the used game market benefits people other than the game devs/pubs. I want the 2nd hand market shut-down, we don't need it. And the industry is better off without it.

So would you be in favor of shutting down all physical stores that sell games? After all, some of that money (not much, but some) goes to the store, and the store isn't the game dev or publisher. The same is probably true of any online retailer other than Amazon. Do you feel like shutting down all video game rental stores and services as well?

Who's greed ? You are implying the publishers are greedy because they want to make money on someone buying the game, yet you are arguing that you should make money on that purchase... you ! Isn't it then your greed, not theirs ? Greed being the desire for making money, you think it's preferable that you make money rather than the devs/pubs ?

It's a question of maximizing economic efficiency by maximizing commerce at different prices and times. If I won't buy a given game at $60, that's money that the publishers and devs don't get as well. Is the gaming market truly better off if I don't buy a new game than if I buy it two months later for $40? Is the developer better off that I never play the game, never see how good it is, and am never any more likely to buy subsequent titles they develop again? Sure, MSRP will drop over time, but only the biggest titles (the ones most likely to resist price decreases) will be able to hold shelf space over other titles as new big titles are released.

Used game stores aren't as important as they used to be. When I was younger, at least where I lived the used game stores were the only specialty video game stores in town. They were the only place to go for an offbeat or less popular title because no major retailer would devote the shelf space to anything but the few biggest titles of the year. They didn't kill the industry then, and I became a fan of more game developers than I ever would have otherwise because I couldn't have afforded so many games any other way. And that includes new game sales, once I had already established that I liked the work the company did. Why should the store, which has to pay for its space and staff, not be able to turn a profit by physically housing the old or unusual games that made the stores worth visiting? Is it really better that the publisher continue to house unsold units in a warehouse (that they have to pay for), losing potential profits as the MSRP drops until it winds up in the $2 bin at Walmart at a major loss? While losing the reputation effects of having more people play and enjoy their products, no less.

In the same way that one pirated copy of a game doesn't necessarily equal one lost sale, one used game sale does not necessarily equal one lost new game sale. Eliminating used game sales will cause game studios to have less exposure in the population and make buying a game (even with reviews or word-of-mouth recommendations in hand) a riskier proposition. The gaming market will shrink. That's not good for the industry, and it's certainly not worth shutting down an entirely legal business approach just because some unknowable number of primary sales aren't taking place.

MarkS - listen to this discussion by TotalBiscuit

. I agree with him, the used game market benefits people other than the game devs/pubs. I want the 2nd hand market shut-down, we don't need it. And the industry is better off without it.

This isn't a piracy issue, it is one of pure greed.

Who's greed ? You are implying the publishers are greedy because they want to make money on someone buying the game, yet you are arguing that you should make money on that purchase... you ! Isn't it then your greed, not theirs ? Greed being the desire for making money, you think it's preferable that you make money rather than the devs/pubs ?

I'll use an example. Let's say you make widgets. You produce a very nice widget that everyone wants and you make thousands of copies to sell. I buy a physical copy of your widget through a retail source and use it, but after a while, get tired of it. I legally own that copy of the widget. With very little exception, I can now do whatever I want with it. I can make a copy of it (in certain circumstances), so long as I do not distribute the copy. I can lend or rent the original. I can sell the original, so long as any copies are destroyed. It doesn't matter to you (or shouldn't) because you already make your money off of my copy when I bought it. If I choose to sell my copy of your widget, you are not entitled to anything more from me. It is the original physical copy and I have the legal right to sell it. Moreover, I would have the legal right to buy the copy used. After the initial purchase, our business is complete.

The game industry wants the 2nd hand market shut down, not because it is irrelevant, but because they are not making money on the sale of the physical copy of the game that they have already made money off of. This is greed, pure and simple. It has nothing to do with piracy. Switching to a download-only model wouldn't solve piracy. It has nothing to do with relevance. They want to make money off of the sale of the physical copy of the game, each and every time it is sold. No other industry expects this, which is why I mentioned cars.

What is next? Books? Should we shut down used book stores and libraries? They are peddling in used, physical copies of copyrighted material that is also easy to copy. Where does it end?

What is next? Books? Should we shut down used book stores and libraries? They are peddling in used, physical copies of copyrighted material that is also easy to copy. Where does it end?

You know, I'm warming to TotalBiscuit's point that this is a false equivalency.

Books aren't actually that easy to copy. Sure, there is nothing actually stopping you - but the time and effort to photocopy an entire book would hardly be worth it. And while ebooks are very easy to copy, they are typically rife with DRM to prevent you reselling or sharing them.

You can't just take the rules that govern a (largely non-copyable) physical good, and blindly apply them to a digital good. This is the reason why pretty much every digital good is distributed using some form of DRM: a DRM'd virtual good is much more equivalent to a physical object.

Is it really a false equivalency? They ability to copy the good only matters if that's what a person is actually doing. You can hack apart your console so that you can play an illegitimate copy of a game and then sell the disc you copied to a used game store, but doesn't sound to me like that much less effort than physically copying a book. And even if it were easier, the point is only relevant if you think that lots of people are using used game stores to facilitate this activity.

If we're talking about digitally distroubted games then any falseness is the equivalency is irrelevant because used game stores couldn't be involved in reselling them anyhow.

I may not be addressing TotalBiscuit's argument very well (I'm not familiar with it), but I don't see that a used game store is meaningfully different than a used bookstore for games that are physically distributed.

I may not be addressing TotalBiscuit's argument very well (I'm not familiar with it)

You should listen to it sometime - it's one of the better articulated defences of the "no used games" policies.

But as for false equivalencies, yes, it is. The photocopied book is qualitatively degraded from the original (a huge folder of low-resolution loose-leaf pages vs a book). The used car is qualitatively degraded from the new car (loses X% of resale value the day you drive it out of the lot). A digital copy of a video game? Identical to the original in every respect.

Which is an important point: in the case of pretty much any physical object, there is a visible and quantifiable benefit to buying a new object, which makes it worth a higher price than the equivalent used object. For a digital good, this is not true - a used copy of a game is identical to a new copy of said game, and offers no incentive to ever buy the new copy instead.

I may not be addressing TotalBiscuit's argument very well (I'm not familiar with it)

You should listen to it sometime - it's one of the better articulated defences of the "no used games" policies.

But as for false equivalencies, yes, it is. The photocopied book is qualitatively degraded from the original (a huge folder of low-resolution loose-leaf pages vs a book). The used car is qualitatively degraded from the new car (loses X% of resale value the day you drive it out of the lot). A digital copy of a video game? Identical to the original in every respect.

Which is an important point: in the case of pretty much any physical object, there is a visible and quantifiable benefit to buying a new object, which makes it worth a higher price than the equivalent used object. For a digital good, this is not true - a used copy of a game is identical to a new copy of said game, and offers no incentive to ever buy the new copy instead.

Too be fair, in the past with used games, you still took the chance that the game may be scratched in a way that could have caused data corruption(i have a copy of FF7, that in the third disk trying to go to that theme park(can't remember the name), before going to the crater to face seperioth at the end of the game causes the game to crash, no matter how you try to access it.

so long as the disc is still the form of transportation for the data, then it's always going to come with that stigma of potentially being damaged if purchased used, no different than buying a used dvd. in my opinion, if the market for used games is shut down, then so should the marked for used dvd's, or music cd's.

in my opinion, if the market for used games is shut down, then so should the marked for used dvd's, or music cd's.

Again, I'd argue that it is a false equivalency.

Where is the majority of money made in the movie and music industries? The cinema releases and the broadcast rights for movies, and broadcast/streaming rights for music. DVD and CD sales are certainly profitable, but they are the proverbial 'long tail'. By the time you buy a DVD at Walmart, the studio has already made back its production costs, several times over.

By contrast, game publishers don't have cinema releases, broadcast contracts or live concerts to make money on - they have to make all their profits from direct sales to customers.

You can call it 'greed' on the part of the publisher, and that's certainly a valid viewpoint. But there is an equally valid viewpoint whereby second-hand games sales benefit nobody but GameStop (and hey, pretty much everybody I know hates GameStop's business practices).

I may not be addressing TotalBiscuit's argument very well (I'm not familiar with it)

You should listen to it sometime - it's one of the better articulated defences of the "no used games" policies.

But as for false equivalencies, yes, it is. The photocopied book is qualitatively degraded from the original (a huge folder of low-resolution loose-leaf pages vs a book). The used car is qualitatively degraded from the new car (loses X% of resale value the day you drive it out of the lot). A digital copy of a video game? Identical to the original in every respect.

Which is an important point: in the case of pretty much any physical object, there is a visible and quantifiable benefit to buying a new object, which makes it worth a higher price than the equivalent used object. For a digital good, this is not true - a used copy of a game is identical to a new copy of said game, and offers no incentive to ever buy the new copy instead.

I'm still not seeing it (though that's probably my fault). The argument against digital resale is indeed a different matter than reselling physical copies of games. As is the sale of a photocopied book. The latter is bootlegging, and there's no real defense of it.

The used book argument, insofar as I understand it, is about buying a new copy from a store and then selling that same copy (not a duplication produced by the initial purchaser) to a store which will in turn sell that same copy to a different customer. In this regard, a used book and a used game disc seem exactly equivalent.

The landscape for digital copies of games is totally different and is entirely separate from the discussions about used game stores, which is a concept that doesn't make sense with digital games anyhow. If games move to 100% digital distribution then used game stores as they are today will just stop existing, in the same way that horse-drawn buggy accessory stores don't exist any more. My comments above were about the reselling of physical game discs in stores, and so may not be on-topic for TotalBiscuit's point.

If games move to 100% digital distribution then used game stores as they are today will just stop existing, in the same way that horse-drawn buggy accessory stores don't exist any more.

That's one of the stranger features of the whole controversy. The question just magically disappears over the next N years, as the majority of game sales move to digital.

If games move to 100% digital distribution then used game stores as they are today will just stop existing, in the same way that horse-drawn buggy accessory stores don't exist any more.

That's one of the stranger features of the whole controversy. The question just magically disappears over the next N years, as the majority of game sales move to digital.

I just watched the video (damn, I wish it had been written up instead of a video, I could've done it faster), and while I'm impressed with the cogency of his arguments I am not impressed with drawing the conclusion "used game sales are inherently bad for the industry".

Most of his points are based around the superiority of digital sales, which I agree with. In your post quoted above, you seem to be thinking about it this way too. But the fact that the market is changing such that used game stores are no longer providing any value provides exactly zero reason to specifically forbid sales of used copies of games. He completely concedes this point.

The only argument he presents about why the used game sale model was bad for producers was because those stores "bullied" game publishers. He doesn't give any evidence of this (which would be outside of the scope of the video anyways), and consequently I don't understand this position very well. If I want a new game, I'll go to a store that has it. If GameStop pushes used sales over new (which does blow for the publisher and developers) then those publishers could stop distributing new games to them. I have never, ever, known anyone who wanted a specific game but would not go to Best Buy or Target or Wal-Mart to get it because they only buy new games at GameStop. Maybe it happened, I can't say it didn't, but I can say I never saw it. And this position is literally the only one that he has which could support the position "used game sales are inherently bad for the industry". It's also a largely historical one, and we can debate the merits and flaws of it in the past, but in that frame most of his argumentation irrelevant.

The accurate formulation is that used game sales will become irrelevant in the future as market distribution norms shift away from old methods in which they made sense. It's a very different argument from the one that I typically see made about their effect on the industry, and this blanket argument suggests that the used game market will persist even just as it has been even while it becomes obsolete.