Heavy Rain Dev Says Pre-Owned Sales Cost it Millions

[Racecarlock]

I'd feel for these people if they were struggling and independent developers. But most of the people who are complaining are the rich ass developers with big buildings. See, the gaming community has told them that they're gods, they make the best games evar, they are totally awesome, they are heroes, and with years and years of this, the industry is beginning to believe them, and that's a scary thought. Also I think this particular guy let sales and reviews go to his brain and make him more egotistical. See, making alot of money in any industry apparently grants greed and asshole license to the money maker in question. Frankly I'm getting sick of their fucking attitudes. I don't see samsung banging down my damn door for this big hand me down television I got. And to appeal to the art crowd on here, I don't see painters asking for money from every garage sale that re-sells their painting. I don't see amusement parks or stadiums asking for a portion of the sells from the people that buy tickets and passes and sell them on to someone else. I don't see this with books, movies, cars, televisions, antennas, radios, food, or clothing. The gaming industry is the only one who has this complaint, and it's because they've become so greedy that they can't let one cent slip through their fingers, and what's worse is that they've gotten you, the gamers and consumers, to go along with this. One last warning. I personally believe that if they eliminate the used market, we'll be paying $120 and higher for every new copy. And we won't be able to do shit about it and they'll be able to take it away if we submit any bad reviews and they'll know it's us because they've installed monitoring software on your PCS and your consoles, and then they'll still be complaining about profit loss from sales. And this discussion will happen again, only then it will be about %40 off sales and such. Something like "Is getting a %60 discount on a game piracy?" and we'll see arguments like "It's piracy because the consumer didn't get it for full price and is therefore stealing money from the developer/publisher.". Also they'll be able to sell us games, then not give them to us but still take our money. Hell, they do that now, they'll just do it even more.

Wow. Long post. Also it's 2:38 AM here so my brain might be loopy from tiredness. And I've been doing hits of star wars. That's not a drug name, I've literally been supplementing myself with adrenaline rushes from watching the battle of yavin.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

My response to this is the same as it's always been.

I can pull out every used game I own, whether they were purchased at yard sales, swap meets, pawn shops or official game retailers.

From that stack I can then go to my games that I bought new, usually on or near release day and there will be a healthy chunk of them that are from the same series or developer as one of the used games.

I own a pretty extensive collection of Megaman and Metroid games because my parents bought copies of Megaman 2 and Metroid at a yard sale.

I own almost every Final Fantasy game ever released in the states because I bought a used copy of the first Final Fantasy from the supermarket near my parent's house when their video rental department closed down.

There are similar stories for my collections of Silent Hill, Onimusha, Metal Gear Solid, Saint's Row, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank and countless others...shit I've been paying Blizzard 15 dollars a month for almost 8 years now because back in '95 a friend of mine sold me his copy of Warcraft II for $5.00.

My point is, that while it's a valid statement to claim that due to the used market you or your company didn't make all the money you could have on sales of your game...there's a potential benefit to it that you may not be taking into consideration.

 

[Tjebbe]

"My plumbing company's books show that two toilets have been installed in de Fondaumiere's house. Yet the records also show that these toilets have been used by dozens of people over the years. None of which payed additional installation fees or usage licenses. This shows that people have been using my toilets without giving me one cent, and this clearly is the biggest threat to plumbing, and the industry as a whole, if it is not fixed."

 

[bificommander]

I'm not terribly interested in these 'numbers' myself. I'm sure car factories could run much more impressive numbers on how much more money they could make if you weren't allowed to buy a second hand car, and everyone bought them new. But car factories don't complain this much about those dastardly second hand car owners stealing their bread by not buying the cars from them for 3 times the price. If the games industry has trouble making a profit when there is a second-hand market, they need to cut costs or raise the total volume of sales (increasing prices will likely backfire). But I don't think they should have the right to decide that a game, once bought, doesn't become the property of the person who bought it.

This argument IMHO also undermines their whole anti-piracy schtick. I agree that piracy is illegal (though I hate the 'It's stealing' argument they keep repeating. No legal owner loses his copy so it's not stealing. It can be a crime without insisting we call it stealing.), and I don't object to them taking reasonable steps to ensure games can be played only by people who bought a legitimate copy. But this anti-second hand craze shows they don't really care that piracy is a crime, just that they feel it's costing them money. Selling games you bought is a perfectly legitimate action to take with your own property. They should focus on a way to make their buisness model viable given that practice, not complain and claim it's just like stealing.

BTW, I don't sell any of my games, I like replaying old games more than I like getting a few bucks back. I just don't like companies demanding that I, and others, do so.

 

[Monkey_Warfare]

Several things here, first the used car analogy is bollocks. A car manufacturer doesn't just make most of its money from the car, its from the parts it sells after so a used car is a vaery big cash cow as it will have parts needing replacement that you have to buy for it to work and they gouge you for the parts (its one of the reasons they hate electric cars). If you don't like DLC then tough shit, it is the same as the replacement parts on a car. The company knows that its not going to make enough money on the original product due to piracy and used sales so it adds DLC you need to buy to get the complete working product and turns a profit on the second hand sales.
The used book authors probably aren't happy about it also, but due to the far profit margins on a book they can live with it. And if you bring up libraries remember that every time you take a book out a royaltu is paid to the publisher.
At fenrizz (post 300) on the IP thing your logic means that if I buy a game I am free to give it for free to other individuals with the developers not getting a cent, after all they sold me the information on the CD. Piracy by any other name.
Personally though I just wait for steam sales, cheaper than used games by a long way, all you need is patience. Also me bitching about piracy is very hipocritical as am one of the main sources for the material in my group of freinds but that is more due to releases being ridiculously late in New Zealand (ironicly here i lack patience despite my prior comment)

 

[Rawne1980]

How delusional can a person get.

Does he honestly believe that if used games weren't sold, people would have bought it brand spanking new?

No Guillaume, they wouldn't.

You would still have been down the money you claim you are because people don't want to pay full price for shit like that.

 

[OniYouji]

Sigh...simple split of the profits. Say Heavy Rain is selling for $20 used and it's being sold in, like, Gamestop. Now, $6.33 goes to Gamestop, $6.33 goes to Quantic Dream and $6.34 goes to Sony Computer Entertainment. An even three-way split seems fine to me. And seeing as this is just using $20 as a price point, and it was just one copy, then imagine that magnified over the "millions" of used game sales for that one game, and the more standard price of used games for a while after release, $54.99...well, there you go. Everybody makes money, everybody wins! Unless Quantic Dream or Gamestop REALLY want that extra penny...

Except your equally splitting profits while the amount put into the product is totally uneven, Quantic made the game and spent time and money on it, Sony is allowing the use of their console in addition to supporting updtes and dlc, game stop has literally done nothing so neither Quantic or Sony want them cutting into their profits, on the flip side Gamestop ponied up the cash and bought the game and thus are entitled to any profits from a sale why would they hand over money when their getting nothing out of it, saying they all deserve an equal share makes no sense.

Really? It seems to me it's still feasible. Developer, Publisher, Distributor seems like an even three-way split. Besides, Gamestop isn't going to just let those sales go away. And what Gamestop gets out of it is the lack of developers and publishers breathing down their necks for "stealing" their sales. The amount of "effort" put into these things should not be an indicator of who is deserving of more money in this situation, as it just leads us right back into this situation all over again. This gives everyone a profit with the least amount of hassle. Plus, this "three way split" can be made uneven if necessary; $20, Quantic Dream gets $10, Sony gets $5, Gamestop gets $5. Or QD = $7, Sony $7, GS = $6. Or rearrange as you see fit. Honestly, it's better than the whole "online code" thing, and it's much better than just letting things go the way they are.

 

[Revolutionary]

Well maybe If games didn't retail for a hundred f*****g AUD is Australia I'd be more tempted to buy games brand new. (I asked the Escapist podcast to cover this issue and they're response was pretty much all the comments above mine.)

 

[Beryl77]

Why should the gaming industry be the only one where people can't buy used games? Car, book, movie, music, everywhere people buy them used, so should it only be the gaming industry? I don't see any reason which makes it different from the other industries.

 

[bificommander]

I never said I had objections to DLC, or to finding ways to increase their profit margins. I just dislike the movement that tries to criminalize the consumer's behavior, or make reselling impossible by removing vital content from the game (such as the entire multiplayer component). And I don't think this is piracy by another name, a second hand seller does not breach the copyright of the legal copy.

And if they want to set up their own alternative to the second-hand shop to do something about Gamestop's high profit margins, they can go right ahead. But I don't approve of infringing on the consumer's right to own the things they buy, as opposed to just letting them buying a personal license to use as long as the publisher feels like it, just to make things easier for them.

And if this means an end to big budget AAA releases, so be it. Personally I think that system is going down in flames sooner or later. The drive for ever-better graphics that need to be hand-crafted, which tends to come at the expense of length and gameplay, is starting to drag the industry down with or without second hand sales. I'd prefer the industry to move away from games so over-produced they need to appeal to 100 million consumers to be profitable.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

Whilst I can sympathise Mr. Quantic Dreams, you really should be pointing your finger at your publisher, specifically the gaggle of idiots that decide to conform to the standard pricing and try and sell it high right off the bat.

While that £40 price point might say profit to you guys at first, upon closer inspection you can now see that it actually says that the game was priced too highly. Why is it so hard for publishers to see that each individual game should have its price decided by what everything else is going for these days. The logic baffles me, it really does.

A brand new game very rarely releases for less than £35, sans Wii titles or movie tie-ins. When I walk into Gamestation, the "New" shelf looks like this:

Dead Island - £44.99
inFamous 2 - £37.99
F.E.A.R. 3 - £34.99
Resistance 3 - £37.99
No More Heroes - £37.99
Warhammer 40K Space Marines - £37.99
L.A. Noire - £34.99

Am I to believe that each of these titles are all worth roughly the same amount? inFamous came out in June and I bought it full price at £40. But apparently it's worth just as much as Warhammer 40K Space Marines still. I'm not complaining that it hasn't come down in price, I'm complaining that there seems to be a certain standard for games to release at, within the £25-40 bracket. It just feels wrong that almost every new release should fall into this bracket.

If Heavy Rain had been released at £25 I can guarantee that there would have been a lot more sales. Who wants to risk 40 odd quid on something they might not enjoy, especially when they know in a few months they'll be able to get it half price used. If Publishers thought with their heads instead of their wallets they'd make more money in the long run.

 

[Arakasi]

If you make a good enough game, people won't sell it.
Quality of game = Quantity of cash you recieve.

 

[FallenMessiah88]

I agree. They made the game so they deserve the profit. At least as much of the profit as they can possibly get. And no, "Make a good game. Then we'll at full price" is not a valid argument.

 

[NitehawkFury]

If I could guarantee that every time I bought a game new, I was going to get $60 dollars worth out of it, then sure, I would have no problem always buying new. I bought Mass Effect new. I bought Portal 2 new. I bought Mortal Kombat new, and with each of these games, I felt that I received the content that I paid for. (And then some.)

However, I also bought Brink new, and Marvel vs Capcom 3 new, and with both of those purchases, there wasn't enough content to actually justify the full-price purchase, so I felt cheated, and I should have bought used. When I go to a movie, whether I like it or not is irrelevant. But I expect about 90 minutes to two hours of time invested. If they charged me full price for a film that lasted 30 minutes, I'd be quite annoyed.

I'm not saying that every game needs to be good, (though that would certainly be amazing), or that it always has to fit my taste. But if I'm expected to throw down $60 bucks, then I certainly feel that I should get $60 worth.

Otherwise, I see no reason not to just buy used.

 

[fenrizz]

I agree. They made the game so they deserve the profit. At least as much of the profit as they can possibly get. And no, "Make a good game. Then we'll at full price" is not a valid argument.

They do get the profit.

If I choose to sell the game that I bought, it's none of their business.

It's not like they are willing to buy the game back from me either, so what's a fellow to do?
Fortunatly Gamestop (or similar stores) are there to fill that void for me.

It's called free market capitalism.

No one is denying them the freedom to set up their own damn used game franchise.

 

[Derek_the_Dodo]

Why do all game companies believe they are getting no money from people who buy games preowned?

Of course they will get money, when they release a sequel people who bought preowned might buy it new if the game they bought preowned was good enough.

e.g. a friend recommended me Oblivion a couple of years after release because I'd never played it. If it had been £40 in shops still then I would have probably passed it up. Instead I bought it preowned for a tenner.

fast forward a few years and I'm snapping up every last shred of hype for Skyrim and will buy it new on the day of release. I probably wouldnt have bothered if i hadn't found oblivion quite so fun. Also, if someone buys a preowned game and likes it, chances are theyll buy some DLC for it at some point.

What better advertising is there for a product than your customers spending hours upon hours playing the prequel?

 

[The Lugz]

Tough shit. I dont see car manufacturers whining that half their cars get bought pre-owned...

exactly.


i buy a game - i pay £60 for it, it sits on my shelf for the rest of my life.
conclusion, company gets £60


i buy a game - i pay £60 for it, i keep it for a month, i complete it and sell it on to
someone that refused to pay £60 for it new.
conclusion, company gets £60

total difference: £0.


if 'someone' likes the idea of your game but did NOT WANT TO PAY for your game at full price that's a pretty good sign that you'd get more sales if you reduced the damn price.
a quick glance at console sales, and specific games sales will tell you there's a whole giant section of the community that did not buy your game.. do the math. if you knock £5 off a £60 game and sell 20% more of them like STEAM DO you'd make MORE money Dumb-asses.
( your asses really are dumb on this issue, i'm not even joking. )

if you want people to keep their games, make them better.
( remember how your dumb-asses? read! )
addictive score based gameplay, creative sandbox gameplay, ect things people ask for.
hell a £5 indie game, audio-surf has more gameplay-compulsion than any modern gen shooter, or racing game i can think of purely because it's so open to your creativity and has ridiculously addictive score driven mechanics.
you make games with a 1 week of game-play shelf-life for £60 and expect people to keep them forever that's just stupid.

this is greed and entitlement from a company. nothing more and nothing less.

afterthoughts:
as a paying customer if i have an additional £20 from a game sale, and i like your franchise i'm probably going to buy the next part, so in further logic your company gets a pretty-much guaranteed second sale because the game is effectively only £40 for me the next time.

you like guaranteed sales right? or are you really THAT big of a dumbass?

this really needs to be stapled to the foreheads of all games devs, because they aren't understanding at all.

they see in binary, it's either money or 0 to them.