(Mods: Feel free to move to a more appropriate forum.)
Inspired by the side discussion in the Planescape thread, I thought I would pose this question to the wise Doper community:
**Is it unethical to sell a used video game without compensating the publisher?**
By video game I mean either a console or computer game, either with or without online functionality (but not those where you pay a monthly fee to play).
One side believes that (1) the purchaser of the used game is getting as much value as the original purchaser, and (2) the seller is giving up little if any value by selling a completed game. Thus, it is the same as if the second purchaser were buying the game “new”, and should compensate the publisher accordingly.
The other side believes that the original purchaser has the right to do whatever they want with the game (aside from illegally copying it), and has paid their due to the publisher.
To start the ball rolling, I’ll toss in my two cents worth. I think the original purchaser essentially has a perpetual and transferable single-user license to game. If he (or she) wishes to sell that license, he can do so without any obligation to the original publisher, either legal or ethical.
I also don’t buy the argument that a used game is identical to a new game. While the physical properties of the game may be unchanged (aside from some Red Bull stains on the manual…), getting a hot game six months after it is released is not the same as having it in your hands on day one. Your friends will have already completed it, and you will have trouble finding fellow players for online fun. Also, while the physical media may not have deteriorated, the game itself may become dated in relation to current offerings. So, games do indeed depreciate relative to other newer games, even if they are still new in their box.
What are your thoughts? Both sides are welcome to participate.
It is a fundemental tennet of our society that when you buy you something you are free to do with it what you will (within rare legal exceptions) and that includes on-sell it.
Does anyone think if you sell a table you are morally obliged to pay the original carpenter again?
Yeah, I still don’t understand why the publishers are up in arms about this. You don’t hear guitar manufacturers bitching about pawn shop sales, or car manufacturers bitching about people listing things in Auto Trader, or anyone bitching about people selling things on ebay. Why on earth would video game publishers deserve to get paid more than once for their product? The same argument could be made about music cds or movie dvds but you never hear it. I will agree that Gamestop is evil, and would love to see them put out of their misery, but I don’t see anything wrong with them reselling things legally purchased.
Of course it’s not unethical. The publisher has produced a product, and the product is sold to a consumer. What the consumer does with the product after consuming it is the consumer’s business, not the publisher’s.
Well, that’s not true. Most of the time, either I think the game is crap and don’t play it to the end, either I thing the game is great and I replay it many times, over the course of many years. In the former case, I didn’t get any value from the game, and in the latter case, I’m losing the possibility of playing it again.
Anyway, as many posters have said, this claim is plainly ludicrous, since it would apply equally to books, for instance. And who’s going to state that selling used book is unethical? You’d think that someone would have noticed it was, since books have been around for quite a long time.
I’m more and more pissed off at the game industry. They sell a product that doesn’t work until you get the patch that they might or might not release, depending on the sales, they load it with programs that tamper with your computer, and now they would want you not to be able to do what you want with the (crappy and harmful) product you bought from them. No other industry would get away with that.
I’m wondering what’s the next step will be. Try to prevent you from playing the game a second time? From installing it again? What?
No, there are a bunch of limitations on what you can do with it. You can’t distribute copies of it, for an obvious example. Mods of games are generally not allowed without the companies permission, which they tacitly provide since it benefits them.
As for the original questions, I suppose it’s tied to your original opinion on copyright. If it’s ethical for a game company to tie a licence to only the original buyer (something every game company around wants to do), then it isn’t ethical for you to transfer it. Plenty of people would consider companies doing that to be unethical though.
Personally I consider copyright inherently unethical, so I could care less what people do with copyrighted material.
In any business relationship, I believe the “ethical” way to act allows the relationship to continue to exist and thrive, satisfying the needs of both seller and buyer. As a result, what is ethical changes as the marketplace changes.
The marketplace for cars is different than the marketplace for books, games, CDs, tax software, etc. so I don’t believe that you can use other products as a useful analogy.
The market for new cars would be wrecked if it became illegal to sell used cars.
The market for tax software would be screwed up if it was commonplace to resell your software after printing out your tax forms. You could sell software 10 times over during tax season, how can the companies survive if they can’t sell enough volume?
WRT games, I don’t think that reselling games is inherently destructive to the video game market. However, I do also recognize that the publisher is selling not just a disk and manual, but a license to use the software. They have the right to restrict that license to a single person, and make it non-transferable.
Bull. Is it unethical to go into the store and buy an item on sale and nothing else, if the store is counting on add-on sales to make that sale profitable? Is it unethical for me to buy an unpopular product on clearance at a pittance, even though my payment does not cover my share of its development and manufacture? Are companies ethically obligated to sell me items below their cost, if I can’t afford it otherwise?
Our society is based on ownership of property. If I buy a game, I should be able to resell it, just as I am able to resell any property I own. If a business can’t make money because people resell its products, then it needs to change its business model, not expect customers to change because they are somehow ethically obligated to help that company make money.
I can’t see how that could be true in general. For one, it allows a poorly thought-out business model to create “ethical” obligations that make no sense.
PC game publishers are getting desperate. Piracy is nothing new, but the measures to combat it are getting a bit extreme (DRM, for example). Publishers are feeling the pinch of pirates, and attempting to combat second hand sales is nothing more than an attempt to squeeze more cash from consumers. Of course, this is my personal opinion, I am not in the video game industry and don’t have any inside information.
I have bought and sold used console and PC games, and have no ethical problems with it. I bought the game, it’s mine, and if I choose to turn around and sell it to someone else, that’s none of your damn business.
What you describe is not piracy. It’s not illegal, or immoral.
Since no one is copying the game, it’s not a copyright issue. And there are tons of precedents that allow someone to buy an item – even a copyrighted one – and dispose of it as he sees fit. These include used bookstores, used CD stores, used record stores, libraries, etc.
The game publishers would be idiots to actually take this to court, since they don’t have the slightest legal basis for their claim. Even if they put it in their licensing, the odds are that, with any competent lawyer for the defense, the case would be thrown out.
I think that the videogame industry is in a rather unique situation where the used market hurts it the most. It sells products that don’t degrade over time, are of a consumable nature (once you play through them/watch them once, you’re done with them), requires big production budgets with lots of people involved, and can’t rely on controllable “single-use only” distribution (like movie theater tickets) for the initial release.
If the hammer makers go out of business because of the used market, I’ll be content with having no new hammers come out. The one I purchased 5 years ago will suit me just fine.
If the book publishers go out of business because of the used market, people will still be writing quality fiction anyway. It doesn’t take *that * long for a single person to write a novel if they are sufficiently inspired.
If the music publishers go out of business because of the used market, people will still be recording good music and playing at concerts.
If movie DVD sales go down the tube because of the used market, big-budget movies will still come out - they’ll just have to rely on theater sales alone.
But if the videogame industry goes out of business because of the used market, new games stop coming out.
Because of this, we’re probably going to see the videogame industry transition over to online subscriptions directly from the publisher (ala World of Warcraft), or to controllable single account licensing only (ala Steam). I doubt you’re going to see games released on physical media much longer.
No. It’s a product like any other. As long as only one person has the rights to that copy, you’re not doing anything wrong.
I do think console game manufacturers may have shot themselves in the foot by transitioning away from cartridge based games, because CDs and DVDs will last (more or less) forever if handled properly, while cartridges have a finite usable life. On the other hand, they would essentially have had to form a cartel in order to keep cartridges going.
Since writing games predates the gaming industry, your argument that “people would still write even if they didn’t make money off it” is also true of video games. There are many, many outstanding freeware games out there (Dwarf Fortress, anyone ?). Modding communities - they don’t get paid a cent, either, they just try to make a given game even bettah for everyone. Why would the demise of gaming industry kill games alltogether ?
Besides, for there to be a used game market, there has to be a new one, too. People are always going to have a choice between “buying the game on release day” and “waiting 6 months until a used copy is reliably available”. Used games don’t appear out of thin air. I really don’t see how the VG industry is so special compared to every other out there.
They already are. Spore and Bioshock both came out with limited installation licence - You get to install them thrice, and then you’re fucked. Their publisher assure us that “no no no, it’s OK because if you call us, we’ll give you a new license”. Cause of course, they can assure us than in 10 years, they’ll still be around and taking care of a 10 year old game :rolleyes:. Or still be there to host the patch disabling that sterling “feature”.
You’re correct of course, and I made those concessions already in the other threads recently on this subject. Yup, mods, single-developer games, and small internet based flash games would still come out, but I was talking more along the lines of the commercial relases of today that typically have dev teams of 50+ people or much more. No way those people are going to want to work for free.
The difference being a single copy of a (non-multiplayer)videogame can support so many more people than most other products can. I could conceivably buy Shadow of the Collosuson the day of release, play through the whole campaign in a day or two, and sell it back to Gamestop for 80% of the original price. Why should I bother keeping it? I’ve already consumed it. Or I could just rent it for $6 at Blockbuster to begin with.
I could do the same thing with a novel I purchased from the bookstore, but after 5or so owners, the paperback is going to start looking pretty ragged, dog-eared, and a little gross. The graphics on a videogame, however, are still perfect after the fifth owner.
Which does bring up an interesting point- If a developer printed discs that deteriorated after 5 or so playthroughs, or had the graphics auto-degrade a tiny bit in quality with each subsequent use, it would probably fix their used market problem. But would anyone stand for it? Hell no.
GameStop gives out 20% of the original price for a trade-in. 30% if it’s a particularly in demand game. My local indie shop gives 40% and I’ve never seen a higher percentage.
If you can beat Shadow of the Collosus, then you are effectively a god and have no need for this social construct referred to as “money”.
Every rental copy had to be purchased new at one time and renting a game gets it beat to hell really quick.
While this is technically correct, video game graphics do not stand still over time. Say you buy Halo: Combat Evolved on launch day in 2001. As it’s gone through five owners, Halo 2 and Halo 3 were released. Halo: Combat Evolved doesn’t look so evolved in the graphics department anymore does it?
This was already tried with DVDs by a company called Flexplay. They’ve been around for close to a decade and have never made a dent in the DVD market.
