Did you the OP?

I'm assuming you thought punished to mean punished under the law when he means punished as in you get an inferior product for buying used.

Yeah, they should me wiped with a spiked whip then trown in boiling oil after being hit 200 times with a metal club.

No

First off, many games can only be bought pre-owned now adays. From older games on 'dead' systems to games that publishers just quit making because they deem them 'not popular enough to make a profit'.

Second of all, not everyone can afford to spend $40-75 dollars on a brand new game when it first comes out, only to find a publisher stops making the game 3 months later and it never goes down to the $20-30 range they can afford. SO these people HAVE to buy the game second hand because....that's the only place they can find it.

If publishers want to complain about used games, they should make more copies of the games available to the public and at a better cost. The only way to combat used games is to beat them at their own game. Especially now adays with game cost RISING, developers have no reason to be complaining about people buying used games. And if they are going to complain about development costs and use that as their excuse for raising the costs of games and only releasing them to limited venues, they shouldn't be making games on HD systems in the first place.

i like this idea.

i like pre-owned games, they're my friends ^___^

So skewed...

1. I think pretty much everyone assumes this conversation doesn't apply to dead systems.
2. Used games are generally $5 less in America, I don't know what they are in Australia but I'm assuming they're close to that.  The games that fall in the $20-30 ranged have had a price reduction and sell for that much new.
3. They should make more available?  They make plenty available in almost every case.  I know places like Gamestop try to artificially make them seem limited, but then just go to another store and you can find the game.  Yeah, it's harder to find games that aren't produced anymore, but that's because those games aren't in high demand anymore.  Or do you want publishers to still print 5-10 year old PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube games because that is just plain stupid.

I really don't get where you're saying games are released in such limited quantities unless you shop only at Gamestop and never preorder I guess.  And then, well, I won't call you stupid for failing to preorder the game in that case, but, man, if you're constantly not able to find new games because you think enough aren't produced then you should either preorder or look at another store.

It is not wise to see games as licenses that allow you to run on one machine, like your typical pc software. Games are made to be available to the mass public, pretty much like dvd's, vhs and other entertainment media. Just like my movies need to work on any dvd player i own, the same goes for games, they need to work any any of their respective consoles.

This by default denies games the status of license products and why they can not be subjected to no resale movement. PC games are split right now since some of them are being made into license type products (like Assassins Creed 2) but this will ultimately fail and be counter-productive as consumers will not accept that the same game can be resold if bought for a console but not if it's for pc. Like in previous discussions, the outcome will be simple: massive pirating.

While it does make sense that buying things used means not getting the whole package, the level or depreciation that comes with buying used is not something that you can arbitrarily gauge. Let's say that someone is selling a 1 year old car that was not used much, thus making the car practically new while still being sold at a lower price just due to the fact it's one year older. How dou you gauge depreciation levels for a game? There isn't really any way to do so.

The only reasonable thing to do would be the following:

1. Devs have to lower prices of their games to be competitive against the 2nd hand market

2. Don't offer incentives like free dlc as it isn't a deal breaker, especially if you offer different dlc for different deals in different shops. Instead return to the old schematic, release a full game with no extras and offer all dlc for some premium, so that even if the game is bought used, there is still potential money to be made.

3. Drop the license approach towards games as it is impossible to implement on consoles, very hard to implement on pc's and is met with huge hostility from the consumers that devs want to sell to. Once again, games are products meant to be in available to the masses so don't shut them off.

What about CDs or DVDs?

If you buy a used game, you will get a slightly dirty case and a maybe ripped manual. And you cannot play the game at release date.

In that case, refer to my earlier it's just a bonus comment.

People have become so use to that bonus that they forget it is in fact just a bonus.

Also, people also forget that you get free things with new CD/DVD's but they're usually things you don't care about.  I think people are just annoyed with games because you actually get something included that you want.

Oh, please.  Get off your high horse.  We'll have lost a bunch of losers that can't make it in business.  Good riddance, I'll get over it pretty quickly.