I should add another way in which we’re seeing the negative effect of reselling games/gamestop effect is the severe DLC-ification of games. Since they can’t sell you the software as a license and demand money from each person who plays the game, they’re slowly encroaching on this concept by DLC-izing the shit out of games, which has to be purchased digitally and then tied to a particular account. DLC is basically a way to get that primary income - people who play the game paying the game owners/creators directly - even from a used copy.
If we sold software as a license and didn’t have the drains from secondary sales, while I’m sure there would still be DLC, the incentive to break the game up and try to sell something to you even if you got a used copy that gave them no money wouldn’t be so high.
One of the big companies a few years ago tried to basically charge a $10 activation fee for used copies of their game exactly to solve this issue, so they could get some primary income from the secondary markets, but people freaked out at the idea. “OMG I have to pay $10 to play a game I paid for!”, so they took the less direct approach - rip out some of the game content and sell it back to people as DLC.
At least with piracy, they’re not changing the way the games are developed and monetized, but the secondary market for console games is actively hurting the design of games by actively encouraging DLC-ization to regain some income lost to secondary sales.
I don’t agree with you. Many games are available both on disc copies and digital download on PS4 and they’re the same price. There is no evidence publishers would drop prices if the second hand market for PS4 / XBox One was abolished.
And I’m really not seeing the issue you talk about in game design. Name one recent release that suffers from this problem?
Of course they’re the same price. They have contracts saying that they have to be the same price because the retailers don’t want to be undercut by digital sales. They’re nominally the same price on PC when they come out too usually (although often $10 lower due to the lack of royaltee fee to MS/sony).
Part of that is price stratification. If people are willing to pay $60, give them a chance to buy it for $60. But PC games are much, much quicker to get discounted. My personal guess is that the average game paid for a PC digital distribution game vs a console retail game is probably about 1/5th. I’ve personally paid around $3 per game for 800 games over various services. $3 per game wouldn’t get you very far on consoles, even on the secondhand market.
But most of it is simply that the PC market, being basically exclusively digital, has almost no retailer/packaging/distribution/etc. cost, and no secondary sales. It’s basically a textbook price/demand curve, since the product has negligible overhead to sell, and everyone who wants to play it has to buy a copy.
It seems obvious to me that if there are a limited number of copies to be passed around rather than each person buying their own license to a game, prices would have to go up.
As far as DLC - you haven’t heard of day one DLC, or seen the encroaching balkanization of game content and extensive reliance on DLC? You’re better off making the case that it’s unrelated to secondary sales, not that it doesn’t exist. Almost all major AAA games are heavily broken up to sell you content bit by bit.
Also, earlier you said
How does buying a second hand disc copy on console help developers get paid? It helps prop up Gamestop’s billions in revenue, none of it goes to developers.
I just bought Just Cause 3 and Fallout 4, neither one has the sort of broken up content you are talking about. You get a full game and the DLC is an extra. Personally I believe in the first sale doctrine. You should have the right to resell something you own, books and audio cd’s survive just fine with a second hand market available. Why are games developers so special that their products shouldn’t be able to be resold?
I also don’t see any evidence that games developers are underpaid. Its a huge growing industry, the top sellers make billions and even indie hits can do very well. Theres no reason to disallow second hand sales.
Day One Season Passes are pretty much standard these days. If you need an actual title: Fallout 4. I hear people all the time say something like “I’ll wait for the GOTY version when the entire game is actually released”.
You also have the “Day One” or pre-order versions of games (console and PC) that comes with some sort of DLC – an extra mission, new maps, extra weapons, a character skin, etc which are always as downloadable content. The idea being that if you buy the game secondhand you won’t be able to redeem the content. The latest Call of Duty included a map (as a download, of course) for people who did a pre-order/Day One purchase. And, if you buy the Day One Season Pass you get to play the popular zombie mode:
None of the reviews I’ve read of Fallout 4 have complained that its incomplete as is. The DLC will add extra missions etc but its a complete game as is. As for Call of Duty, well its EA, what do you expect?
Sorry to me the first sale doctrine is more important than making sure developers get paid for every user.
The future of game selling is digital, you know that, right? It’s already fully here on PC and the console makers are going to want to keep all the money from the sale instead of spreading it to retailers, wholesalers, packaging, manufacturing, etc.
And the future is fantastic. Games are more available, accessible, cheap, integrated, and easy than they’ve ever been on PC. It would not have exploded as it had - and it certainly would not have been nearly as cheap - if we tried to force some sort of notion of digital right of first sale. That would probably tank the whole damn thing.
It won’t be as good on console - the fact that you’re only getting your games from one place will discourage the competition there is on the PC side - but I’m pretty confident that on the next generation of consoles the vast majority of sales will be digital, and those retail sales will be more or less what PC game sales are now - a code to enter to play the game. Maybe with a system for “activating” used copies by paying $10-20, if such things even still exist.
That’s exactly the sort of thing someone trying to justify piracy would say. What’s the difference?
The difference is that the developer has already been paid full price for the second hand game when it was bought new. Various countries have laws enshrining the first sale doctrine even for digital products and I support those.
See Oracle Vs UsedSoft, they lost a major court case in Germany establishing that the first sale doctrine also exists for digital only downloads.
You’re also forgetting that many other countries have severe bandwidth restrictions compared to the US. Triple A games are currently over 18GB. You’ve not going to be downloading that easily in many many countries in the world. Physical media is not going to disappear anytime soon.
Star Wars: Battlefront. Essentially a 110€ game, because most of the content beyond the core engine and a paltry handful of maps is bound up in season passes and DLC. It’s like a nega-verse Splatoon.
To chime in, I’m completely okay with giving up resale rights for digital purchases. I almost never resell games, so I am much happier to spend $5~$20 on a game I can’t resell than $40~$60 on one I can. It really does seem to work out better for everyone (except Gamestop) and it seems like a lot of people clamoring for resale rights haven’t really considered the economic incentives beyond “I want it both ways”.
It already has on the PC market. Beyond many games never getting a physical media release, as often as not these days the “release” is just a Steam client and maybe some base files. Mad Max, MGS: The Phantom Pain, Batman: Arkham Knight, Fallout 4 all came with minimal or no actual game files on the “physical media”.
I think you’ll find that in markets outside the US and Europe they release them with real files on the disc. Of course many indie games never get a box release but those don’t tend to be 18GB.
Nope. Hey, maybe I’m wrong… find me the version of The Phantom Pain with the the full 28GB on disc. I couldn’t find mention of it.
Bethesda plainly said that they wouldn’t be releasing full on-disc versions of Fallout 4 to combat piracy. There’s also the issue that the files won’t all fit on a DVD and Blu-Ray readers aren’t popular enough on PCs to make BR-versions of PC releases practical.
Yeah ok, but also I think you’ll find PC Master Race gaming is also less popular outside of US / Europe. Consoles are much more the thing here (I live in Thailand). And the fact you can buy the discs with the game on it instead of downloading is one of the factors.
For these reasons for consoles at least, I think the next generation after the PS4/XBox One will still have physical media as an option. And I hope, second hand sales will still be possible as well.
Sure but my point was that, with PC gaming, physical media is already essentially dead. The little games don’t need it and the larger games can’t/won’t fit it on a disc.
No argument that publishers continue to put console versions on disc but I thought we were mainly talking about PC gaming.
You were making sense right up until this point; The “competition” there is on the PC side? Who is competing with Steam in a meaningful way? Seriously.
PC gaming is nearly as much a monopoly as Console.
It was not Steam nor copy protection, it was the lack of copy protection. By the time Steam came about, one couldn’t even return open software unless it was for an exchange.
Korea yes, PC gaming is huge. China yes because consoles were banned until recently. Japan no, consoles are huge, PC Gaming is tiny. Rest of Asia, consoles.
Source: lived in Japan for two years, Thailand for two years, travelled extensively in Asia.
And ‘PC Master Race’ is a joke, its a common meme on reddit etc… see:
