Perhaps one of the most hot button issues in the world of gaming today is the raging debating concerning used games, piracy, and the rise of the Online Pass in new games. When approaching these issues, it’s important to keep in mind that everyone reading this article is coming into it with a bias. Bias has been made a dirty word in today’s online world, and I’m striving to bring it back to its truer meaning, the fact that everyone one of us is coming into an issue with preconceived ideas, formed throughout our life experiences. We all hold an intrinsic bias towards gaming, in some fashion, or else we wouldn’t be here. The way this bias manifests, however, can be unique. Maybe you are pro-consumer, or pro-developer.
For those that are pro-consumer, to complain that the consumer is being “Screwed Over” by having to going through extra hoops to get to features, is certainly valid. “The customer is always right” is a thought that has been drilled into our culture since birth. But logically, the customer can’t ALWAYS be right. If a customer insisted he deserved a product for free, or for less than the producer was willing to sell it for, we come to an impasse. If a customer doesn’t like a product/service, they can take their business elsewhere, right? No producer would want to lose out on sales to competition. However, the producer must make a decision: is retaining the future goodwill of the consumer worth devaluing the product he is selling now? If the price is lowered or raised, will it be sustainable in the long run?
A product sold for less than what a producer feels it is worth and can support will eventually end in losses. If said product is too cheap, and consumers become acclimated to that price they will revolt when or if you need to raise the price. A great example of this is the iOS app store, where very few apps can make a splash or become successful at any more than $0.99. I personally feel this market is not sustainable, or will stagnate. At a $0.99 norm over the course of many years, with no shortage of games in sight, a game’s budget and scope must be tailored harshly. On the flip side, if producers keep their original price and have less consumers, producers have to hope that that smaller audience will spend more. The consumer wants cheaper products and workers to be paid more. Take a look at Apple. I would hope that those people calling out for better working conditions and wages for people in the Foxconn Factory are not the same people that are complaining about the price of an iPhone.
Our Western society is unfortunately based on greed, at the expense of others. Greed isn’t all bad. Think of it as a quest to better yourself. Capitalism can be seen as ambition or greed that ends up benefiting many, for example. How does this relate to what I’m saying? Well, piracy, used games, and rentals can all be seen as part of an opportunistic approach to the industry. Let me elaborate. Ideally, the profit behind earned from a new game sold at 60 dollars would work as such: The game starts by being developed by a developer and funded by a publisher. Publishers then sell the games in bulk to retailers at a lower cost than retail. The onus is then on the game retailers to sell these games to the public for the MSRP: a successful new game will be re-ordered by the store, and a game that flops will make no more money for the publishers, as retailers will not be willing to buy more stock of a product they can’t sell. Of course, digital distribution cuts the retailer in the efforts to maximize the money publishers get from each sale, perhaps at the cost of number of copies they can sell. Pirated, Used, and Rental games fundamentally alter this system, much to the developers and publishers chagrin.
Pirates profit directly at the expense of publishers and developers, and put no money into the system. Used game retailers profit, and to a smaller extent, consumers, at the cost of publishers as well. Money made from a used sale gets stuck in the retailer ? consumer group, with higher margins each time for the retailer. Rental games work in similar ways, with smaller margins. One copy of a may be played by hundreds for a fraction of the new cost. Of course, the acquisition of these titles is controlled by the publisher, and they can sell it at higher margins to rental companies if they feel it appropriate. Hell, in some aspects. the idea of waiting for a sale can be seen as a subversion of the system. Stock that the publisher sold to retailers is then stuck with them, and these retailers can make less profit or even lose money for unsold product, or product sold at a discount.
Now, it is perfectly legitimate for a consumer to not care about the game industry, but simply about the products. I will not judge you (much) for purchasing a used game of a company that’s in dire financial straights. Buying a used Saints Row 3 is totally within your rights as a consumer. It supports the industry, in the sense that you’re putting money into the retail side of the industry. It doesn’t support, say, THQ or Volition, but to say that it is not supporting the industry and economy is incorrect. Most gamers on enthusiast websites don’t give 2 shakes of a stick about game retailers, however, and Gamestop is the source of much derision.
I must stress that I’m doing my best not to ascribe a morality on any of this. I feel that justification for piracy is wafer thin at best and common denial of thievery at worst, but some people genuinely believe it’s a legitimate source for politics and religion. Used and rented games, of course, seem like much less a moral quandary in comparison. You’re taking a physical copy out of the market, and are paying somebody that legitimately bought the game in the first place. But, clearly to some publishers, the legally acquired used and rental games are no better for their bottom line than pirated copies.
Forgive me for not citing anyone in particular, as I hate to create a straw-man, but indulge me for a second. A sentiment I have certainly heard around the internet goes as such “I’m low on cash, and I trade in my old games in order to buy new ones! I’m supporting the industry as best I can.” Now, this may end up certainly helping the gaming industry, but nobody can really know unless a statistical experiment is conducted. This experiment would have to observe the profit and revenue of companies in regards to two types of gamers: those that traded in games to buy new ones, thus adding used games to the market; and gamers that did not trade in games but instead bought and kept new games less frequently. This type of data would certainly be expensive and hard to collect, but it could stop this argument once and for all.
For another example, take a single player game in an increasingly focused online world.
Say a single player game, no matter how well crafted, can be finished in 6 hours. The gamer that bought it new may keep it, but more likely he will trade it in towards a new game. While he thinks he’s doing his part in buying new games, that used game often doesn’t just languish on the shelf of the store, but is sold back to somebody else. From here, the cycle can continue: people selling back the game, and others buying it. The game is exchanging hands, money is circulating, and yet the retailers are the ones that are reaping the profit, despite having no creative involvement. This may sound really silly, but if publishers and developers were who you sold your used game to, they wouldn’t care that it was used! They’d get money from it, if only a fraction. They try to make this odd fantasy a reality via online pass. Now, some people I have seen like to bring up used cars as a parallel to used games. Unlike car dealerships, there are no “certified Sony or Activision” resellers. The closest they have to this is the online pass, where part of the game has to pass back through their own certification system.
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Whew, that was a veritable wall of text. I’m going to break up this feature into 2 parts. In the next part, I will discuss the the idea of Online Passes versus CD keys, PC piracy versus Console Used games, DRM services like Steam versus DRM for disc based products and the problem with internet commentors regarding these issues. Til then, tell me what you think of all this in the comments!