"Renting"

[rankfx]

I've had this topic on my mind for a while now...

I'm from Australia, so I don't know if other people here are in the same position, local game stores (a big, international chain) have a policy where if you aren't satisfied with a game during seven days you can return it and be refunded fully.

I do use this as I figure it's intended to be used: to buy games I otherwise wouldn't without risk, hopefully finding a "keeper". But me and my friends occasionally buy games that we don't intend to keep. Sometimes we buy games to finish them, knowing that we can trade the games in against something else once we're done, essentially playing a game for free.

The implication of this is that the game can now only be sold as "second hand." My question isn't whether Escapist users believe this to be wrong: I know this is wrong. I don't care about the money grabbing, middle-men stores. They lose money and I know it: I don't care. But is this hurting developers? As a musician, I know the feeling of just wanting to get something out there regardless of proceeds- do game developers feel the same way? If a billion people played your game but you only got paid for a hundred copies, would you be happy or sad?

Does anyone else here do anything similar? Do you believe this is wrong or right?

 

[ProfessorLayton]

It is wrong. You're abusing the store letting you return a used game. The only time I ever return my games is if there is a game breaking problem that wasn't my fault. Not if I don't like the game, not if I can get my money back for them. Do you know how easy it is for GameStop to just say "Alright, any game you buy you have to keep; broken or not"? And when people keep doing stuff like this, it can lead them to do something like that. Even when you rent games you have to pay a small fee for them.

And music and video games are very different. A game costs millions of dollars to make (most of the time) and has to be put together by a huge company and spend all that money on distributing it... there is no "getting it out there" because the fact that it's actually in stores should be good enough. Bands, on the other hand, can be made by four kids who happen to have some instruments, microphones, and Audacity on their computer. Blank CDs are cheap, so they can spend 10 bucks on a 100 pack of blank CDs and give them out for free to spread the word and get people to come to their shows, especially when they're a newer band.