Developer calling Used game sales #1 issue in the industry..

[BoringSupreez]

Steam would work just fine for me if you only had to let it check the validity of your install once, and then the game never required internet access again.

You can actually do that. There's an option for offline mode. Check it out.

I'll have to look into that. I'd heard that you had to have constant online access, ala Ubisoft games.

Wouldn't it be nice if all PC game publishers did things the way GoG does? No DRM at all, just trust the customer to be honest?

[J T]

This is why Steam is killing retail.

Except that I can't use Steam, because of my 350 megabyte-per-day download cap. I can't have it auto-updating, or sending usage statistics, or any of that stuff or I risk having my speeds bumped down to sub-dial-up for 24 hours.

Steam would work just fine for me if you only had to let it check the validity of your install once, and then the game never required internet access again.[/quote]

Thankfully I don't have this problem, but I fear that ISPs will kill the currently glorious internet one day with their increasing push to have bandwidth caps.

[J T]

Steam would work just fine for me if you only had to let it check the validity of your install once, and then the game never required internet access again.

You can actually do that. There's an option for offline mode. Check it out.

I'll have to look into that. I'd heard that you had to have constant online access, ala Ubisoft games.

Steam (as DRM) is just a check in. You can check in and go into offline mode for a sustained period of time, until you need to download a new game or something.

However, if you have an Ubisoft game with always on DRM, then you have Ubi-DRM on top of Steam-DRM and you need the internet to be always on.

[isiolia]

10 or so years ago, I only bought my games new, but that was because back then there were plenty of great PC games from the 90's available at Walmart and such places for only $10. Stuff like SimCity 2000, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Doom, etc. Now, all's $10 will get you new is 150,000 Amazing Games, or Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Haunted Wardrobe, or Deerhunter Turbo DX 2005.

Not entirely - I still glance over at those sections, and sometimes find worthwhile titles mixed in. Granted, usually ones I already have...but I've seen stuff like Far Cry 2, several NFS titles, Age of Empires collections, etc.

You can also find a lot of them on Amazon and the like still. Or, of course, gog.com, Steam, etc have a number of titles available for cheap. (in addition to previous comments, you can turn off auto-update in Steam, including per-title). GoG titles have no DRM, so you could possibly download them elsewhere.

Say a new game comes out, Game X. It's a decent game, but I don't want to pay $60 for it, so I wait a year and a half and get it for $20 used.

Thing is, you can usually drop the "used" off the end of that and just buy a lot of games for $15-30 the following year anyway. I know I do.

If game companies would just charge less for their games, I'd buy new a lot more often.

It's a circular issue. Companies would need more copies sold in order to break even at a lower price point, but they won't see those numbers until the prices are lower.

Effectively, games are cheaper now, accounting for inflation/cost of living changes. Maybe not across the board - but big releases on the SNES n' such were often $60-70, sometimes even $80 if they were particularly large (more ROM chips = more expense, which was passed to the consumer). $60 today is relatively less than $60 twenty years ago.

[Majors]

'course, you also used to have tons of people abusing return policies and paying effectively nothing to "rent" games.

This man worked at a game store.

My manager and I HATED the the Babbages (showing my age now) return policy. It was so abused, but policy was policy and we just followed orders. Our best way to beat it was to refuse to sell games to known repeat offenders.

I got no comment on used games that has not been said already. It's all greed.

[fastbilly1]

My manager and I HATED the the Babbages (showing my age now)

Hey now, I bought my Jaguar at a Babbages...

[bryan_65]

OK I did not read all the post yet but damn, it is our right to buy and sale used items no matter what they are. If we ever see an all digital market or Capcom's one save games take hold you can bet that I will never buy anymore current games.

I hate when companies are like that, bummer I only made 2 million instead of 5 million.
I remember reading the paper a few years back and Burger King was complaining that due to the economy there business was down and instead of 100 Billion they only made like 60 Billion that year.

All corporations are Greedy bastards!!

[Sideroller]

I think it's important to distinguish games bought used 5 or 10+ years down the road when the game in question may no longer be in print -- and games sold back and bought used 10 weeks after it was bought new.

How are we at fault by buying a game that's out of print that we want to play?

But as it's been mentioned by just about everyone in this post - with behemoths like GameStop practically encouraging this sort of fast turn-around of games, they're effectively abusing the system and ruining for the people who actually buy games used purposefully.

[MrPopo]

I remember reading the paper a few years back and Burger King was complaining that due to the economy there business was down and instead of 100 Billion they only made like 60 Billion that year.

They speak in terms of revenue, not profit. If my revenue is $100 but it costs me $90 to run my business then my revenue going down to $60 is BAD.

All corporations are Greedy bastards!!

You do realize that companies exist in order to make money, right? And the main measure of success is how well they can make money. Do we really consider it a bad thing that companies want to ensure that they keep making money?

[DinnerX]

Do we really consider it a bad thing that companies want to ensure that they keep making money?

Depends on what they are doing to make more money.