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View Full Version : My stance on used games



Darkhog
29-05-2013, 11:56 PM
It would probably make flame here, but if it comes to this point, I believe mods will close this pretty fast (but please don't unless there will be f-war).

So they want to remove ability to resell our used games, right? Well, I'm against these practices. They are fully powered by greed.

Mark my words there will be times when you'll pay for brand new game same as for 5 years old if it passes.

They say that this is to provide more revenue to game developers. You know what? That's bullshit. Want more revenue streams? Make more damn games. Or go into F2P, I don't care. There are also subscription-based model which provides CONSTANT revenue.

I can't lend games to friend, or just plain give them if I already went through it? Bullshit. I remember when I used to swap with my cousins Famicom carts with games (since we all had famiclones, mostly one called Pegasus, though I had clone Funstation that looked like PSX except where in PSX is CD-ROM there were cartridge port). Granted, they were mostly pirate X in 1 carts, but we didn't know it was piracy at the time. We had great time playing them though.

Yes I'm sorry about what happened with THQ, great publisher, really. But their only advantage was Saint Row series and they weren't clever enough to make more revenue by not relying on their cash cow and sell other games too. They weren't even making use of their older successful IPs (Homeworld...). But for one things they were... They were morons.

Why? Because they got too reliant on one IP instead of developing multiple at same time. Which would provide "multiple revenue streams" so wanted by so-called game developers. Instead they chosen to take easier route by taking away our rights.

This is bad, this is really bad.

Also: http://www.tickld.com/t/118881

Colin
30-05-2013, 03:29 PM
Hello Darkhog,

First I want to add that I think also this thread should not be closed or deleted, this is an important subject for all game developers as it will affect their future.

Before i begin, I would also like to note I run my own software and 3d development/games company and when i was younger i worked in a game store.

If selling second hand games becomes prohibited, here is what will happen, right now game stores make very small amount from retail games, they have a very tiny markup, in most cases they need to rely on the consoles or pc's to make their money back (which is not always happening) they make enough from selling second hand games, this keeps them in business and allows them to continue selling retail games.

So without second hand games, many game (only) stores will go out of business from too high costs for electricity, rent and numerous other costs (like the store i worked at), which means the competition becomes less for other stores, these other stores will also try to save themselves by making an increased markup price on games, so a 69.99 game will become 79.99 or 89.99 and so on, in the end games will become to expensive for people to buy anyways and will increase pirating of games and chipping of consoles.

Most large scale game development companies and publishers make more than enough back from their released titles. For THQ was another problem, they were just extremely bad at handling their expenses/loans from trying to expand too fast.

Here is what i believe should happen if they really want to pursue this..... private persons should be able to sell their second hand games at any time without restrictions..... shops/stores should be prohibited from selling second hand releases of titles that are no more than 3 month old. This will allow time for people really willing to spend the money to go and buy the retail titles, and those that can't afford it to buy it second hand at the designated date (keeping the stores in business, allowing bigger access to also retail games for those that would like to buy them) - Games that are sold for 20$ or equivalent should have a higher offset for second hand compared to those that cost 60$. e.g. 60$ = 3 month, 20$ = 7 month, this will allow for the developers to recover more than enough money to begin working on their next release(s), however i agree that digitally downloaded games should not be transferable.

If you think of it like movies, they do not release the DVD at the same time as it is displayed at the cinema, as many people will watch the movie several times at the cinema, if they could buy it directly on DVD, many will not bother to go to the cinema, so second hand games should still be allowed to be sold, but as i said after an offset period of time.

-Colin

Darkhog
30-05-2013, 06:54 PM
@Colin: That's most sane opinion on the subject I've read since that fiasco began. I totally agree!

SilverWarior
30-05-2013, 08:15 PM
The problem is that developers doesn't earn anything from used games infact it causes them losses.
Take next example:
Some person buys new game for 30$ and plays it for about month. The he sels that game to used game store for lets say 5$.
This store now sels this game to some other person for 20$.. This person then playes this game for about a month and sels it back to the store for 5%
The store sels this game again to another person for 20$. This can go on and on. And everytime the game gets resold developers lose potential ernings.

So should be selling of used games banned or not? On my opinion it shouldn't be generalized for everyone. I think tghat best solution would be that developers themself decide wheter the game could be lately sold to another person or not. You can simply state this in EULA (End User Licence Agreement). For instance just take a look at Windows EULA. From what I know the only way for a Windows coppy to change the owner is through inheritage. You can't sell it, you can't lend it, heck you cant even install it on another computer after it has been already activated. Maybe through some deactivation process I'm not sure.


As for in general I think that game developers should lower the prices of most of their games especially big gaming houses.
Who is prepared to pay 60$ or even 70$ for one game which he might turn it ower in a weak. If your game doesn't have much replayability it is "crime" to put such high prices. In such case I rather wait a year or two for prices to drop or even to get the ability to buy game second hand if the comany selling the game still insists with to big prices for to long.

Now I understand that it is hard to sell some game for small price especially if you spent a lot of money developing it. But to high prices only increase priacy of such games.
Why Indie comunity thrives so much lately? Mostly becouse Indy developers provide their games at reasonable prices. ANd the price of Indie games actually reflects the replayability value of the game and not how nice graphics and how many special effects the game has as it is with most AAA games.

Darkhog
30-05-2013, 08:31 PM
Potential sales? Oh please... If they can't afford to buy retail version, they wouldn't buy it anyway. Buying used game is better than pirating it (which by the way will increase when you can't buy used game and can't afford retail price). Dev won't get money anyway and it'll just hurt them in the long run.

This tactic is very short-sighted. If I'd want to buy console (which I don't have money for as I'm facing foreclosure) I'd choose Wii U. Not only because I love Mario games, but also because Nintendo seems happy to let players sell their own games or transfer ownership when they don't play them anymore. Otherwise they'd stop used Wii games ecosystem long time ago.

I personally, when I'll develop game for sale will release it on Torrents (besides demo version on site or paid option) and without any "funny" business like Game Dev Story fake. If my game is any good, people will buy it anyways. If not - well sucks to be me, but I won't never, I say NEVER blame piracy for that. Only my own incompetence as developer.

pstudio
30-05-2013, 08:47 PM
As I see it, prohibiting second hand sale or putting a fee on it is just a sign of how unhealthy the AAA market is. Way too many money is put into way too many (at best) mediocre games. Second hand sale is not the reason why these games don't sell well. It's because gamers are bombarded with all these average games that offers nothing new but yet cost $ 50+. It's limited how much mony gamers can/will spend on these games when they just get more of the same. The few AAA titles a year that really excels or have a big following usally don't have much problems with second hand sales.
However second hand sale may actually improve sales in a few cases. Gamers may pick up a game cheap they otherwise wouldn't buy. If they then like it they may spend money on DLC or on future games from that developer.

SilverWarior is on to something. AAA developers should look at the indie scene. Personally I've really only bought indie games on Steam for the last year. Why? Because they're cheap reasonly priced and they offer me novel entertainment. A buddy of mine is all excited about GTA 5 and is talking about it to me all the time. He has a hard time understanding why I ain't all hyped over it just like him (after all I study games on an academic level) but as I see it it's just another game with better graphics, bigger world, and generally just better of everything. That's fine I suppose but personally I can't see what's new? It's just more of the same.

AAA developers put way too much money into their games considering that they rarely offer anything new in their games. Yet the reason they don't experiement with new stuff is because they put so much money into development and will rather play it safe and stay with the old recipe. It's not good enough IMO and considering most AAA games don't even break even I guess I'm not alone in thinking that. The AAA industry should look inwards instead of blaming second hand sale and other things on their poor sales. That industry is in need of a revolution and a new way of doing their business.

Another issue about them forbidding second sale or asking for menoy again is that I doubt it would even be legal for them to do that. The EU recently made it clear that it is legal to sell digital software second hand (in the EU). You bought it once; it is yours to sell again if you wish to do so. I will expect the EU to do something if Microsoft or whoever makes second hand sales impossible or put a fee on it.

Darkhog
31-05-2013, 03:34 AM
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Top-Misconceptions-About-Gaming-Industry-40569.html

User137
31-05-2013, 11:32 AM
I personally, when I'll develop game for sale will release it on Torrents (besides demo version on site or paid option) and without any "funny" business like Game Dev Story fake. If my game is any good, people will buy it anyways. If not - well sucks to be me, but I won't never, I say NEVER blame piracy for that. Only my own incompetence as developer.
That's inspiring idea actually. There's way too many people who still believe that piracy is away from developers wallets, when it's actually the opposite. It is a method of free advertising and fanbase increase. Especially if you willingly allow piratism and let public know, it would multiply the effects.

User137
26-06-2013, 02:01 PM
I thought it was on topic, that Microsoft reversed their thinking for Xbox One
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/microsoft-may-announce-reversal-on-xbox-one-drm-always-on-policies-later-today-1160205
They propably received too much negative feedback from players, and bended to their will, to keep even some credibility. It seemed that PS4 would win the "console wars" otherwise, with their nonrestricted playing and trading.

Darkhog
26-06-2013, 05:47 PM
Yup, they did, but they still sucks for indie devs (and devs in general). PS4 is still way to go.

davido
27-02-2019, 12:40 PM
I only play the games used, the new games are too expensive for me.


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SilverWarior
27-02-2019, 05:22 PM
I only play the games used, the new games are too expensive for me.

Lately I'm pretty much only buying Indie games. Quite often in Early Access stage. Why?
1. They are generally a lot cheaper so I can buy from 3 to 6 indie games for the same amount of money that I would have to pay for a single AAA title.
2. Believe it or not but quite many of these Indie games offered me more game-play enjoyment than similar AAA titles.
3. Indie developers are not afraid to try new things so you can find some unique gems amongst them while most AAA game development studios keep clinging to the already tried recipes that worked in the past which makes AAA games feel very similar to each other.
4. And finally the reason that is attracting me the most into Indie game scene is the fact that most Indie developers are not afraid to talk about how game mechanics in their games work. And with that information you can learn quite a lot about game development even without seeing a single line of games code. Not to mention that you could potentially learn from others mistakes so that when you go and start developing your own game you won't be repeating them.

WButcher
23-10-2020, 04:40 PM
Agreed there are alot of indie games that better than AAA projects.

Ñuño Martínez
23-10-2020, 05:41 PM
Indeed there are. Money doesn't mean the final product will be good.

WButcher
24-10-2020, 11:05 AM
Indeed there are. Money doesn't mean the final product will be good.
true

Jonax
09-06-2022, 01:11 PM
Is it even possible to buy used games anymore? Seems everything is on Steam nowadays.

Ñuño Martínez
20-06-2022, 06:31 PM
As far as I know, only old games (pre-DRM ones).

Jonax
24-06-2022, 12:04 PM
As far as I know, only old games (pre-DRM ones).

And those are often tricky to install/run on modern Windows.

Ñuño Martínez
24-06-2022, 06:09 PM
Yes, they are. Even using emulation or VMs.

SilverWarior
24-06-2022, 11:19 PM
Yes, they are. Even using emulation or VMs.

It depends on specific game.

Most common difficulty foor running old Windows games on modern Windows versions is the fact that they are saving their setting and savegames within their own folder. This is in violation with modern security standards which are enforced by Windows User Account Control (UAC) which by default blocks saving such setting and savegames within the same folder the game is installed. That is unless you changed permissions for that specific folder to allow full read and write capabilities. For this reason I have a specific folder with full read/write permission into which I install any older game.
Second most problem for running older games is that many of them used Direct Draw for their graphics. Because Direct Draw based games often use custom color palettes their graphics are not rendered properly on modern graphics cards because they can't map those custom colors properly. To solve this problems you could replace ddraw.dll with a custom one that makes sure the colors are mapped properly. Our forum member LP who is also author of Platform eXtended Library (successor of Asphyre Sphinx library) made such DLL replacement which actually works quite well. You can read more in https://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/showthread.php?32477-Legacy-DirectDraw-Layer-wrapper-that-allows-playing-old-games-on-new-hardware

Old games that don't have complex 3D graphics can be easily ran within a Virtual Machine with older OS installed.. For instance I have a WMware virtual machine with Windows 98 installed in it to run some older games that I own that do have copyright protection that simply fails to work properly on modern Windows versions.

As for old MS DOS based games I most commonly use DosBox or Virtual machine with FreeDos installed in.

Sometimes I even go and turn on my old AMD K5 based computer to go and play some old games on a computer they were basically designed for ;)