InstantAction CEO: Retailers Are "Parasites and Thieves"

[Plinglebob]

Give me an incentive to buy your game new, and then we'll talk.

But then people (not necessarily you) will just ***** about day one DLC, EA Sports licence and other tricks companies use to try and get you to buy new. I personally have no problem buying new if its a game I want or they give me a reason, but I admit I buy used because most the time they're the only games I can get for £15 or less.

 

[jasoncyrus]

Ok Someone please correct me if i'm wrong here but....most games sell a million units on average at full price right? Full price being $60

Thats $180 MILLION. Oddly enough I somewhat doubt it takes $180 Million to develop and publish a game.

Each disc costing about 10 cents, thats 100k, say a team of 20 to make the game at $50k a year, thats $1M. That leaves $178,900,000 dollars for marketing (which there isnt much of compared to stuff like movies), distribution etc.

So I fail to see why they are whining so much. It's not like they are about to go under -.-

Give me an incentive to buy your game new, and then we'll talk.

But then people (not necessarily you) will just ***** about day one DLC, EA Sports licence and other tricks companies use to try and get you to buy new. I personally have no problem buying new if its a game I want or they give me a reason, but I admit I buy used because most the time they're the only games I can get for £15 or less.

Indeed, games and other software (especially OS and photoshop etc) are *ridiculously* over priced for the amount they give us on release, and then they have the audacity to sell us THE REST OF THE GAME that was already made by the time the original disc is ready to be produced.

 

[Arec Balrin]

Many people wouldn't buy games brand new unless they knew they could recoup some of their 'investment' back by trading it in later. It's one reason why PC gamers are very aggressive about keeping prices down; we know we can't trade in and don't easily forgive publishers that price-gouge.

 

[Digital_Utopia]

Wait, are they seriously calling retailers thieves, because they have the nerve to sell a used product the developer/publisher already received money for the original sale?

 

[Mechsoap]

10 dollars?! i sold my most worthfull ps2 game for 3 dollars to them!
anyway, its a good method at spreading old games you loved and enjoyed to others to enjoy for a more or less fair price

 

[jasoncyrus]

Wait, are they seriously calling retailers thieves, because they have the nerve to sell a used product the developer/publisher already received money for the original sale?

It's because their Lake of money went down a couple of millimetres and they can't dive for 500 metres anymore in $1000 dollar bills.

 

[The Amazing Tea Alligator]

Maybe people buy used games so much because you charge so much damn money for games. And you say you charge so much because you spend so much on development.

Have you tried not spending so much on development?

May I suggest that not spending as much on development is a horrible idea?
Polish really helps. Picture how great Mount and Blade would be if the controls were tighter, the area was larger, the factions more balanced, and the multiplayer more fleshed out.
Polish really helps.

 

[SaintWaldo]

Doctrine of First Sale, Louis. Go look it up. Then quit your bitching. According to his analogy, every used car sale needs to pay the manufacturer or everyone involved is a parasite. What a moron.

If this guy EVER owned ANYTHING second hand, so much as a reused public school textbook, he's a goddamn hypocrite.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

rofl I hate used game shops but this guy is going overboard

here's a clue, if you lower the price of new games, used games will be less attractive

50-70 dollars is TOO MUCH

developers/publishers need to start taking the ikea approach, start with the price and budget from there

make the best damn game you can that you can sell for $20-30 bypass retailers entirely and just sell online

retailers are just as much dinosaurs as publishers, they are just taking longer to wind down

 

[Dioxide20]

Take Ubisoft with their absurd DRM!

I completely agree with everything else, but I think Ubisoft is dropping their permanent connection DRM thing for Steamworks. In fact I think this was covered in a Escapist article not to long ago.

And there next big thing will be charging for Multiplayer. EA is doing it with their sports games, and Activision was thinking about implementing it into COD games.

 

[ShadowKatt]

To all that oppose the used game industry(Namely this assclown in particular),

You complain that you're not getting a cut of the profit from used game sales. Before I go on a tirade of how rediculous that is, I will say that from a very thin moral standpoint, you MAY be right. However, the absurdity of your claim is profound, and let me tell you why.

You are in the video game development industry. You built a business around making and selling, not buying and selling. This idea that you should get a cut from someone elses industry is both morally and legally moronic. TO get away from the used games industry, let's look at pawn shops. A pawn shop buys and sells everything, including games, but also guns, jewelry, and other items. If a pawn shop buys and sells a gun, does Ruger deserve to get a cut of the resold pistol? If a pawn shop buys and sells a wristwatch, does Rolex deserve to get part of the money that the pawn shop has invested and turned a profit on?

The answer to this is no. Ruger and Rolex, like every other manufacturer, have a very simple relationship with their customers. They make and sell, and the customer buys. They have no right nor grounds to demand or even suggest that they recieve money from the actions of another company simply because they have a name on the product, and the used games industry is no different. If you want to turn a profit on your own used games, then expand your business model to include buying and selling used games as well as manufacturing and development.

Until that day though, keep your hands off and your mouth shut.

Sincerely, ShadowKatt.

 

[angry_flashlight]

Oh, poor you and your multi-billion dollar expanding industry that was the only one making money throughout the entire recession... boo hoo.

How dare someone use legal means to make money off a product you've already made money on! They should survive only off the pennies they make from selling overpriced games! /false sympathy

Off topic: does anyone else remember when new games were $20-30, $40 tops? Feels like so long ago.

 

[Neuromaster]

So we've graduated from treating our customers like thieves and parasites and are now treating our distributors the same way? Well, 5 out of 5 for consistency...

Gamestop is no morally worse than Craigslist's for sale section, imo.

 

[Weaver]

Take Ubisoft with their absurd DRM!

I completely agree with everything else, but I think Ubisoft is dropping their permanent connection DRM thing for Steamworks. In fact I think this was covered in a Escapist article not to long ago.

They're only doing it for RUSE, future PC games will continue to use their DRM.

 

[Dioxide20]

Take Ubisoft with their absurd DRM!

I completely agree with everything else, but I think Ubisoft is dropping their permanent connection DRM thing for Steamworks. In fact I think this was covered in a Escapist article not to long ago.

They're only doing it for RUSE, future PC games will continue to use their DRM.

Well, then I completely agree with you.

 

[Delusibeta]

Take Ubisoft with their absurd DRM!

I completely agree with everything else, but I think Ubisoft is dropping their permanent connection DRM thing for Steamworks. In fact I think this was covered in a Escapist article not to long ago.

Incorrect, they're dropping it only for RUSE, it'll be back in full force for HAWX 2. [Edit] Ninja'd.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Ok Someone please correct me if i'm wrong here but....most games sell a million units on average at full price right? Full price being $60

Thats $180 MILLION. Oddly enough I somewhat doubt it takes $180 Million to develop and publish a game.

Each disc costing about 10 cents, thats 100k, say a team of 20 to make the game at $50k a year, thats $1M. That leaves $178,900,000 dollars for marketing (which there isnt much of compared to stuff like movies), distribution etc.

So I fail to see why they are whining so much. It's not like they are about to go under -.-

Your numbers are way off. First off, most games don't sell a million units. Relatively few games do that, and the ones that do either have very large budgets or are regarded as massively successful.

Second, there's far more than 10 cents per copy worth of fixed costs. Packaging, shipping, retail's cut, etc.

Third, $1M is a very, very low budget. $20M is becoming more the standard for "core" games, with higher profile titles easily exceeding that. That doesn't include marketing or publishing, either.

The big sellers (CoD, Halo, WoW) are making tons of money, but plenty of games also bomb and lose a lot of money.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and $60 times 1 million units is $60 million. Where did you get $180 from?

 

[oktalist]

there's nothing anybody can do about it

Doesn't he live in a democracy?

If we make something like woolen blankets and we start eating the sheep, pretty soon, we have no more woolen blankets.

That's the stupidest analogy I've ever seen.

Why is it only the gaming industry, one of the most profitable industries in the world, bitches about used sales?

I don't hear ANY of this moaning from used car dealerships, used DVD sales, used books, nothing. Someone had to have bought the game new in order for used to exist; you already made your money.

To be fair, a lot of those industries do give back some proportion of their used sales to the original publishers, which Castle says would make it okay if games retailers did that.

 

[cainx10a]

Is Used Game sales any different from say, this dude who purchase a game and pass it off to his friends and co-workers?

In both cases, the game is only purchased once legitimately. Then re-sold or lended to many people at a lower price (or no price), and in most cases multiple times since you can return a used game to gamestop, which will gladly resell it at probably the same price as it was purchased.

I am split on the matter as I will certainly purchase certain games as a used copy if there are no benefits of purchasing a new copy of the game, but like some people mention, it would still be fair to give the industry its due share.