Online used games marketplace SwitchGames announces a new plan to give developers and publishers a cut of used games sold via their service. This could help redress some of the constant industry complaining about used game sales, though in an interesting twist, they are putting the decision about cutting in devs and pubs in the hands of the consumer:

“We want to tackle a fair concern head-on,” said SwitchGames founder and CEO Jason Crawford, “and I think we’ve arrived at a practical solution. Current annual used game sales of $2.4 billion are a goldmine for retailers. But neither game publishers nor developers can touch that revenue. SwitchGames is changing that. When gamers sell used titles on SwitchGames they’ll have the option to share a percentage of a used game sale with the people who actually made the game. Like everything else at SwitchGames, gamers are always in control and it’s up to them to decide whether they’d like to cut in developers and publishers.”

Today, SwitchGames also announced a developer contract provision available on its website. The contractual language entitles developers to a percentage of any proceeds paid to publishers by SwitchGames. SwitchGames encourages developers to copy and paste the text into their development contracts with publishers. Find the provision text at: http://www.switchgames.com/contract_provision.php