Used games

[badgersprite]

Snip.

Your telling me, you shouldn't pay people to entertain, keep support, and everything functioning for you because they are some greedy organization?

When you buy a house from somebody, who do you pay for it? Do you pay the people who live in the house and who sold it to you or the people who originally built the house in the first place? The people you're buying the house from didn't do anything to create the house or design it or provide you with the warmth and shelter that exists, did they? But you pay them because they're the ones who own that property. They're the ones who are selling it to you. You don't pay someone who built the house twice for the same object.

Ownership, property and the ability to re-sell things we have purchased is fundamental to our economy. It seriously baffles me that so many people are so keen to argue against one of the most basic property rights capitalism affords to us.

If the game is an online game then the people who run the game are still paying for you to play it, In your given scenario that would be like the people you bought the house of paying for your gas and heating bill. Is that fair ?

That doesn't explain why I should have to pay them for the disc. The copy of the game I'm playing has already been purchased and paid for. It has been transferred from one person to another. The online service they're providing? I agree that they are completely entitled to charge for that service. And, if it's an online game, you usually do have to pay to use the service. I have to pay to use Xbox Live, so if I'm accessing a used game online, I am paying for them to keep it going. If I'm playing an MMO, I usually do have to pay to use it. If the game company sets it up so you don't pay for using the online component, that's their choice.

In other words, to use the house analogy, when I buy a house from someone, do I pay the people who originally built it? No, I pay the people who sold it to me. If the people who originally built the house provide a service of gas and electricity bills, do I still pay them full price for the house? No. I don't. I pay for that service they provide. They still don't own the house - they sold it to new owners.

So you haven't explained to me how the service necessitates paying twice for a single copy of the game.

 

[Rednog]

I always find it funny that when threads about controversial topics pop up and there's a video(s) which is the crux of the topic...no one watches them. People just barge in and are willing to write essays on their stance, and the sad part is that it just ends up being a "crank that tired old argument machine" over and over and hope your point somehow becomes validated through repetition.
Same old comparison to other media, cars, etc. Same old arguing about old games which have no new copies. There gets to be a point where people need to just start slapping this nonsense down. The same old flawed arguments really need to get stamped out.

That said, I tend to agree with Total Biscuit, the practice of a lot of these used game retailers really is a vulturistic model and no matter how much people kick and scream in their defense the manner in which they conduct business is going to drive them into the ground.

 

[Rickin10]

The thing that I never see mentioned is how the used game market actually sells new games. I ask you, how many games do you buy brand new (particularly pre-releases with no idea of how good they are because of review embargos) precisely because you know you can trade them in?

Last year I was really excited for 3 games. How many did I buy? Answer: 12! The other 9 games I either wasn't sure whether I'd enjoy them, knew I probably would but also knew that they had an insultingly short 5 hourish campaign, or was something that I knew had no replay value. But I bought them, not because I desperately wanted to play them, but because I could try them, or finish them and still get something back. If these draconian used-games controls were in effect then, I would only have purchased 3 games. That's 75% of my money The poor publishers/developers wouldn't have seen.

Microsoft and Sony should think very carefully. Even if they, against the odds, actually do sell a lot of consoles, people are going to be much more circumspect with their purchases, and they may end up making less in the long run.

 

[badgersprite]

Can someone tell me a good reason why the developer or anyone should earn from second hand sales?
Every other industry has second hand sales, so what's so different about games?

Not in every industry, only in the ones that sell physical products. Information is not a product, it's an abstract concept with no real scarcity, but potentially infinite access for everyone.


When you download a game, you are not getting "a copy", you are getting the permission to create a copy.

We might give it a certain artificial scarcity to give some distribution monopolies to the publisher, but why these monopolies should be granted in a way to semi-accurately mimick physical property, is not self-evident.

That's not how Europe works. If I buy something, it's mine, including licences.
So whether I got a copy of the game, or a licence to use the game, i'm allowed to sell it. And information is a product, just not a physical. Everything you sell is a product or a service. Since games are obviously not a service, it's a product.

You were asking for reasons why second hand sales SHOULD be controlled. Not legal statements for why it IS conrolled.

Europe can declare information to be a sellable product, and that won't make it so any more than if they would declare "faith in humanity" to be a sellable product, or the wetness of the ocean to be a separately sellable content, or fire on the top of a torch to be the property of the torch's holder, that they can move to another one's torch exactly once.

Information is different from property. Fundamentally. In it's very nature, it's something else. Products are defined by being physical.

When you have a milkshake, you can point at something and say "this is the milkshake".

When you have a story, there is nothing to point at, because "the story" doesn't even equal any of the copies that are made about it, but the very act of ideas and knowledge getting arranged in a particular pattern.

Intellectual property is different from the form the property is contained in, though.

If I buy a book, I have absolutely no ownership over the words within that book, and that is completely fair and how it should be. I have no ownership over that story. Can I still give that book to a friend for free? Yes. I absolutely can, because I own that book. I can absolutely sell that book and the information contained within. I cannot take that information out of the book and create a copy by myself and then sell that copy because that infringes copyright laws.

Why should games be any different?

If I have a disc with game information on it, that's no different from a book. The information the disc allows you to access is contained within that disc. It physically exists within that copy. That data is completely real. I can point at that disc or point at the file on my hard-drive and say, "This is the game." So why are games any different from a book?

I am totally within my rights to sell a copy of a game that I possess to someone else. I am not creating any additional copies of that game. I am not depriving the game company of a sale. I am simply disposing of my purchase to someone else. I no longer have any ownership of the game. I no longer have a copy. I have given my license to that service to someone else while depriving myself of the ability to play that game. Nothing has been lost to the game company.

Seriously, do you have to pay the author of a book every time you borrow a book from a library and read it? No, you don't, because that would be totally asinine and stupid. Intellectual property doesn't trump actual property rights.

A physical book is just that. It doesn't have to be supported by publisher once it leaves the shelf. Is there a typo? Can't fix that. There are no recalls. You see what you get. A game is not a physical entity per say. You can't tell what is in a game by looking at the disk. It has to be supported. Does it have multiplayer? The developers have to support servers too. It is a product and a service rolled into one.

But you can still pay for that service separately. In a lot of online games, you do pay for server support and the like. You still have to subscribe to use that game and access those servers. So the new owner does pay the companies in those cases.

Besides, if someone transfers a copy of a game to me, they have given up their right to access those services. They revoked their license to access those services and transferred it to me. If the game involves a subscription fee, I now pay that fee. If it doesn't require a subscription fee, then they haven't lost any money, because they weren't charging the original person either. The game companies are not providing an additional service to a new person who they were not providing those services to before. They are providing those services to the exact same number of people. Nothing has been lost.

Additionally, a whole ton of games aren't online or have no real need to be supported online. A lot of people never hook their consoles up to the internet. They never take advantage of those services. Should they still have to pay the game company for a used game?

 

[jnixon]

I think it's more upsetting than frustrating that people can get continuously slapped in the face by publishers with practices like online passes which are obviously not for stopping used games but for making money where were they during the first xbox? pretty sure there were used games and xbox live on that console too? and then come back for more time and again. No it's not ok for companies to announce on disk DLC months ahead of time, no it's not ok to charge me for things on the disc i bought (brand new) already and no this shouldn't continue. But well as we all know gamers will come back time and again because they don't care about being treated unfairly

 

[Entitled]

Seriously, do you have to pay the author of a book every time you borrow a book from a library and read it? No, you don't, because that would be totally asinine and stupid. Intellectual property doesn't trump actual property rights.

If you own a book as your supposed "property", you can't just stick it into your photocopier that is also your own property, and use it to produce more property.

IP is trumping actual property rights all the friggin' time.

If you own a café as our propety, and you have a CD player as your own property, you can't just stick your musc disc into it so all your customers can listen to the songs that you own, because that counts as a performance, and the RIAA would jail your ass for it.

Intellectual property is not "a type of property", it's a monopoly. At it's very core, It means not that artists get to keep their belongings, but that artists (or more realistically, publishers) receive extra authority over controlling what other people are allowed to do with "their information". How to copy it, how to sell it, how to perform it, how to parody or imitate it, etc. In other words, to limit what they are allowed to do with their own body, and their physical property.

The only reason why physical books were allowed to be re-sold to begin with, is because it was uncontrollable anyways, and as a matter of tradition, publishers stopped laying claim to it.

But there is no fundamental, self-evident truth in what IP rights are supposed to be about. They are just a bunch of regulations. Positive rights, like the right to education, or to health care.

There is no solid objective reason why copyright needs to extend exactly as far as it does right now, limiting a number of property rights, but not others. It could be a lot less strict, banning what is now Fair Use, and Used Sales, and Public Domain, but it also could be a lot more liberal, lasting 15 years, or legalizing all non-commercial file-sharing, or the right to publish fanfiction, or whatever.

It's depending entirely on exactly how much monopolies society deemed necessary for industrial progress.

 

[omega 616]

Why has this become a thing on this forum, TB makes a video then somebody makes a thread, embeds the vid then says "waddya think?" ... It's like TB has just become the shit in gaming journalism. Just curious is all.

I will say here what I said on that video.

"Probably going to get a lot of hate for this but oh wells.

How is devs and publishers money troubles my problem? Thousands of stores across the world have closed down for whatever reason, should I have shopped there to try to keep them open? No 'cos how could I afford that, I'm no billionaire.

I can't afford to look out for other people, I'll work on my money problems and let everybody else deal with theres."

Is it a selfish stance, yes but it's not like the publishers are doing it out of the goodness of there hearts, they are in it to make money.

That's not to say I exclusively buy second hand, just looking at my pile of PS3 games ... half are brand new buys, new smell and all.

 

[badgersprite]

Can someone tell me a good reason why the developer or anyone should earn from second hand sales?
Every other industry has second hand sales, so what's so different about games? What makes developer/publisher entitled to the money of the second sale? They sold the product, it's not theirs anymore. They aren't entitled to more money from that sale.

It's rather depressing how the big publisher managed to brainwash such a huge part of the consumer base to stop looking out for themselves and look out for the weak and poor publisher. Anyone who is against second hand sales is nothing but brainwashed.
The publisher are a business, not a charity organization. You DON'T need to look out for them. They look out for themselves. However, you need to care about yourself because the publisher certainly won't. They will milk you as much as they can and once they are done, they will trow you away. And believing their bullshit PR and fake numbers is just naive.

Your telling me, you shouldn't pay people to entertain, keep support, and everything functioning for you because they are some greedy organization?

Can you point out where I said you shouldn't pay them?
I said they aren't entitled the the money from second hand sales. That means, they already got payed. They won't get payed twice for one service/product. If you want to support them, but new, however, don't force other or try to make other look bad for using one of their basic rights as consumer.
If I buy something, I own it. No one has the right to tell me whether I can resell it, or even worse, take a cut from my sale. Once the initial transaction is complete, the publisher has absolutely no right to interfere with my product in anyway unless I want them to do so. And I certainly don't want them to interfere with me reselling the game.

Your telling me, you shouldn't pay people to make new cars, keep support and everything functioning for you because they are some greedy organization?
Now insert pretty much anything instead of "cars". I don't see the furniture industry complaining about second hand sales.

They are undercutting new game sales, for a matter of $1-$2. So instead of selling 2 or 3 games, they are selling 1 game to 2-3 people for that $1-$2 the customer saves, the publisher loses $8-$10. That adds up over thousands of sales. It is not economically helpful to anyone. Game develop lose money on projects and things that would be beneficial to players. Games would be cheaper. If you clearly don't see this, then there is something wrong.

So, if you're a company that makes teddy bears, and I buy a teddy bear from you, I shouldn't be allowed to give that bear as a gift to someone else when I no longer want to use it. You sold one teddy bear, and it ended up being given to two different people. If I had forced that other person to buy a second teddy bear from you, you certainly would have gotten more money. That money could have gone back into the creation of new teddy bears. Me giving my old teddy bear as a gift to another person hasn't done anything to help the toy creation industry. That money will never go into the creation of new teddy bears.

Why do you only care about people losing money because of property transfers when it's a game? If the industry is losing so much money, then they have a terrible model and they need to do something to change it. If they are not supporting an economically viable system, guess what, capitalism is going to punish them for it. Don't blame consumers for the fact that publishers are stuck to a business model that isn't the most profitable. Instead of punishing consumers for making economically rational decisions and exercising their inherent property rights, publishers should reassess their business model and try and find new ways to be profitable.

Or, again, like I said, you could accept the fact that transferring property to other people is one of the most basic and fundamental rights that's afforded to us, and accept the fact that once you sell a copy of a game that owner can sell it.

You don't get mad that you can sell or buy anything else used. Games are not unique or special. They follow the same rules. Arguing that they should be exempt is fundamentally undermining your own legal rights, and you should think about that.

 

[frizzlebyte]

If it weren't for used and pay-what-you-want deals, I'd have a lot fewer games, so on the whole, I think used is great. But I also think that the pubs and devs should get a cut of the used sales (I'm apparently one of the few who thinks so, based on the furor over the XBOne's rumoured plans in this area).

 

[razer17]

Used games hurt the industry quite a bit, If you go into a store they try and push the used games.

I can't see this being a big issue after all most of my games will be digital downloads ( If rumors are to be believed) So hopefully it will be a lot cheaper than current prices. But if that is not the case I can see me having less games but not really being that bothered by it, The only time I buy used games is when I am not sure if I will like it or not but there are always other ways to find out if I might like it or not.

seems unlikely. If the consoles start going mainly digital they'll have a captive market, which means they can increase the prices. Hell, just look at the price of full retail games on the PSN or XBL, way above shop value.

OT: I like used games. I feel that I should have the right to sell my games just as I can sell my Xbox, TV or whatever else. Also, with the amount that brick and mortar stores are losing money, we need them to be able to sell used games, or we will very quickly end up with the brick and mortars going out of business, which will be bad for us consumers, and also bad for the industry.

Also, a lack of used games will decrease console sales, possibly driving people over to PC, where pre-owned has never been an issue.

On the other hand, I don't disagree that it may be somewhat bad for the industry. In the end of the day, when you buy pre-owned the pubs and devs get nothing. But how many extra sales would there be if pre-owned wasn't an option? I would hazard a guess that the increase wouldn't be as significant as the publishers might hope.

 

[badgersprite]

Seriously, do you have to pay the author of a book every time you borrow a book from a library and read it? No, you don't, because that would be totally asinine and stupid. Intellectual property doesn't trump actual property rights.

If you own a book as your supposed "property", you can't just stick it into your photocopier that is also your own property, and use it to produce more property.

But that's what I'm saying. You can't do that because it does infringe copyright laws. You shouldn't be able to copy games either. I totally support that. That's copyright infringement. But, if you sell a copy of a book that you own to someone else, the fact that this book contains intellectual property that the new reader is going to get to experience for free does not prevent you from selling it, does it? Why should games be treated any differently?

IP is trumping actual property rights all the friggin' time.

I think you totally misunderstood my point, but okay.

If you own a café as our propety, and you have a CD player as your own property, you can't just stick your musc disc into it so all your customers can listen to the songs that you own, because that counts as a performance, and the RIAA would jail your ass for it.

That's a completely different issue than used games, especially in this scenario. And, actually, in a lot of countries, yes, you totally are legally entitled to put music from your CD on the speakers and play it in a store, because not every country has the totally insane laws that the United States has, so you're wrong on that front too. The US's example is not universal, nor should it be.

But, honestly, tell me straight and true, do you really think that the RIAA is a good example? Do you want video games to follow their example? Do you think their actions are fair? Do you think they did anything to help the music industry?

Intellectual property is not "a type of property", it's a monopoly. At it's very core, It means not that artists get to keep their belongings, but that artists (or more realistically, publishers) receive extra authority over controlling what other people are allowed to do with "their information". How to copy it, how to sell it, how to perform it, how to parody or imitate it, etc. In other words, to limit what they are allowed to do with their own body, and their physical property.

Yes. That's fair. That's why video games do have copyright protection. That's why you might have your video taken down if you upload a let's play on youtube. That's why it's piracy if you copy a game and distribute it for free. But I can sell a copy of a used game. There's nothing wrong with that. I can sell a license to someone to play that game. There's nothing wrong with that. In the same way, I can sell a film script. I can sell a play script. I can sell a book. I can sell the original reels to a film. If I possess these things, all these things can be sold. I cannot use that film script to produce a movie all on my own. This is what I mean when I said intellectual property was completely different from physical property, and that it does not trump your basic property rights to dispose or transfer it. The fact that intellectual property laws attach to all of these things does not in any way affect my ability to sell the original, physical copy.

Similarly, I have every right to give a legally owned copy of a disc to someone else and they have every right to play the game. If there are any fees that I had to pay to subscribe to that game and its services, the new owner now has to pay those fees.

The only reason why physical books were allowed to be re-sold to begin with, is because it was uncontrollable anyways, and as a matter of tradition, publishers stopped laying claim to it.

So you think libraries should be destroyed now that we can physically control books? Or maybe it's because our intellectual copyright laws are a product of the values of our time and individual freedom has been sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed?

But there is no fundamental, self-evident truth in what IP rights are supposed to be about. They are just a bunch of regulations. Positive rights, like the right to education, or to health care.

There is no solid objective reason why copyright needs to extend exactly as far as it does right now, limiting a number of property rights, but not others. It could be a lot less strict, banning what is now Fair Use, and Used Sales, and Public Domain, but it also could be a lot more liberal, lasting 15 years, or legalizing all non-commercial file-sharing, or the right to publish fanfiction, or whatever.

It's depending entirely on exactly how much monopolies society deemed necessary for industrial progress.

I agree with this entire section completely.

But the thing is that when you give these monopolistic corporations so much control and so much legal weight and power, I personally believe that you actually hamper progress. Instead of encouraging businesses like video game publishers to innovate and come up with new and dynamic business models that would revolutionise the industry and benefit everyone, you instead give them all these rights and powers to restrict what consumers can do that effectively compensates for their own failures and weaknesses.

I thought capitalism was supposed to be against that? I thought the idea of capitalism was that if you made good business decisions you would succeed and if you made bad ones you would fail. Instead of that, we now have a system where, if businesses aren't making enough money, competition doesn't inspire them to take brave risks or change the way they operate in order to survive, the law will actually take their side and force a broken system to remain in place and impose it upon consumers.

I don't think that's good for the industry either. They aren't willing to look for better solutions to increase revenue. Instead, they'll treat their own consumer base like an enemy that they need to rob of as much money as they can at gunpoint.

 

[Raggedstar]

If it wasn't for used games, I wouldn't be gaming today.

I started into serious gaming in 2009. My first console since my Sega Genesis was a PS2 (I know, late to the party). Most of the games I bought were from Gamestop, a used game shop near here, and eBay. How many of my PS1/2 games were new? Maybe 4 (well, one was $3 at the bargain bin). The rest of the 20 or so games were from used sources. It was cheaper and more convenient since most of those games weren't in print anymore (also remember this was before Sony started to do HD collections and the PS3 was JUST starting to kick ass). I took in games like Okami, Spyro 1-3, Ratchet and Clank 1-4, Jak and Daxter 1-3, Ico/SOTC, Sly 1-3. and many more.

When I DID get my PS3 in 2010 and started gaming with current releases, I started buying new for games I would chomp at the bit to get. Why? Because I tapped into older games and got more enthusiastic about the hobby. No way would I jump into a new hobby that would cost me $60 every time I want a new experience. If the PS2 was locked, then most copies of a library of dozens of classics would be lost forever. Garbage. We can't always port over every single game in absolute perfection. Most ports and HD collections have some kind of quirk that keeps them from being a superior or even equal version to their original. Ratchet and Clank collection has SEVERAL glitches, with some requiring you to restart your file. Jak and Daxter collection has a few (critial) glitchy cutscenes. Okami HD lacked the awesome ending credits song. I heard the HD version of Beyond Good and Evil has some synch issues. The Team Ico collection was fine except it's kinda broken how hard it is for Wander to balance himself. I won't even go into detail on how crap the Silent Hill 2 and 3 collection was.

Also, let's not forget that it's just so bloody WASTEFUL. You have a perfectly functional disc and it's pretty much garbage after you use it once? Off to the trash with you!

 

[Entitled]

But there is no fundamental, self-evident truth in what IP rights are supposed to be about. They are just a bunch of regulations. Positive rights, like the right to education, or to health care.

There is no solid objective reason why copyright needs to extend exactly as far as it does right now, limiting a number of property rights, but not others. It could be a lot less strict, banning what is now Fair Use, and Used Sales, and Public Domain, but it also could be a lot more liberal, lasting 15 years, or legalizing all non-commercial file-sharing, or the right to publish fanfiction, or whatever.

It's depending entirely on exactly how much monopolies society deemed necessary for industrial progress.

I agree with this entire section completely.

I think we are done here. I'm not actually agrueing in favor of used games getting banned as being a good thing, but merely pointing out that the analogy comparing information to property is ALWAYS horribly flawed.

The basic "You have a right to resell the games you own because you could also-re-sell a car" argument is just as stupid as the industry's "Don't steal games because you wouldn't steal a car" propaganda.

In both case, these are about hyperbolic aggrandization of legal rules to pretend that IP is something more set in stone than it actually is, and pretend that what rights and limits we have are more self-evident than they really are, to avoid discussion about copyright as a regulation.

I want information to be more freely distributed, because I want people to be more free, and because I believe that it wouldn't kill the entertainment industry.

But to claim that I "deserve" to sell games because they are my property, is just wrong, and it will lead to entirely flawed justifications.

 

[grey_space]

If I buy a game it's mine. If I want to sell or trade it again it should be my choice.

Games are expensive for me so a good 70% of the games I play are either used or traded in for a couple of games I had in my library and didn't want to keep.

Hell the game I'm playing now is used (Dragon's Dogmaark Arisen for ?19. Thank you very much.) and I'm knocking great craic out of it once I got into it; but the thing is I more than likely never would have if it was the guts of ?50, new.

If there was a sequel, I'd probably be buying it first week, now.

 

[bug_of_war]

And I really can't see how TB would understand the issue, by his own claim he is rolling in cash and review copies are thrown at him left and right (more then he has time to review)... he really couldn't be less qualified to consider the aspect of game costs.

Jim says: "Do you know why Gamestop aggressively hawks (as Ben puts it) second hand games? Because publishers take the lion's share of new sales."

No, they do it because it is profitable to do so. Gamestop are a company out to make money just as Microsoft and EA are. Jim's videos are always heavily biased, and making Gamestop out as an innocent victim of a rampantly capitalist corporation here is no exception.

So we have two people who have extreme differing views that they gained due to their positions they've held...yeah that's how an opinion is based. Total Biscuit's opinion is perfectly reasonable for someone like him, as is Jims, I personally would side more with Jim, but that's because when I was doing year 12 last year I had a limited income that halted me from buying full priced games.

So yeah, OT: I agree with Jim to a point, but my view is that used games are good for the consumer and the store doing the deals and that's it. Shops that allow the trade and save deals get extra money, and people buying the used games get a chance to have a good experience for cheaper, which is good for the people whom have a limited income, but don't want to be pirates. As for the game industry jumping up and down about not getting money, it's what they do, it'd be insane if they didn't get twitchy when they don't get money, but this is kind of like the South Park piracy episode where it's like, "Blah blah blah can only buy his son a Ferrari instead of a jet plane".

Look, you can wank on about how, "Used games are destroying the industry" but in reality the industry would have been dead long ago if that was the case.

 

[Generic4me]

Why does everyone seem to think that anybody in this situation isn't doing what they do purely because it's what's best for them?

Publishers load games with DLC and online passes because they make money. Gamestop pushes used games because they have better profit margins. Money. Used games buyers buy used games purely because IT'S CHEAPER. Money.

I'm not going to pretend that my buying used games doesn't hurt the Publishers and Developers, I just don't care. I've never met them, and they're pretty damn rich. Why should I?

Totalbiscuit and that guy from Kotaku seem to think that if we cut out used games, things will get better. No, they won't. Publishers and Developers are, I know, this argument is tired, but true, out to make money. They're not going to pass their "good fortune" of making all kinds of extra cash to us, because, again, they don't give a shit about us.

TL;DR, everybody cares about themselves. Don't pretend or fool yourself into thinking you don't.

 

[Cyfu]

They are undercutting new game sales, for a matter of $1-$2. So instead of selling 2 or 3 games, they are selling 1 game to 2-3 people for that $1-$2 the customer saves, the publisher loses $8-$10. That adds up over thousands of sales. It is not economically helpful to anyone. Game develop lose money on projects and things that would be beneficial to players. Games would be cheaper. If you clearly don't see this, then there is something wrong.

But The publishers will not lower their prizes.... Why should they when they can get away with selling games for 60dollars? Don't come here and say that the publishers are some good guys that are looking after us. They are out to make money, they will make the most money if they sell their games for 60 dollars so they will keep selling games for 60 dollars

 

[Cyfu]

Why has this become a thing on this forum, TB makes a video then somebody makes a thread, embeds the vid then says "waddya think?" ... It's like TB has just become the shit in gaming journalism. Just curious is all.

I will say here what I said on that video.

"Probably going to get a lot of hate for this but oh wells.

How is devs and publishers money troubles my problem? Thousands of stores across the world have closed down for whatever reason, should I have shopped there to try to keep them open? No 'cos how could I afford that, I'm no billionaire.

I can't afford to look out for other people, I'll work on my money problems and let everybody else deal with theres."

Is it a selfish stance, yes but it's not like the publishers are doing it out of the goodness of there hearts, they are in it to make money.

That's not to say I exclusively buy second hand, just looking at my pile of PS3 games ... half are brand new buys, new smell and all.

I don't really know... I posted this because I was genuinely curios on how people on the escapist felt about this. So I asked the question and added a video for both points of view.

 

[joshthor]

not all used games are bad, however, most are. here is what i mean. you walk into a game stop or your local video game store, you see the new game, say ... "assassins creed 3" new for 59.99. then you look to the right. its used right next to it for 56.99!!! you can save 3 bucks!! thats scumbag level sales right there. im all for bargin bins and good discounts but seriously, if your local retailer gives you < $5 off for a used game, just buy a new copy and support the industry.

Used games have a variety of potential problems these days with online codes, dlc, and even just scratched media. so if you are so cheap you cant break out an extra $3-5 for a 60 dollar game you shouldnt be playing video games - you should be finding a job.

that being said, older games are completely fine. its all about percentage difference. if you can get an older game (and know there are no online codes and stuff) for like 10 bucks when the game is normally $15-20 go for it. those are significant savings % wise.

edit: oh, and speaking as someone who works for one of these game stores, dont think we are bringing you savings. we buy the newer games for around 20 bucks and flip em for 50-60, older ones we will give less than 5 bucks for and flip em for 20. there is no better racket than the used market.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I would not have bought a game system or acouple indie games off Live if it were not for used games.