A point of contraversy (part 1) - Buying a game used is as bad as pirating?

[FuzzyRaccoon]

I think this is dumb. If I hadn't gotten into games by buying used ones when I was younger, I would have inevitably focused on something else other than games, like maybe basketball. I would be training right now on campus, not playing Dead Space 2 or any of the dozens of games I bought when they just came out.

I think used games actually help the industry in the long run.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I haven't read the thread yet, but I'm sure someone has brought up the idea that videogames have a hard time being profitable, and that $60 is a perfectly reasonable price point, so I'm going to quote myself from the thread we had earlier on the same topic:

No, you're really bad at capitalism. Value is what the market will bear. If costs are so high that the market won't buy what you need to charge to stay in business, you will go out of business. That's just the way things work.

Oh, by the way, nice ad hominem there. I'm not self entitled; if anyone is, it's the people who don't know enough about the value of a dollar to understand just how much $60 is, because they've clearly never been anything but rich.

Income-expenses=net profit.

Movies: Avatar (2,000,000,000[theatrical]+190,000,000[Just DVD sales, not blu-ray.)-237,000,000=$1,953,000,000

Games: GTA4 1,000,000,000-100,000,000=900,000,000

Now, i'm not a math expert, but that's still a difference of 1 billion dollars. And that's the full statistics for the game, assuming every copy sold for 50 dollars. I don't have blu-ray sales for Avatar, or TV syndication profits. Or the re-release data. the 3D release data, and the video game profits they made off of it.


That's basic capitalism. revenue minus expenses. Supply and demand determines value, producer determines supply..

Either way they have to make up their expenses at least. I think 60 bucks is fine for a game. I'm glad you think I'm rich though. Makes me feel all warm inside.

Except that GTA wasn't a huge seller, just hugely expensive (for a videogame; like I said, it's par for the course for film.) A better example would be Modern Warfare 2, which only cost about $50 million to make, and wound up being the most profitable entertainment item of all time -- yes, even more profitable than Avatar.

Besides, if these games are as profitable as you're saying they are, the game companies have nothing to complain about from used sales.

Let's look at the math:

MW2 sold 7 million copies on day one source. That means on day one, the margin you were talking about looked like this:

$50,000,000-(7,000,000*60)

= $50,000,000-(420,000,000)

= 370,000,000 in profits in the first day of sales.

The final number was much higher, but it should be pretty blatant that, with profit margins like that, blockbuster videogames don't need an equivalent to a theatrical release. Let's look at it at $20, which is what I'm saying should be a reasonable price:

$50,000,000-(7,000,000*20)

= $50,000,000-140,000,000

= $90 million in profit from 7 million sales on the first day.

Heck, lets look at how many they would need to sell just to break even at $20 a copy.

$50,000,000-20X=0

$50,000,000=20X

X= 2,500,000 sales.

That is a tiny number of sales when you think about what is generally considered a flop, especially when you consider that $50,000,000 is on the high end for the cost of a AAA game, and $20 is on the low end for what people would be willing to pay for it. If you lower the cost to $30 million, and raise the asking price to $25, (both of which are pretty darned reasonable), it's even better: you get a number of 1,200,000 to break even. If a game doesn't sell that much in its first day, it's never going to turn a profit anyway, so I don't see what the problem is here.

Edit: oh, by the way: at lower prices, more people will buy. So the game companies are really crazy for not trying to find a better price point.

This whole thing is nothing but profiteering from the publishers, and the only reason they're doing it is because they know they can get away with it. Enough gamers have bought into their PR sob story that they actually defend these horribly anti-consumer tactics, and it's frankly sickening.

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

Is stealing a car the same as buying it used?

When you steal a car, you steal the physical thing, when pirating a game, you are cloning said game.

But what if you download a car...?

I saw a chair once in a store. I liked it so much that I went home, pulled out a saw and used a hammer and nails and built one exactly like it. Then I sat in it. I'll bet you the creator of that chair is foaming at the mouth right now because of the lost sale he just got. All because I used my chair copying machine and created a copy out of thin air...

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

...

I was tempted to stop reading when you brought up the comparison to data being transported over a network (hello, fellow Engineer, Security and Network Administrator here) and I am not going to bother formulating a reply to this one.

I didn't though, and I am not sure what to make of the rest of your reply.

My analogy here was that cars lose value, games do not. Thus the cut in a price by half and no money going back to the original car manufacturer, while the game is being re-sold in its first hand condition (the GAME, not the box) by someone who had no hand in creating it and cutting the developer from the profit of a first-hand sale.

This is me repeating myself.

Let's go look at your license argument. You know what the problem here is? The feeling of entitlement from players. As much as I appreciate the whole "I own something" notion and understand where people come from, this whole "I am entitled to this" thinking is ridiculous. Consumers on the gaming side are a greedy, entitled mass of people who seem to believe every developer and publisher with a wealth of successful titles to their names are trying to cheat them of their money and should bend over backwards and throw their creations at them with a cut in profit.

You don't cry at Adobe for selling you a license, and not an actual physical copy of Photoshop that you might even have to upgrade for another 200 bucks once the new version comes out. But you DO cry injustice when BioWare tells you that you have to pay some extra bucks to get the Cerberus network connection set up if you buy Mass Effect used.

Ugh.

Gamers are the most ungrateful and disrespectful bunch of consumers I have ever encountered.

What software company do you work for? Because they've just lost all future business from me. If anything, gamers don't have enough of a spine, or game companies wouldn't be able to get away with the crap that they regularly pull. And yes, I believe I own a copy of any and all software I might buy. It's just as idiotic when Adobe does it as it is when Activision does it. Heck, even Adobe isn't necessarily legally right with this "license" malarky; the case law is very much divided on the point.

Edit: Not that the law on that point matters. Just because the game industry has enough money to lobby congress to write laws that take away my rights doesn't mean that they're right to do it, or that the law should be enforced. This country (and this industry) is heading toward a correction, the likes of which haven't been seen since the end of the gilded age. I just hope it happens before I'm too old to benefit from it.

 

[The Human Torch]

Is stealing a car the same as buying it used?

When you steal a car, you steal the physical thing, when pirating a game, you are cloning said game.

But what if you download a car...?

I saw a chair once in a store. I liked it so much that I went home, pulled out a saw and used a hammer and nails and built one exactly like it. Then I sat in it. I'll bet you the creator of that chair is foaming at the mouth right now because of the lost sale he just got. All because I used my chair copying machine and created a copy out of thin air...

Because going to a hardware store to buy wood, nails, a saw, sanding paper, wood oil and whatever else you need, is the same like buying an owned game...
Let me know once you are ready to develop Diablo 3/whateverothergameyoulike on your own, and we will talk.

 

[Olrod]

Some people already did. It's called Torchlight 2.

 

[ace_of_something]

You know what I never understand? Buying it used saves you $5 and you have a chance of getting a disk that doesn't work and then the online pass (or whatever) costs $10. So you leave losing $5 and chances are you have an inferior copy of the game. What's the point?

If, like me, you don't buy your used games at gamestop you actually save a reasonable amount of money on them. A local chain around here I once bought a used copy of a game that came out about two weeks before that it was $43 rather than the price of a $60 new. (the game in question was the first inFamous)

 

[Emperor_Augustus]

Piracy = no money given
Buying a used game = money given

If i give even $10, I want the full game. If I do not get what everyone else has, why would I purchase anything from the company in the future? consumers shouldn't have to deal with that "code" shit. I hand you money, you hand me the full game. That's how it should work. If a company doesn't like it, maybe the video game industry isn't the right place for whoever is in charge of said company.

 

[aprildog18]

The used car versus used game analogy is completely appropriate. The reason publishers are crying about used game sales is because they feel every time someone purchases a game used, they are losing revenue (a new sale). This assumption is unfounded since they statistically would not have made the sale anyway.

-snip-

But can't you say the same thing with piracy?

---not related to quote--

Anywho...If I bought a game (hard copy) and played it, and then sent it to my million friends one at a time to download (because you don't need CD to play it), would that be as bad as pirating or buying it used? I mean, unlike cars that goes poop after a while, CD lasts quite a long time. I've had CDs since well...CDs were created and all of them works fine.

And the thing about buying a used car versus stealing a car? I don't think that is an appropriate analogy because no one is actually 'losing' anything. A more appropriate analogy would be...

Is buying a used car better than getting a new, duplicate car free of cost where no one actually 'loses' money (well gaming-wise, buying used benefits customers and company while pirating only benefits pirate)?

I don't buy used games and I only pirate games that I already have for the xbox (cause I'm beastly on the PC) so hopefully I didn't show a bit too much bias...

Edit: is your point of contraversy part 2 going to be..is sharing Steam accounts okay? xD

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

You have my undying, slightly sticky (don't think about it) respect for that post. And the guy you quoted, good to him too.

The games industry hates capitalism. They do their very best to avoid playing by the same rules as every other industry. Once their product is out of their grip, they have their cash, move on, make more copies and make the deal better. Don't try and scrape double money on every copy, because that is being a pig. You are NOT special gaming, get over it, learn to play like movies and music and even furniture, make the product good, affordable and entice more people to enter the field of gaming, as opposed to scaring them off with this bull.

So I'm not the only one that sees they only like the distinction "Like every form of media" when it serves them well (A la the First Amendment) but detests it when it comes to the matter of consumer rights?

As I've said before, telling part of your playerbase "We think you are bad as pirates" is not a smart business tactic.

Look at it this way: I got Mass Effect 1 used because it was only $20. It got me hooked on Bioware games. ME2, DA:O, DA:2? All new purchases. But, oh wait, I guess my first action was as bad as piracy. Even though they saw upwards of $200 from me later which may not have existed otherwise.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The used car versus used game analogy is completely appropriate. The reason publishers are crying about used game sales is because they feel every time someone purchases a game used, they are losing revenue (a new sale). This assumption is unfounded since they statistically would not have made the sale anyway.

-snip-

But can't you say the same thing with piracy?

---not related to quote--

Anywho...If I bought a game (hard copy) and played it, and then sent it to my million friends one at a time to download (because you don't need CD to play it), would that be as bad as pirating or buying it used? I mean, unlike cars that goes poop after a while, CD lasts quite a long time. I've had CDs since well...CDs were created and all of them works fine.

And the thing about buying a used car versus stealing a car? I don't think that is an appropriate analogy because no one is actually 'losing' anything. A more appropriate analogy would be...

Is buying a used car better than getting a new, duplicate car free of cost where no one actually 'loses' money (well gaming-wise, buying used benefits customers and company while pirating only benefits pirate)?

I don't buy used games and I only pirate games that I already have for the xbox (cause I'm beastly on the PC) so hopefully I didn't show a bit too much bias...

Edit: is your point of contraversy part 2 going to be..is sharing Steam accounts okay? xD

Piracy is an overblown problem as well, and it's only a "problem" because game old media companies have yet to realize that they will never be able to stop it, and they need to change their business model if they want to survive. They make a big show out of selling licenses because the actual physical copy is supposedly worthless, and then they get angry when the consumers start applying the same logic and making their own copies. What media producers are doing right now would be akin to the manufacturers in Star Trek suing anyone who used a replicator, instead of the whole Federation going to a communist system. If you've watched TNG or later, you should understand what I'm talking about.

Edit: To the mods:

I am not advocating piracy. I'm simply saying that the threat of piracy is overblown, and the only real defense the entertainment industry has against it is to change their business model to something that can make a profit despite the people who pirate it. Pandora's box has been opened here, and no matter how much the industry whines, they aren't getting the lid back on.

 

[WaruTaru]

Piracy = no money given
Buying a used game = money given

If i give even $10, I want the full game. If I do not get what everyone else has, why would I purchase anything from the company in the future? consumers shouldn't have to deal with that "code" shit. I hand you money, you hand me the full game. That's how it should work. If a company doesn't like it, maybe the video game industry isn't the right place for whoever is in charge of said company.

Buying pirated games = money given too. Whats your point? That money is given?

Who are you handing money to exactly? The game shop? Ask the game shop for the full game then.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Piracy = no money given
Buying a used game = money given

If i give even $10, I want the full game. If I do not get what everyone else has, why would I purchase anything from the company in the future? consumers shouldn't have to deal with that "code" shit. I hand you money, you hand me the full game. That's how it should work. If a company doesn't like it, maybe the video game industry isn't the right place for whoever is in charge of said company.

Buying pirated games = money given too. Whats your point? That money is given?

Who are you handing money to exactly? The game shop? Ask the game shop for the full game then.

The game company was already paid for any used copies that might be circulating. They were not and will not be paid for any pirated copies, regardless of whether the pirates charge for it or not. If you want to look at entitled brats, look at the industry people who are trying to get money they don't deserve, not the consumers who are just trying to save a buck. That's what consumers are supposed to do in a free market economy.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Piracy = no money given
Buying a used game = money given

If i give even $10, I want the full game. If I do not get what everyone else has, why would I purchase anything from the company in the future? consumers shouldn't have to deal with that "code" shit. I hand you money, you hand me the full game. That's how it should work. If a company doesn't like it, maybe the video game industry isn't the right place for whoever is in charge of said company.

Money given, but to who? People buy games because they enjoy them and want to support the developer of those games, so that they can make more games int he future. When you buy a game used all of the money you give the store goes directly to the store and not a dime is given to the actual developer.

Look up one post, or just read this quote:

Piracy = no money given
Buying a used game = money given

If i give even $10, I want the full game. If I do not get what everyone else has, why would I purchase anything from the company in the future? consumers shouldn't have to deal with that "code" shit. I hand you money, you hand me the full game. That's how it should work. If a company doesn't like it, maybe the video game industry isn't the right place for whoever is in charge of said company.

Buying pirated games = money given too. Whats your point? That money is given?

Who are you handing money to exactly? The game shop? Ask the game shop for the full game then.

The game company was already paid for any used copies that might be circulating. They were not and will not be paid for any pirated copies, regardless of whether the pirates charge for it or not. If you want to look at entitled brats, look at the industry people who are trying to get money they don't deserve, not the consumers who are just trying to save a buck. That's what consumers are supposed to do in a free market economy.

The game industry isn't entitled to a single penny of the money made on second hand sales. The developer and the publisher have both been paid by the time a game hits the used market; they aren't entitled to double dip. And they accuse the consumers of false entitlement? Pot, meet kettle.

 

[WaruTaru]

The game company was already paid for any used copies that might be circulating. They were not and will not be paid for any pirated copies, regardless of whether the pirates charge for it or not. If you want to look at entitled brats, look at the industry people who are trying to get money they don't deserve, not the consumers who are just trying to save a buck. That's what consumers are supposed to do in a free market economy.

And the person who bought the first-hand copy already consumed the value of the goods, which is why it depreciates when it is resold. Isn't this exactly like used cars? Used cars are not in perfect condition when sold. Some parts are replaced, some parts are damaged, etc. etc. The manufacturers sell replacement parts for those who want to buy it. If you purchased a used car and don't want to buy the replacement parts from the manufacturer? Thats okay with the manufacturer too. You are risking a damaged car when you buy it used. If you refused to buy new parts from the manufacturer, and the car broke down, whose fault is it?

If the industry people don't deserve the money, then whoever bought a used copy don't deserve a perfect game, no? The industry people sold what they advertised: A Full Game at Full Price. They had no hand in the used games market, and whatever damage that happens to the game (whether by intention or by accident) has nothing to do with them.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The game company was already paid for any used copies that might be circulating. They were not and will not be paid for any pirated copies, regardless of whether the pirates charge for it or not. If you want to look at entitled brats, look at the industry people who are trying to get money they don't deserve, not the consumers who are just trying to save a buck. That's what consumers are supposed to do in a free market economy.

Yet somebody still payed less money for a used copy, got full use out of the game, and not a dime of the money they spent went to the developers. This is like that argument pirates make about pirates who wouldn't have bought the game anyway, they still got to play the game without paying any money. It's what it boils down to, Someone got to play game and the developer made 0 profit on the sale. I'm not gonna blame any consumer for taking advantage of a deal, I'm going to blame Gamestop for trying to kill the gaming industry.

The industry can cry me a river for all I care. They didn't earn that money, because they were already paid for the copy that I bought. What this whole argument has taught me, really, is that piracy really isn't a problem at all. No industry in the history of humanity has gone under because it was outcompeted by its own used market. If the games industry is in danger of having that happen, it deserves to fold. Further, if the used market is really more damaging than piracy, then let me sign up to pirate some stuff, because it must be downright good for the industry.

Or alternatively, piracy is worse because, you know, pirates introduce new copies of the game into the marketplace and drive the value down, while used markets require each copy to be sold new at some point, and helps it to sustain a higher initial value, because people are able to recoup some of their initial investment by reselling. One of the two.

Basically, this argument is just making me wish a crash on the industry. Such a crash wouldn't affect the indie developers, since they don't generally distribute their products through major channels, and they're just about the only game companies left that treat their customers with any modicum of respect. If the games industry wants me to support them, they'd darn well better treat me like a valued customer, and not like something they just scraped off of their shoe.

 

[Kakashi on crack]

god damn how many times do I have to point it out: The developer makes money when the game is sold. Buying a used game is buying a game the developer ALREADY made money on. They do not lose profit from you buying it, they lose POTENTIAL profit of you buying a new copy.

I'm not saying that I have no sympathy for the devs, I really do, but people need to look at used games like we look at used anything

Having worked at goodwill, I can tell you, about 99% of the store's wares/clothes are USED wares/clothes. Does this make us the equivalent of pirates because when people donate used games, we resell them cheap? Does this make us pirates when a jewelry company doesn't make a profit from something we sold? I understand gamespot is different because they still charge 20-40 dollars, but honestly its not that different then what we are doing.

This is why I support some of the DLC stuff. Instead of punishing you for not giving them a profit twice, they say "hey we want something from what you paid for the game" and it can be anything from an extra campaign to little things like hats and such. I cannot support punishing used games buyers though in most other cases because, at least in my mind, it registers as trying to sell the same product twice.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The game company was already paid for any used copies that might be circulating. They were not and will not be paid for any pirated copies, regardless of whether the pirates charge for it or not. If you want to look at entitled brats, look at the industry people who are trying to get money they don't deserve, not the consumers who are just trying to save a buck. That's what consumers are supposed to do in a free market economy.

And the person who bought the first-hand copy already consumed the value of the goods, which is why it depreciates when it is resold. Isn't this exactly like used cars? Used cars are not in perfect condition when sold. Some parts are replaced, some parts are damaged, etc. etc. The manufacturers sell replacement parts for those who want to buy it. If you purchased a used car and don't want to buy the replacement parts from the manufacturer? Thats okay with the manufacturer too. You are risking a damaged car when you buy it used. If you refused to buy new parts from the manufacturer, and the car broke down, whose fault is it?

If the industry people don't deserve the money, then whoever bought a used copy don't deserve a perfect game, no? The industry people sold what they advertised: A Full Game at Full Price. They had no hand in the used games market, and whatever damage that happens to the game (whether by intention or by accident) has nothing to do with them.

Except the damage was intentionally done by the publisher. It would be like buying a car and finding out that the AC didn't work, not because it had broken after a lifetime of use, but because GM had decided that they needed a cut of used sales, and decided to do it by yanking out the compressor and forcing the customer to buy a new one straight from them.

As I said one post up, if this is the way the games industry is going to treat its customers, they're due for another crash. And I will play my fiddle as they burn.