The Used Games Market: Good for Gamers but Bad for Developers and Publishers?

(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on February 20, 2012)

I have intended to write about used games for quite some time as it has been a hot button topic on the Internet for the past few years. I felt the need to write about this since I buy used games because they are cheaper than new copies generally costing around $60; but I just could not get around to it since I’ve been struggling to come up with something to say. “It’s about time I write about used games now,” I told myself. My interest in the issue began when I read four articles about it last year and recently rekindled when I read four more just this month. I will start by giving you an objective summarized overview of the said articles, starting with the first four.

The appeal of secondhand or used games is that they are reusable; they have longer shelf life than used fruit and used underwear and do not wear off as the latter examples do. This appeal has seen the rise of a used game market, one well-known example being the video game store chain Gamestop, which profits greatly from games traded-in by gamers. I’m may not exactly be an economist but it has been said that the secondhand games market runs counter to fundamental consumerism, which emphasizes paying money for new products that appear on the market. Game publishers and developers have this type of economic mentality since they acquire money from new games but none from used ones. In recent years, they have developed controversial initiatives to combat the used game market. One example of this is Electronic Arts’ (EA) Project Ten Dollar, which requires gamers who buy EA Sports games secondhand to pay $10 for an EA Online Pass, which contains a redeemable code that enables access to online play, leadership boards, and downloadable content. This move caused uproar among gamers. On May 17, 2011, Mike West, a combat designer at Lionhead Studios who had a part in the development of its role-playing game (RPG) Fable III, told Eurogamer that pre-owned sales are a bigger problem than PC piracy. “[S]econd-hand sales,” he said, “cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days.” Guillaume de Foundaumiere, co-founder of the French development company Quantic Dreams, argued that trade-ins of the PlayStation 3 exclusive Heavy Rain have cost his studio millions of dollars worth of royalties. Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, one of the earliest games for the Nintendo 3DS, did not allow users to delete their save files. Capcom explained that the intent of that decision was to invite “high levels of replayability, encouraging fans to improve mission scores [while also ensuring] that both original and unlocked game content will be available to all users.” To most consumers of the used game market, that design decision was another act against trade-ins like the EA Online Pass and have expressed outrage. I had thought about writing this entry last year based on the overview I just described. However, I have been unable to do so due to various circumstances and the thought about used games have gradually faded from my mind as a result.

The drive to write this entry was rekindled when I read this month’s Gamespot and 1up articles about the used games issue. Jameson Durall, a design director at Volition Inc., sharply criticized the used games market on his blog and warned that the entire industry could “fall apart” because of it. When he talked about the rumor that a new Xbox would prevent gamers from playing secondhand titles (which gamers are less than pleased to hear), he called it “a fantastic change for our business.” Two other developers have criticized the rumor; Adam Badowski, CD Projekt Red’s managing director, said that “blocking used games can be a bad thing” while Matthew Karch, CEO of Saber Interactive, called the method unfair to gamers in general. Aside from all the developer criticism and consumer counter-criticism I have read, I read one curious 1up article. In it, Ryan Winterhalter argued that as much as publishers and developers don’t get money from secondhand games sales, money from some new games sales usually go to the publishers and not the distributors, citing the case of Team Bondi not receiving much money from their game L.A. Noir as an example.

Having just given the overviews and buying two used games a few days ago, I feel I have to express my feelings about the whole issue. As I said in the beginning of this entry, I have a habit of buying used games more than new ones due to their low price, with a few occasional exceptions. Most of the titles I picked are as good as reviews that give high scores say they are. I must note that I realize the difference between playing a game and making a game. From a developer’s perspective, it takes a lot of money and hard work to make a video game. Since money from the secondhand game market goes to the retail stores and not the developers, does it mean that we are paying the stores and not the developers? If that’s the case, do we as consumers have no interest in the well-being and hard work of developers? Do we tend to make developers suffer as we relish in the games they make? Would we throw away the former rather than the latter based on longevity? What do you, the reader, think about the questions raised by the issue of used games and the secondhand market in general?

Original Comment

KenFebruary 27th, 2012 at 9:27 am
You are correct that the secondary market provides no benefit to the developers. I think that, at some point, game consoles and game developers will move to a download-only distribution that will largely eliminate the second-hand market because game licenses will be directly linked to user accounts and their specific consoles. It will be harder to get the newest releases cheaply, but they will eventually be made available once sales drop off. Media products have a “long tail” which means that they can continue to generate revenue for a long time after their release.