This whole thing is obnoxious, but first let me establish my position:
Used games are a necessary piece of the gaming economy.
Why? Several reasons:
1. Brick-and-Mortar.
While they are sliding towards obsolescence, dedicated games retailers like Gamestop are still a fairly damned important factor in the sale of video games, video game systems, accessories, etc. And the margins for the sale of such things are RAZOR thin for the retailers. Most of the profit is hogged by the publishers, and then a share is given to the developers, and the scraps are given to the retailers. In order to maintain a store that can dedicate itself to the sale of a vast array of games not easily found elsewhere, the store would either A) have to inflate the price to receive a higher margin, B) manage to sell out of almost all stock every month. The developers/publishers have offered no alternative to this arrangement, and as such the retailers come up with a more innovative, completely legal avenue of profit: used game sales. Had the publishers considered finding a better way to distribute the wealth, they would not now be reaping the fruits they'd sewn. If you want a store that contains a fair volume of hard-to-find games, then you need to understand that that store needs its profits from somewhere.
2. Out-of-Print
Not all good games sell well. Not all good games stay in print forever, be it for legal purposes or simply age. If you want to find King's Field, or Stella Deus, or God Hand, or even Dark Cloud 2, you'll likely have to resort to getting it used, because the publishers are unlikely to reprint a few extra copies because of your demands. And bear in mind: used game sales don't exist soley in your local Gamestop, whatever you may think of them or their employeess: it exists in any scenario where a person who just doesn't play that game anymore and finds it wasteful to just throw the disk away might want to sell it to someone who does.
3. Profit!
You know what, let's be straight here: not everyone is convinced of a game's mandate of heaven simply by virtue of it's awesome advertising campaign and the fact that there's a roman numeral attached to the end. And those ten-minute demos, as it turns out, do not necessarily give a person a feel for how the game is going to be. Look at Arkham Asylum's combat simulator which toltally left out, you know, BEING BATMAN. Or how Brutal Legend lead everyone to believe they were playing a heavy-metal beat-em-up, and not Tim Schaefer's madcap fever dream of what an RTS is. In these cases, a used game is a good way to dip one's toes in the water without subsequently drowning.
Consider this, now: how many people who play Call of Duty now played since the first one? Not very many, I'd imagine. And how much of this terrifyingly large playerbase is made up of people who's first Call of Duty was a new copy? Probably a larger number, but I'm betting again not a staggering volume. But how many of these people will be queueing up in line to play this game on release day? Probably a very dazzling number(the ones who aren't relying on getting it for christmas, that is). All in all, a net gain for a developer, especially since many of their loyal players might not have tried at all if it weren't for their test swim through the dreaded waters of Online FPS?
Ultimately, I understand why developers are desperate to make more copies sell, but criminalizing their potential fans by restricting their access until they give immediate pay where it's due is short-sighted at best and an invitation to go to the competitors at worst.
Used games are a necessary piece of the gaming economy.
Why? Several reasons:
1. Brick-and-Mortar.
While they are sliding towards obsolescence, dedicated games retailers like Gamestop are still a fairly damned important factor in the sale of video games, video game systems, accessories, etc. And the margins for the sale of such things are RAZOR thin for the retailers. Most of the profit is hogged by the publishers, and then a share is given to the developers, and the scraps are given to the retailers. In order to maintain a store that can dedicate itself to the sale of a vast array of games not easily found elsewhere, the store would either A) have to inflate the price to receive a higher margin, B) manage to sell out of almost all stock every month. The developers/publishers have offered no alternative to this arrangement, and as such the retailers come up with a more innovative, completely legal avenue of profit: used game sales. Had the publishers considered finding a better way to distribute the wealth, they would not now be reaping the fruits they'd sewn. If you want a store that contains a fair volume of hard-to-find games, then you need to understand that that store needs its profits from somewhere.
2. Out-of-Print
Not all good games sell well. Not all good games stay in print forever, be it for legal purposes or simply age. If you want to find King's Field, or Stella Deus, or God Hand, or even Dark Cloud 2, you'll likely have to resort to getting it used, because the publishers are unlikely to reprint a few extra copies because of your demands. And bear in mind: used game sales don't exist soley in your local Gamestop, whatever you may think of them or their employeess: it exists in any scenario where a person who just doesn't play that game anymore and finds it wasteful to just throw the disk away might want to sell it to someone who does.
3. Profit!
You know what, let's be straight here: not everyone is convinced of a game's mandate of heaven simply by virtue of it's awesome advertising campaign and the fact that there's a roman numeral attached to the end. And those ten-minute demos, as it turns out, do not necessarily give a person a feel for how the game is going to be. Look at Arkham Asylum's combat simulator which toltally left out, you know, BEING BATMAN. Or how Brutal Legend lead everyone to believe they were playing a heavy-metal beat-em-up, and not Tim Schaefer's madcap fever dream of what an RTS is. In these cases, a used game is a good way to dip one's toes in the water without subsequently drowning.
Consider this, now: how many people who play Call of Duty now played since the first one? Not very many, I'd imagine. And how much of this terrifyingly large playerbase is made up of people who's first Call of Duty was a new copy? Probably a larger number, but I'm betting again not a staggering volume. But how many of these people will be queueing up in line to play this game on release day? Probably a very dazzling number(the ones who aren't relying on getting it for christmas, that is). All in all, a net gain for a developer, especially since many of their loyal players might not have tried at all if it weren't for their test swim through the dreaded waters of Online FPS?
Ultimately, I understand why developers are desperate to make more copies sell, but criminalizing their potential fans by restricting their access until they give immediate pay where it's due is short-sighted at best and an invitation to go to the competitors at worst.