You can't exactly blame gamers for wanting to pass on poor/non-replayable games after spending so much on them. I personally keep games that I am attached to, but trade in ones that I can't keep playing.

@AllegroDiRossi, that might make sense, gaming shops passing on commissions to game studios, as long as it was fair of course.

[papillon]

You could say that about a lot of things though. Books, furniture, houses. Once you buy something than you are free to sell it on to someone else.

While I'm definitely in favor of used games, there is a slight difference in that with non-digital items, passing through multiple hands has a strong tendency to degrade the item and change the selling price. Books have a whole scale of conditions used in their sale listings. Houses are even more complicated, as some homeowners often actively upgrade their homes before selling them on. The house you buy after it's been lived in for ten years is quite different from a brand-new house.

With a purely digital item, there is absolutely no difference between a used item and a new item.

With a normal console game, there is <i>almost</i> no difference between a used item and a new item. There's packaging, but people tend not to care about it. There's the sort of bonus objects you get with limited edition games, but few games come with those.

This is part of why we're getting games tied to user accounts with "new user bonuses"... like the whole dragon age thing, where you can buy a used copy, but then you'll have to pay extra for some of the downloadable content that came free with the new game. But that still feels artificial to a lot of people.

Not selling on second hand games would destroy the casual gamer market

The downloadable casual market has NO ability to sell on games, and that hasn't actually destroyed it.

Lack of ability to sell secondhand games causes problem for entry-level gamers who can't afford to buy a lot of games. When I first got a DS (and was pretty poor at the time; I got the DS free) I intended to buy only one game at a time and then resell it in order to buy another.

In everything except the PC, though, there are usually other options, like rentals.

[Tachyglossus]

Hmmmm now you mention something that has peaked my curiousity... a rental place can generate a lot of revenue from their games. They lend it out for cheaper, but say a game or movie is popular and it is being constantly rented out, it eventually more than pays for its price... and does any of that revenue make it to the creators? I don't know how that works at all, so I'm wondering if someone can clarify that.

Furthermore, second hand games are absolutely necessary for discontinued games to be distributed, and well, they've already sold all the copies they are going to sell, so whether those copies get resold, does it really HURT the creator in that case? They've made their sales, then stopped them.

However, games which are still in production hitting the second hand market, well... if someone can buy a used copy for cheaper than a new copy, I can see how that's a problem. Nonetheless, someone still needs to buy the first copy legitmately (or steal it, but let's just pretend that doesn't happen for argument sake), thus sales are being made, and those initial sales are divided up and commissioned to those who are entitled royalties and what not. So from my perspective, it isn't as much of a loss as piracy, where one copy can be bought, and then it can be essentially cloned and sent about for free or for money, whereas second hand, every game resold is equal to one game sold from the original retailer.

So I don't see that second hand selling is more hurtful than piracy. I can see it being equally harmful, but not MORE harmful.

[chensterrain]

While I can understand how used sales can hurt profits, I do find it fairly ridiculous how the game industry seems to go on about used sales as if they're the only industry affected by them. Especially given the death of most rental shops, and the fact that Nintendo pretty much never provides demos for anything, I'm far less likely to shell out for a game if I know that I can't trade / resell it afterwards.

With a purely digital item, there is absolutely no difference between a used item and a new item.

With a normal console game, there is <i>almost</i> no difference between a used item and a new item. There's packaging, but people tend not to care about it. There's the sort of bonus objects you get with limited edition games, but few games come with those.

I've never actually heard of people being able to resell purely digital products before - is that even possible? I've always taken 'used games' to mean packaged, physical products, and I'm not really sure how selling on digital products would even work... unless I'm missing something?

I'd also say that with console games at least, there is at least a little risk involved when buying used. Back when I worked at Gamestation, people would trade in games in pretty dire condition, and as we didn't have time to test all of them there was always a chance when buying used that the game wouldn't even work in the first place, or that it'd work fine up until a certain point, after which time it'd be too late to take it back to the shop for a refund (i.e. every Dreamcast console / game I ever bought. Not that that stopped me trading them back, but hey). Of course, assuming they worked properly there was pretty much no difference between new / used at all; I think maybe half the GBA games I bought as a kid were unboxed, used copies at £10 a pop. Good times!

That said, my only experience comes from console games (and last-gen console games at that, hur hur), so I guess I can understand why PC developers might want to prevent people from installing a game and then selling it on, assuming they don't need the disc to play the game. As a kid, there was absolutely no way I could have afforded to buy the games I did if I hadn't been able to trade each game back to the shop; not to mention the fact that as there was hardly any difference between new / used prices (damn greedy game shops, eh), I would almost always use my traded games to buy new. While I'm sure the secondhand games market is huge, at the very least each secondhand copy will have been paid for by someone at some point, making it far less hurtful than piracy in the long run.

[LVUER]

Perhaps what we should change is the business model? I wonder what is people reaction when all rental and second-hand business need to pay a certain percentage of their revenue as commission to the original creator? If the original creator also get something from rental and second-hand business, I bet they won't mind very much.

[Chu-3]

You reminded me to the PC games I bought last year through yahoo auction (the game is pretty rare to get on that time).
The game is new, and covered by the vinyl plastic.
But after I uncovered it and take out the disc, I found a sentence "this game is forbidden to resell on auction or to second-hand shop", printed on the disc's surface. But still, I found some auction merchant sells the same game (even if it's a used one) on internet. And nobody take care of it. More than that, I found the second hand game shop also posted their price to buy the same game on their official site.

But after that the game's publisher decided to use a new protection on their next title. It was protected by a system, which you're only permitted to install the game once, so you can't install it on other PC if you have more than one computer. There's a way to crack the game, of course. But the second hand game shop stops to buy the used game published by them, which is using the new system.

[Aleema]

I like what some game companies are doing now: instead of punishing used gamers, they reward when you buy new (free DLC, pre-order bonus). That seems like the best practice, because the incentives are usually enough to make you go "hmmm ..." I like it, actually. No DRM is a good DRM. Either way, people win. (You still get to play the game either way.) Unlike games that force you to sign up on Steam (Portal, Fallout, etc) which basically makes your disc useless after that first install, or the "constant internet connection" games that make me want to stab the producers in the eye.

[pondrthis]

...Destroy the casual gamer market and increase the pirate market.

I'd call that impossible. Casual gamers aren't savvy enough to pirate anything. (I realize that AuCN was simply defining "casual" as people who play fewer than, say, 5-6 mainstream games a year... but the statement raised flags in my head due to the typical definition of "casual" as Farmville and Text Twist players. By her definition I'm sure I'm a casual gamer: I own about ten games for each console I own, and have never resold anything.)

On a selfish, Devil-may-care note: I would be glad to see games which don't have either a) replayability or b) collectible value fall flat. Games should be at least as well-rounded as Metroid Prime, Devil May Cry 4 (I choose 4 because the art is the best, environments are most diverse), or (and I admit this to my chagrin) Final Fantasy X before they sell millions of copies firsthand. Unless a game is so good and so beautiful that it makes you feel guilty for owning an ugly-ass used copy--oh, my sweet, sad "Shadow of the Colossus"--there's no incentive to buy new.