rembrandtqeinstein said:
Beautiful End said:
And why should I pay 60 bucks for it when I can buy it used at Gamestop, or from a friend or eBay or whatever, waaaaay cheaper than that?
When you get it from a friend or even piratebay you aren't consuming $50 that you had reserved for spending on games. When you get it from ebay there isn't a management structure pressuring employees to redirect new purchases to used ones.
Even if Gamestop closes, people are STILL gonna sell used games. Your cousin will, eBay will, pawn shops will, and so on. Same with car sales, book sales, etc. You can't stop it and you can't claim it's a crime or else every single person on Earth would be a criminal.
Straw man, nobody is talking about prohibiting used games. The problem is that there is a finite amount of money people will spend. The question is who receives the money. Is it gamestop or is it the publisher. If it is gamestop then what motivation does the publisher have to finance games?
And furthermore how are used games different from piracy as far as publishers are concerned?
Hehe, straw man. Don't know what you meant by that but I like it
I still don't see the problem. Yes, employees are encouraged to offer used games, but if the customer says no, well what else can they do? The simple solution is just saying No every time someone offers a customer a used game.
The publisher does see some money from used game sales. They just want it all. Unless Gamestop is stealing loaded trucks in the middle of the night, they must get the games from somewhere. Again, I offer Blops as an example. The game was so...great, i guess, that one one traded it at all. The demand was high, though. As soon as one person traded it in, someone bought it immediately. So the solution was getting more new copies of the game. People who came and asked for used copies had to buy a new one if they wanted the game that badly; not like it was a bad thing.
Not only that, but if a publisher has a game that just won't sell brand new, either because it's lame or not recent, they send us their copies to be sold as new, simply because people are usually willing to risk losing a couple of dollars for an okay game. And they can always return it if it sucks. One game that comes to mind that did this was Midnight Club for the 360 and PS3. Personally, I liked the game but I guess it wasn't selling, so we sold the new copies as new. Then it suddenly sold. Extra bonus for giving someone a new copy with the price of a used game. And believe me, Gamestop could not possibly get away with something like this without the publisher being aware of this; Gamestop isn't some sort of Pop & Mom rental store.
I think that's a great policy, especially for lame games. For example, I wouldn't buy Duke Nukem for 60 bucks, but sure, I might buy it for 40 bucks if I know I can always return it if I hate it.
Bottom line: Publishers do see money out of used game sales, especially if they're buying it at Gamestop! When i sell my game to my cousin, the publishers see no money from that transaction, that's for sure. Publishers just want ALL of the money. I can understand their point of view, but making a scene every time their game is sold used is not the way to go and it is not a crime either.