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

[Shinobi-san]

Im sorry but i cant for the life of me understand how piracy has less of an effect than used game sales on the industry???

Used game sales, and the money that is involved there usually finds its way back in the industry. Most gamers who sell games back to retailers use that money to buy more games, im pretty sure this is the most common scenario. Very seldom will you find people taking that money and going and buying something completely unrelated to gaming with it. Now you could argue that was a lost sale...but really how on earth can we really know that? I could argue then that because they couldnt sell games back to retailers it actually prevents them from buying new games which would oddly enough also be a lost sale. So i dont see the point in arguing what if's we should rather base our opinions on things that we know. And what we do know is that gamers use used game sales money to buy more games, which is a good thing.

Piracy on the other hand, has a very small positive impact on the industry...which i would put down to free marketing, and possible chance that the gamer goes out and buys the game or maybe buys the sequel. However for the most part, people who pirate are indeed gamers, and you will find that some buy games as well and some dont. The point is that they are gamers, and they see value in games, but its become way to easy to pirate games so they just rather pirate than go buy, even if they can afford it. I find that a lot of the poeple who pirate games can actually afford it, its just not really an option because apparently its ludicrous to pay for something you can get for free. If it wasnt this easy a good % of people who pirate would actually go out and buy those games, maybe not all but some.

Main point: revenue is better than no revenue at all.