It doesn't matter. All that matters is that on average, some money is going to be used for new games, and on average, the industry will always benefit. The reasoning will still work even if only 10% of the initial value of the games traded in are used for new games on average. It will simply change the numbers, but so long as some percentage of the trade in value is used for new games (gamestop claims this percentage may be as high as 70%), more money will be pumped into the new games industry than otherwise.
So why does piracy and used games NOT hurt devs?
- Thread starter sn00zer
- Start date
It doesn't matter. All that matters is that on average, some money is going to be used for new games, and on average, the industry will always benefit. The reasoning will still work even if only 10% of the initial value of the games traded in are used for new games on average. It will simply change the numbers, but so long as some percentage of the trade in value is used for new games (gamestop claims this percentage may be as high as 70%), more money will be pumped into the new games industry than otherwise.
That clearly isn't a large enough market to put pressure on demand, since used games are in abundance, typically. Now if there was a consistent shortage of used games, the argument could be made, but that only really happens with niche titles because of limited release.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
But again, they have no right to income from used games sales. They already got their money from the original sale. In the case of a used game store, the developer has nothing to do with the game. The store rebuys it, reshelves it, resells it. Once it's been purchased the first time, the developer is out of the picture, but they seem to think they deserve more money for doing nothing. They think you don't own the game, they do. You're merely leasing the game from them.
And make no mistake, the people who lose on this will be people reselling the games. Gamestop isn't going to take a % hit on income due to these greedy developers. They'll just take whatever the reactivation fee is and subtract it from what they would give in trade, so they can sell the used at the same price they did before without losing any income.
Old games will essentially become less than worthless.
CaptainGyro
Banned
You answered the question from the perspective of somebody who believes that it does damage to the industry, just to a lesser extent than the publishers make it out to be and were telling me stuff I already knew ( not all pirated games equal a lost sale.) I was asking the question based on a post from somebody who seemed to think it barely hurt devs at all.
I have a headache
Either
A) I am trolling
or
B) Recognize DRM is being used to curb both piracy and used game sales as publishers see both as a threat to profit margins
Could you please answer me this...what makes the games industry so different from any other industry when it comes to used items? No other industry is trying to go after the used market and say that they should get a cut of every resale. What does that say about the games industry? What is so wrong with people being able to sell the things they purchased on ebay or craigslist?
Gaming Truth
Member
Actually, it can and happens often. The launch window is usually one to two months. Gamestop loves to buy back these new releases and sell them again during the launch window, especially if its a hot seller. Games like the Mario series can be beaten quickly and sold back. Games like X-Blades doesn't sell initially well and loses out in the long run when people who regretfully bought it sells it back and the only people who'd buy it from that point forward will only do it for a discount.
I keep reading people's stance on piracy and I feel it's stupid:
Bullshit. If piraters couldn't pirate the game they want, they'd pirate someone else's game. If they can't pirate games at all, would they quit being gamers? Of course they wouldn't. And, they'd start paying for games.
People don't pirate games and then don't play them. Non-gamers don't pirate games. If piracy was eliminated, they'd have to be legitimate customers like the rest of us.
Btw, the quoted picture is moronic. Piraters aren't stealing the game from developers like shown in the picture above (with the pig). They're stealing the money the developers would have gotten.
You trade in your game for $30 - but GameStop will always sell your previously used game for well more than $30 (which is why they accept that trade-in). The trade-off works out in the negative for game publishers if anyone buys your used game at the price GameStop expects when they give you credit.
If it was a flat trade, it would be fine (from an economic point of view). But it never is anywhere close to flat.
People are not saying piracy is okay, but many are implying that it is harmless; a claim that is even worse in my opinion. Check the first page.
vpance
Member
Well, more is clearly not enough! /Greedy publisher
I'd still like to see Gamestop cough up a percentage and no need for draconian DRM. But for whatever reason I guess the former is not really an option so pubs are pushing for the DRM angle.
At no point in my calculations do I care, nor do I need to care, about what gamestop sells the game at. I am calculating how much money a person who trades in games spend on new games, as a result, one dkoes not need to factor in the price of a used game, only the value that a person will get for trading a game in. In fact, my assumptions don't even require trading in at a retailer, the same reasoning goines for private trading on ebay or an online forum. All that is required is that the person gets some money back from selling the old games, and uses a portion of it on new games.
none of the people I quoted were close to making that argument
they simply said that pirates wouldnt have bought the game anyway to dismiss the question
given that and given that the question the thread asks is "So why does piracy and used games NOT hurt devs?"
the conclusion is that piracy does not hurt devs because piracy
e.g. "piracy is ok - there is no harm done"
Gaming Truth
Member
I can answer this:
Music and movies also have a used copy industry. Local record stores buy/sell used tapes/CDs. Game stores got into buying/selling movies/shows.
The difference, however, is that albums and DVDs are only a portion of revenues for their respective industries. Movies also make money in theaters. Musicians also make money in concerts. For developers, its game sales or bust.
Not really, in the big picture. Gamestop is a business and contributes to the total economy; games economy does not exist in a vacuum so claims like this are just more of the incalculable we already get enough of.
I think that publishers are scared. Even if they killed the used game market, their days are numbered. There are fewer and fewer publishers every generation with THQ as the latest victim. They can go after the used game market if they like but that's not going to save them. With self publishing on WiiU and PS4 things are going to get very interesting.
Quadraphonic
Member
Do you think they might have a bias? Or at least an incentive to bone the consumer over just to help their own bottom line.
In-game advertising, DLC, Special Editions, soundtracks, strategy guides, licensed toys, social game companions. There's a LOT of avenues for additional revenue.
I want to see developers admit banning used sales is wrong too.
Both camps are ruining gaming for people like me who buy legitimate new and used games.
I have this "gut feeling" that second hand sales benefit the industry, while piracy DOES hurt.
I don't know how you could spin it but if there was no means of pirating a game, absolutely none, there'd be more sales indeed, by how much I don't know.. 5%? 10% 20%? It's not like your game would sell 9 times tho, extrapolating from games that are told to have 90% piracy rate. The amount of people who say "I pirate first to see the game then buy" is negligible. However, the effect of piracy is overblown like mentioned, a few percent of pirated goods would have been actual sales, IMHO.
The nice thing about simple Disk Based DRM is that it is convenient enough and only one copy can be played at a time. If you circumvent it to allow you to play WHILE you give it to your friend for him to play the game is piracy, and it is not good for the industry. Sell it to your friend and it is fine. It's all about ethics. Once you buy a game, you shouldn't have the right to copy it as many times you like and share it with people. "My friend wouldn't have bought it anyway so I'm copying this to him while I also enjoy the game" is not the ethical one. Just lend him the game, let him play it, and if he wants to play it, he should buy it for himself if you want your game back. Any other DRM than Disc Based to allow only a single instance of the game has to communicate with a server -> Online requirement.
I don't know how you could spin it but if there was no means of pirating a game, absolutely none, there'd be more sales indeed, by how much I don't know.. 5%? 10% 20%? It's not like your game would sell 9 times tho, extrapolating from games that are told to have 90% piracy rate. The amount of people who say "I pirate first to see the game then buy" is negligible. However, the effect of piracy is overblown like mentioned, a few percent of pirated goods would have been actual sales, IMHO.
The nice thing about simple Disk Based DRM is that it is convenient enough and only one copy can be played at a time. If you circumvent it to allow you to play WHILE you give it to your friend for him to play the game is piracy, and it is not good for the industry. Sell it to your friend and it is fine. It's all about ethics. Once you buy a game, you shouldn't have the right to copy it as many times you like and share it with people. "My friend wouldn't have bought it anyway so I'm copying this to him while I also enjoy the game" is not the ethical one. Just lend him the game, let him play it, and if he wants to play it, he should buy it for himself if you want your game back. Any other DRM than Disc Based to allow only a single instance of the game has to communicate with a server -> Online requirement.
Oh, you mean the people that created a market for you to turn your game into cash to buy new games? Yeah, they are the bad guys. And pirates. And people who don't buy DLC.
David Jaffe's full argument RE: used games.
I agree with it.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rkh3mr
I agree with it.
Quadraphonic
Member
Oh yes. Piracy kills. Even though every single study of those who pirate show that they actually buy MORE retail products than those who don't pirate at all. Every. Single. Time. For the last 2 decades. Every time the study is done on piracy, those who pirate are those who spend MORE on products to begin with, on average.
Really, the "Piracy hurts" argument is the same as saying "Video games make you violent" argument. You aren't going to stop it, regardless of how much of a gut feeling you have that it hurts. Any actions against it are only going to hurt legit consumers.
Okay, I'm sure that a furniture company is only making money off of furniture sales. Nike doesn't restrict me from selling my Air Force ones, Ford doesn't restrict me from selling my F150's, Levis doesn't restrict me from selling my jeans, etc...you can see where this is going right?
and they would be wrong. A ton of people pirate shit they would pay for. Their mentality is "it's free, why would I pay for it?"
To add to this good post, most movie studios make the majority of their profits from movie theaters, which practically has no second-hand market. I am sure the movie industry would have taken Gabe Newell's path if the majority of their revenues was from home media sales.
um
evidence that people who pirate buy MORE retail products does not mean that their piracy is making them spend more
perhaps video game pirates like video games?
it also doesnt show that without piracy, they wouldnt spend even MORE
Posted? Jaffe:
Wow. That's surprising. I thought he was a reasonable guy. The people who claim that every pirated title wouldn't have been bought haven't thought about it much, are wrong, and shouldn't be adressed with anything but an explanation -- certainly not an insult.
Most pirated copies of a game are indeed most likely downloaded by people who wouldn't have bought it. 10-20% might be people who would have bought it.
A lot of people download every single game, movie, etc they can find, only to store it on a harddisc.
Say you're a pirate -- you've downloaded 1000 games or more; in most cases, you wouldn't have bought much more than 10-20 of those. Most pirate circles are made up of collectors; people who download stuff simply for the sake of collecting.
A certain site does mainstream pirating a bit, but you also have to consider the significant amount of games with malfunctioning cracks, no cracks, games with complicated installation instructions, so it's not like even the number of downloads from that site equals a 1:1 play ratio for the people who do want to play, in addition to the collectors, the testers that make up the overall numbers.
Yeah, it's the act of downloading a full game itself that might prevent a sale, so a malfunctioning downloaded title isn't necessarily a valuable argument in this, but my point is that it's a number of people who download it, can't get to play it -- so the overall "downloads" might actually be some of the "legal" buyers, in addition to the testers, the word of mouth pirated titles will spread, the genres/developers/series people might be introduced to, etc.
There are lots of ramifications to this. Based on how well the industry is doing, I don't think it's a good idea to tamper with its ecosystems.
In regards to the Xbox One, I think it's a big mistake to try and eliminate used games, or the way used games work now -- it will prevent collecting games, and contribute to even stricter rules. I think the overall money poured into the gaming ecosystem by collectors alone is significant.
That is true. Pirates may spend more on retail than the average consumers, but comparing to the average consumer is not the right comparison. What you need to compare to is whether they will spend more or spend less if they had no access to piracy, which is a more difficult problem.
vpance
Member
Huh? I was just pointing out that while I get back money to put into new games, another dude comes along and buys my copy for $55 instead of buying the new copy. So maybe it is just a wash in the end? We need more numbers, it's a guessing game here.
Personally that is my view too. In my country friends used to laugh at me because I bought genuine games on my PS2 while every single body I knew was using modded consoles. Their reasoning, as you said, was, "why pay for it if it is free?"
When the PS3 was released, many people waited for a while in anticipation of a mod, but after the great games started rolling in, people jumped in and bought the system and actually started to legally buy games!
Of course this is just my personal experience and I don't think we can extrapolate this to the whole industry, but I believe that there is a segment that would start buying games if piracy ceased to exist.
But what if cheap quality games also suffer from piracy? Take World of Goo for example, the devs claim that the game has a piracy rate near 90%.
The game had no DRM, was cheap, and it was fantastic. Can you explain what is going here? the devs did what you asked and still, the game got heavily pirated.
DigitalRicket
Member
The idea of pirating because you weren't going to buy it anyway is the same as saying I'm going to sneak into a theater to watch a movie I didn't intend on watching anyway.
If you didn't download a game then the only way to have experienced it would've been to pay for it. So to say they weren't going to is completely untrue since how would you know if they were or not?
If you didn't download a game then the only way to have experienced it would've been to pay for it. So to say they weren't going to is completely untrue since how would you know if they were or not?
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
... please tell me that you're actually not serious.
Because that is a horrible fucking analogy. For many, many reasons.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
All the same calling piracy a 1:1 loss is disingenuous.
Reasonable analogies flew out the window when developers equate used games with piracy.
Let's not forget where this started. It's the industry's fault.
He didn't say following that advice would avoid piracy. It won't. It's a way to please your paying customers and make money.
Because I liked 2DBoy and WoG so much, I bought their game twice. And recommended it to my friends.
Nobody ever equated piracy to used games. The only thing that would have been said is used games are as detrimental to retail sales as piracy. Which is most likely true.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Yes, let us stop using logic and sound arguments that make sense just because we're upset at other people's opinions.
Many people in threads such as this have equated piracy with used games. It's a regular theme in the ongoing discussion of this issue.
thats completely true, and nobody should try to argue it
but given the ease and volume in which games can be pirated, even if a moderate % of them would have been actual sales represents a sizeable amount of money for the industry
His original point was valid and you flagrantly dismissed it without any rebuttal.
ShinobiFist
Banned
Man, I need to put the industry on blast(In person) for buying clothing on thrift shops or retro gaming on ebay. Or better yet, having their offices clean by non-citizens.
Games that basically have the content of an average flash game, or could have been a flashgame at kongregate, for example, shouldn't be priced at more than 5$. I haven't played that much of World of Goo, though, so I might be wrong.
They are fighting hardest against console users, though, and the consoles have the fewest pirates. The most pirated games in 2011 were Gears of War 3 and Call of Duty: MW 3. Gears of War 3 was pirated 890,000 times, Call of Duty: MW3 was pirated 830,000 times. Those numbers are insignificant compared to their sales and profits. Certainly not worth implementing even stricter rules.
Is Jaffe saying that money should go to the game makers, even if the money for certain titles will just go to the executives/higher ups (Not the game makers.), or is he including those in his suggestion?
You won't find anyone saying selling a game/ buying used is morally wrong like piracy is. Being as detrimental though? Yes, many people think that. Because obviously used games are detrimental to the industry. The analysts/researchers that work for MS, EA, Activision, Sony aren't retarded. If they think they need to fight used games, there's likely a good reason for it.
You would be surprised.