Help me out here, guys. I have zero sympathy for video game developers and publishers who cry poverty vis-à-vis used video game sales. At the same time, I have zero sympathy for the likes of GameStop, what with its hyperactive employees always trying to sell me some added nonsense, when it claims that used video game sales help expand the video game market as a whole.
The issue is this: video game publishers and developers feel they’re being cheated out of money every time you buy a used video game from GameStop or eBay. At the same time, GameStop defends the practice by saying that people who buy used video games are different than people who buy new video games. In effect, GameStop argues that selling used games opens up the whole industry to new people. It also doesn’t hurt that GameStop can take your game, give you $20 in store credit, then turn around and sell it for only $5 less than the full, new retail price.
In a perfect world, as far as video game publishers are concerned, there’d be no such thing as used video game sales. Failing that, a portion of the money earned from used sales would be diverted to the publishers and developers themselves, rather than just sitting in GameStop’s cash register.
Again, I think both sides here are being greedy jerks, but surely the video game industry doesn’t believe that there’s something inherently different about video games that would necessarily prevent a secondary market? I can buy a car from a dealer, then sell it to my neighbor—does Toyota see any of that money? I can buy a toaster oven, then sell it at a garage sale—does Black and Decker see any of that money? Or maybe I’d like to put a pair of speakers on Craigslist—does Bose see any of that money?
Exactly.
The publishers aren’t going to have to worry about used sales, once this stuff goes all to downloads.
Of course, then they’ll be bitching about all the hacked games being distributed on the net.
Watch what you wish for, pubs, you just might get it.
If you buy a song from the iPhone store and burn it on a CD and sell to a friend, is that legal? No.
If you get a Netflix account and burn a dvd from it is that yours and can you sell it? No.
If you buy a game for one game system and then steal the same game for another one but justify it that you already bought it, is that legal? No.
If the movie industry gets a percentage from all dvd’s that are bought from Blockbuster, Netflix, other rental places, etc. why isn’t the publishers and developers seeing any of that from Gamestop or others?
Where are the secondary markets such as TV, Cable, DVD sales, etc? There are none currently so making AAA games are going to be more and more risky therefore you get:
run of the mill games that are “safe”
developers aren’t paid so not as many games out there
I honestly don’t mind piracy, so go rigth ahead Nate. Most likely people who pirate have way too much time on their hands (teenagers through college) and probably won’t buy the product anyway. The secondary market is a much bigger problem and the sooner it goes all digital the better.
I would LOVE to see the slow death of GameStop.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not one of these pro-pirating types.
I’m just against all of these companies trying to lock us down. Gamestop, Sony, Capitol Records… you name it.
These guys have this idea that they should be getting their piece of the pie at every turn. I say, the second I buy the disk, I should be able to do with it what I will… short of copying it and giving it away for free. It’s my property, if I want to sell it, I should be able to.
Now, when it comes to Gamestop’s evil system, if people are stupid enough to sell and buy their games at Gamestop, that’s their problem. More power to Gamestop for taking advantage of these morons.
If the game publishers have such a huge problem with this, why don’t they put their money where their mouths are, and pull their new games from Gamestop’s shelves? Is it because they depend on Gamestop more than Gamestop depends on them?
Sorry, didn’t mean to focus you out on the piracy thing, heh. I’m just ticked at GameStop. :)
The majority of it is the publisher’s problem. They don’t have any other revenue streams so it really wrecks them when it comes to second hand games. They do sell to big box stores that don’t have second hand markets but it’s going to be a interesting problem trying to make sure that people can get their gaming rights on their system without crazy DRM and figuring out how to bypass the secondary market.
Re: going digital. Well, yeah. Long-term, once downloads replace physical media, selling games back to GameStop will come to an end. But, as the saying goes, in the long-term we’re all dead, so…
It’s a “now” problem is all.
I just sort of skimmed through all this, but I too would love to see the slow death of gamestop. They care little for me, the pc gamer (since they can’t profit off of secondary sales.) And things just aren’t the way they used to be back in the days of Funcoland. Man I loved funcoland.
After some consideration, I think I see it this way: if a company sells a product, be it media-based or otherwise, without an explicit limit on the number of uses or period of usage, then the buyer owns the product and is free to do with it as he or she sees fit, short of copying the product to distribute it. Such freedom includes the right to resell the product or to rent one and only one copy of the product at a time. However, if, at the time of the transaction, there is a limit on the number of uses or period of use, then the transaction is a rental, wherein other restrictions might apply.
So, if a person buys a game that can be played an unlimited number of times or for an unlimited period, then the person owns that game and has the right to transfer ownership of it with or without charge to another individual, who would, under the common definition of ownership, inherit the same rights. Moreover, a seller doesn’t have the right to (try to) put any other kind of limitation on the sale to prevent further sales, because a seller, by definition, relinquishes rights to control sales of a product, and any such attempts should be expressly illegal (if that is not already obvious enough). Nor should a seller be allowed to make any other arbitrary limitations such as, for example, “you can buy it but only if you agree not to sell it to women.” Allowing such limitations flies in the face of the concept of ownership, wherein one exchanges money for something else. Does a buyer have the right to tell a seller that the seller can only use the proceeds from the sale (money) in a certain way? For example, could a buyer say, “Okay, I’m buying this from you, but you can only use the money to buy food”? Of course not! In the same way, sellers necessarily give up control with what can be done with a product upon the sale being finalized (i.e., money changing hands).
An owner can apply limitations only if the owner chooses to rent the product. Moreover, any such rentals should not be enforceable without a signed or digitally-signed contract between the two parties. Such a contract would clearly distinguish whether a sale or rental is involved, and thus affect the amount that a potential consumer is willing to pay. In short (though it’s too late for that), if one pays for something without signing a rental contract, then one should own it completely without restrictions except for being prevented from copying for distribution. Again, this is all how I see it, not necessarily what the law states.
Ever since the invention of the printing press, people would balk at the idea that a book that was purchased couldn’t be resold, and so it should be with the sale of software such as a video game. There’s no fundamental difference. E-book readers like the Kindle shouldn’t change this principle. Will we now second-guess history and say that all such book sales in the past were ill-conceived? So, if publishers want to rent media as opposed to selling it outright, then that’s their prerogative, but you can be sure that consumers won’t be willing to pay as much for the “privilege” of renting. Also, based on this line of reasoning, it wouldn’t matter whether a game or book was obtained in physical form or via a download, so long as the seller sold it instead of offering it for rental. Lastly, if a title is only temporarily accessed as a service via a real-time server (or a temporary webpage), then no ownership is involved, unless the service provider explicitly agrees to sell the title outright and perhaps maintain it at the seller’s location.
In a world where greed rules, it’s predictable that owners will want to claim for themselves additional rights that are not morally justified in the sense of being reciprocally fair, but we as a society must put our foot down. The fundamental issue that the article seems to raise is whether a buyer has the right to rent a purchased product, in that, if GameStop repeatedly sells and repurchases a product, then, in a sense, it is renting the product, and publishers are contending that such is unfair. Perhaps they even feel that it’s similar to copying the product for distribution. I agree that such rentals could impact sales and thus revenue, but I think that such a possibility is a reflection of a kind of natural law that an intellectual property-based product (wherein most of the effort goes into the initial creation as opposed to duplication) should be limited (though not explicitly) in terms of the amount of profit it can bring to the creator. The creator didn’t spend an unlimited amount of time developing the product, so it seems reasonable that the profit that can be derived shouldn’t be unlimited (although it could be quite substantial even with any such natural limitation given the “flux” involved in the system).
Yes, I’m suggesting that there’s something “unnatural” or potentially even “immoral” about a content creator becoming—pardon the phrase—filthy rich from, say, spending a few weeks on a title, which, admittedly, is a huge exception to the rule. Rich, fine, but filthy rich? That doesn’t seem called for, as it undervalues the service provided by people who earn a living producing tangible items such as food and furniture one item at a time (the old fashioned way). It is their services that truly sustain the world. If a content creator is so gifted so as to produce such a popular work of art, then it seems reasonable that part of the benefit/reward should be shared with society because, in a sense, society created the climate that made it possible for such a creator to create something so popular. So back to the issue at hand, I don’t think that allowing rentals is going to so limit profit potential that the incentive to create and thus potentially enhance humanity will be drastically impacted, and whatever limited impact that would have would likely be made up for by the benefit to society in terms of enjoying wider distribution of content and also by the derivation of livelihood from the rental of such content (yes, by the rental shops that did not create the content but serve to make it more available).
If a copy of a media product is sold, then it can be rented, but only to one renter/user at a time. And therein lies another kind of limitation that works to protect the content creator: the time and effort involved for a rental shop to secure renters for a product. And the lower the sales price that the content creator sets, the less likely it is that the product will be rented…because people could just buy the product for a bit more money. So now we see the crux of the problem: charging $50 for a game title is often too high and means that people can probably only justify owning a very limited number of titles. The rental business (and cyclical reselling) exists partly because of such high pricing. Of course, game developers will argue that they need to earn good profits in order to keep developing such “amazing” content and pay for their exorbitant production costs. Yes, such an argument could be made (which I’ll leave to another). But what content creators probably won’t be as ready to argue is that, if they set their prices low, then, although they’d at least initially sell more copies, they’d worry that consumers would eventually become “saturated” with titles and, therefore, reluctant to buy more. But if the prices were low enough, it seems likely that consumers would keep buying, as they would likely retire, so to speak, older titles. However, whether such sales would be enough to support the ever-increasing costs of developing spectacular titles is debatable. Perhaps not. But, in the grand scheme of things or in terms of the so-called greater good (and assuming that there’s utility in playing games), wouldn’t it be better for more people to have access to average titles than for considerably fewer people to have access to seemingly great titles? Besides, the world can probably survive quite nicely (perhaps more nicely) with fewer Grand Theft Auto titles being released, although I digress.
If the game developers would develop a game that was good then maybe people wouldn’t get rid of it and play it again, instead they develop eye candy that plays like junk and once you play the storylined game once why play it again? You never go see a boring movie a second time.