Imho, This is nothing more than greed on the part of publishers and developers.  No one is talking about pirating games here, so I'm not sure wtf they are griping about.  Gamestop provides a GREAT service for gamers who want something now in the used game arena. 

Considering that you can get the same stuff cheaper on eBay and Amazon, their crying and whining falls on my deaf ears, and I hope Gamestop doesn’t cave-in totally on used games.  I’m sure Gamestop isn’t stupid, and they will certainly try to be accommodating to the concern of developers/publishers, but you can only be so accommodating in this case.  I’m no cheerleader for Gamestop, but when a store has an offer like, 70% credit back on a new game purchased within 30 days, what’s not to love about that?   

"So yesterday saw a huge row over the issue of used game sales, specifically one writer's now-disowned call for them to be regulated heavily in favor of the publishers. Victor Godinez of the Dallas Morning News wrote to me to share some details of an interview he had Thursday with Dan DeMatteo, the chief executive officer of GameStop, in hopes they can better inform this discussion.

Some of what DeMatteo said has been out there already. But his on-the-record position, shared by Godinez, is that the damage done by used-game sales is more perceived than real, and it sounds like after the holidays DeMatteo will be going to game makers to make the case that resales are a good thing for them.

Industry complaint #1: People can buy flipped copies of a AAA-title on or close to the day of release, depriving a publisher of its rightfully earned dollars.
Writes Godinez (quoting GameStop figures): "Just 3 percent to 4 percent of used games purchased are games that have been released in the last 90 days. So while Epic and other publishers fume about gamers buying used copies of GoW2 on the day of release, that’s not what’s happening, by and large. The used games that are being sold are largely the older titles that have already gone through 98 percent of their lifetime sales."

Industry complaint #2: Resales represent a second market inaccessible to publishers/developers, siphoning business away from the retail market in which they can operate.
Writes Godinez: "80 percent of people who trade in a game turn around and use that money/credit to buy a new game. So the used game market is directly fueling the new game market."

Industry complaint #3: Game resales deliver no benefit to the primary market, they only take from it.
Writes Godinez: "When gamers buy a new game, they, on average, expect their game to retain about $20 in trade-in value when they get tired of it and decide to sell it. So they’re willing to put up with the $60 price because they know that they’ll recoup about one-third of that cost when they sell it in a few months."

"DeMatteo seemed pretty frustrated about the growing rumblings from developers about used games," Godinez said. "And it sounds like GameStop is going to embark on an effort after the holidays to explain to game makers why the used market is good for them, including getting an outside research firm to vet these numbers."

Sounds like a plan. I'm all for anything that puts more light than heat into this debate, and a bona fide industry player like GameStop won't be taken lightly."

http://kotaku.com/5097068/gamestop-to-take-up-resale-issue-with-industry-after-holidays

I don't think it's greed (well, maybe a little bit), but more knowing that it's *very* hard to turn a profit.

That said, I don't think the gaming industry should be immune from the secondhand market. Every other industry has to deal with it, so do we.

Of course, I'm also all for allowing people that buy new games special perks. I don't agree that they should go as far as making you pay for the final boss through dlc but giving people additional content for free as a bonus for buying the game new is a great idea.

@ twesterm: won't that lead to games being more expensive though, to alleviate the (so-called) extra time needed to bring in that bonus material for new-game buyers?

Not really, many games release with downloadable content ready off the bat.

And then there are games like Fable II that allow bonus armor, Gears 2 that had the gold lancer and free maps if you buy new.  Games like Rock Band could give you free songs.

There are always loads of options you can give away.

In any case, developers and publishers could cash in a bit already by allowing some sort of rental copies to be rented out (seeing how renting is now illegal over here). Charge a rather large sum for that, to compensate for the loss of sales that some rentals may cause (they may not like it that much, but at least it'll generate sales they otherwise wouldn't have gotten).

Don't see how they'd solve this used-situation though, although twesterm's move is probably the most logical one.

I honestly feel that renting/buying used is as good as stealing from the eyes of a big business seller of anything. But everyone has the right to sell the stuff they own, so the game industry shouldnt bitch.

I am a huge thief then considering that 80% of my games collection + hardware are used.

I find it highly irritating that publishers would try to make it more difficult (or impossible) to resale a game.

Heck, gamestop's used $5 games is what has kept me a gamer for the past 3 years or so.

And anyway, trade in value adds intrinsic value to games making someone more likely to buy a game new, because they know if it doesn't meet their standards, they can recoup their investment partially (this is often quoted in the used car industry).

@twesterm

I'm kinda seeing your point, but when I say “greed”, it implies that publishers and developers are trying to milk this whole “recouping cost” line of reasoning, used to justify higher game prices. The fact is that most developers now have 360/PS3 programming on auto-pilot, and I’d challenge ANY of them to DOCUMENT the development cost of a game, these many years out from the launch of these consoles. When you’ve got, Joe blow developing simple games for these console in their basement with the development kits out, it’s a joke. Sure, these simply games are no Gears 2 or R2, but here’s the thing about it; neither game design finding the cure for cancer or solving world hunger. If software development costs haven’t been drastically reduced from original launch titles, they are doing something wrong, and what does that say about the next gen of games…are we going to be paying $70 to $80 for a title? I’m not going to pay that…I’ll be a PC gamer from then on. These guys remind me of the oil companies…and the pharmaceuticals with this nonsense…while banking major profits.
Epic is one of the developers b!tching like crazy, but let’s REALLY look at Gear to Gear 2…is there anything REALLY radical there??? Is there 60-80 million difference between the 2 games….I think not…I love the game so far, and the expanded features are VERY nice, but they need to spare us with the nonsense about them going broke, and losing profits. The fact is this…the way you make people KEEP their titles longer is to have meaningful DLC…6-8 months AFTER the game is launched, and I don’t mean horse armor. I loved Mass Effect, but the DLC sucked in the implementation. I’m interested to see how good this DLC is going to be for GTA4.
To cap my rant off, look at the Wonderful World of Warcraft…sure there seems to be lots of hate from certain people, but how the heck is it that WoW user base KEEPS growing…in the face of mad amounts of competition from others…DLC and Expansions that keeps us coming back for more. After TBC, I took periods off from WoW, but I always knew that I need to come back ever now and then to do other stuff. I certainly don’t think console developers can make games that’ll keep players for years, but if you can input enough DLC to keep them for 6-8 months owning the game, you’re freaking golden…and if the title is good. I go back to Mass Effect…the game started off slow in sales, but it’s base grew and grew and here we are a year later, and we’ve gotten 1 crappy DLC…that requires you to have made sure you hadn’t already FINISHED the game…that’s piss poor for a great game.

Point number one is interesting, and I hadn't expected the figure to be that low (although in hindsight I shouldn't be surprised: you're only saving five bucks...). The other two points seem rather weak, though...

Overall, I'm alright with the used market, since it's a consumer's right to dispose of the property he purchased in such a manner (and I'm heavily pro-consumer rights). But I can see the other side of the fence.

Seems to me the real problem here is that too many publishers are putting out games that are primarily targeted at the same small social niche. That keeps the market small, and makes used game sales hurt a lot more than other media (like DVD, etc., where you can make up the difference in sheer volume and ensure that someone new will always be there to buy your stuff).

Perhaps if more companies tried to draw in more gamers and upstream them, we wouldn't be in this mess? As it is, the industry's focusing on just a small, fanatical core of gamers. Is it any surprise that there aren't enough gamers to ensure that more titles don't have a diverse enough audience to have "legs"?