Piracy or Used Games. Which one do you think hurts Developers more?

[binary solo]

KylieDog said:
Used games.

I'm convinced especially from personal experience that most games that get pirated people were not likely to buy in most cases anyway, they get it because it is free.

Used games however are people willing to part with cash, but instead of buying a new game they buy used, so a sale is stolen everytime (and the cheaper argument does not come into it, price drops etc).

I disagree. Every used game I ever bought (and it's a few) I would never have bought new, and the likelihood of new copies of said games being at the price I bought them is extremely low. So the industry hasn't lost a cent off me, because with no used game market I wouldn't have bought the games. And knowing I can sell games at some future time to get back some money is sometimes is part of my personal justification for spending money on those games that I do buy new.

I borrow games off friends and family members and they borrow off me. Is that evil now too? I have 3 gamers in my house, should we each buy a copy of the same game to keep developers and publishers happy? After all game sharing is tantamount to used game trading. How many people do developers expect to play each copy of a game that's sold new? If I live a lone with no gamer friends and I buy a game that only I play, then sell it to someone else how is that different to me living in a house with 3 gamers who each play one copy of the game? Are developers going to put DNA tags on discs and in consoles so that only the person who first touches the disc gets to play the game without having to pay an extra fee?

I dispute the validity of both the revenue loss figures. (piracy and used game sales) The assumption being made is that every pirated game or used game sale = a new game sale lost. But as in my case it's simply untrue. Those games I bought used I bought because they were B or C list games for me: games that I may want to play one day, but only if I can get them cheaply.

Don't even get started on job losses. What crap. Video games are a non-essential industry, and skilled developers and other IT professionals can readily get jobs in IT industries that are far more important to our lives and well being. So I shed no tears for the number of people who could have found jobs in the gaming industry but had to "settle" for IT jobs elsewhere on the relatively small % of sales that the gaming industry are maybe losing due to used games. IT jobs have been pretty recession-proof from what I can tell. My friend owns a small IT company with 300 employees spanning 2 countries, and he wants to expand his workforce by at least 10% right now, but they aren't getting the skilled people applying.

People who ONLY buy used games are cheap arses. But I figure the gaming industry gets its pound of fles out of me, so I have no qualms about stacking my games library with a few used games.

And now they have online pass, and soon there will be online activiation required for all games, once activated the game won't be playable on any othe3r person's account without paying for another activation.

So companies can stop crying about used games.