Totally flawed logic re used games = 3/4 of royalty revenue lost. Each time a game is traded the price goes down and so diminishing the likelihood of the next buyer being willing to pay full price for the game. And the better the quality of the game the fewer time's it is traded. So a very high quality and value for money game probably loses about 10-20% of potential royalties. But hey those games make good profits off their 80-90%. Low quality/value games probably lose 50-60% of potential royalties. But 50-60% of not much by way of sales is still not much. And come on if you make crap games you deserve to go out of business, so the used game market is actually doing gamering a favour.


Anyway, are people saying that if my friend buys a game and finds out they don't like it, but it appeals to me, and I offer to buy it from him/her then he/she should say "No, I will burn this copy of the game so that it can never be played by anyone and you must go buy a new one." Get Real!!

Or are we just whining about game retailers trading in used games?

They're all part of the same market, both transactions are denying developers and publishers potential royalties.

Sure developers are missing out on some revenue, but not nearly what Mr Blitz Games says. But Movie studios are missing out on revenue from used DVD sales, and Music publishers are missing out on revenue from used CD sales, Book publishers are missing out on revenue from used book sellers, none of them are crying about it. What's so special about games?

Game developers and publishers should get over themselves and stop being so precious about the used game market.

It's legal, it's legit, and morally speaking undermining peoples' rights to sell their possessions is fundamentally worse diminishing a company's ability to make a profit.

The day that they stopped me from gifting my games away is the day I stop buying and start pirating.

Boo hoo, another game studio complains about used games.

Used games have been around for longer than their studio has been around. They have three options. Complain about it, ignore it or try to use it to their advantage. If these game developers hate used games so much, they should actively work to fix it by fighting companies like Game Stop and offer better incentives for new games. Not whine about used games to the press. It just makes you look weak to the one branch of people you want to have a good image with, your customers.

Sure you can have them hacked. Haven't you seen MW2 pirates playing on the official servers? Also WoW is not even in the top 5 pirated games in any given single year, or any of its expansions. Just to clarify some things, bt glad we agree on this good developer = less used/pirate games.

I never claimed top 5 for WoW, and looking at annual piracy charts is the wrong way to go about it. For example, Modern warfare 2 was pirated a lot shortly after release, but will likely have very short legs in the piracy department. You must consider TOTALS, not annual figures.

Care to provide a link to CoD6 being playable onlione pirated (a link to a news story, not to the source of the crack cos that's against VGChartz rules) because the only way to do it I could find on google involved putting a space or other special character in your steam account name, and that loophole took a whole 4 days to be fixed

What's the difference between the two? I've only heard of EA's $10 principle.

That's right devs, kill the goose that is laying you your precious golden eggs. If there is a game I am unsure that I will like enough to keep, the fact that I can sell it and recoup some of my losses makes me more likely to purchase the game. also, if there is a new game out that I would really like to buy, and I have a few older games that I rarely play anymore, how does it not benefit devs if I sell my old games to buy the new game? These guys are idiots...seriously.

I agree with the article, if you pirate a game, you aren't going to be playing it online so the company saves money on bandwidth needed for you to play the game. If you buy a used legitimate copy, then you will play it online and consume bandwidth, either way the developer and publisher are not getting any additional income due to pirating vs someone buying a used game, the only thing is they will pay more in the longrun for bandwidth on the used game.

@phxprovost - EB/Gamestop, etc might go under, but you will always still be able to find games, think of stores like futureshop/best buy, they don't "NEED" the gaming part of their store to survive they make money from everything else as well.

@ironman - By you trading in those 3 games, it means that they potentially lose the sale of those 3 games to someone else that would have to buy it new if your used copy wasn't for sale

@slimebeast - I think I explained the difference in my opening paragraph, though there could be other things I am not thinking of that they are.

@Kenryoku_Maxis - They have done your 3 options, they ignored it, complained about it, now they are doing something about it by selling you a code so you can play online.

@coolbeans - I read somewhere that you can get a game and get a temporary code to allow you to play the game for 7 days, any longer than that and you need to buy the $10 code

@tuscaniman - Good luck breaking into that field man, hard as hell, my buddy even did one of those special video games schools for 30k for 1 year, yeah, he's not in the field >.

You improve sales with added values, not other way around.

You did? I cant see it lol.

The only strategy by EA to decrease used game sales I've heard of is the one where DLC would cost $10. Coolbeans made it sound like there was an original idea that now has changed.

How is the prevention work in BaD Company 2 and ME2 compared to FIFA 10 and these other sports games?