[color="#1C2837"]Hello all, my name is Jordan Walker from Silver Ray Studios and I am here today to start a thread to find a solution to this problem. I will inform you on how Gamestop is stealing developer's money and how they will steal yours if you publish a game commercially.

So here's the deal - If you have ever shopped at Gamestop you will notice the Pre-owned section. This used to be a section only but now pretty much everything at Gamestop is pre-owned. This is because they have developed a sleazy selling tactic that will make them money by selling the same game over and over again, while the developers who made the game get nothing because no new copies are being bought or sold.

Here's how it works - Gamestop orders exactly enough games from developers for those who Pre-order the game so they can keep exactly that amount of game's in circulation. The pre-orderers get their game, play it, then return it and are paid back. But now Gamestop has the same game and don't have to pay for anything and just sell it again. They keep selling all of the game's and keep them in circulation while they make big money while the developers make nothing. That is messed up in my opinion. The ones who work extremely hard and put lots of money into development are in a way, creating, advertising, and publishing their product only for Gamestop to buy it and take advantage of it. Then they lower the prices for the Pre-owned games which also lowers the value. This is how games and their developers die.

A solution to the problem? - Electronic Arts recently devised a plan to avert this, a plan called the "Ten Dollar Project". Other companies are beginning to accept this idea and use it in their own games. But it may be annoying and inconvenient to customers.

Here's how it work's - When the game's are sold for the first time they will include coupons or codes that the customer will use to download multiplayer itself or multiplayer content. Once the first buyer uses these codes they are useless. Then they return the game. Gamestop takes it in and sells it again as usual. The second buyer however doesn't have these codes or multiplayer, therefore they have to go online and pay for the content and wait for it to download. However if other content such as new features or patches are unavailable to player's that don't have internet and play the game, they can't have or use it. Therefore they return the game with the codes or things still there. Also due to my studies there are ways of bypassing this. Many companies have taken this idea and utilized it as Electronic Arts has done/ will be doing with their new releases such as Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2.

What do you think - You think that the "Ten Dollar Project" is a good idea, bad, or are you going to propose something new and entirely different. Post your thoughts and ideas on this below and please keep this thread alive. Who wants to not make money off of their hard-worked and highly budgeted game? If I could, I'd write a F*** you letter straight to their corporate as*** in Texas. Also I will be creating polls as ideas are proposed deciding whether or not they are reasonable and good ideas. Then I will write to several game companies proposing these ideas to them (like Activision, Electronic Arts, Bungie, Blizzard, etc. And I may actually write Gamestop a fancy, nice, and pleasant F*** you letter and tell them to take this as business just business. [color="#1C2837"]Hopefully I remained civil.

This was cross-posted, and has more replies in the business forum, HERE. I think this is a potentially interesting discussion, so please do head over and have your say in the other topic -- note that I'm moving one currently posted reply from this topic to the other one.

Please choose one forum only which you believe your topic fits into; this is a business-oriented topic and there are more replies there, so I'm closing this one.