Used Game Sales are a "Bigger Problem Than Piracy"

[acosn]

Okay, I know the price point argument isn't legitimate against piracy, but here, I have to wonder if this isn't an indicator that games are being priced too damn high.

priced too high? No. There's such thing as 50$ and 60$ games. Very few mind you, but they're out there.


The problem is that companies think themselves arbiters of game price.

Yeah, buh, what?

I'm guessing that's not US$ (and I apologize that that's what I immediately think of when I see a $). In the states the standard price points are $50 for PC and $60 for 360/PS3. With $10 shaved off on some budget titles at launch.

No, that's the US. Maybe I didn't explain everything properly but 50-60$ for a game is like giving it a 9 or 10 out 10 for me- in about 14 years of gaming (I'm 20, mind you) I'd give maybe 4 games that distinction. Just a point of reference.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Pardon me while I get out the world's smallest violin.
The douche said it himself, games are expensive. So you think a possible solution could be lowering game prices maybe? Ya think?

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I've only read the first 5 pages so I may be repeating a previous poster with this:

I buy some games near release, thus paying a LOT for them, I but some used, thus saving a bit and I buy most when they get a cheap release after some time. So There's that. The reason I buy some games new at release is not, in fact, to support the industry, but because I want the game. The reason I hold out for most games is that I don't feel like paying through my nose to get the game.

My role as a consumer is not to be responsible for supporting the industry. My role as a consumer is to acquire the goods that I want for a cheap a price as possible. That's basic market dynamics as far as I'm concerned. As a consumer it's not my business if the industry miss out on money. It's not my job to support them.

I think they got in wrong or upside down somehow. Consumers shouldn't care how they get the goods as long as it's legal. If the industry find used games a harsh competitor they better do something to win back consumers. In a free market there is no such thing as moaning about competitors. You out compete them or suffer. And EA seems to be trying to do something about it with the 10$ thing. That's perfectly good. Now it's up to the consumer to decide if the added valuer to the new product is enough to shift the sale. That's as it should be.

I also often buy used books. Not because I hate book publishers or authors but because it's cheaper. Same goes for some of my clothes and if I had a car it would likely be a used one.

I think there is a strange reverence for the games industry among fans and other people in the field. I must repeat: as consumers we are not responsible for a corporations bottom line. We are responsible for our own.

This isn't Soviet Russia for crying out loud. Do or die in the free market.

(I'm a communist by the way. )

 

[Contextualizer]

My role as a consumer is not to be responsible for supporting the industry. My role as a consumer is to acquire the goods that I want for a cheap a price as possible. That's basic market dynamics as far as I'm concerned. As a consumer it's not my business if the industry miss out on money. It's not my job to support them.

Then why are you so upset that the industry's bottom line is to make more money?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Sigh...similar trends occur in other industries too.
If I need a special tool, I can ask to borrow it from a number of people.
Somehow, this practice hasn't put the tool manufacturers out of business.

It sounds more like the publishers are bitching because they didn't wring any more obscene profits out of their titles.

 

[(LK)]

I feel like I'm losing my mind here. How in the holy fucking hell can anyone be staunchly anti-piracy but support the used game market?

What if retailers found some legal loophole to sell pirated copies? Would you be slobbing retailer knob then?

It's fairly easy actually, given that selling entertainment media used is a practice that was directly challenged by the content industry, whose challenge was denied so firmly (by U.S. courts at least) that such resale became a legally enshrined consumer right (known as the First Sale Doctrine).

Basically it's as easy as being pro-consumer and believing in the rule of law.

tl;dr- you're using a mixture of strawman fallacy and reductio ad absurdum

 

[mightybozz]

On what basis does this guy claim that videogames are to be defended from used sales in comparison to other products? Do book publishers ever complain about second-hand bookshops "stealing" profits from them? No they don't. A consumer buys a product, they then have the right to sell the product if they so wish. Making illegal copies of the product and then distributing it is a civil offence, but selling your own original copy is not.

Incidentally, here is a list of games I, as a teenager earning minimum wage, picked up second-hand and consequently, not experienced the skills of the relevant developers without the second-hand market: Prince of Persia SoT and WW; Second Sight, TS2, Warioware, Metroid Prime, Left 4 Dead, Mario Sunshine...the list goes on and on.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

My role as a consumer is not to be responsible for supporting the industry. My role as a consumer is to acquire the goods that I want for a cheap a price as possible. That's basic market dynamics as far as I'm concerned. As a consumer it's not my business if the industry miss out on money. It's not my job to support them.

Hey look, yet another argument used to support the supporting of massive cancerous retail chains that also supports piracy.

Seriously, if thats how you feel, just pirate everything.

My mind is melting and dribbling out my ears.

Yes, that would be the right move; to start pirating because I act as a consumer and try to save money where possible.

I don't buy games in retail chains as they tend to be way overpriced. For all I care Gamestop can die a fiery death.

My point is, just to repeat it: in a free market any industry must be responsible for selling their products. If the price is too high for me, then that's too bad. I can sympathise, but that does not change the fact that it's a completely valid move to wait buying the game till it's cheaper. I fail to see how acting as an informed consumer and making choices as to purchases is the same as piracy? Surely you don't expect me to buy every game ever released just to support the industry?

An example: why would I pay 60? for a console game on release when I can
a)wait for the price to drop, a perfectly alright thing to do.
b)don't buy it altogether, I often do that.
c)get it at half price online, I do that a lot.
d)buy it used at a later date. I seldom do the used games thing but it's a valid option.

I mostly buy online, thus saving about 20-30? per game. That's my choice as a consumer. I might add that as a fan, I want to support the industry, but that comes second to my role as a consumer. I think that's an important distinction that a lot of people, including the industry, need to have in mind.

 

[wtrmute]

You do know that used games cars give absolutely NO money back to the developers automakers so they can't make more games cars and make them better using better technology. It's because of people like you why most developers automakers just do what they're required to do and not create anything new. Probably why games cars like Madden Corolla, Guitar Hero Civic and CoD Ram are put out at least once a year. Buying used games cars is also why alot of publishers dealerships put a price other than "free" on DLC A/C because you're not giving money to where it really needs to go. If you can't pay $50K-60K a game car, stop buying games cars used, because like I said before, you have more pressing matters that need attention, like managing your budget well and not like a idiot.

There, fixed it for ya. ;-P

 

[veloper]

So more people in the industry have come to realize that reducing used sales, would make them alot more money than trying to combat piracy.

There's no arguing with that. It's true. Just the methods may not be nice.

 

[wtrmute]

Law is irrelevant. Piracy is illegal because it can't be defended by anyone, as no one profits from it, and if they do, they have no legal grounds which to defend themselves.

Retail chains buying and selling used copies is legal because retail chains have the money for lobbyists and legal defense if they ever come under fire from publishers. Which has happened. Publishers always lose these legal battles because they're essentially fighting cornered animals. If publishers ever start pushing for laws that required retail chains to pay royalties on all works, retail would lose extensive amounts of profit, motivating them to go, literally, all out in fighting this law. While content creators must think in terms of balancing the cost of the extensive legal battle versus the potential gains.

No, pirating is ILLEGAL because there is a LAW against it. I(N) + LEGAL = ILLEGAL, that is to say, not legal. I think the word you're looking for is IMMORAL, which is something that is against good customs and reprehensible, irrespective of whether there is a law against it or not.

 

[Xanthious]

My role as a consumer is not to be responsible for supporting the industry. My role as a consumer is to acquire the goods that I want for a cheap a price as possible. That's basic market dynamics as far as I'm concerned. As a consumer it's not my business if the industry miss out on money. It's not my job to support them.

Hey look, yet another argument used to support the supporting of massive cancerous retail chains that also supports piracy.

Seriously, if thats how you feel, just pirate everything.

My mind is melting and dribbling out my ears.

COMPETITION IN THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY IS ATTEMPTING TO MAKE A BETTER GAME THAN THE COMPETITION! RETAIL CHAINS LEECHING CAPITAL FROM PUBLISHERS/DEVELOPERS IS NOT COMPETITION! IT IS SUBVERSION! THE FUNCTION OF RETAIL IS DISTRIBUTION! BUT THEY ARE NOW MAKING EXTENSIVE PROFITS FROM REDISTRIBUTING WORKS THEY PLAYED NO PART IN CREATING OR SUPPORTING!!

Please tell me what in the blue hell is so special about the video game industry that you believe that they shouldn't be held to the same standards we hold every other manufacturer of retail goods to? Ya know how we get secondhand games? Yeah someone buys them to begin with. Why do the video game makers deserve to be paid twice for the same product? Why shouldn't people be allowed to sell something they have legally bought and paid for?

Furthermore sunshine, if you are so damned worried about the people that made a certain item getting paid for each and every transaction that their item is involved in feel free to break them off a check next time you sell something on Craigslist or sell something on Ebay.

 

[(LK)]

I feel like I'm losing my mind here. How in the holy fucking hell can anyone be staunchly anti-piracy but support the used game market?

What if retailers found some legal loophole to sell pirated copies? Would you be slobbing retailer knob then?

It's fairly easy actually, given that selling entertainment media used is a practice that was directly challenged by the content industry, whose challenge was denied so firmly (by U.S. courts at least) that such resale became a legally enshrined consumer right (known as the First Sale Doctrine).

Basically it's as easy as being pro-consumer and believing in the rule of law.

Law is irrelevant. Piracy is illegal because it can't be defended by anyone, as no one profits from it, and if they do, they have no legal grounds which to defend themselves.

Retail chains buying and selling used copies is legal because retail chains have the money for lobbyists and legal defense if they ever come under fire from publishers. Which has happened. Publishers always lose these legal battles because they're essentially fighting cornered animals. If publishers ever start pushing for laws that required retail chains to pay royalties on all works, retail would lose extensive amounts of profit, motivating them to go, literally, all out in fighting this law. While content creators must think in terms of balancing the cost of the extensive legal battle versus the potential gains.

In this same topic you've simultaneously defended and decried the results of (limited) Laissez-faire economics, depending on which action currently supports your given isolated point. Publishers gaming consumers for max profit is heroic, consumers gaming the market in legally protected means for max benefit is... via reductio ad absurdum, presented by you as being piracy.

Also you almost seem to be suggesting that piracy is only illegal because nobody defends it? Would it be legal if someone went to court and tried? Can you more calmy clarify this objection?

Publishers are currently saying, basically, they would like to place duress on consumers by limiting their free-market choices to raise their income, as opposed to generating demand by their own work and actions. Rather than earn increased demand they want to force consumers to have less choices so maybe they'll pick one that is more profitable to publishers. Skewing the dynamics of an entire, mature market to make it favor you is not an ethically or legally defensible action. It is sheer cutthroat, cutpurse exploitation. Your point seems to be that using the market to exploit the customer is laudable business, but customers aren't allowed to exploit the market and it should be a crime to do so.

I'm honestly not sure why you would, in the same breath, express sentiments that decry the power wielded by corporations and lobby groups... and then go on to defend a point of view that would have a system created where it is viewed as outright immoral for people without purchasing and lobbying power to simply use the powers already afforded by them by the market. It's wrong for customers to game the same system that's used to game them?

Incidentally this is a very tame, very minimal microcosm of the kind of market practices that turned New England against British colonial rule in the first place. Trying to make a market where customers had no choice but to buy things from one oligopoly with the power to dictate prices as they see fit.

Publishers don't currently wield that kind of power, and it is precisely because many nations, like the US in 1908, determined that a publisher does not have the right to determine the prices legal copies or sold at, or whether they may be resold. Without that consumer right the distribution of games becomes a market where publishers are the one and only notable power, because nobody else has the right to influence the factors of the market: price and supply.

If you detest retail corporations so much you're really not going to like a system where publishers are the one and only power in the market and the politics, either.

 

[bigolbear]

I hear what he's saying, and it sounds like "Boo-hoo we need more money; my beemers nearly a year old and I haven't been on holiday in months". Listen closely, and you'll hear the sound of an entire planet not giving a shit. What kind of drooling, gibbering eyebleedingly bedwettingly imbecilic imbred halfwit do you have to be to look at a figure that says games get traded up to four times, and deduce you're only getting a quarter of potential sales? People that trade in the games do so so they can afford the new ones, and people like me make do with trade-ins because we don't have a budget equal to your greed. The sooner you and your bleating industry is drowned by the online micro-transaction system the better off gaming will be. Fuck you very much.

 

[Xanthious]

Why do retailers deserve to be paid twice for the same product?

They aren't being paid twice. They are being paid once per game they have legally bought. Some they buy from distributors and some they buy from individual people. Each time they are only being paid once. While they might be making a tidy profit off used games nothing they are doing is any worse than what's being done in the auto industry, furniture industry, etc.
What is it about the video game industry that you think they should get special treatment over these people? Or do you not think people should be allowed to resell something they legally purchase?

 

[TheXRatedDodo]

Bottom line is, the entertainment industry always wants something to use as a fucking scapegoat.
Piracy, now used game sales. Either way the consumer gets fucked in the ass by having their choices limited because of pure, honest greed.

They as good as said "We've sold one copy of the game, but that's not good enough for it, we want money for another 3 sales of the same product!"

If I sell a chair, the carpenter is not banging on my door saying "I want a portion of the money from this sale" or proclaiming that it has to have one leg sawn off so that the person buying used is at a disadvantage (thus being forced to buy a new copy at a higher price.)
That's not how business WORKS.

Pure fucking greed, utterly insidious.