Are Used Game Dealers Defrauding the Industry?

With the American economy’s schizophrenic behavior over the past few months, gamers have been doing whatever they can to cut the costs for new games. One of the easiest ways to shave off a few dollars is, of course, buying a used game from places like GameStop or eBay. The unfortunate part about doing this, however, is that the game developers make no money when their products are bought second hand. Now that used game sales are more profitable than ever (used games made up 49% of GameStop’s $1.8 billion in sales during 2008’s first quarter), members of the industry are speaking out against skimping on retail game purchases.

One of the most recent attacks came from David Braben, the founder of Lost Winds developer Frontier Developments—and he was not happy. In an interview with GameIndustry.biz, Braben stated that the used games industry is “really damaging to the single-player experience.”

Braben went on to argue that although single-player games such as BioShock and Assassin’s Creed met with considerable success, their profits were tempered by large purchases of used games. “The sales don’t reflect the actual sales of people playing them because someone has gone out and bought, at almost the same price, a pre-owned copy because they couldn’t get an original. It’s very frustrating that they don’t carry that stock any more.”

Shouldn't the developers be paid for this sale?

In a separate interview with Eurogamer, Braben further insinuated that used game dealers are deliberately “defrauding the industry” by “giving us a way of distinguishing between pre-owned and new… We’ve got a lot of retailers eating our lunch and refusing to sell full-priced games. I’ve been in a shop where I’ve tried to buy a copy of a relatively recent game, and I’ve taken an empty box off the shelf and they’ve given me a pre-owned copy. That, I think, is disgraceful,” he said. “Not holding stock of new games, substituting them with pre-owned games at the same or much the same price… That is really destroying the shelf-life of our games.”

While some may interpret Braben’s argument as merely whining for more money, remember this: when developers don’t get money, they can’t make games; if they don’t make games, we can’t play any new games. Our only option would be to go to GameStop or eBay and dig through the used games bins for lost treasures. Of course, that’s the most extreme direction this situation could possibly go, and thus will never happen. Still, this could easily put serious strain on smaller, independent publishers.

Keep these developers in business!

Probably the only sure-fire way to make gamers buy directly from publishers would be to commit releases to digital distribution. This would be advantageous to both developers and gamers in different ways: developers would receive royalties for every copy sold (if they drew up a proper contract, that is), and gamers would no longer need to pay exorbitant amounts of cash to get a rare game off of eBay—as long as game companies keep the servers up, your favorite titles could be downloaded at any time in the future. The main problem, of course, would be the chance of increased piracy—converting digital information into easily pirated forms is a hobby for many out there. And let’s not forget GameStop’s stance on digital distribution. Who could blame them, really, with billions of dollars of pure profit rolling in from used game sales?