Obsidian Hopes "Digital Distribution Stabs the Used Game Market in the Heart"

[x-machina]

God I feel awful, will multi-million dollar corporations ever catch a break? Or will the greedy peasants continue to have the audacity to trade and sell their property?

Something must be done

 

[Kathinka]

Wrong. Every argument you just made for used software I could make for a used book a used DVD/Blu Ray or used CD. A used book/movie/CD is essentially identical to a new one in every way that matters. Hell used books have existed for centuries and books have managed to persevere just fine. Just imagine if the book industry was filled with as many whiny cunts as the game industry they'd have been crying foul for centuries.

Furthermore, your claim used games are "identical" to new copies is a false one as well. Ya ever buy a used game? Ya ever look at the disc and notice scratches? Yeah that's wear and tear. Ya ever get a used game without the original case and book? Again another example of a used copy being inferior to a new copy. Can you find used copies that are as good as new? Of course but you can do that for anything ranging from furniture to books.

The bottom line is that games are NOT special. They don't deserve special treatment when it comes to the used market. The cunts in the gaming industry can go get fucked with their beliefs otherwise. Everyone else out there making and selling things manages to do just find in spite of used sales. The gaming industry need to pull the stick from their ass and move on.

A furniture manufacturer recoups their losses with every piece of furniture sold. Reselling the furniture doesn't harm them since they've maintained their business with that first sale. A game developer, in contrast, needs as many people buying their experience as possible to effectively recoup their costs and make a decent profit. Look at the games industry today: any major title that doesn't make umpteen-million dollars is scrapped. Games become less daring, and we end up with nothing but CoD clones because the margin of error is so small that no one wants to take risks.

Scratches on the DVD? Don't be silly. Game companies aren't selling DVDs, they are selling gaming experiences. You experience is unchanged no matter how dirty the DVD looks. As long as it plays, you are enjoying the product of a team of hard-working developers without actually providing them any sort of compensation.

And please stop using the word "****" to describe the people who are working their asses off to sustain our favorite form of entertainment.

First, I see no reason that just because the gaming industry is incapable of managing their expenses they should be given special protection from used sales. That's their problem and shouldn't swell over to the consumer. If they are spending too much making games to make an acceptable profit then they need to fucking spend less. It's not hard to figure out.

Second, just because the wear and tear doesn't degrade the gaming experience doesn't mean it is nonexistent. I know people who buy new because they want a pristine case and manual. To those people having a scuffed case and a ripped manual means the product is inferior to a new copy. The fact that the gaming experience is unchanged has fuck all to do with there being no wear and tear on the physical product. Used media suffers from wear and tear the same as anything else.

As for the people making it being compensated. Well they were compensated when the original purchaser bought it. They don't deserve to be paid multiple times over for the same product. Once they sell a game to someone it is no longer theirs. The fact that they aren't recouping enough of the costs with new sales is meaningless to the consumer. Their flawed business model means shit to me.

Finally I will absolutely keep calling the whiny little cunts in the gaming industry just that as the amount of absolute and total disdain I have for the industry is fucking immeasurable. If there was a button I could push to magically throw every last one of them on the street fighting over scraps of discarded food like stray fucking animals I would press it like I was on Jeopardy and knew all the answers.

The gaming industry is filled with the most whiny and entitled lot of ass clowns I have ever seen. Every fucking day they find something new that's "killing the industry" and using it as an excuse to fuck over the paying customer that much more all while posting record sales and profits. Fuck every last one of em top to bottom.

and the worst part of it is: instead of rebelling we defend their bullshit and bend over like the little bitches that we are, politely asking for more. -.-

 

[Raine_sage]

While I don't agree with everything said here, I do agree with one user who said videogame publishers are more than willing to tell their customers to take a long walk off a short pier.

The response to every consumer complaint is "Don't like it? Don't pay for it!" and then they get pissy when consumers take their advice.

I don't have any beef with a particular publishing company, but for the sake of argument lets say I really abhor EA for some reason. They put out a game I think looks fun, but since I don't like EA I don't plan on buying it and life continues as normal. EA does not complain that I am somehow ruining the industry by not buying their product, even though my sale is more or less a "lost" sale.

A couple months pass since the release of that game and I go into gamestop to trade in some old games I no longer wish to play because I've pretty much sucked every last drop of fun out of them and would like them to stop cluttering up my shelf. The store owner informs me that I now have enough credit to buy another game and as it turns out that EA game is sitting right on the shelf of the used section right within my budget. So I pick that up since it does look like a fun game and I'm supporting the store not EA by buying it which is agreeable to me.

However suddenly alarms go off and now I'm a bad person because even though I was /never/ going to buy that game if I couldn't get it used, this is somehow stealing money from the publishers.

The overall attitude just strikes me as kind of petty. It's like a child grabbing his toys away from a younger sibling and going "mine!"

So tl;dr: Whenever a complaint is raised by consumers (price tag too high, sketchy business practices, etc.) the company response is a resounding "Don't like it? Don't buy it, now piss off." And when consumers do just that they throw tantrums about how it's just not fair nobody wants to support developers. The overall impression I get from them is that they hold their customers in contempt, which is not a nice feeling to have about someone you're essentially in a partnership with.

 

[Zom-B]

Chris Avellone is continuing to propagate the done-to-death logical fallacy that used sales equate to lost sales one to one. It's just not true. As others have mentioned, every used sale requires an initial new purchase. So right there we see that there are obviously sales to begin with.

Also, it's not as though used sales are creating additional copies of games that developers and publishers are not seeing money for. Nope, for each used game sale there's still only one owner of said copy.

Furthermore, the used sales argument always fails to take into account that the person that bought the used game for 1/2 price (give or take) may not have ever or might never purchase the same game for full price.

The industry is still fixated on the $60 new game price, even though used sales, Steam and other digital distribution services prove over and over that it's not that people want to buy used games, they just don't want to spend $60 on games that either aren't worth that price in their estimation or they can't afford to purchase them at that cost.

That's another little tidbit that those who argue against used sales fail to mention: Every person doesn't buy a game because it's too expensive for their budget is a lost sale. I don't see too many developers or publisher railing against our current price point, hoping to bring it down to get their games into more gamers hands. Nope, they only want to sell more at $60, which won't happen. Rising prices almost never result in greater sales. People want perceived value. Look no further than black friday deals.

The video game industry is in it's teen years and it's experiencing growing pains and until all these selfish, egotistical, privileged game developers and publishers realize that their lifeblood is the very people buying their games and take that into account be offering better products for better prices, we're going to continue down this bumpy road.

 

[Yosarian2]

So? Used bookstores have been around forever, too.

Yes, used game sales are inherently better for customers and worse for the big game companies. Customers save money when they buy games and get money back when they're finished them, while the big game companies make a little less profits. So what? If you're a big game company, I can understand why you wouldn't want it, but if you're a game consumer, it's clearly in your best interest.

Never let a big company manipulate you by making you feel guilty for doing things you have a perfect right to do.

books =/= games, there's at least 2-3 people that wrote a detailed analysis on how game sales do not equate book/TV/movie sales early on in the thread.
Like this guy here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.333033.13493186

It's the same concept. The guy who writes the book doesn't get a penny for used book sales, or library books, or people who buy a book and then loan it to a friend. He would probably rather everyone just bought the book new. But guess what? That's not up to him.

And how the fuck do I benefit from not paying the company whose product I want (and likely want more of), and especially how does paying another big company that a) doesn't produce anything and b) screws both the people making the games and its customers "benefit" me in any way other than saving minor amounts of money? "Used game sales" were good for consumers when they were made on portals like eBay, personally or in small 2nd hand shops and game companies didn't care about it much back then, the only thing retail chains like GameStop achieve is pocketing the money themselves while the gaming industry goes down the drain and suffers from it and in return it is less likely that you will get more of the games you like if they fail to break a certain sales record.

"Used game" doesn't have to mean "gamestop", you know. It can just as easily mean "selling or buying it on ebay", or "trading a game you're bored with off to your friend for a game he's bored with", ect. Those are all options you have that the game companies want to take away from you, and I don't understand why you're ok with that.

Anyway, how do you benefit? That's easy. It increases the value of the games that you own; because you can resell them. It decreases the cost of buying games. It increases competition, giving some market pressure on the game sellers to keep their prices more reasonable. It gives the consumer more options. It lets people try a new type of video game they've never played before for a reasonable price; if I've never played a sports game before, I'm not going to spend 60$ on one, but I might try an onlder one if I can get it used for 20$ at gamestop.

Beyond that, it gives you the chance to buy games that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get. You want to know what the first thing I did was when I bought a PS2? I went out and bought a used copy of the PS1 game final fantasy tactics. At the time, there was no way to buy that game new, it only existed at all because you could buy it used. And, frankly, the fact that I knew that I could go back and play PS1 games that I had missed out on was one of the big reasons I bought a PS2 in the first place.

Buying "Pre-Owned" is like paying less than a cent for any given game, because they get nothing out of it.

You're not paying the game designer anything, no. What you are doing, directly or indirectly, is paying the last person who got the game.

Logically speaking, from an economic point of view, people probably are willing to pay more money for a game if they know they can trade it in later. So, yes, by giving the customers that option, the game company is making more money.

I'll buy a game from an online distributor, sure, but I won't pay nearly as much for a game I don't get a physical copy of. I'll spend 50 or 60 dollars for a new game, but i will never spend more then 20$ for a game I download. Same goes for games that have an "activation code" or whatever.

 

[Ipsen]

Well, it would sure as hell get ME to buy digital if the game was 45 bucks that way rather than 60 at the store. But yeah, "passing the savings on to you" might be a bit much to hope for.

Edit: On the subject of used games, I do have to agree with those who say they never let go of a good game. If I play your game all the way through, and I enjoy it to any degree, I will keep it forever and it will never see the shelf in a used games store. I have, lemme count... 83 games that I can easily find in my apartment (Wow. That is a kind of staggering amount of money, seeing as I'm not counting my Steam games...). I bought them all new, and I will keep them forever just in case I want to play them again.

Well, until I die and my loved ones hawk my collection, anyway. At that point you're on your own, but I think you can handle that if you even still care in fifty years.

To some degree, you do have to consider every used game on the shelf a game that the original buyer didn't like all that much. Perhaps your marketing campaign appealed to him more than your product, perhaps the game was broken, perhaps it was just too difficult to him, whatever... a customer paid you full price for the game and was not satisfied. In leiu of asking the game developers for a refund, he used the used games market to recoup some of his cost and pass it along to someone who might like it better.

So make me a great game, video games industry, and I will keep it off the market. Hell, make me a decent game and I'll keep it off the market for you. However, the idea that I should hold on to a game that just turned me off from the moment I popped it in the console, to keep your bottom line up, seems a little selfish unless you're gonna start offering refunds for total flops.

I do have another idea, now that I think of it... why not start offering a deposit on used games? Developers, offer to buy them back YOURSELVES for 5 bucks a pop or whatever it takes to beat Gamestop, accepting them when they are mailed back to you in sort of a "Cash for Gold" model. That way, you may have to pay a lot of gamers some of their money back (and it'd be a bit of a logistical nightmare, granted), but you'll keep the used games off the shelves and be able to sell a new copy to the guy who would have bought my used one. Making a profit of whatever you actually get from a game sale minus five bucks.

You could re-release the ones in good condition years later, as a "Nostalgia Edition" off your website. Some old titles are really expensive on eBay, or so I'm told... you could do well if your game has lasting appeal. Or you could just recycle the disks and cases to make the physical new games, not sure which makes more sense... but either way giving people an incentive is bound to work out better for you than hitting our noses with a newspaper and telling us we're bad.

+5 points.

It's forward ideas like this that need to be put forth for this debate to be resolved; all this babble about how publishers/developers make their money (and how many of you actually gathered experience in either field, and remain unbiased?) enlightens no one. Video game publishers, as a for-profit organization, will make money. They stand on that more than anything. Don't worry so much about them.

I follow the same principles; keep games that you love. Granted, I buy used, and quite often. Call me a bad guy, but I only have ONE job, and what money I can spend after taking care of this fleshbag I want to put towards many an experience while I'm still young (also while the console is still in production). This also forms for me expectations and excitement for sequels (ugh), and other games of similar genre. These I'll not only buy new, but I'll preorder them.

And a hypothetical prediction, should pre-owned sales somehow disappear from the market, not much would change; New sales would take on the price flexibility of pre-owned sales. Publishers would HAVE to do this; their ham-handed tactics of keeping a 60$ tag on so many new releases would never work. Like our here-and-now, customers would just 'wait until the price drops'. What does change though is customer policy; I have alot more freedom buying a pre-owned game. It's opened previously, so I can return it for a full refund should I not like it (also leaves room for businesses like redbox/gamefly). With an all-new retail system, everything is treated as only defective returns viable. Skipping a few obvious steps (summed up as frustration), I'd also predict many people would just not buy as many games period, not because of even good prices, but because the issues you can have with a damn disc make retail inflexibility that much more irritating.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

lol i COULD (so this is a hypothetical and not a chance in hell it happened) share my steam account with my friends and now they all play the newest games for free without even doing anything tractably illegal (if id read the steam tos i suspect id have found mention of "only u can play these games or well be super mad you").. people who want to save money are going to save money

 

[BlueHighwind]

When the day comes that I can no longer buy games used, I'll just pirate them all. Obsidian is dreaming if they think they can strongarm me into buying from them directly.

Or game devs just could sell that at reasonable prices, instead of sixty bucks.

 

[poleboy]

Please, keep crying. Your tears are almost as deliciously salty as the music industry's. Waaa, every person who used our product didn't pay full price! Through the magic of my reality-ignoring calculator, this means that we lost a sale for every such person! WAAAAA! I'm making hugely inflated claims about how much we COULD have sold because it makes me feel like a big man, and also because my boss told me to. WAAAAH!

Yeah, nothing new here.

 

[Aeshi]

When the day comes that I can no longer buy games used, I'll just pirate them all. Obsidian is dreaming if they think they can strongarm me into buying from them directly.

Or game devs just could sell that at reasonable prices, instead of sixty bucks.

And then people will just sell said used games for less/still pirate them for free, so they don't actually gain any extra sales AND they make less money than they would've made if they'd have sold them for the full $60.

 

[Darius Brogan]

In order for the game to be classified as 'Used' it has to have been 'Purchased' first.

So even if ten million people buy a used game, the devs still sold ten million copies of a game that was most likely priced at roughly $50-75.

That's a huge amount of cash.

It would be theoretically possible for ten million people to sequentially buy and trade in the SAME COPY of a used game. Practically impossible, but it isn't that infrequent for the same copy to change hands three, four, or even five times. That 10 million could easily be several million fewer actual new sales.

That's not the context I was using, at all.

If The game company sold ten million games that are then traded into a used game store, even if all ten million copies are bought, and the company gets 0% of those sales, they still sold ten million games before hand.

Even at prices as low as $30, that's $300'000'000 in sales.

Let's look at MW3 for a second.
In 24 hours, 6.3 million copies were sold, grossing more than $400'000'000 dollars. That figure was bumped up to more than $750'000'000 in five days, and more than $1'000'000'000 in a little over two weeks.

Used game sales will never, ever make a noticeable dent in that figure.

 

[stefman]

actually no. technically what if 5 million people bought it, then sold it, then the next five million people bought it etc. Not saying i care about used sales and devs being pissed or whatever, but your logic is flawed considering used games can be bought and sold multiple times without the purchase of a new game.

 

[Darius Brogan]

actually no. technically what if 5 million people bought it, then sold it, then the next five million people bought it etc. Not saying i care about used sales and devs being pissed or whatever, but your logic is flawed considering used games can be bought and sold multiple times without the purchase of a new game.

Were you talking to the OP? or to me?

If me: My logic isn't flawed at all, because if five million people bought it, it doesn't matter how many times it's re-sold afterwards.
At prices as low as $20 a copy, five million sales is over $100'000'000 in revenue.

No matter how many times it's bought after the original sale five million new copies were bought, so the dev already made $100'000'000 in profit.

 

[FamoFunk]

This bloke can go fuck a Duck.

I buy used games, and even if they stop it somehow, I can easily wait for games to decrease in value or go on a big sale (Just like Skyrim is already £22.49 instead of £45)

I'll only buy games new when I know I want the it really fucking bad, not just, "Meh, this looks OK"

Maybe if they started making games that're actually worth £45 I'll give them my full money.

 

[UnderCoverGuest]

Well they won't have the money to make them if no one buys them.

Conversely, CoD4 got lots of money, and that resulted in MW2 and MW3...so I guess my argument is flawed...

One thing I will say is that you just need to look at Used College books sales to realize how backbreaking buying used can be to a developer, publisher, etcetera. I bought a book for a senior level A&P class a good while back that was $200*--and that's virtually guaranteed to be because of Used book sales. With a single college-level book being sold from student to student to student a good three or four times during a year before a revised edition comes out (if it does get revised), the book distributor, publisher, and don't forget, the actual writers and researchers of the book will only get one portion of the profits that might have been made.

If Used College books didn't exist, then that A&P book I bought would probably only have been $75, if not $60 or something like that. Lower-division course books would be cheaper still.




*Of course thought-out my college career I had bought books that were upwards of $350 to $500, but '$200' is a nice, even, and easily imaginable number.

 

[Guardian of Nekops]

One thing I will say is that you just need to look at Used College books sales to realize how backbreaking buying used can be to a developer, publisher, etcetera. I bought a book for a senior level A&P class a good while back that was $200*--and that's virtually guaranteed to be because of Used book sales. With a single college-level book being sold from student to student to student a good three or four times during a year before a revised edition comes out (if it does get revised), the book distributor, publisher, and don't forget, the actual writers and researchers of the book will only get one portion of the profits that might have been made.

If Used College books didn't exist, then that A&P book I bought would probably only have been $75, if not $60 or something like that. Lower-division course books would be cheaper still.




*Of course thought-out my college career I had bought books that were upwards of $350 to $500, but '$200' is a nice, even, and easily imaginable number.

Alternatively, though, if the book cost me $75 rather than $350, then I wouldn't BOTHER looking for it cheaper. It's only when they start asking me as much as my landlord does for a month's rent, for a prop for a single class of which I'm taking 5, that I start frantically seeking alternatives.

Ramping up the price to the point that people are CONVINCED you are fleecing them does not help you fight the used market. It drives your customers to it, and gives people a convenient excuse to steal your work... as indeed, the school book sector is already seeing. Not that I condone that, of course... it just pepetuates the cycle of both parties trying to screw the other.

Matters get worse (as a corollary to games you finish in 2 hours that cost you $60) when the class requires you to buy the textbook, but then doesn't actually USE it at all, making it so you've spent a month's rent on something you didn't even need. That you then can't sell back because they made a little, incosequencial update SPECIFICALLY so you couldn't sell it back.

So yeah, there's a lot of parallels between the two situations. But to be honest, the textbook companies aren't doing right by their customers either, ESPECIALLY with the minor redesigns (sometimes as little work as changing where the page and chapter breaks are, with no actual new information added) to keep their monopolies.

 

[Gunner 51]

Big ol' snip

My apoogies for my late reply, my router blown up on Wednesday during the storm. (Lightning hit the pole outside.)

Anyways, I'll reply to your post...
As an ex-bedroom coder - if games are costing this much to produce, then the developers and producers should be either raising the prices or cutting costs. But unfortunately, for the retailer and gamer alike - they're not even doing both - they're making a third stinger: making the public pay not so much for a game which they originally wanted, but paying for permission to play they'd paid for.

By doing this, it means that most games are getting to the point where they are not worth the tremendous price for their purchase. As a result of this the gamer sells the games on because they aren't worth the asking price.

You could argue about the End User's License Agreement, but no gamer on the planet really cares that much about it. No-one reads it through all the way, I could't. I'm afraid it all appears as blah, blah blah to me, and I cannot imagine I'm alone in this.

My purchase, my game. If the publishers don't like it, I can show them a few parts of my anatomy they're welcome to kiss. Just because I ticked the EULA's agreement box doesn't really mean I read and understood the T&C's - it just means I've said "Yeah, yeah, yeah gimme my game already." But then again, British and American laws are different from each other.

The publishers know full well what they're doing - they're screwing gamers over and using developers as human shields. All because they want a bigger cut of the proceeds than they are morally entitled to.

As someone who buys new every time, and seeing how my pay packet is frozen till god-knows when - it just grinds my gears to be ripped off. What's wrong with expecting my money's worth? Especially when it's so easily preventable by the publishers - if they just gave the money to the developers which they are entitled to, none of this would ever be a problem.

Still, I hope the advent of cloud gaming will simply shift the shareholders from the publishers to the developers. Now that'd be an interesting and hopefully a fairer power shift.

 

[Mauso88]

Not everyone has the internet and/or the funds to buy games brand new. So, buying pre-owned makes the most logical sense.