# CMV: Used Game Sales are Legalized Piracy



## PityOnU (Feb 19, 2019)

See title.

The general argument behind why piracy is a bad thing is that it hurts game developers and publishers. Somebody had to make that game, right? By pirating a game, you are cheating the developers and publishers out of money for their hard work. This can, in turn, potentially lead to studios going under, or less games being made in general. Not the good!

Well, buying or trading used games has the same effect. Picking up a game from the used section at your local Gamestop sees exactly $0 going back to the original developers/publishers.

It is also worth pointing out here that with most modern software, it is understood that when you buy something like a disk or a game cartridge, you are not necessarily buying the actual physical item. What you are buying is a license to use the software it contains. I haven't read up on the fine print, but I am skeptical as to whether or not your license to play a game is also transferred along with the disc if it is traded in or sold. If not, there could end up a situation where you still own the license to a game even though someone else is using the disc, making them a... pirate.

Beyond this, as a general case, with warez distribution, no one is directly profiting off of it. The IP is given away and shared around for free. With used game sales, large corporate entities are actually profiting off of the activity (millions or billions of dollars).


----------



## WD_GASTER2 (Feb 19, 2019)

i only ask out of genuine curiousity but if we are to assume the premise of the topic is correct (which i disagree for a few reasons but to not to stray from the topic at hand)what is the issue if its legal?
also your premise that rights are not transfered is incorrect.
please the the first sale doctrine which is the law in the U.S.
as for the devs not getting paid, what many fail to see is that the video game industry is much more than developers and publishers, retail partners are still required to remain profitable (and yes even if they need to do used video game sales to do so) in order to have a healthy industry (although i am sure that is now changing due to increasing digital distribution.

https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine


----------



## PityOnU (Feb 19, 2019)

WD_GASTER2 said:


> i only ask out of genuine curiousity but if we are to assume the premise of the topic is correct (which i disagree for a few reasons but to not to stray from the topic at hand)what is the issue if its legal?
> also your premise that rights are not transfered is incorrect.
> please the the first sale doctrine which is the law in the U.S.
> as for the devs not getting paid, what many fail to see is that the video game industry is much more than developers and publishers, retail partners are still required to remain profitable (and yes even if they need to do used video game sales to do so) in order to have a healthy industry (although i am sure that is now changing due to increasing digital distribution.
> ...



From your own link:

Further, the privileges created by the first sale principle do not "extend to any person who has acquired possession of the copy or phonorecord from the copyright owner, by rental, lease, loan, or otherwise, without acquiring ownership of it." See 17 U.S.C. § 109(d). Most computer software is distributed through the use of licensing agreements. Under this distribution system, the copyright holder remains the "owner" of all distributed copies. For this reason, alleged infringers should not be able to establish that any copies of these works have been the subject of a first sale.

From the (for example) Destiny EULA:

Bungie grants you the non-exclusive, personal, non-transferable, limited right and license to install and use one copy of this Program solely for your non-commercial use.


----------



## Alexander1970 (Feb 19, 2019)

Hello.

And today garage sales/flea markets/jumble sales are a pirate´s nest.  *arrrrrrrrrrr*


----------



## _v3 (Feb 19, 2019)

So selling a used car is car theft???


----------



## PityOnU (Feb 19, 2019)

_v3 said:


> So selling a used car is car theft???



No, you own the car.

You do not own a game. You purchase a license to legally play it.


----------



## WD_GASTER2 (Feb 19, 2019)

i highly doubt gamestop are going to be shut down any time soon though. lol


----------



## PityOnU (Feb 19, 2019)

WD_GASTER2 said:


> i highly doubt gamestop are going to be shut down any time soon though. lol



Correct.

I've just always found it to be a bit of a no sequitur that people have been condemned and sued into the ground for distributing ROMs for free online while there are MASSIVE companies built around profiting off of equivalent breaches of EULA.

Remember when Microsoft said they would make physical sales essentially the same as digital sales with the Xbox One? Remember how pissed off people got about not having a used game market anymore? There shouldn't be one to begin with. It's probably the reason consoles don't get the equivalent of Steam sales.

If you are buying used games, you're basically subscribing to a private tracker.


----------



## Deleted-401606 (Feb 19, 2019)

PityOnU said:


> See title.
> 
> The general argument behind why piracy is a bad thing is that it hurts game developers and publishers. Somebody had to make that game, right? By pirating a game, you are cheating the developers and publishers out of money for their hard work. This can, in turn, potentially lead to studios going under, or less games being made in general. Not the good!
> 
> ...



Just because the game developer doesn't profit doesn't mean that ethically it is the same as pirating.Pirating makes a copy of the original while a used game IS the original.If I sell a physical copy of a videogame,I can no longer play it since I no longer have the physical copy.Any how,I don't really care about piracy.I know legally it's stealing but once you get old and you realize the nature of humans you will quickly see that pirating a videogame is a very minor drop in the bucket.


----------



## BORTZ (Feb 19, 2019)

WD_GASTER2 said:


> i highly doubt gamestop are going to be shut down any time soon though. lol


Ehhhhh I urge you to take a look at GameStop stock prices.


----------



## Ryccardo (Feb 19, 2019)

Maluma said:


> Just because the game developer doesn't profit doesn't mean that ethically it is the same as pirating.


That confusion is inavoidable: it's what happens when copy-right (literally, having an exclusive on [controlling] the creation of copies), intended like all intellectual property to promote originality through obstructing imitation, is perverted into "I made it and therefore they owe me money", like most probably happened within 10 days after the invention of copyright


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 19, 2019)

I have never bought this argument and can't even get close to it. If you buy something and don't sign a contract stipulating to its uses (normally only houses on developments and high end cars seeing such a thing, and such a thing being more for limited runs and considered something of a drag/price lowering affair). Indeed I would go so far as to say I find the notion being floated at all a disgusting act contrary to basic principles that underpin societies -- if you have something then you can sell it. Fortunately we seem to have come a long way since the 90s where end user rights could be trampled over (see the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the story behind that), though I say that but the downloadable game marketplaces seem a bit slow on giving me options to sell games to friends (why I don't use them and register individual accounts to them to resell individually with attendant games).

I am still shocked this mindset gained traction -- I saw the very earliest attempts at this on older internet forums and late stage magazines and laughed heartily at them, assuming the idea would never catch on. That I was partially wrong still worries me.


----------



## JaapDaniels (Feb 19, 2019)

if i only bought the licence, then give me the contract to sell that contract and we're done talkin'.. as i buy any product, it be paper or physical, i own a right to sell or i own a product to sell. it's mine i bought it, i can sell it.
the thing is you wanna sell a product, but in your mind you never accept when sold it's not yours anymore.
the argument for legally selling 2nd hand products is that they'll never get forgotten.


----------



## Necron (Feb 19, 2019)

PityOnU said:


> No, you own the car.
> 
> You do not own a game. You purchase a license to legally play it.


This is unregulated, however. If you buy a physical game, there are no records [Name] [Last name] bought a game somewhere, nor there is a formal contract established when you buy it. This only works for digital games, where there's a real bond between the purchase and the game you're playing.


----------



## lucoia (Feb 19, 2019)

I've talked about this for decades. I won't again. I'm just adding a thought to the debate.

In our present time we can sell "everything" as a product, and let people pay to access that "everything" and not paying the single products anymore. (Netflix, Spotify, Napster, etc.)

Cloud gaming has been tested for a while already by Google, Nvidia, Verizon etc. and soon it will become standard.

Videogames won't be sold as a single product anymore and things are gonna change pretty drastically pretty soon.


----------



## the_randomizer (Feb 19, 2019)

Lol, game developers are just butthurt


----------



## PityOnU (Feb 19, 2019)

Maluma said:


> Just because the game developer doesn't profit doesn't mean that ethically it is the same as pirating.Pirating makes a copy of the original while a used game IS the original.If I sell a physical copy of a videogame,I can no longer play it since I no longer have the physical copy.Any how,I don't really care about piracy.I know legally it's stealing but once you get old and you realize the nature of humans you will quickly see that pirating a videogame is a very minor drop in the bucket.



The used game disc is a "physical copy" of the original code. It is a copy. The original is on a server somewhere.

And you are right, selling your old games IS different than piracy. In the former, you are profiting off of your violation of the EULA. So is the used game store. It's basically CloudGate NX or whatever that new Switch warez subscription service is called.



Ryccardo said:


> That confusion is inavoidable: it's what happens when copy-right (literally, having an exclusive on [controlling] the creation of copies), intended like all intellectual property to promote originality through obstructing imitation, is perverted into "I made it and therefore they owe me money", like most probably happened within 10 days after the invention of copyright



It is a necessity when the creation of a 1:1 copy of an original item is effectively free.



FAST6191 said:


> I have never bought this argument and can't even get close to it. If you buy something and don't sign a contract stipulating to its uses (normally only houses on developments and high end cars seeing such a thing, and such a thing being more for limited runs and considered something of a drag/price lowering affair). Indeed I would go so far as to say I find the notion being floated at all a disgusting act contrary to basic principles that underpin societies -- if you have something then you can sell it. Fortunately we seem to have come a long way since the 90s where end user rights could be trampled over (see the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the story behind that), though I say that but the downloadable game marketplaces seem a bit slow on giving me options to sell games to friends (why I don't use them and register individual accounts to them to resell individually with attendant games).
> 
> I am still shocked this mindset gained traction -- I saw the very earliest attempts at this on older internet forums and late stage magazines and laughed heartily at them, assuming the idea would never catch on. That I was partially wrong still worries me.



"If you buy something and don't sign a contract stipulating to its uses" - Okay, well with games, you do. It's called accepting a EULA. With a lot of software you accept the EULA just by using it. Selling a used game is breaking your legal contract with the content owner (generally the developer/publisher).



JaapDaniels said:


> if i only bought the licence, then give me the contract to sell that contract and we're done talkin'.. as i buy any product, it be paper or physical, i own a right to sell or i own a product to sell. it's mine i bought it, i can sell it.
> the thing is you wanna sell a product, but in your mind you never accept when sold it's not yours anymore.
> the argument for legally selling 2nd hand products is that they'll never get forgotten.



Well, I'm not arguing this, one way or another. I'm arguing that the used games market is just as bad, if not worse than, straight up piracy from the point of view of the current legal system in most countries.

http://lawofthegame.com/you-dont-own-it/



Necron said:


> This is unregulated, however. If you buy a physical game, there are no records [Name] [Last name] bought a game somewhere, nor there is a formal contract established when you buy it. This only works for digital games, where there's a real bond between the purchase and the game you're playing.



There are absolutely records - namely your credit card. And by playing most games, you are establishing a formal contract by accepting a EULA - many of which grant you a NON-TRANSFERABLE license to the software for personal use (see Destiny EULA outtake above).


----------



## Ryccardo (Feb 19, 2019)

PityOnU said:


> which grant you a NON-TRANSFERABLE license to the software for personal use


They can write what they want, but a private contract doesn't override the law (and, for not knowing the correct word, "good-will and humane standards agreed on by the court")

Did you use iTunes in a nuclear power plant, recently?


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 19, 2019)

PityOnU said:


> "If you buy something and don't sign a contract stipulating to its uses" - Okay, well with games, you do. It's called accepting a EULA. With a lot of software you accept the EULA just by using it. Selling a used game is breaking your legal contract with the content owner (generally the developer/publisher).


That would depend where you are in the world. EULAs presented after the point of sale are invalid in a lot of places. Secondly I have never seen a game EULA say that*. Thirdly if they thought they had a hope I am sure gamestop et all would have been buried under an avalanche of lawsuits already. Fourthly there was that interesting supreme court case with the printer toner cart re-manufacturing the other month that would speak somewhat to the nature of resale here, as would earlier cases with student version software being resold. Fifthly I forgot to mention last time but I can't get to comparing it to piracy for another reason, that being it exists, it is known to exist, it has long existed, it has no chance of going away in the future by law or otherwise and any dev looking out into the world would know this before starting -- if it is a known and generally accepted variable then why would I have any empathy at all with their "position"?.

*even if it did then the old dodge we used to do with corporate software would probably come into play -- some fancy software package costing thousands per chair or something similar, company goes bankrupt or is otherwise offered for sale. My accountant friends (and I being proverbial spanner thrower) buy the name for the company and make it a sub company of the company it is going to (making the bankrupt company live on as it were, depending upon what goes they might "hire" out the seats but we are into technicalities at this point) and thus continue to have theoretically non resaleable stuff available all completely legally. I am sure all those nice companies that set up LLCs in Montana for people to have supercars registered to will be happy to do a bit of extra business.


----------



## Kioku_Dreams (Feb 19, 2019)

Used game


PityOnU said:


> The used game disc is a "physical copy" of the original code. It is a copy. The original is on a server somewhere.
> 
> And you are right, selling your old games IS different than piracy. In the former, you are profiting off of your violation of the EULA. So is the used game store. It's basically CloudGate NX or whatever that new Switch warez subscription service is called.
> 
> ...



The EULA has a very strict set of applications that allow enforcement. The used gaming market does not fall under this precipice. You can argue the one-off license you get with PC games. Outside of that? The argument isn't valid and holds no water. Effectively, what you're stating, is that the used game market is a hindrance and is borderline piracy in the effect that developers get nothing out of it. The latter is true, the former is not. Otherwise we'd all be held to the full extent of the law and facing possible prison time. This isn't even debatable. Just you trying to spin specific wording to match your unfounded views. It makes zero sense.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



the_randomizer said:


> Lol, game developers are just butthurt


How dare they want payment for the work they put out. You're better than this. Really?


----------



## PityOnU (Feb 19, 2019)

Bored of this thread already, lol, but I encourage you all to look up secondhand software sales and recent legal agreements related to them. I had one link above, and there are many others with a quick Google.

Will the used game market stop anytime soon? No.
Will piracy stop anytime soon? No.
Am I advocating piracy over buying used games? No.
Can you be prosecuted for breaking EULA? Yes.
Does the EULA for a lot of software grant a non-transferable license? Yes.
Can companies place pretty much whatever they want in a EULA? Yes, within reasonable limits.
Am I agreeing to a EULA by using the software? In many cases, yes.
Will companies be pursuing the used games market anytime soon? No - it is in their best interest to maintain positive PR.
Is the used games market a hindrance to the industry? At this point, I would say yes.


----------



## the_randomizer (Feb 19, 2019)

Memoir said:


> Used game
> 
> 
> The EULA has a very strict set of applications that allow enforcement. The used gaming market does not fall under this precipice. You can argue the one-off license you get with PC games. Outside of that? The argument isn't valid and holds no water. Effectively, what you're stating, is that the used game market is a hindrance and is borderline piracy in the effect that developers get nothing out of it. The latter is true, the former is not. Otherwise we'd all be held to the full extent of the law and facing possible prison time. This isn't even debatable. Just you trying to spin specific wording to match your unfounded views. It makes zero sense.
> ...



But used games as being bad as piracy? I call bullshit.  Maybe I wouldn't be so cynical if developers didn't bitch about used sales.


----------



## Kioku_Dreams (Feb 19, 2019)

the_randomizer said:


> But used games as being bad as piracy? I call bullshit.



It's true, it's not. Some devs cry about it, just like musical artists cry about illegal MP3 downloads. It is what it is. The point of this thread is unfounded bullshit, and should be left at that.


----------



## the_randomizer (Feb 19, 2019)

Memoir said:


> It's true, it's not. Some devs cry about it, just like musical artists cry about illegal MP3 downloads. It is what it is. The point of this thread is unfounded bullshit, and should be left at that.



Sorry, but I'm not going to stop just because of some whiny developers' bitchfest. Gonna keep getting used games out of spite. It's bad enough DRM is getting worse.


----------



## Kioku_Dreams (Feb 19, 2019)

the_randomizer said:


> Sorry, but I'm not going to stop just because of some whiny developers' bitchfest. Gonna keep getting used games out of spite. It's bad enough DRM is getting worse.


...and that's fine. I'm talking about OP and his illogical stance on the matter. Trying to spew it as fact, when anybody with even a hint of rational thought knows better. I'm for the used market.


----------



## the_randomizer (Feb 19, 2019)

Memoir said:


> ...and that's fine. I'm talking about OP and his illogical stance on the matter. Trying to spew it as fact, when anybody with even a hint of rational thought knows better. I'm for the used market.



Ugh, no kidding >.>  I smell anti-consumerism sycophancy from his post


----------



## The Real Jdbye (Feb 19, 2019)

PityOnU said:


> No, you own the car.
> 
> You do not own a game. You purchase a license to legally play it.


And you are allowed by law to transfer that license to another person if you are no longer using it or no longer want it.
I see no problem with this. It's better than creating even more e-waste than we already have. 

I'm sure the devs and publishers would get rid of used game sales if they could, but I'm glad the law isn't made in such a way as to only favor those who are making all the money. The customers are just as important, we are the ones giving them our money after all. Just because used game sales don't benefit the devs/publishers doesn't make them bad, it benefits the customers and I think comparing it to piracy is unfair.

Someone bought that license, do you think it should just go to waste if they no longer have a use for it and the cartridge/disc discarded?


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 19, 2019)

PityOnU said:


> Bored of this thread already, lol, but I encourage you all to look up secondhand software sales and recent legal agreements related to them. I had one link above, and there are many others with a quick Google.
> 
> Will companies be pursuing the used games market anytime soon? No - it is in their best interest to maintain positive PR.
> Is the used games market a hindrance to the industry? At this point, I would say yes.



Yet you made it?

Anyway. This is the same industry that almost pulled the wool over the eyes of many with these downloadable efforts priced the same as retail. The same industry that has been seen to attack its fans for no great reason. That has been seen to push all sorts of stupid agendas. With this second hand lark there was one that went after a guy for a dubious technicality with a sealed game. A bit of bad PR if they could actually make money as a result rather than just pretend to be virtuous or whatever... they would not even hesitate, they could even bankroll some small fry firm as a test case.

Hindrance? How? Second hand games/software has been a thing since software was divorced from hardware however many decades ago that was and we got commercial efforts at games. It has not all of a sudden shifted in character, or appeared out of nowhere, and neither has what it takes to make games. Books get resold all the time (and have done for hundreds of years), music gets resold all the time (if we look at sheet music or music rolls then probably similar timeframes, LPs and such then longer than anybody ever likely to read this has been alive), DVDs get resold all the time (collecting film reels was a thing back to the earliest days), art gets resold all the time and has done for centuries... all of those are IP driven fields and nobody would think twice there, the notion of stopping it being patently absurd to them, if IP somehow should gain a special status over other general goods.
I am sure if they magically had it stopped and everything shifted to them (or some fraction thereof as the market is clearly not going to realign. see also the PC since Steam weaselled and wormed its way into the hearts of fools) then they would be delighted. Just the same as I would be if magic fairy land was real and I could get there and get whatever I want from it.
If game devs want money from me reselling games and they did not manage to trick me into agreeing to a glorified rental from them then they get to offer the service themselves or invest in a company that does it. I can't see a logical reason why I would, or should allow, them a taste or to otherwise block me and mine from disposing of things as we will.

As far as recent legal stuff then you are going to have to share case names and numbers. While not impossible that I missed something it is not a minor trifling thing that all the things I follow are likely to have missed.


----------



## AkikoKumagara (Feb 19, 2019)

I gotta disagree. With reselling, you're taking one physical thing from a place and moving it someplace else. With piracy, you're copying that thing while the original continues to exist.

Playing with a legally obtained secondhand copy disables the previous owner from continuing to play the game. Piracy allows you to play a copy of the game unlawfully obtained while the original owner (assuming it's a rip or dump) can also continue to enjoy their copy. This is the same with all digital media, as well. One is unregulated duplication, one is transference.


----------



## Taleweaver (Feb 19, 2019)

I'm going a bit against the grain here, but...I mostly, if not completely, agree with the OP.


Yes...I've read the replies: many of you think it's bullshit, so you're going to be at best skeptical about my post. That's fine. I'll make my case and see how your arguments stand. 

Let's start with the thing we can agree on: when we buy software, we mostly (if not exclusively) buy the _right_ to use the software. The physical disk (or bunch of floppies to the old gamers) is but the medium on which it is transported. Same with a valid download link (tied to an unique account): THAT is what you really buy. In an ideal world, there'd be no need for anti-piracy and everyone should be legally able to make all sorts of backups and torrents of everything EXCEPT THIS KEY (okay: unless there isn't a key. But that's a different situation).

Now...this key, or even this disk, has a problem that pretty much no other good has: very, very little wear and tear. Buy a book, read it, and then compare it to a new book: chances are that it shows signs of wear-and tear. Now...let's hold that idea for a while. More so: let's assume for a second that this isn't a thing. That books remain just as brand new as the day it's bought.

Still with me? Okay...now let's visit stores. Both video game stores and book stores. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the latter, but let me tell you this: _they might have a second hand book department, but it's at best a niche section of the store_. Meanwhile: just about all dedicated video game stores I've visited have almost as much shelf space for second hand games as the first-party line-up. Granted: like those book stores, the second hand video games department isn't as neatly organised. But still...if you go to a book store and ask if you've got a book of the current bestseller list in stock as second hand, they'll laugh you out of the store. On video games, this is common practice (well...except on launch day, obviously). Heck...I once saw a new and a second hand version in the same store within sight of each other.

Like it or not: that is a difference. I already mentioned the very low wear-and-tear of video games, so the whole difference to consumers between new and second hand is about 5 to 10 bucks saved when buying second-hand. My argument (that same argument that is already called bullshit when phrased a bit shorter) is that by making it so much easier for a DESIRED game to be bought second hand, it hurts the ACTUAL (that is: first time) sales on the long run.

Now...I admit that stores cannot operate by themselves this way. They handily play into the lack of wear-and-tear of video games by actively pursuing the re-buying (and then reselling) of new games.

Let's compare this with books again. Here's what I think: if I own a book store and actively push my guests to sell their freshly bought books back to me (so I can, in turn, make more profit by selling the book a second time), it will hurt the overall sales of these books in the long run. And the reason this doesn't happen? Distributors. Book publishers sell an amount of books to stores. If they fail to sell that amount, they won't get future books. I'm not sure if the situation is the same with movies, but I assume so.

But with video games...that simply doesn't happen. Publishers don't like that their new games will sit next to second hand copies for which they get nothing, but they use other methods to get money. In other words: they see more in the long term profits of brand recognizability...and of course alternative monetization methods (ahem...DLC and such).


_But Taleweaver...what about libraries?
_
I'm glad you ask that question. Again: the situation is different there. Libraries have more the goal of preservation of knowledge. The reason these do not plummet the book market (that'd be "mass piracy whereas the writer gets nothing" in your mind, right?) is that they actively DON'T play into supply and demand. New books are often added weeks or months after release date, and in my opinion never match the demand. As such: if I want to read a SPECIFIC book, I buy it rather than check the library and see that there's a waiting list to reserve it.

Now...if video game stores would follow the same guidelines as libraries, my opinion would be different. But it's not. These game stores seek to get the maximum profit from video games as possible, so they're not going to wait until the hype dies down to start accepting second hand copies of a game. They aren't going to limit their supply if they suspect they can sell it.

Is it piracy? Pure from a technical stance, it is not. It is not piracy in the same way that (traditionally) piracy isn't the same as theft. However: this method of second hand sales has a much larger impact on ACTUAL game sales than is presumed by most. Of course it is my opinion. But in my opinion it is not bullshit. Rather the contrary: my claim is that the larger stores have a larger role in vanished sales than traditional pirates.


Okay...that's my (long) explanation on this. As said: feel free to disagree or to argue. 

(heck...feel free to call me an idiot if that makes you feel better. I'll read it as "I don't believe you but I'm too dumb to even consider that this might be correct")


----------



## kuwanger (Feb 19, 2019)

PityOnU said:


> Well, buying or trading used games has the same effect. Picking up a game from the used section at your local Gamestop sees exactly $0 going back to the original developers/publishers.



Basically, your argument fails for the obvious reason:  every copy a copyright holder makes is a legal copy for sale or resale.  Copyright holders then have an inherent ability to control the supply of copies.  If game stores sell used copies of games at a higher price than the copyright holder would like, they can trivially undercut them.

Of course, most copyright holders don't try to undercut used stores precisely because they can charge a substantial premium on first sale.  When you can sell millions of copies at $50, you dilute the actually value of any one copy into a much lower value.  So, you can of course instead make a "limited run" and try to inflate the price of hundreds or thousands of copies.  Some try to do both.

As for breaking EULAs?  Read above:  each copy that is a legal copy is a legal copy.  Copyright holders have the right to limit supply.  They don't have the right to limit resale.  So, yes, you do own a copy as much as you own a car.  Courts that disagree go against First Sale Doctrine.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 19, 2019)

Second hand book shops, charity shops selling books, antiques shops selling books, individuals selling books at any number of markets or places where people go with a table to sell stuff, auctions selling books... are everywhere here, and that does not count more distance selling methods. Fewer doing music but still not hard to find. Whether shops selling books or music have a second hand section is immaterial from where I sit -- what does it matter whether it happens under the same roof or 20m down the road?

"it hurts the ACTUAL (that is: first time) sales on the long run."
Company makes product that competes with itself. Happens all the time -- it was often joke the main competitor to the various HP laserjet models were the models before (and the ones before that a lot of the time as well, to this day I still have a few in service). The onus is on them to make a product resistant to it if they care, in games we tended to see devs try to make a multiplayer mode as a first pass at such a thing. I can not see why I should forgo fundamental rights to "correct" that.

"If they fail to sell that amount, they won't get future books"
Actually they tend to tear the covers off and send those back to redeem them -- it is why you have all those warnings saying if the cover is not on here don't buy it.

"wear and tear" has been a notion floated before -- records vs CDs being a big one here. It was dismissed then and I can't see the rationales changing. Equally I have books from the late 1800s that appear just fine. The 1700s ones tend to age a bit worse. Depending upon the wars involved then some of the paper in the 1940s ones, and later "pulp" 1950s stuff, is a bit less than some others but that is an initial product.

"Publishers don't like that their new games will sit next to second hand copies for which they get nothing"
I know how they feel; I don't like that I am not getting millions for doing nothing other than dicking around on the internet right now.


----------



## WD_GASTER2 (Feb 20, 2019)

BORTZ said:


> Ehhhhh I urge you to take a look at GameStop stock prices.


you got me there. LOL


----------



## DayVeeBoi (Feb 28, 2019)

Great thread, I love these on the odd occasion they happen. A smart discussion of the industry/law/ethics of gaming without name calling or trolling. Just to be clear, I am not commenting on the validity of any particular viewpoints, just on the merit of the discourse itself. Thanks to OP and all those who are participating, for some interesting points and perspectives.


----------



## SG854 (Feb 28, 2019)

I’ve had the same thoughts as the OP about used game sales, game rentals and developers not getting money.

This is actually a big deal to developers. So big that Nintendo and other Publishers teamed up to make game rentals illegal in Japan.

This seems more like a morality issue rather than a illegal one since used games are legal. Unless they decide to make used games illegal, not going to happen.

Would you buy a used game and not to support the developer. Or your morals kicks in and you buy a new game and the developer gets a cut of the money, because you want to support them.


----------



## Captain_N (Feb 28, 2019)

so OP, do you always buy new games? I think i smell a hypocrite.... You sound like those people that hate large corporations but still buy their products....

I bet you would rather buy games on a stream service so you can be told when to stop playing said games and own nothing. Buying uses games is not even close to piracy. Your logic is about as sound as . The gaming industry's business model is built to include the used game market. The video game industry wants players to never own anything. Then they can keep selling you the same game over and over...


----------



## AkikoKumagara (Feb 28, 2019)

SG854 said:


> Would you buy a used game and not to support the developer. Or your morals kicks in and you buy a new game and the developer gets a cut of the money, because you want to support them.



Because that single copy is moving from one owner to another, and the developer was already compensated for that copy of the software, it does not hurt the developer to buy a used game from a third-party. Rentals are different because they're spreading a single copy of a game across a wide range of people in a short timespan, and you're obtaining the right to use the software by renting it but not ownership thereof. The latter still isn't piracy, of course, or even nearly as bad as piracy is perceived to be, at least in my opinion, but it's easier to make a sound argument against rentals than it is against secondhand sales.

Neither are comparable to piracy because piracy involves making an unauthorized copy which no one who created (or officially distributed) the software is compensated for.


----------



## SG854 (Feb 28, 2019)

Sophie-bear said:


> Because that single copy is moving from one owner to another, and the developer was already compensated for that copy of the software, it does not hurt the developer to buy a used game from a third-party. Rentals are different because they're spreading a single copy of a game across a wide range of people in a short timespan, and you're obtaining the right to use the software by renting it but not ownership thereof. The latter still isn't piracy, of course, or even nearly as bad as piracy is perceived to be, at least in my opinion, but it's easier to make a sound argument against rentals than it is against secondhand sales.
> 
> Neither are comparable to piracy because piracy involves making an unauthorized copy which no one who created the software is compensated for.


Like I said in my original post. It’s a moral issue, not an illegal one. Do you want more money to go to the developers for the copy you purchase or not. 

Even if they were compensated for a copy. Why not give them even more and support them more by purchasing new?


----------



## Paolosworld (Feb 28, 2019)

lol I just pirated $3000 worth of Pc games please help


----------



## AkikoKumagara (Feb 28, 2019)

SG854 said:


> Like I said in my original post. It’s a moral issue, not an illegal one. Do you want more money to go to the developers for the copy you purchase or not.
> 
> Even if they were compensated for a copy. Why not give them even more and support them more by purchasing new?



In this context, morals are subjective based on one's own beliefs, usually stemming from societal factors and upbringing, and really shouldn't hold a lot of weight in this kind of debate. It doesn't contribute much to say it's a moral issue because anything can be. The reasons why it's a moral issue are what is important, and those would fall back on compensation for those involved in creation and distribution of the product, right? That's why I made the point I did. They were already compensated for the copy being resold, unless it was stolen or something. You can choose to give them more money (and spend more) by buying a new copy if you want to, but it shouldn't feel like an obligation because there's nothing wrong with buying things secondhand. When I buy a used car, I'm not going to feel bad that the manufacturer of that car won't get my money, they were already paid for the car.


----------



## SG854 (Feb 28, 2019)

Sophie-bear said:


> In this context, morals are subjective based on one's own beliefs, usually stemming from societal factors and upbringing, and really shouldn't hold a lot of weight in this kind of debate. It doesn't contribute much to say it's a moral issue because anything can be. The reasons why it's a moral issue are what is important, and those would fall back on compensation for those involved in creation and distribution of the product, right? That's why I made the point I did. They were already compensated for the copy being resold, unless it was stolen or something. You can choose to give them more money (and spend more) by buying a new copy if you want to, but it shouldn't feel like an obligation because there's nothing wrong with buying things secondhand. When I buy a used car, I'm not going to feel bad that the manufacturer of that car won't get my money, they were already paid for the car.


All laws are created based on moral beliefs of humans. Morality holds a lot of weight because they govern the laws of the land we create. For this specific case, it’s a moral one in that no law exists, but it’s still relavent because they still govern how people behave. 

My comment wasn’t you have to do it. It was more about it depends on your morals if you think game developers should get money for your purchase or not. Which would still be interesting to hear what people think.

They can get much more money. That extra money can be beneficial in a lot of ways especially if they are a smaller company. They have more disposable cash to invest in bigger projects, and higher quality games with bigger budgets. 

They may be already compensated for that purchase. But buying used they loose a potential purchase from you. It’s 1 copy sold that 2 people get to enjoy, and they only get money from 1 person.

All copyright laws and illegal copy laws only exist because developers want to get as much money they can as possible. If it was within their power I’m pretty sure they would make used purchases illegal because that means more money for themselves.


----------



## Deleted-401606 (Feb 28, 2019)

SG854 said:


> Like I said in my original post. It’s a moral issue, not an illegal one. Do you want more money to go to the developers for the copy you purchase or not.
> 
> Even if they were compensated for a copy. Why not give them even more and support them more by purchasing new?



There is nothing immoral about buying a used video game copy. Is buying a used car immoral because the car manufacturer doesn't get a cut?


Sophie-bear said:


> Because that single copy is moving from one owner to another, and the developer was already compensated for that copy of the software, it does not hurt the developer to buy a used game from a third-party. Rentals are different because they're spreading a single copy of a game across a wide range of people in a short timespan, and you're obtaining the right to use the software by renting it but not ownership thereof. The latter still isn't piracy, of course, or even nearly as bad as piracy is perceived to be, at least in my opinion, but it's easier to make a sound argument against rentals than it is against secondhand sales.
> 
> Neither are comparable to piracy because piracy involves making an unauthorized copy which no one who created (or officially distributed) the software is compensated for.



You explained this better than I could.Most of the post on this thread are just baseless arguments and have little to do with ethics/morality.


----------



## Mythical (Feb 28, 2019)

In the end I would say it comes down to one thing. The developers put their work out into the world with a set of rules they have /the product have to adhere to. When someone pirates a game they're not following the agreement for the general consumer. Basically you're disregarding their choice to put their works out under a set of conditions. Sort of a trust thing, but not seen as such because the connection between retailers and consumers and such is so far apart and non personal.
Also if companies really cared that much they would go digital only, and/or sell used copies themselves. It's one of those problems that takes money out of their pockets, but not as much as any viable solutions do.


----------



## SG854 (Feb 28, 2019)

Maluma said:


> There is nothing immoral about buying a used video game copy. Is buying a used car immoral because the car manufacturer doesn't get a cut?
> 
> 
> You explained this better than I could.Most of the post on this thread are just baseless arguments and have little to do with ethics/morality.


That’s up to the person to decide if they want to make it a moral issue or not.

The used game existence means they loose potential customers right. And loose potential money correct.

To make comparisons. There are defamation laws that exist and the purpose of these laws is that if someone damages your reputation like a false rape accusation, that you end up loosing ability to make money because jobs won’t hire you now, you can sue to try to get you lively hood back. The big thing this law functions under is potential money that is lost in future events.

Loosing potential money is a big thing, if it wasn’t defamation laws wouldn’t exist. And that what developers loose is potential customers, which is potential money lost with the existence of used stores. Even if they get money for a game from 1 person, they still loose potential customers.


----------



## kuwanger (Feb 28, 2019)

SG854 said:


> The used game existence means they loose potential customers right. And loose potential money correct.



Potentially yes.



SG854 said:


> To make comparisons. There are defamation laws that exist and the purpose of these laws is that if someone damages your reputation like a false rape accusation, that you end up loosing ability to make money because jobs won’t hire you now, you can sue to try to get you lively hood back. The big thing this law functions under is potential money that is lost in future events.



Yet if someone damages your reputation with a true rape accusation, you're SOL in most countries.  By the same token, if you give someone bad advice, you're rarely on the hook for potential future livelihood.  Then there's things like tortious interference.  Unless you're going out of your way to be malicious, are generally reckless, make specific promises, or in some special position where you're specifically obligated in some fashion, the law and general morality is you're not responsible for another person's general livelihood.



SG854 said:


> Loosing potential money is a big thing, if it wasn’t defamation laws wouldn’t exist. And that what developers loose is potential customers, which is potential money lost with the existence of used stores. Even if they get money for a game from 1 person, they still loose potential customers.



This does lead to the obvious question, how much money is actually lost (or really, not gained)?  It's an interesting thing to me, for example, that Nintendo sells a lot of its 3DS games at the same price digitally as stores sell physical carts.  Furthers, stores aren't selling games at cost and depending on contract Nintendo might have to buy up unsold games and/or the stores will demand lower prices so they can offset the loses of unsold stock.  There's also the opportunity cost of making an oversupply of one game and the lost sales of an undersupply of another--people might end up buying a cheeseburger if the game they want isn't available.

With all of that out of the way, if you wanted to be under your moral code and cut a check to Nintendo when you bought a used game, how much would you actually give them?  Are digital sales then immoral because the price is substantially higher than that when their appropriate compensation plus costs?


----------



## Deleted-401606 (Feb 28, 2019)

SG854 said:


> That’s up to the person to decide if they want to make it a moral issue or not.
> 
> The used game existence means they loose potential customers right. And loose potential money correct.
> 
> ...



So in your view is buying a used car immoral since the car company doesn't get any money from it?


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 28, 2019)

SG854 said:


> All laws are created based on moral beliefs of humans. Morality holds a lot of weight because they govern the laws of the land we create. For this specific case, it’s a moral one in that no law exists, but it’s still relavent because they still govern how people behave.
> 
> My comment wasn’t you have to do it. It was more about it depends on your morals if you think game developers should get money for your purchase or not. Which would still be interesting to hear what people think.
> 
> ...



There is a law. It is called First-sale doctrine in the US. Not sure of the complete origins but the US Supreme court apparently first had a kick at the cat over 100 years ago at this point ( https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/210/339/ ), and has continued to affirm it and consider its limitations in the years since - 2017 saw a fun case with printer cartridges here.

I can't see how games differ sufficiently in concept to other things already in existence; occasionally for the car example people like to say the maker gets money from parts but eh really, as mentioned though books, music, film, paintings, prints... all IP based with a fairly minimal reproduction cost and all are doing just fine. At no point could they reasonably have expected to only see "new" sales and suddenly they find themselves competing with themselves, indeed the idea that long tail new sales would happen for this long is itself fairly new in games; barring those few that made "grey label" type setups it was something of an initial sales only market for years in games.
As such I can not see how they would have any claim, legal or moral, to more money from a copy being resold.

Extra money? Sure. Free money is almost always helpful. I am still however at a loss for why any more should be given to them at the cost of either those selling or those buying, or, worse still, potentially preventing the resale altogether.


----------



## blahblah (Feb 28, 2019)

Used game sales of recently released titles are super bad for so many reasons and are largely responsible for the hellscape that gaming has been for a while, but good luck getting people to accept that. Not even worth litigating.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 28, 2019)

blahblah said:


> Used game sales of recently released titles are super bad for so many reasons and are largely responsible for the hellscape that gaming has been for a while, but good luck getting people to accept that. Not even worth litigating.


Is this not why you build your game with long term appeal and replayability? If self competition is a problem and you can recognise it there are plenty of ways to solve it, even without a tacked on multiplayer mode.

While I am none too fond of gaming at present ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-games-you-will-keep-for-your-ps4-and-xbox-one.499105/ ) second hand sales were very much still a thing, perhaps even more so, during the PS360 era and that was probably one of the best times I have ever had in gaming.


----------



## blahblah (Feb 28, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> Is this not why you build your game with long term appeal and replayability? If self competition is a problem and you can recognise it there are plenty of ways to solve it, even without a tacked on multiplayer mode.
> 
> While I am none too fond of gaming at present ( https://gbatemp.net/threads/the-games-you-will-keep-for-your-ps4-and-xbox-one.499105/ ) second hand sales were very much still a thing, perhaps even more so, during the PS360 era and that was probably one of the best times I have ever had in gaming.



The problems are what the resale of recent releases does to the economic model of video games. We’ve been seeing the impact of that more and more. 

The 360 generation suffered in the same ways for the same reasons. It gets worse over time.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 28, 2019)

blahblah said:


> The problems are what the resale of recent releases does to the economic model of video games. We’ve been seeing the impact of that more and more.
> 
> The 360 generation suffered in the same ways for the same reasons. It gets worse over time.


Why is a game dev's inability to do their job (that being make games that sell) my problem?

Ready commercial resale of games has been a thing since probably the 16 bit era (I certainly had game shops offer to procure a copy of things from their sister stores for either no or a token charge, so presumably a database and stock redistribution apparatus somewhere in there). With the explosion of the internet it got even easier but it is not like those times were worse for games. I am not sure how the PS4 era is going to be worse than the PS3 one either -- growth of ebay/craigslist/gumtree/... has probably been minimal in the gaming set from the point at which the PS360 got firing on all cylinders to now (or maybe just grown as a function of age of the population; 10 years ago I would have been enjoying the recently released skate 2).


----------



## Silent_Gunner (Feb 28, 2019)

the_randomizer said:


> Lol, game developers are just butthurt



And publishers spend FAR too much on advertising. Like, I think the marketing campaign for the original Destiny was $500 million! How is any company that doesn't have backing from a big name publisher supposed to compete in that market? Let alone innovate with how much risk is involved with their investments?

I remember reading some column that was looking into how much games (mostly 7th generation games) costed to produce and market, and it was really sobering to see how much money is just thrown to the wall in the hopes that it will stick, because all it takes is a failure or two, and I can imagine these companies would be scrambling for cash real quick. As in, actual, financial cash and not financing things with debts, loans, investments, and other things involving other peoples' money!


----------



## blahblah (Feb 28, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> Why is a game dev's inability to do their job (that being make games that sell) my problem?
> 
> Ready commercial resale of games has been a thing since probably the 16 bit era (I certainly had game shops offer to procure a copy of things from their sister stores for either no or a token charge, so presumably a database and stock redistribution apparatus somewhere in there). With the explosion of the internet it got even easier but it is not like those times were worse for games. I am not sure how the PS4 era is going to be worse than the PS3 one either -- growth of ebay/craigslist/gumtree/... has probably been minimal in the gaming set from the point at which the PS360 got firing on all cylinders to now (or maybe just grown as a function of age of the population; 10 years ago I would have been enjoying the recently released skate 2).



If developers and publishers can’t get paid, they will make other things that monetize easier. Enter the always connected, online only ‘forever game’. Rainbow Six Siege. Open world design, games structured to give you trash work so as to delay resale. Garbage content. The single player 12 hour experience goes away, becomes the exception to the rule. That’s happened. It’s already over.

Only video games need to deal with a viable resale market for first run content. Movies are in theatres. Tv is funded through the cable bundle. Music is a hell scale for different reasons. Books wear.

Your selfish garbage views aren’t worth engaging with further. There are complicated economic reasons why what I am saying is true & there are studies and research that backs me up. It is a settled matter - unlimited resale of recent releases breaks the business model.


----------



## PityOnU (Feb 28, 2019)

DayVeeBoi said:


> Great thread, I love these on the odd occasion they happen. A smart discussion of the industry/law/ethics of gaming without name calling or trolling. Just to be clear, I am not commenting on the validity of any particular viewpoints, just on the merit of the discourse itself. Thanks to OP and all those who are participating, for some interesting points and perspectives.



I was hoping for that sort of a discussion, but unfortunately it did devolve into name-calling and annecdotal evidence. Also, lots of people who haven't actually read the First-Sale Doctrine.



SG854 said:


> I’ve had the same thoughts as the OP about used game sales, game rentals and developers not getting money.
> 
> This is actually a big deal to developers. So big that Nintendo and other Publishers teamed up to make game rentals illegal in Japan.
> 
> ...



Again, used games are definitely in a legally grey area right now. If you actually read the licensing terms (some are posted prior in this thread, here is another: Sega's general licensing terms for their games), the vast majority of companies are granting you a single-use, NON-TRANSFERABLE license to use their game. And before people start shouting about "muh rights!," well, it's right there in the EULA. They told you what you were buying, expressly, and you still bought it. You don't have a leg to stand on, legally. This has been held up in some court cases, at least in the US. The general trend is to side with the EULA as well, if this article is to be believed.



Captain_N said:


> so OP, do you always buy new games? I think i smell a hypocrite.... You sound like those people that hate large corporations but still buy their products....
> 
> I bet you would rather buy games on a stream service so you can be told when to stop playing said games and own nothing. Buying uses games is not even close to piracy. Your logic is about as sound as . The gaming industry's business model is built to include the used game market. The video game industry wants players to never own anything. Then they can keep selling you the same game over and over...



I do always buy new games. Mostly digital nowadays - easier to keep track of. I tend to avoid any type of retailers or software which includes DRM so I can keep my own backups on a 15TB array I have. GOG is great for this! Admittedly, I probably miss out on a lot of titles because of this, but there are simply so many games it's not actually a huge deal.

I would argue that the used games market is at least partially responsible for the epidemic of paid DLC, lootboxes, and microtransactions that are creeping their way into AAA titles nowadays.



Sophie-bear said:


> Because that single copy is moving from one owner to another, and the developer was already compensated for that copy of the software, it does not hurt the developer to buy a used game from a third-party. Rentals are different because they're spreading a single copy of a game across a wide range of people in a short timespan, and you're obtaining the right to use the software by renting it but not ownership thereof. The latter still isn't piracy, of course, or even nearly as bad as piracy is perceived to be, at least in my opinion, but it's easier to make a sound argument against rentals than it is against secondhand sales.
> 
> Neither are comparable to piracy because piracy involves making an unauthorized copy which no one who created (or officially distributed) the software is compensated for.



From Wikipedia: "Piracy traditionally refers to acts of copyright infringement intentionally committed for financial gain, though more recently, copyright holders have described online copyright infringement, particularly in relation to peer-to-peer file sharing networks, as "piracy"."

Violating the EULA is copyright infringement - i.e. going against the agreement you have with the copyright owners. Interestingly, used game sales result in financial gain, while straight-up piracy usually doesn't. Hmm...



SG854 said:


> Like I said in my original post. It’s a moral issue, not an illegal one. Do you want more money to go to the developers for the copy you purchase or not.
> 
> Even if they were compensated for a copy. Why not give them even more and support them more by purchasing new?



Again, I would argue that it is a legal issue. But I agree with you - I always purchase new from a moral standpoint.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 28, 2019)

blahblah said:


> If developers and publishers can’t get paid, they will make other things that monetize easier. Enter the always connected, online only ‘forever game’. Rainbow Six Siege. Open world design, games structured to give you trash work so as to delay resale. Garbage content. The single player 12 hour experience goes away, becomes the exception to the rule. That’s happened. It’s already over.
> 
> Only video games need to deal with a viable resale market for first run content. Movies are in theatres. Tv is funded through the cable bundle. Music is a hell scale for different reasons. Books wear.
> 
> Your selfish garbage views aren’t worth engaging with further. There are complicated economic reasons why what I am saying is true & there are studies and research that backs me up. It is a settled matter - unlimited resale of recent releases breaks the business model.



I agree there is an element of "evolution does not make the best, just something that works" in. Granted evolution is randomly directed where this has a bit more conscious direction towards greed. While I am generally ambivalent towards the concept (if you don't like it then don't play it* generally sufficing for me) I would sooner cast aspersions at the fools parting with their money for old rope, just the same as I did in the arcade days.

*I will game systems where I can if there is a chance of a good game making it out of it all.

Still if they could make PS360 games profitable then there is no reason why things still can not be. Barring a marginal rate of inflation game development prices need not have gone up, indeed with the ability to have far more overhead far more easily I would expected it to go relatively down. If people want to spend millions animating night time sky boxes then that is their problem -- everybody else has to trim the fat or innovate their way around it.

I have books from the late 1700s that are still plenty readable, and from about 1900 onwards (give or take the pulp years and world wars) they are still perfectly fine almost by default. At a glance it is usually only my knowledge of 90s typefaces and fingerprints of similar vintage layout software that sees me able to tell most of those when I am rooting through bookshelves in second hand shops. These are timeframes beyond copyright, never mind theoretical first sale timeframes.
So a few other industries have a handful of alternative pathways (straight to DVD/streaming being probably the majority model by the way). Does DLC/expansion packs not count? They have been doing that at least since the 90s and probably earlier than that.

I am still not sure how my views are selfish, at least as far as my in turn having to theoretically sacrifice a fundamental right, one never taken from the game devs, game dev being a luxury industry, game dev also being broadly similar if not easier than it really ever has been (certainly not got harder), and one they have no reasonable grounds to expect anything on as far as getting a taste of my resales.

So I am back at game devs have a bad selling model/can't do their job. Adapt or die, make something people want to play and they will come, this has been true for decades now and nobody cried when a dev failed at business (EA/Ubisoft buyouts and borderline vulture capitalism aside).


----------



## blahblah (Feb 28, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> I agree there is an element of "evolution does not make the best, just something that works" in. Granted evolution is randomly directed where this has a bit more conscious direction towards greed. While I am generally ambivalent towards the concept (if you don't like it then don't play it* generally sufficing for me) I would sooner cast aspersions at the fools parting with their money for old rope, just the same as I did in the arcade days.
> 
> *I will game systems where I can if there is a chance of a good game making it out of it all.
> 
> ...



Again, you are washing over how hard things were last generation as well as the changing economic situation. Just because X worked (poorly) in the past does not mean it works now. Your comment regarding cost of development is outright untrue, as is the bulk of the rest of your post. You are reducing the complexity of the matter so as to allow you to semi-credibly argue something you only believe on account of selfishness, but even with the simplification your argument remains absurd & you have to state things that are not true as fact in order to even make the argument

Books physically wear. Books do not allow for unlimited resale due to the very real wear they incur from being read. A disc is not the same way. Few people would buy a used book* at a slight discount compared to a new book. The places you buy used books are not the same physical places you buy new ones. A used disc is different, it incurs no substantive aging when compared to a new one. A used disc works and looks just like a new disc, so consumers do not view it as a lesser product. You know this, because you are not a moron, yet you argue in bad faith regardless.

Your views are uninformed and highly selfish. 'Why should I care if the people who make the product I want to buy are able to make money doing so? Surely they'll continue making said product forever, regardless of if they are able to make a living!'. That's a selfish view, as well as a dumb one.

We've lost entire genres already, gone to the odd platform holder funded exclusive. We're deep into the era of '100 hour' open world games, where hours and hours of filler content are injected to delay the resale of the game. We're deep into the forever game, the multiplayer only AAA title, the everything undesirable. And the handful of exceptions to the rule aren't enough. We've lost a lot. We've retained nothing of value. Being able to resell a game during the launch window does not matter if there is nothing of value to resell.

I will not respond to you any further. You are too awful, too selfish of a person to be won over.

*The obvious exception being text books, which are sold to consumers through a deeply exploitative model & are expensive enough that the purchaser tends to take good care of the book, so as to be able to recoup some of their money when the book is no longer needed. The same is not true of video games; the model is not deliberately exploitative & the product is no where expensive enough to incur the ‘this costs a lot, I will take care of it’ advantage as far as the supply of used products are concerned.


----------



## kuwanger (Feb 28, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> At no point could they reasonably have expected to only see "new" sales and suddenly they find themselves competing with themselves, indeed the idea that long tail new sales would happen for this long is itself fairly new in games; barring those few that made "grey label" type setups it was something of an initial sales only market for years in games.



Funny you say that.  Do you consider shareware titles "grey label"?  I'd tend to argue shareware and any non-large company had a lot of long tail sales and hence to some degree competed against themselves.  The truth, though, is since sales were so low there wasn't/isn't much real competition on price--you're unlikely to actually meet a person who owns the game and those willing to devote the money to buy the game in the first place after playing the shareware/demo version are unlikely to want to resell it.  Meanwhile, since you have a shareware title with an address on where to actually buy the game, you'd likely go that route.

The comparative situation in consoles is rental, and I'd tend to argue that what has allowed so strongly for used sales in that space has changed over time.  In the past with most games as cartridges, there was a prohibitively high production cost.  This both limits supply but also limits the possibility of reducing price over time.  In the present with most games on disc (or even digital), the production cost is so low than there is a tendency to oversupply the market in the near term and especially long term.  This is a large part of why most smart companies reduce prices after a time because they're not only competing against other titles but against themselves.



blahblah said:


> Used game sales of recently released titles are super bad for so many reasons and are largely responsible for the hellscape that gaming has been for a while, but good luck getting people to accept that.





blahblah said:


> If developers and publishers can’t get paid, they will make other things that monetize easier. Enter the always connected, online only ‘forever game’.



Actually, my understanding is entirely different.  As Silent_Gunner notes, "Like, I think the marketing campaign for the original Destiny was $500 million!"  This is where larger developers are having problems:  they spend a vast amount of money and so they need to recoup those costs.  They know most gamers would balk at purchasing a $100 game yet overall recoup rate per player has to be on the order of that.  So, they try different strategies to monetize.  It turns out, service fees, loot box fees, etc tend to make more money for a successful game--as defined by millions of players--are a lot more profitable.  It's why F2P has become such a major source.  That, btw, really disproves the argument against needing an upfront price for what is the hellscape of many games.  It also makes the argument that people must morally spend money on F2P games.



PityOnU said:


> Again, used games are definitely in a legally grey area right now. If you actually read the licensing terms (some are posted prior in this thread, here is another: Sega's general licensing terms for their games), the vast majority of companies are granting you a single-use, NON-TRANSFERABLE license to use their game. And before people start shouting about "muh rights!," well, it's right there in the EULA. They told you what you were buying, expressly, and you still bought it. You don't have a leg to stand on, legally. This has been held up in some court cases, at least in the US. The general trend is to side with the EULA as well, if this article is to be believed.



Which is honestly bullshit.  The whole reason the Supreme Court ruled there was First Sale Doctrine is because In that case, the copyright owner sold books to wholesalers with a printed notice announcing that any retailer who sold the book for less than $1.00 was engaging in copyright infringement.  The "legally grey area" then is the logic that such a notice could by some magic make a copy of a work created by the publisher both a pirated one and a legal one based upon agreeing to some imposed terms.  The courts, rightly at the time, agreed that was absurd.  It's sad that future courts have generally went back on that.


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 28, 2019)

blahblah said:


> Again, you are washing over how hard things were last generation and the changing economic situation. Just because X worked (poorly) in the past does not mean it works in the future. Your comment regarding cost of development is outright untrue is the bulk of the rest of your post. You are reducing the complexity so as to allow you to semi-credibly argue something you only believe on account of selfishness, but even with the simplification your argument remains absurd & you have to state things that are not true as fact in order to even make the argument
> 
> Books physically wear. Books do not allow for unlimited resale due to the very real wear they incur from being read. A disc is not the same way.
> 
> ...




I am a complete cunt, I recognise this and embrace it whole heartedly. But I think my logic holds here and nobody has thus far presented a legal or moral argument that holds water from where I sit.

The business equation has not changed. Make a product that the market wants. Make it for less cost than what you can sell it for. Do that and you earn yourself some profit. The market as big, if not bigger with more avenues, than it ever has been -- I figure much like religion you tend not to make many new gamers of older people but if you got an Atari when you were 10 in 1977 then you quite reasonably could have grandchildren by now and thus have probably bred a bunch more into the world.

Developing games does not have to be more expensive than things once were, and said things still sell just fine. If you want to race into shiny shiny land. Again more overhead available and thus less need to optimise, ability to buy in assets, engines, libraries and such to save a bit of effort and thus money over developing bleeding edge stuff.

I agree books physically wear but again I routinely purchase books over 100 years old for next to nothing that still read just fine. You might as well say discs scratch, discs suffer the little sibling effect, disc foil layers degrade, batteries leak in carts, contacts wear, chips otherwise degrade, pcbs might not survive the flex, capacitors leak... which are all true but far from universal.
My books might not be around in 1000 years but if 100 for them to routinely remain in fine working order, and be so available that I buy top tier works of the day in all sorts of fields for less money than most people spend on lunch, all with no more care than "store in a heated and dry house" then the wear thing becomes a hard sell to base a "not comparable" claim upon.
Indeed the lengths one often has to go to so as to correct the problems with game carts and discs at timeframes when the books of the same era I have to use knowledge of the aesthetics to tell might speak to games being even more fragile than books are.

"Why should I care if the people who make the product I want to buy are able to make money doing so?"
I care about that. It is why they are allowed the exclusive right of reproduction of said work. It is part of the bargain they struck with society, and I abide by, and has worked for well over 100 years at this point (certainly all the time the game industry could reasonably have been called that). No part of that is they should get a free ride though -- if they want it then they have to earn it. The world has not suddenly changed on them and forced me to consider extreme measures to keep them around.
If they can't make a product (and people still demonstrably do so, and have done under almost identical conditions (or indeed possibly worse ones -- said PS360 era also falling squarely in this little thing called the great recession)) then they need to refine their business model, make a better product or perish.



kuwanger said:


> Funny you say that.  Do you consider shareware titles "grey label"?  I'd tend to argue shareware and any non-large company had a lot of long tail sales and hence to some degree competed against themselves.  The truth, though, is since sales were so low there wasn't/isn't much real competition on price--you're unlikely to actually meet a person who owns the game and those willing to devote the money to buy the game in the first place after playing the shareware/demo version are unlikely to want to resell it.  Meanwhile, since you have a shareware title with an address on where to actually buy the game, you'd likely go that route.



I was thinking grey label being the second print things with lesser covers that a few of the more popular games got. I think that might be more of a UK term as the PS1 was so popular here. That said the plight of shareware is something to ponder in this.


----------



## kuwanger (Feb 28, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> I was thinking grey label being the second print things with lesser covers that a few of the more popular games got.



Ah, those tend to get labelled "best hits"/"players choice" or the like here. I think the thing to consider, though, is that the number of such titles is incredibly small.  They may make up the bulk of sales yet for example there were 109 games release for the PS4 in 2018.  Makes me wonder how much of those are digital vs possible long tail sales of one print titles that are sold in units of progressively lower MSRP.



blahblah said:


> Books physically wear. Books do not allow for unlimited resale due to the very real wear they incur from being read. A disc is not the same way. Few people would buy a used book* at a slight discount compared to a new book. The places you buy used books are not the same physical places you buy new ones. A used disc is different, it incurs no substantive aging when compared to a new one. A used disc works and looks just like a new disc, so consumers do not view it as a lesser product. You know this, because you are not a moron, yet you argue in bad faith regardless.



This sort of relates to the above.  No, discs do physically wear out.  They get scratched and machines that try to correct for defects are far from perfect.  The difference with books is that in a book the wear and tear is gradual.  With discs, especially in games or movies, it can render the content unusable in a very binary way--something befitting its digital nature.  Oh, and there's lots of book stores that sell used and new side by side.  The difference there is people don't have to gamble as much:  they can physically inspect the amount of wear on a used copy.  With discs, depending on the used store, they're a lot less amenable because a scratched disc that they already tried to fix that's returned turns out to be a complete loss.

The same holds true with hardware.  People, me included, are inclined to buy new over used if the price difference is small.  Where it hurts most is, as you note, when soon after initial sale where the risk of damage is relatively low.  The question to ask is, why would there be so many used sales so soon after release?  Why would a used store sell a used game at much lower a price, to make it actually attractive?  So, what's the answer?  Probably make sure your games aren't so overhyped that people do go out and buy and then immediately resell something leading to a glut of used copies--unless that's the strategy since short term high prices can mean substantial profit.  Focus on the long tail sales and be prepared to do grey label prints--unless the focus is to get as much money as soon as possible to parlay into yet another shovelware title.  Maybe push harder for Gamestop and others to buy back games at better prices so they can't undercut you as much--you could do this by offering to buy back the games yourself.


----------



## blahblah (Feb 28, 2019)

kuwanger said:


> Funny you say that.  Do you consider shareware titles "grey label"?  I'd tend to argue shareware and any non-large company had a lot of long tail sales and hence to some degree competed against themselves.  The truth, though, is since sales were so low there wasn't/isn't much real competition on price--you're unlikely to actually meet a person who owns the game and those willing to devote the money to buy the game in the first place after playing the shareware/demo version are unlikely to want to resell it.  Meanwhile, since you have a shareware title with an address on where to actually buy the game, you'd likely go that route.
> 
> The comparative situation in consoles is rental, and I'd tend to argue that what has allowed so strongly for used sales in that space has changed over time.  In the past with most games as cartridges, there was a prohibitively high production cost.  This both limits supply but also limits the possibility of reducing price over time.  In the present with most games on disc (or even digital), the production cost is so low than there is a tendency to oversupply the market in the near term and especially long term.  This is a large part of why most smart companies reduce prices after a time because they're not only competing against other titles but against themselves.
> 
> ...



As one would expect, your entire argument is nonsense and is unsupported by the data. Nothing interesting in your post worthy of a direct response.


----------



## SG854 (Feb 28, 2019)

Maluma said:


> So in your view is buying a used car immoral since the car company doesn't get any money from it?


No. I personally don’t care if people buy used games, or pirate games. I’m just arguing for the sake of arguing because it’s an interesting topic to me.



kuwanger said:


> Potentially yes.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I’ve was making parallels to the recent Vic Mignogna case (Dragon Ball VA) on false accusation charges, which he can sue for potential damage to his earnings. He has a law firm confirmed. And potential money lost is still enough for a lawsuit, you don’t need to calculate how much he lost in order to have a sueable case.

Here’s a video of a lawyer explaining what he can do, if your interested. And it’s one of the craziest cases i’ve seen in a while because people are tampering with evidence and making up fake stories which have been confirmed fake.

But for the used video game topic, Nintendo has their own proprietary cartridge which is a lot more expensive to produce then a blueray. Bluerays are the same size as dvd’s, which are the same size as cd’s. They can use the already many existing factories that are used to create DVD’s to create bluerays which saves them money. Nintendo Switch cartridges don’t have this and need specialized equipment to mass produce leading to more expensive production costs.

Nintendo doesn’t want to alienate physical stores and put them out of business which is likely why they are the same price. I’m guessing is why they do it.

GameStop is already doing horribly and probably makes 5 cents per copy sold. There is no denying that potential money going directly to game companies is lost with the existence of used stores and eBay. Whether or not you want to buy new to support them is up to the individual person.


----------



## kuwanger (Feb 28, 2019)

blahblah said:


> As one would expect, your entire argument is nonsense and is unsupported by the data. Nothing interesting in your post worthy of a direct response.



Then I'm not sure why you bothered to reply. 

Speaking of cars, I think I have a good car analogy*,  Imagine if Ford build cars but stipulated that it was only a "genuine" Ford car if you agreed to an EULA; otherwise, driving the car around would risk punishment for having a "non-genuine" Ford car.  Further, you don't buy the car directly from Ford but through a dealer.  So, this EULA isn't a first-sale to you the customer from Ford.  This is a Ford to dealer sale, then a dealer to customer sale.  Maybe some dealers have a contract with Ford that you have to agree to the EULA before you drive it off the lot.  Most don't, though, and Ford merely designed it that the first time you start the car you have to agree to the EULA for it to turn over.  In that circumstance, I'd want to hotwire the car to bypass the defect that is the EULA.

* Good luck turning this into a Library of Congress reference.



SG854 said:


> Here’s a video of a lawyer explaining what he can do, if your interested. And it’s one of the craziest cases i’ve seen in a while because people are tampering with evidence and making up fake stories which have been confirmed fake.



Right, because people are being malicious.  There's nothing inherently malicious about resale.



SG854 said:


> Nintendo doesn’t want to alienate physical stores and put them out of business which is likely why they are the same price.



Then Nintendo is, IMO, stupid.  Being the same price, they get less profit off physical copies.  Further, because they run in parallel with digital copies, less physical copies are made.  However, it encourages all those who plan to resell their games to buy physical copies which means as a percentage physical copy resale is likely to go up.  Ie, it encourages more competition against new copies.



SG854 said:


> GameStop is already doing horribly and probably makes 5 cents per copy sold.



The truth, though, is that Gamestop is in the same boat as used book stores--competition against the internet.  Having to have stock and it being limited really undercuts any edge they have.  The fact that some moved into malls was incredibly stupid--the increased foot traffic doesn't compensate for the high rental fees in the long term, at least not on resale of goods.  In short, I don't know think Gamestop is a good example of comparison.


----------



## SG854 (Feb 28, 2019)

kuwanger said:


> Then I'm not sure why you bothered to reply.
> 
> Speaking of cars, I think I have a good car analogy*,  Imagine if Ford build cars but stipulated that it was only a "genuine" Ford car if you agreed to an EULA; otherwise, driving the car around would risk punishment for having a "non-genuine" Ford car.  Further, you don't buy the car directly from Ford but through a dealer.  So, this EULA isn't a first-sale to you the customer from Ford.  This is a Ford to dealer sale, then a dealer to customer sale.  Maybe some dealers have a contract with Ford that you have to agree to the EULA before you drive it off the lot.  Most don't, though, and Ford merely designed it that the first time you start the car you have to agree to the EULA for it to turn over.  In that circumstance, I'd want to hotwire the car to bypass the defect that is the EULA.
> 
> ...


Economically it doesn’t make sense. With cutting the middle man out and saving on production costs they can offer a cheaper product if you go digital. They’re probably doing it to be “fair” to physical copy buyers. Also SD cards are more expensive then HDD. So maybe they are rooting for physical because of storage capacity is expensive, people will likely go physical instead.

Going digital only can actually stop used game sales if they wanted to. Someone will have to provide a source on how much they make on used and physical to see if going digital only will benefit them. And how much production costs are.


----------



## the_randomizer (Feb 28, 2019)

It's time for these anti-used sales companies to man up and get over it and accept the fact people hate paying 60 to 70 dollars for a game.  They really need to grow a pair and just accept the fact there is absolutely no stopping it, and that attempting to curtail this, or piracy is simply a lost cause. Something being crimimalized, banned, illicit, etc, will only make that act all the more desirable to do. There is no stopping it.


----------



## PityOnU (Feb 28, 2019)

the_randomizer said:


> It's time for these anti-used sales companies to man up and get over it and accept the fact people hate paying 60 to 70 dollars for a game.  They really need to grow a pair and just accept the fact there is absolutely no stopping it, and that attempting to curtail this, or piracy is simply a lost cause. Something being crimimalized, banned, illicit, etc, will only make that act all the more desirable to do. There is no stopping it.





FAST6191 said:


> The business equation has not changed. Make a product that the market wants. Make it for less cost than what you can sell it for. Do that and you earn yourself some profit.
> 
> If they can't make a product (and people still demonstrably do so, and have done under almost identical conditions (or indeed possibly worse ones -- said PS360 era also falling squarely in this little thing called the great recession)) then they need to refine their business model, make a better product or perish.



"Pls game companies, blow your massive load of paid DLC, microtransactions, and lootcrates all over my waiting face."


----------



## FAST6191 (Feb 28, 2019)

SG854 said:


> There is no denying that potential money going directly to game companies is lost with the existence of used stores and eBay.



If everybody suddenly decided to purchase only new copies tomorrow then sure they would get more money.

The chances of that happening though, either by law or general coincidence, is so ridiculously low that billionaire sugar daddy suddenly appearing to bankroll things is equally plausible (it too being quite possible, indeed the art world is full of examples of such people doing the whole patronage bit).

If they have no way to expense it on an account somewhere or fire someone for poor business choices by seeing it happen (if I return 1 million profit when I could demonstrably have brought back 10, all within company mission statements and whatever, there would be a decent chance of my polishing up my CV in the near future -- I might have made a profit but I theoretically denied them that much more revenue) then I struggle to see why I should pay it any mind over other idle daydreams like the billionaire patron thing.




PityOnU said:


> "Pls game companies, blow your massive load of paid DLC, microtransactions, and lootcrates all over my waiting face."



They can try. However as I have never paid for a microtransaction and don't plan to any time soon, ditto lootcrates (if I can't unlock it reasonably then it might speak to a badly designed game). DLC wise then actually not that either since I got that Heroes of Might and Magic 2 expansion pack, or maybe it was the age of empires one, however many years ago that was. I did get the GTA 4 Double Pack (second hand of course) because I wanted to play Lost and Damned but that was standalone, as would be anything like that I really go in for (save perhaps mods for PC games -- Arma 2 to play DayZ sort of thing). If I am not there to take it then they will just end up spattering their shoes.


----------



## kuwanger (Feb 28, 2019)

SG854 said:


> They’re probably doing it to be “fair” to physical copy buyers. Also SD cards are more expensive then HDD. So maybe they are rooting for physical because of storage capacity is expensive, people will likely go physical instead.



Not sure what "SD cards are more expensive [than] HDD" relates, but you can buy 256GB cards for $45.  Going by these numbers that translates to holding between 16-32 games or an average cost of $1.40-$2.80/game (presuming you buy around 16-32 games).  Just charging $10 less for digital games would mean after 5 games you're already better off financially.  Or they could conversely charge $10 more for physical copies.  The point is, to claim to be fair to physical copy owners they're being unfair to digital copy owners--which is even worse if you factor in being able to sell physical copies.



SG854 said:


> Going digital only can actually stop used game sales if they wanted to. Someone will have to provide a source on how much they make on used and physical to see if going digital only will benefit them. And how much production costs are.



Well, if it's a moral argument against used games, then going digital which precludes resale would be done regardless of whether it's more profitable or not.  The only way I see digital being somehow inferior to physical in sales is if (1) people refuse to buy digital regardless of price, (2) people can't buy digital (that's much less of a issue with the prevalence of online store point cards that can be bought in retail stores, and region locking already combats a lot of grey market sales), (3) long tail sales (the wii shop ran for over 10 years so for the most part that's not a thing), and/or (4) restricted access through digital sales (which varies by platform and usually is as or more prevalent for physical copies).

Having said all that, yes, actual sales figures would be interesting.  If anything, used game sales might increase new game sales because people who otherwise would never buy new buy used and the people who sale collect their money to buy new.  The ratio though of used sale prices vs new prices though makes me think it'd tend to go the other way overall.


----------



## SG854 (Feb 28, 2019)

kuwanger said:


> Not sure what "SD cards are more expensive [than] HDD" relates, but you can buy 256GB cards for $45.  Going by these numbers that translates to holding between 16-32 games or an average cost of $1.40-$2.80/game (presuming you buy around 16-32 games).  Just charging $10 less for digital games would mean after 5 games you're already better off financially.  Or they could conversely charge $10 more for physical copies.  The point is, to claim to be fair to physical copy owners they're being unfair to digital copy owners--which is even worse if you factor in being able to sell physical copies.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Well I mention storage drives because if a storage is expensive people would go physical rather then digital. PSVita memcards were really expensive and it was cheaper to buy physical. 

I seen terabyte sd cards being very expensive. And if you go for smaller sizes you would have to buy multiple. people like carrying around just one for convenience. Nintendo’s competition uses HDD and they are cheaper so it’s more viable to go digital for those consoles rather then on Nintendo.

The Switch is region free isn’t it.


----------



## osm70 (Feb 28, 2019)

Let's look at it this way:

First, we have to define a few things, just to make sure we agree on the important parts. Let's say that the developer getting money is a good thing because they worked on it and deserved to be paid. And let's say that getting the game for free is a good thing because honestly, who wants to pay?

You have 3 ways of getting the game:

Buy new - you pay, the developer gets money - 1 good thing, 1 bad thing

You pirate - you get it free, the developer gets nothing - 1 good thing, 1 bad thing

You buy used - you pay, the developer gets nothing - 0 good things, 2 bad things


----------



## AkikoKumagara (Feb 28, 2019)

osm70 said:


> Let's look at it this way:
> 
> First, we have to define a few things, just to make sure we agree on the important parts. Let's say that the developer getting money is a good thing because they worked on it and deserved to be paid. And let's say that getting the game for free is a good thing because honestly, who wants to pay?
> 
> ...



Buy used - Developer already _was _paid. You get the game cheaper than buying it new.


----------



## Xzi (Feb 28, 2019)

Largely ignored is the fact that _tons_ of physical games can _only_ be bought used now.  Two plus console generations back, you'll find maybe 1 in 100 copies of any given game is new, and vastly overpriced to boot.  I think the truth is that publishers like the long-term effects of used game sales, they inflate the value of their games (at least the good ones).  It's the short-term effects they dislike, because they want that money fast to show off to shareholders, instead of the retailers/individual resellers getting it.


----------



## MasterJ360 (Feb 28, 2019)

"Legalized Piracy" is a contradiction. Piracy is illegal no matter how you slice it. Used games are second handed you are still paying for it while piracy you don't pay a dime to anyone.


----------



## kuwanger (Feb 28, 2019)

SG854 said:


> Well I mention storage drives because if a storage is expensive people would go physical rather then digital. PSVita memcards were really expensive and it was cheaper to buy physical.



Well, yea, but that's an example of Sony being generally assholes when it comes to memory storage in portable devices.



SG854 said:


> I seen terabyte sd cards being very expensive. And if you go for smaller sizes you would have to buy multiple. people like carrying around just one for convenience. Nintendo’s competition uses HDD and they are cheaper so it’s more viable to go digital for those consoles rather then on Nintendo.



Ah, yea.  Was stuck thinking about 3DS/Switch (don't have a PS3/4/Xbox 360/One or Switch).  In all cases but PSP/Vita, the storage price vs the game size has been mostly reasonable--smaller handheld games are on SD and larger consoles/PC games are on HDD.  IIRC, the Wii which used internal storage and then SD limited games to ~40MB (and is part of the reason various games never appeared on the platform).

As for carrying around just one SD for convenience?  Yea, that's another reason to go that route over physical because even if you were to buy multiple SD because you did buy a ton of games incrementally, you'd be able to leave one in 50% of the time (you'd probably just transfer your most played games onto one card and leave it in 95% of the time).  Having said that, the N3DS put the microSD slot in a terrible location--they pulled a N-Gage but too a lower offense live.



SG854 said:


> The Switch is region free isn’t it.



True.  Nintendo can't seem to make up its mind if it wants to region lock systems, but everyone else heavily pushes region lock.  That region lock exists on some PC games is actually particularly repulsive to me.  Not sure how common such is outside of Steam. :/


----------



## Xzi (Feb 28, 2019)

kuwanger said:


> True.  Nintendo can't seem to make up its mind if it wants to region lock systems, but everyone else heavily pushes region lock.  That region lock exists on some PC games is actually particularly repulsive to me.  Not sure how common such is outside of Steam. :/


Outside of Steam it's perhaps even _more_ common.  I've heard the Epic launcher and Origin simply don't sell games in a lot of countries.  Region locks tend to be for the purpose of complying with specific local laws, like the overbearing ones in Australia or Germany, but none of the other launchers has been around long enough to set up that kind of infrastructure.


----------



## blahblah (Mar 1, 2019)

kuwanger said:


> Then I'm not sure why you bothered to reply.
> 
> Speaking of cars, I think I have a good car analogy*,  Imagine if Ford build cars but stipulated that it was only a "genuine" Ford car if you agreed to an EULA; otherwise, driving the car around would risk punishment for having a "non-genuine" Ford car.  Further, you don't buy the car directly from Ford but through a dealer.  So, this EULA isn't a first-sale to you the customer from Ford.  This is a Ford to dealer sale, then a dealer to customer sale.  Maybe some dealers have a contract with Ford that you have to agree to the EULA before you drive it off the lot.  Most don't, though, and Ford merely designed it that the first time you start the car you have to agree to the EULA for it to turn over.  In that circumstance, I'd want to hotwire the car to bypass the defect that is the EULA.
> 
> ...



There is no valid car analogy. The issue at hand is one of economic models, and cars are completely different. There is no valid analogy. Your post is nonsense, as was your post earlier.


----------



## SG854 (Mar 1, 2019)

kuwanger said:


> Well, yea, but that's an example of Sony being generally assholes when it comes to memory storage in portable devices.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


We are barely starting to get terabyte SD cards, and HDD have been selling higher then 1 terabytes for years. They just announced a 1 terabyte SD card a while back and it’ll be $450. You can get a 1 terabyte HDD for around $40 or less. The price difference is huge. It’s cheaper to go physical on Switch. 

The digital and physical price is the same on competative consoles too. Nintendo isn’t much different in this. But with price drops it’s physical that does it first.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ubisoft-explains-why-digital-games-stay-more-expen/1100-6428760/


----------



## FAST6191 (Mar 1, 2019)

blahblah said:


> There is no valid car analogy. The issue at hand is one of economic models, and cars are completely different. There is no valid analogy. Your post is nonsense, as was your post earlier.


Why would we be beholden to a given model?


----------



## tbb043 (Mar 1, 2019)

yeah, right, and buying a used car is literally the same as carjacking.

buying a used house, also theft. I mean you aren't paying the builder for that! UNFAIR!


----------



## kuwanger (Mar 1, 2019)

SG854 said:


> We are barely starting to get terabyte SD cards, and HDD have been selling higher then 1 terabytes for years. They just announced a 1 terabyte SD card a while back and it’ll be $450. You can get a 1 terabyte HDD for around $40 or less. The price difference is huge.



I know, but again the point of comparison being made is cost of physical game vs cost of digital game.  One terabyte SD cards are an outlier on price, so I think reasonably most people would buy multi 256GB or 512GB--on Amazon at least that sweet spot is about 60% the cost per GB compare to 1024GB.  So, HDDs tend to be $40/TB vs SD $255/TB.  So long as HDD bound games tend to be ~6.4x larger on average than SD bound games then the per game cost is about the same.  Of course, given the opportunity plenty of people would undoubtedly love to shove an HDD into their Switch and save $215.  



SG854 said:


> It’s cheaper to go physical on Switch.



Because Nintendo, as copyright holder, has distorted the market to make the cheaper to make digital copies cost more.  And the market corrects by having a used market that undercuts their new physical prices.  Otherwise, if you could actually resell digital copies those too would undercut new digital copies and likely it'd be cheaper to go digital on Switch.  Also of note is just how many physical games on Switch have huge SD requirements.



SG854 said:


> The digital and physical price is the same on competative consoles too. Nintendo isn’t much different in this. But with price drops it’s physical that does it first.
> 
> https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ubisoft-explains-why-digital-games-stay-more-expen/1100-6428760/



Aha, "Also, one thing to consider is related to stocks; if we have stock in stores, we tend to make sure we decrease the quantity of units in stores before going digital with lower prices."  Ie, because they've invested in physical copies, they're willing to undercut their own digital sales to get rid of stock.  Which in other parlance amounts to digital sales subsidize physical sales.  More and more, this isn't about being "fair" to physical copies.  This is all about fucking over digital sales.

What I have to ask is, why are they doing this?  They're literally paying more to sell at a lower price.  Even if I believed one company, like Nintendo, was striving for fair, I don't think businesses as a whole strive for "fair".  Perhaps it has something to do with:  "We are actually more aggressive on the PC side where digital is very, very strong. We tend to be more conservative on the digital side for more console and more flexible on PC."

The "we" in this likely is "Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft and I".  Ubisoft likely literally can't be more flexible with pricing on console because of contracts.  This makes me believe the answer is obvious:  Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are getting paid for every physical copy made.  My guess is, Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft are paid more per unit on physical copies and require a certain number of physical copies made for many publishers.  Even if that were true, it wouldn't explain why Nintendo pushes a good many physical copies of games.

It makes me believe another thing is probably true:  physical presence in a story is critical for console sales which is critical for game sales.  Digital sales can't be verified, but physical production has side effects like used game sales that can be used to some degree to verify numbers.  There's also, various people arguing the resell value or simply "When it comes to any Nintendo game I always get a hard copy." so my presumption early about some people never buying digital seems at least anecdotally true.  I don't think nearly as many people feel the same way about Ubisoft, though.

PS - And thinking of it more, perhaps it's the exact opposite.  Perhaps digital copies actual make more for Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft and the point of physical copies is to force the publisher to sell out the physical copy stock first, which they'll be reluctant to do at substantial price cuts too quickly  Ergo, console digital store prices stay inflated for third party sales.  However you slice it, there's clearly something rather fishy about there being substantial amounts of physical copies made.  It actually makes me wonder, also, if companies are conspiring to have large day one downloads to mitigate much of the advantage of a physical copy and further encourage digital sales.  It'd be really informative to actually get some more insider information to understand why things are how they are.


----------



## SG854 (Mar 1, 2019)

kuwanger said:


> I know, but again the point of comparison being made is cost of physical game vs cost of digital game.  One terabyte SD cards are an outlier on price, so I think reasonably most people would buy multi 256GB or 512GB--on Amazon at least that sweet spot is about 60% the cost per GB compare to 1024GB.  So, HDDs tend to be $40/TB vs SD $255/TB.  So long as HDD bound games tend to be ~6.4x larger on average than SD bound games then the per game cost is about the same.  Of course, given the opportunity plenty of people would undoubtedly love to shove an HDD into their Switch and save $215.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This is an old article but it explains why Nintendo charges the same price for both digital and physical.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/n...al-games-are-not-less-expensive/1100-6415997/

It’s basically not to devalue Digital copies. You pay premium and feel like you’re getting premium. It’s like Apple charging high for their products to make it feel premium. They are playing into psychology here. And it’s actually not a dumb strategy because they have strong physical and digital sales.

It’s like people that pirate a bunch of games but ends up not playing any because there’s too many games, and being free, they value them less, not caring for them. 

Where as when you work a long days work, make money, and purchase a game with hard earned cash, you tend to value the game more, because you worked for it, and gave up money for it, at premium price. The game has more value and you tend to play it or else it’s a waste of money if you don’t. They are probably playing into this psychology.

And it’s the people that are buying into it and determining the market. If people just stopped buying digital and only focus on physical, this would force Nintendo to rethink their strategy and lower digital prices.


----------



## CMDreamer (Mar 1, 2019)

PityOnU said:


> [...] or less games being made in general. [...]



IMHO, as long as those "less games" are remakes I'm ok with it. Gaming industry has become remake industry.



PityOnU said:


> Well, buying or trading used games has the same effect. Picking up a game from the used section at your local Gamestop sees exactly $0 going back to the original developers/publishers.



So they want a piece of the cake when I sell the games I legally own? That can't be considered piracy because we're selling/buying legal and original games, not scam copies. SNES/NES/GB/GBC/GBA/Genesis cartridges are being sell as "reproductions", many "multigame consoles" are being sold as such and that's piracy too because all of them rely on emulators (not illegal) and digital copies of games -aka ROMS- (illegal unless you own the original game); selling my legally owned property (not IP) can't be considered piracy.



PityOnU said:


> It is also worth pointing out here that with most modern software, it is understood that when you buy something like a disk or a game cartridge, you are not necessarily buying the actual physical item. What you are buying is a license to use the software it contains.



This "new" business model sucks for real. When I buy an originally produced optical disc of a game, I want it to contain the game (media contents), not just a license, I prefer physical games instead of digital ones. That's the main reason I will never ever buy anything XBox related and if "that lame brand owner" follow the same line then I won't buy anything from them too.



PityOnU said:


> [...]With used game sales, large corporate entities are actually profiting off of the activity (millions or billions of dollars).



Re-selling should be done only between particulars not involving those companies. They buy your games at ridiculous prices and re-sell them at almost the original price.


----------



## chrisrlink (Mar 1, 2019)

i personally don't like any game company besides sega but i also hate gamestop cause they rip you off which is why i prefer things like the trading forum even let go i used a few times cause i can set my own reasonable price and i get about 90%-100% of the profit depends on if i ship and these next gen (PS5 etc ) going all digital will eventually fail not only that it would increase the likelyhood of people trying to find exploits and even buying games ( in mass) and dump them for others to pirate


----------



## kuwanger (Mar 1, 2019)

SG854 said:


> It’s basically not to devalue Digital copies. You pay premium and feel like you’re getting premium. It’s like Apple charging high for their products to make it feel premium. They are playing into psychology here. And it’s actually not a dumb strategy because they have strong physical and digital sales.



I do agree it's playing into psychology, but I disagree with your assessment about it about paying a premium and feeling like you're getting premium--unless you're arguing that digital, which costs more due to equivalent pricing, is the premium sale.  I think this part actually captures it:  '"we decided that, since the contents are the same, the company would offer the software at the same price, be it the packaged version or the digital version," Iwata said.'  It's the exact opposite of premium*.  The real point is to mask the notion that physical and digital are different with different values.  The point is to push the psychology that the only thing really being bought is the content.

I wouldn't disagree with that being a smart strategy in theory.  The problem is, it quickly breaks down if you actually try to pursue it.  What happens if your physical copy breaks?  Will Nintendo allow you to download the game because you paid for the content?  What happens if you want to sell your digital copy?  Will Nintendo facilitate resale because physical == digital?  Clearly the idea is heavily to frame the discussion in a fashion that reinforces the notion of copyright.  I'd go as far as, perhaps the real point is to make digital == physical, so when the physical games go away they'll have a customer base used to physical games which will be a lot less inclined to pirate.



SG854 said:


> It’s like people that pirate a bunch of games but ends up not playing any because there’s too many games, and being free, they value them less, not caring for them.
> 
> Where as when you work a long days work, make money, and purchase a game with hard earned cash, you tend to value the game more, because you worked for it, and gave up money for it, at premium price. The game has more value and you tend to play it or else it’s a waste of money if you don’t. They are probably playing into this psychology.



Except I have over 1,000 games on Steam that I paid for.  My hard earned cash isn't what has made me play more or less games.  It's the actual desire to play those games--mostly I'm getting older and it's harder for me to stay interested in gaming.  For example, I just recently finished RAGE (which I bought back in August/September).  Now, if tomorrow I only had one game and buying another one cost $50?

Yea, there isn't no truth to the psychology.  But the reality is as an adult who works hard to make money, game prices (even $100 games) are trivially cheap.  It's actually children who can't make much in the way of money, who are more Nintendo's audience, that I think would be effected by such things.  It explains nothing about why nearly every other console maker follows suit, though. :/



SG854 said:


> And it’s the people that are buying into it and determining the market. If people just stopped buying digital and only focus on physical, this would force Nintendo to rethink their strategy and lower digital prices.



It's interesting you say that, as I actually looked some more into it.  It sounds like ~75% of AAA sales are in physical copies.  Further, there was one site who partnered to surveyed some Europeans who bought boxed games over why they preferred physical over digital.  They found 32% said they wanted a physical boxed copy and 18%/13% chose physical because it was discounted/cheaper.  Then there was the ability to sell/lend games.  Or more technical reasons like poor internet.

Perhaps the answer is simple:  a difference in price of even $10 would radically shift sales of the physical to digital ratio result in a much harder to predict production goal for physical copies.  I wonder what the non-AAA physical to digital ratio is like.  Anyways, thanks for the links and the discussion.

* What would be arguing premium is why Nintendo games start high priced and stay high priced.  What would be arguing premium is not bundling games, digitally only, with new consoles at potentially reduced prices.


----------

