The war on second hand games

There has been a number of comments from a few retailers, I can only name THQ (shame on you as i really like a lot of your games) off hand but i am sure there are more, about Second hand games.Games publishers do not like the second hand games market apparently because they "Don't make any money out of it". Well lets look at that for a second.

Not everyone can afford to buy all new games, its a fact of life. So publishers are going to cut away some of their market. Why spend £15 on a second hand game when you cannot play it online or cannot play all the content. Some of these people are going to download the game which will likely have all the content, sure they wont be able to play online but its saved them fifteen quid and they are in the same position. Some users sell games they have finished with and use the money to help fund new games and if no-one is going to buy the gamesstores will stop offering cash for them and the people who do buy new games will have less money to be able to do so.

So in reality games publishers do make money out of second hand games, maybe not directly but they do benefit from the money being kept within the system. After all it's not like the first buyer will still be playing online or using the extra content after they have sold the game is it? So why stop someone else helping to fund the games industry and playing a game for a lesser price. Everyone wins, oh no i forgot suddenly more game splayers are suddenly going to be able to find the extra £15 to buy the games new arent they.

Perhaps publishers would be better on focusing on creating games users will want to keep and keep coming back to rather than "Just doing enough". DLC is common these days but once in a while a new FREE map wouldn't go amiss or do what Valve are excellent at doing and make it easy for users to make mods and maps for games, I may be wrong but wasn't counterstrike originally a free mod? £10+ for a few extra maps is a stupid price i won't pay.

Perhaps if games were priced a bit more reasonably then more people would buy them. I have never understood how an addon for a game can be priced at £40, i'm looking at you Bioware.

For every second hand sale, somewhere along the line the game must have been bought new so the publisher has already had a cut. As I have already said by stopping the trading in of games it wont mean more sales in fact its likely to be the opposite, Its a bad business decision.


BySteve Jarvis