Pre-Owned Games Market Goes Digital

[Andy Chalk]

Pre-Owned Games Market Goes Digital

A new digital distribution platform called Green Man Gaming is promising to throw a curveball at the industry by letting gamers trade in their digitally purchased pre-owned games.

The pre-owned games market is a big thorn in the side of most publishers. Retailers make significant margins on used game sales, far more than they do on new releases, but publishers and developers see none of that income. Mass Effect 2 [http://www.epicgames.com/]. But it's through the advent of digital distribution that some see the final end of the pre-owned market, as games bought electronically have no inherent tangible value, and thus no resale value.

Green Man Gaming claims it will challenge that assumption, however, when it goes online with a new system that will allow customers to trade in digitally purchased games. "Previously the minute you had paid and downloaded your game it had no resale value. This is extremely expensive for the gamer and does not encourage the consumer to try new genres or franchises," said Green Man Gaming COO Gian Luzio. "Our leading edge technology gives downloaded games a value that gamers can trade-in at any time."

Unlike conventional used game sales, GMG also promises that publishers will see "substantial remuneration" from its used sales. "We will pay significant royalties to the publisher each time the game is traded in perpetuity," Luzio added.

Green Man Gaming is expected to launch with 400 titles by the end of March 2010 and have over 2000 games available by the end of the year. Keep your eyes on greenmangaming.com [http://www.greenmangaming.com/] (currently just a little green man placeholder) for more information.


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[Baby Tea]

Wow, that's a pretty slick idea.
And with royalties going to developers/publishers, then I can't see too much of a backlash with this.
Seems like only good thing for everyone involved.
Now, let's see if it works out.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

We'll see if this works!

Hope it does.

 

[Cherry Cola]

I'm glad over these news. Selling my games plays a very important role in how many new games I can afford, so if the market goes digital, it's good that my ability to sell games does too.

 

[Souplex]

No! We need to stop digital distribution, not feed it!

 

[CAW4]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but...where are they going to be making money? With royalties to publishers and so many other choices for digital distrubution, I can't see them turning a profit.
(Sorry if the spelling sucks, my school's internet doesn't have spell check)

 

[fix-the-spade]

Trade digital game and pay of the publishers? By Jove! I think he's onto something!


It will be interesting to see if there's any cease and decist order backlash, with no physical disc to trade it would be pretty easy for publishers to argue this as piracy by another name.

 

[oliveira8]

Wow...

Any chance this will work with Steam games? I see potential for profit by buying games at a ridiculously low prices during crazy Steam sales and then turning them in to Green Man...

Doubt it. Steam games are welded to the account. I bet it will work in things like D2D, don't see it through Steam. Though wouldn't that be a scam? Buying the game on sale and reselling it for double the price/whatever?

 

[Yog Sothoth]

I've actually been waiting for this... In fact, I anticipated that Steam would be the first to do it, since they already have the functionality to gift games to friends. I figured that allowing people to trade games is just one step away from that...

I will definitely be checking out GreenMan.com when it launches...

 

[Outlaw Torn]

I imagine they will probably make money through subscriptions, advertising or just a small cut of the sales.

I'm more interested in figuring out how they are actually going to sell games.

 

[Doktor Merkwurdigliebe]

I see a flaw in their plan. This won't work with PC gaming, as you still need the cd-key to play the game aaaaaand I have yet to see a cd-key in a preowned game I had bought(most of my non-steam games are pre-owned).

Of course Internet Is Your Friend, but then you might as well forget about multiplayer.

 

[uppitycracker]

It's a shame that Steam is the only service that'll see my money, because reselling my games would be quite nice.

 

[scnj]

This is a good idea in theory. Might not work out, but I'll be interested to see if it goes anywhere.

 

[SharedProphet]

Unlike conventional used game sales, GMG also promises that publishers will see "substantial remuneration" from its used sales. "We will pay significant royalties to the publisher each time the game is traded in perpetuity," Luzio added.

Sounded awesome up to that point. I hope it doesn't catch on, or the game industry gets a good new incentive to intentionally make games we don't want to keep...

 

[Swaki]

no idea on how it works, but i have a 20-30 steam games i havent played in awhile (1+ year), if i could get like 2-3 new games out of it that would be sweet.

 

[IlikeLolis]

Wait, so if I'm reading this right we're now able to sell game files that are on our hard-drive at a used price which the company will sell to other people?

With Digital Distribution you don't get scratched disks or glitched hardware (Hopefully) so essentially wouldn't buying a "used" copy of a digital game be either copy-pasta of the old users files, or just a fresh version of a game with the label used?

This brings another question...Do they even have to wait for someone to Trade-In an old game before they sell games as "Used"?

This all goes with the assumption that they will also Sell used games while buying them, otherwise how do they make a profit?

 

[Arbitrary Cidin]

Hmmm... suppose people try to sell pirated games to GMG, how is that going to be dealt with? Actually, if people do this, doesn't that mean that piracy will begin to benefit producers?