Pre-owned games a bigger problem than piracy, says dev.

[InsaneNutter]

Blitz Games Studios’ co-founder Andrew Oliver says second-hand games can effectively quarter owed royalty pay.

As EA is set to implement a divisive $10 pay-wall in a bid to curb pre-owned sales of its games, one experienced UK developer believes the threat of second-hand sales must be addressed.

Develop report that Blitz Games Studios co-founder Andrew Oliver believes that piracy is not the biggest problem facing the game industry, but instead one part of a bigger, underlying issue; lost revenues.

“Arguably the bigger problem on consoles now is the trading in of games,” he tells Develop.

“I understand why players do this, games are expensive and after a few weeks of playing you’ve either beaten it, or got bored of it so trading it back in to help pay for the next seems sensible when people are short of cash.”

However, citing figures suggesting that games are traded in as many as four times, he says that – if true – this means that publisher and developer royalties are effectively quartered.

“So while retail may be announcing a reasonable season, the money going back up the chain is a fraction of what it was only a few years ago. This is a much bigger problem than piracy on the main consoles,” he added.

Oliver adds that the damage done by the pre-owned business will push publishers towards “digital downloads, either the full game, or downloadable content releases.”

 

[KillerWhiteMan]

Personally, I think the used game sales are what keep people playing games. There are many times that I won't purchase a game when it first comes out, but rather buy the game used at a much cheaper price. I also trade in games in order to combat the constant high price of games and wouldn't be able to afford new games otherwise. I think developers are making this "problem" more than it needs to be. Even though the game is being traded in, it was still purchased at full price at one point or another. Piracy on the other hand does not give the developers any royalties whatsoever, therefore it seems to me that it is worse than trading in games.

 

[Titcher]

The difference is simple, a good amount of pirates wouldn't ever buy the game anyway, no lost revenue anyway. Where as people buying used games, are still buying the game, just at no gain to the developer/publisher, if they want to combat this, they need more price reductions, plain and simple.
I quite like gold edition releases of games, as they bundle expansions and patches in, these are often better value too, I.E Civ4 Complete, which is Civilisation 4 with all expansions, was just £20. I feel that more re-releases of games would gain more profits overall for the gaming industry.

 

[KillerWhiteMan]

I feel that more re-releases of games would gain more profits overall for the gaming industry.

But what if you already have the game? Could you in good sense shell out more money, though less what you paid for the original copy, on the same that you may already have in your collection? I understand the re-releasing with all the updates and DLC is for gamers that have not picked the game up yet, but it just annoys the rest of us that already have the game because it is usually more expensive to pay for the game when it first comes out and then pay for all of the DLC afterwards. Then there are re-releases that have exclusive DLC that can only be played by paying for the game again. That is equally annoying. Alright no more ranting from me for now...

 

[Slaz]

Whatever action publishers will take, retail games will be traded alongside players anyway. Even if the big stores like Gamestop are gone someday, there is still Ebay and of course hand-to-hand selling. After all, that's how we did it with NES games back in the days. That's also how I got my N64 second hand, a mate sold it to me because he wanted a Playstation.

 

[Titcher]

But what if you already have the game?

Depends on the game, some of the really good games I own several times in various re-editions. Owning a game twice is no big deal if the gold edition is cheaper, at least in my opinion.

 

[Trebor]

It may come as no shock to some that I paid for UT2004 again on Steam. Mind you that's only because it wouldn't take my original CD key but if the games good enough to have me play it over 50+ hours I'm more than willing to give the developers more cash Haven't developers and publishers already started trying to tackle this problem with codes that come in the box allowing access to content for first time buyers (Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins and Gears 2 are noticable examples so far)?