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| [Apr 21, 2012, 1:38 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments |
HotHardware - If You Resell Your Used Games, The Terrorists Win. Thanks Ant via Slashdot.
Both Browne and Braben conflate hating GameStop (a thoroughly reasonable life choice) with the supposed evils of the used games market. Braben goes so far as to claim that used games are actually responsible for high game prices and that "prices would have come down long ago if the industry was getting a share of the resells." Amazingly, no game publishers have stepped forward to publicly pledge themselves to lower game prices in exchange for a cut of used game sales.
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| 46. |
Re: Op Ed |
Apr 24, 2012, 03:32 |
Bhruic |
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If your argument revolves around rights and entitlements, then yes, it's about legality and not practical results
It doesn't revolve around them, it uses them to demonstrate the reality of the situation.
Without used sales, stores would only be able to sell new copies. Once they run out of new copies, they'd have to order more from the publisher. Used copies help retailers avoid buying more copies from publishers, thus denying them compensation that they would have earned had used copies not been available.
See, this is where the blinders come in. To you, any sale should have the publishers being "compensated". Conveniently, of course, overlooking the example of the block of cheese I used to point out how idiotic that viewpoint is.
Fine, if you want to think of it from that perspective, every single sale of a game from a store is a used sale, so the publishers and developers should get paid more. When a store buys a game from a publisher, that's the sale. The store owns the copy. They then turn around and sell the game to other people, a clear case of a used sale! Sure, the store paid the publisher for the copy when they bought it, but now they are reselling the game, and the publisher isn't getting a cut of it!
Again, a completely ludicrous position, but it's the logical progression of the argument you are making.
Why do you think GameStop loves used sales so much? It's pure profit for them.
Of course it is. That's because they've managed to effectively corner the market. The profit doesn't come from not compensating the publishers, the profit comes from ripping off consumers. When Gamestop can buy a used copy of a game from a customer at a much lower price than the publisher is charging, who do you expect them to buy from? Consumers are stupid to sell their games for so little when Gamestop resells them for so much. And other stores/companies are stupid for letting this happen without trying to get in on the action.
Hell, if publishers had any brains at all, they'd get into the used sale business. If they re-bought their own games at the prices Gamestop is charging (well, a little higher to beat out Gamestop), they'd be able to make the profits that Gamestop is making. But they've got the same blinders on that you have, and are more concerned with trying to combat a problem that only exists because they've ignored it. |
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