InstantAction CEO: Retailers Are "Parasites and Thieves"

[Upbeat Zombie]

Every other kind of medium has used game sales. Instead of complaining. Why don't you give game buyers a good incentive to buy games new.

 

[playinthedark]

I'm no economic strategist, but I'd hypothesize that if one person can afford a game for $100, then at least two people could afford it for $50, four for $25 dollars, probably ten people for $10. And companies still make the same profit (if they scale back a bit on packaging), and people would have less motivation to buy used games because the new product is more widely affordable.

 

[Sebenko]

Well either make games less expensive, or worth the money.

I still haven't bought Bioshock 2 or Mass Effect because I wasn't willing to pay 70 FUCKING POUNDS (like normal pounds, but shiny) for two games, one of which I probably wouldn't play again after the week I got it.

Also, Borderlands is on sale for £6.79 on steam right now, but a game I have no interest in is a game I have no interest in. So make better games. Ask GSC perhaps, they manage. And for £10 less than other new games.

 

[poiuppx]

I'm sorry, I'd argue his points pro and con, but the tortured logic in that sheep & wool blanket example hurt my thinking meats too much to continue. I think I need to go lay down for a while...

 

[poiuppx]

Buying a game Used is the equivalent of piracy. In either case, the developer doesn't get paid.

...Doctrine of First Sale, much? Once the person buys it, it is their property to do with as they please, to sell or dispose of it at their own leisure. As long as GameStop isn't making duplicate copies in a backroom somewhere, they're free to do as they wish with the property once they acquire it. Same as you. Or are you under the impression garage sales are an illegal and immoral act?

 

[pneuma08]

Spoiler

Personally, I don't understand why Gamestop works. If I want to buy an used game, I search for it on Ebay and buy it there for cheap. The Gamestop price for used games is usually only marginally lower than the full price of a game. If I only save 10? I might as well buy the new game.

Yeah I don't get it either, guess people are retarded... always taking the cheaper "product" no matter what and not exactly thinking about the consequences. Getting it for free on the internet or buying "home-made" games on flea markets would save them even more money and have the same effect on sales... "Voting with your wallet" works both ways, by not buying something and by consciously buying something to support it or because you want more of it.

Counterarguments:
1. Not everyone has access to the internet.
2. Not everyone prefers to pay via a card. Many people still prefer to pay with cash, which cannot be done on an internet purchase.
3. Ability to actually inspect the disk in person (which cannot be done with an internet purchase) is also a factor.
4. Shipping time, cost, and returnability are also factors. Potentially a much greater hassle online. Ebay in particular may take several weeks before the purchase arrives. Some people may prefer to pay a few extra bucks and have it right away.
5. Some people prefer to save money, other people prefer to spend the extra money for the quality of "newness". Is newness worth $5? Is it worth $10? Depends on the person.
6. All of this is also assuming that the buyer can afford either option. Some percentage of used game buyers simply would not buy a new game in any event.

Spoiler

That doesn't work, if the games would cost 30$, the used-games industry (GameStop etc.) would sell em for 25$, if the games cost 20$ they'd sell em back for 15$ and so on, if it's 10$ they'd still sell em for 7$ and still make a profit... as the OP says they're parasites and they don't have to compete with anyone or anything else because they don't create a product... they just resell and take all the profit, and apparently the greed to save those 5 bucks will make lots of people buy used in the first place.

Further counterarguments:
1. Not every game sells at a given price point, and just because a game is up for sale at that price point it is not indicative of the margins of that game.
2. Supply. Used copies are not always available, especially close to launch, when it would be rarely available. If anything the blame should be laid at the feet of those supplying the used game market (which is a ridiculous prospect, IMO).
3. This is ignoring all the good used sales do as well. This includes:
3a. Legacy. If you try to buy a five-year-old (hell, two- and sometimes one-year-old) game, good luck finding it new. The used game market also extends (beyond big retailers) all the way back to the beginning of gaming. I'll admit this is slightly out of the bounds of this argument, but it cannot be ignored when talking about the "used game market".
3b. Advertising. Every time someone walks into a retailer, they are bombarded with ads. Every time the lure of the pre-owned draws someone in, that's someone else that hears about that awesome new collector's edition coming out.
3c. Environment. These are gaming specialty stores. When properly run, they're filled with people who love to play games. No way should this fall to the likes of the big box store.
4. Used game sellers do compete with other used game sellers, not to mention new games (since otherwise we wouldn't even be having this conversation). They have to compete with other buyers as well (other used game sellers and personal sellers).
5. As discussed elsewhere on the Escapist, used game sellers also allow the owner of a game to reap some return on a game purchase. This gives them more purchasing power than they otherwise would have, and potentially drives new game sales further.

Lastly,

...movies get their main income from theatric releases.

This is incorrect. DVD sales greatly outpaces that of theatrical release tickets, by any margin.

 

[silversnake4133]

*sighs* Hey guys, I think this dead horse was beaten enough already... and the argument within the OP's article kind of reminded me of something....


Oh yeah! That's it!


In all seriousness though this is really starting to get annoying. I miss the good old days back when games were simple 8-bit side scrollers, and stories and "having fun" were more important that mechanics and graphics. This seems like a good reference to a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde syndrome. (i.e. some innocent and creative idea experiments and grows into something ugly and twisted, the caustic potion being money.) Games started out so innocent and fun, now look at it. The developers/distributers/publishers etc. are so wrapped up in making a profit that they could care less about the games themselves and more about the revenue they are worth. I have heard countless times that the video games industry is a multi-billion dollar industry (if you'll excuse the frequent use of the word industry)... but I've always wondered how much the designers, concept artists, programmers, testers etc. actually see of the profit that their creations rake in.

Anyway, this Louis Castle guy is starting to sound more like an impudent internet troll than a mature businessman, but then again, the words "mature" and "businessman" are pretty much never used in the same sentence unless a negative contraction is placed between them.

I've also noticed that as a solution, a lot of people like to think that "online distribution" will save the industry. Well, in some cases it just might. I know a shit load of people who participate in online gaming and what not, what they probably don't realize is that not everyone is into that sort of thing.

Reasons why:
1. They don't have a computer
2. They don't have internet access
3. They aren't interested in online gaming
4. They are paranoid about hackers and would rather jump in a well than buy anything online
5. Online gaming isn't as easily portable
6. All sales are final
7. Possible freezes/crashes can happen during a transaction or download
8. Offline multiplayer

Granted, I'm not an online/computer gamer (yes I have a Mac). However, the online industry and Steam have me quite interested to possibly signing up. But I do enjoy the console gaming a bit more. Anyway, I digress. As a conclusion for this comment, I will say that it doesn't matter what industry this subject falls upon. People are greedy for money, period. They always want more, and they become volatile when they don't get it. Money runs their world, why do you think they panic when their stock drops a couple of tick marks.

As a side note, (trolls and haters do your worst >:]) I've kind of seen used retailers as the "Robin Hood" to the "Prince John" of big business industries.

 

[LadyRhian]

I have an issue with buying a new game, and only getting content you can fully explore in a day or less. If I can play the whole thing in under a day and there is nothing new to experience (and, like Yahtzee, I don't do online multiplayer), where is the incentive to buy a game at full price and keep it forever? There is none. Yes, I want to support the gaming industry, but I want to support the kind of games I want to play and enjoy playing. I would be more than willing to pay full price for an RPG with 100+ hours of content that didn't rely on the game being nerfed at the original sale and the publisher nickling and diming me for X map or X dungeon or a few piddly quests that aren't available until you pay more money. To me, that's counter-intuitive and will make me less likely to pick up a game.

I am willing to pay full price for games. I have paid plenty in full price for games. But I think that games developers are shooting themselves in the foot with this crap. At this point, I'd rather play indie-developer games like Avernum from Spiderweb Software than download shitty titles with anemic gameplay that I can finish in a day or two from large publishers. And trust me, if game developers think like this guy, they are going to vanish- because they are killing themselves, and blaming their dying on everyone else.

 

[pneuma08]

I'm no economic strategist, but I'd hypothesize that if one person can afford a game for $100, then at least two people could afford it for $50, four for $25 dollars, probably ten people for $10. And companies still make the same profit (if they scale back a bit on packaging), and people would have less motivation to buy used games because the new product is more widely affordable.

While the theory is sound, the math is unrealistic. Furthermore, if it costs $1 to print a disk and ship it out, the company is making $99 on the first scenario and only $90 in the last. (And if they can cut costs by scaling back something like packaging, they can do that in the most former scenario and make a larger profit.)

Lowering the price of a product practically guarantees more sales but it does not by any stretch guarantee more profit.

Lastly, I don't think the financial wings of gaming companies are stupid, and that they make a decision with all the numbers in front of them. They don't want their game to be overpriced, because "overpriced" that means that by lowering the cost they can make more money. I think what is going on is that (with a few exceptions) no one knows what the value of a game is until after it's released, which is why we see dramatic price dropoffs a month or two after the release of a game.

 

[Stormz]

Without the used games industry I wouldn't own any older games for ps2 and down. So fuck you. Also lower game prices so I don't have to waste 80$ on your 5 hour games.

 

[Flames66]

Here is my response. Firstly I will not pay more than £10 for a game. If you charge more than that, I will get it from soneone else.

Secondly If someone sells a used car or MP3 player, CD, Roll of tape, watch, film, pair of shades or lizard, They do not pay any of their profits to the original seller. Games are no different.

Thirdly, millions of people buy used games, this is clearly how the customer wants to do business. If you punish your customers for your errors, they will stop buying from you alltogether. That is why Ubisoft does not get any money from me.

Looks like InstantAction games are another thing I will not be buying in future.

 

[jasoncyrus]

So 60 x 1m = 180m?

Come again?
Not only are you bad at math but you're not very realistic. They will not use the profit from the game for marketing as they have other costs to deal with, like paying the guys who made the employees.

So i suck at math, sue me.

I dunno how i came to 180M.

and 1M units isn't an unrealistic figure over a 5 year period. Especially if its released globally. But even just taking in US and europe, its still a very easy fgure to attain for these main stream whiners. They are ENORMOUS publishers who are raking in millions upon millions.

so even 60M, it's still hugely more than it actually costs them to make.

a team of 20 at $50k a year for say 3 years thats 3M. 10 cents a disc is a pretty reasonable figure since i said discs not cases etc, but we'll add on say 2 dollars per set since realistically thats what bulk costs roughly.

say...20M marketting covering all bases, tv, magazines and such like.

Addon on the fact it'll have another $20 a time for each dlc people download, say 50% or original purchase figure, so 500k units there thats another 10M.

And then toss 15M distribution costs on top of that

Even adding on costs of property tax, etc its still not much

They are pretty much swimming in money.

 

[darkszero]

You've seen it people. They consider buying used and pirating both stealing, so there is no difference. So pirate and don't buy used! [/sarcasm]

 

[Antari]

Greed at its finest. InstantAction huh? .. I'll have to remember the name for future avoidance.

 

[jamesworkshop]

I just imagined this whole article in Andrew Ryan's voice.

"The parasite sees invention and says 'where's my share'!"

He, he, he!

What it cannot plagiarize, it seeks to censor. What it cannot regulate, it seeks to ban

Unable to provide for itself, the need of the publisher grows until war is made to justify it

 

[SimuLord]

InstantAction? Who the f--- are they? I mean I've heard of (and have accounts on) Steam and GamersGate, plus I know of Impulse and Direct2Drive...the above services being named pretty much in descending order of prominence.

So what exactly is IA's market deal? Besides "nobody in their right minds would buy ethereal property like digitally distributed games from a company that is highly unlikely to survive the consolidation and shakeout in the industry."

 

[tkioz]

Both publishers and retailers only have themselves to blame.

Publishers ***** about sales when they push region based sales, if a new game costs $40USD but $109AUD you have no reason to wonder why I look for a cheaper option, the exchange rate has been running from .8 to .9 for the last few years, at most I should be paying $60-70AUD, not $109. I import all my new games from the UK for this simple reason, I can pay full retail and international postage and still make a $30-40 saving, that's disgusting, so I've got no pity for publishers, until they stop ripping me off based on where I live they can suck it.

Retailers if you buy a used game that's only been out for a week or so back from a customer and then sell it for $104 (that's a $5 saving, well worth the scratched case, missing manual, and running the risk of unusable disc.... /sarcasm) you only have yourself to blame when the publisher sees it and goes "WTF!?"

 

[sabercrusader]

Buying a game Used is the equivalent of piracy. In either case, the developer doesn't get paid.

Wrong, the game has to have been bought before for it to be "used". The Developer gets paid but they don't get a second $60 cause said person bought the game used.

Besides what if that "used" game they buy gets them so into the series that they buy the collecters edition of the sequels, i know this is a what if case but it is possible.

 

[fletch_talon]

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.

Cars and books both depreciate in value in the eyes of the consumer. Cars depreciate in value incredibly quickly because there are plenty of people who want a fresh car that has 0 mileage and hasn't had someone else's arse planted in the seat. Books are often visibly worn after even a single use and again, many will pay more money for a pristine book even though they'll end up wearing it down themselves (guilty as charged).
Games, provided they havn't been mistreated, don't really suffer from use. If I went into an EB Games store and pulled down 2 copies of the same game, one used and one new, it would be difficult,if not impossible to tell the difference between the discs.
DVDs have the same quality, but I haven't personally seen any stores which deal in second hand DVDs the way EB/Gametraders do with games. Not to mention most DVDs are movies or TV shows that have made money from being shown in cinemas/TV.

Basically games likely suffer more from second hand sales because retailers can offer an identical product for cheaper and the people that made the game don't see a cent of this second (or third/fourth...) sale.