Piracy and used game sales hurt developers, publishers and paying customers. There are so many variables to consider when it comes to explaining why, though.
The majority of arguments in favor of piracy are complete bullshit. There are plenty of opportunists out there. They'll take what they can get at no cost, regardless of whether or not it's right, as long as they can get it without getting into trouble and as long as it requires little effort. You can't just assume that someone who pirates a game wouldn't have purchased it, anyway. The price isn't always the issue; sometimes, the VALUE of a game is more important. If a game's perceived value outweighs the effort of pirating said game, then most people who can afford a game will buy it. If piracy was actually difficult, then it wouldn't be as much of a problem.
As a bit of aside, does anyone else feel that games held more value to them when they were more difficult to obtain or keep? I remember being blown away more consistently by games when I didn't have any cash flow as a kid. I'd rent games most of the time, so the short time that I had with many of them just felt so much more rewarding. When I'd get a game for my birthday or for Christmas, I'd play that game so much longer than I'd play most games now. I don't even feel that it speaks of the quality of games back then versus what they are now. It's just that it's so easy to get games now, even if you're paying for them. I just have so many games in my Steam account that I haven't even played, and games that I *do* play probably don't always get the same amount of enjoyment out of me as they probably would've when I couldn't afford them. Also, I almost feel that people who pirate games tend to be less appreciative of them.
People bitch about the price of new games, yet people forget that there was a time when the average price of games fell. Why? Because Sony made it a point to pass the manufacturing cost savings onto consumers more or less at the height of PlayStation's (PlayStation 1, mind you) popularity. The cost of games fell because development costs hadn't increased dramatically in any meaningful way, and piracy was probably more of a niche thing. It wasn't as easy to pirate games for consoles at that point. (PC games were another story, of course.)
If there were fewer opportunists out there, then the price of new games probably could fall, because it's better for companies to sell more copies at a reduced cost than it is for them to hold out at higher price points for sales that'll inevitably slow to a crawl over time. (Steam is proof of this.)
The problem with used games is that they're more or less doing what launching at a lower price point would've accomplished. They're competing with the new product, and the new product needs to have additional value incorporated into its cost to account for piracy and used game sales. Even if you reduce the cost of new games to what you typically pay for those same games used, used copies can still be offered at a lower cost, and people who currently buy used games WILL still purchase those used copies. It has nothing to do with the new games being within the price range that they consider to be affordable; it has everything to do with the fact that the used copy is less-expensive.
And yes, I realize that a lot of trade-in credit goes toward new games, but it'd still be better for developers, publishers and paying customers if everyone just purchased new copies (assuming that publishers could set lower price points at launch and have said price points not fuck them over).
There's a lot to say about this, and I probably left something out, but that's how I feel about piracy and used games.
