EB Games/Game Stop and many other game stores make most of their profits from their shonky second hand trades.

Game developers and publishers receive no money from the second hand game trade.

Second hand game trades hurts developers as much as software piracy. In both cases developers and publishers receive no money from the second hand games sale or downloaded game.

Game stores not only rip off consumers with terrible pricing in their favour, they rip the game industry off as a whole. Renting and lending games to a smaller extent hurt the game developers and publishers. Fewer customers purchase the games by second hand purchase, pirate game, rental or borrowing a game from a friend.

Bear in mind the cost of developing video games these days is sky rocketing, costing as much as $100 million for some game developments.

End of rant/

The same goes for books and DVD's. Ultimately when I buy a game, it's mine, I own it, and if I feel it wasn't worth it or it isn't worth keeping, I am perfectly at liberty to sell it back to the shop. Games are expensive enough without customers being expected to keep the duds or games with no replay value.

Yeah, and what about the used car market????? Evil resellers!!!

that's why game companies want DD to become successful, eventually, but trust me it will not be happening any time soon, you only have to look at the psp go for that.

Actually, it might even be worse than piracy. One pirated download does not equate to one sale as very often the downloader wouldn't buy the game in any case. For a second hand sale, the buyer is much more likely to have bought the game new- after all they've just paid for a copy, but they just wanted it cheaper.

Regardless, other industries seem to manage just fine when their products are resold, and I don't think that games companies are justified in trying to restrict the second hand market by introducing DRM, which they are currently trialling on the PC.

@Demotruk

In this day and age, how could anyone pick up a game they didn't like? It might be just me but before I buy anything, I do some extensive research into the product before I buy it.

Anyway, I do agree with you that we have a right to resell any games we want once we buy it, but here in Australia I see it as a scam robbing me as a customer more even than the developers. I could spend $110 on a game, if I trade it back in the next day I would get $45 in store credit. That's disgusting and it saddens me when I see a poor kid, come in with his Wii games and gets $12 for 3 of them even though their pretty new and the kid wouldn't know any better.

That's a pretty flawed analogy. A used game plays exactly the same as a newly bought game. A used car will very likely not be in the same condition as a brand new car, will be out of/ have a shorter warranty, will require servicing earlier etc. A better analogy would be to books, DVDs and CDs, the content of which is not affected by age.

The answer is Online.

it depends if the game you buy has been looked after or not, for example if it has smudges and scratches it will not work as well as a new version.

God damn it not this shit again... Will it never end