JDKJ said:
Huh? If we assume that the buyer to whom you resold the game would have to and was willing to buy it new if a second-hand market didn't exist, then of course the publisher has lost a sale.
The assumption is wrong. If someone would've bought it new, they probably will do so. Why do people buy games in the second-hand market? I'd wager mostly because of the price.
$/?60 for a new game is really expensive, and I certainly don't pay this much (with a few exceptions). If I want to play a game I'll usually wait a bit and then buy it second-hand from someone who already tired of it, so I get it for ?30 max.
The only way I'd buy it new is if it is less expensive to start, or is on discount already. So in my case they haven't lost a sale since I would never have bought it for the price the publisher demands anyway -- instead they have the ?60 from the initial purchaser, who played it for a while and then resold it for ?30 to me. The end effect for the publisher is that they still sold one unit and one unit is being used, and for both me and the original purchaser there is effectively half the cost while we still both got to play.
Online Passes mess up this entire system just because the publisher feels entitled to extort more money from me just because I did not buy the game directly from them, but instead use something they've already been paid for in full.