The fact that you are playing on a closed platform which has an exclusive monopoly on the distribution of it's own games itself could be interpreted as DRM. On PC you can choose what platform you buy on, you don't need to use Windows you can also load up a Linux distro. You can't buy a game for the PS3 or Xbox 360, physically or digitally, without giving a cut to Microsoft or Sony.

I'm going to back now becuase you're trying to twist my arguments in your favour. All your points lead to the fact that used sales do no harm to the industry. Why don't you take this argument to the publishers then? Talking all big and mighty here won't solve this DRM problem. Maybe you can. Bottom line: I think your logic is flawed and needs re-thinking , but that's just me.

BTW: Unsold games? Did you ever hear of "making more"? How do you know they aren't creating more discs? See? You're jsut trying to twist my arguments. This consversation will lead to nowhere , so I'm stopping it now.

EDIT: I'm not actually talking about people who wait for price drops , but for people who buy used in the first month of the release. This kind of people who are greedy over 5 bucks.

Well I disagree and think much the same way about your arguments. :)

Others have taken these arguments to the games industry, but just like trying to tell them that DRM only hurts legitimate customers while leaving pirates relatively unharmed, publishers don't seem to take much heed.

Used sales - I was saying neither argument makes any headway with publishers despite both being accurate.


EDIT: AHHHHH - I accidentally deleted my previous post, oops, sorry!

New Xbox games will be installed on the console hard drive. If there are no measures in place to make sure two consoles aren't playing the same copy simultaneously, that's a bootlegging free-for-all. If there are - that's DRM. It might be DRM that allows for used copies (account binding and unbinding, as seen on GMG), but GOG's business practices are not relevant here except perhaps in the broader sense of consumer rights. They aren't even interested in physical media.

Hell, Microsoft is not interested in physical media as DRM, discs are now an infrastructural component.

Actually , that argument about buying at a 50% discount (for example) can encourage retailers to order more copies. (but not the type of copies you may think of) The more copies are in circulation , the faster can a game reach the status of "Platinum" , "Greatest Hits" & "Essentials". While I don't like this type of reprints and do not buy them , they too come at a profit for the devs.
Bottom line: People who buy an used game for 5 bucks less in the first months (maybe not months , but weeks) of a game's release are hurting the industry.

As far as I'm aware, the game is installed on the hard drive, but the disc still needs to be in the drive when playing. Basically you have all the problems of console gaming AND all the significantly worse problems of PC gaming.

You managed to save my post, thanks! :) (I accidentally deleted it)

Except that they had to buy from people who bought the game at full price. Those people who resold the game may not have bought the game at those prices if they didn't have right to resale. I'm not arguing Gamestop are saints, in fact they're a practical monopoly on the used games market because of dearth of retail stores who do used games (they're the last big ones left standing). I'd love to see a healthier/peer-to-peer used games market, but that won't happen if publishers keep trying to kill it. We'll continue to get the worst of all worlds.

Retailers tend to do the big sales when they aren't buying much or any more inventory, so buying then doesn't encourage the creation of more copies. That's retailers getting rid of stock they don't want anymore and don't want to buy any more of. When they come out with new versions for the game ("GotY" or "Enhanced Edition"), that is of course a new version that someone may choose to buy if they didn't buy the original. But that's a difference process because often it involves the bundling of expansions and otherwise new content. And in fact, who buys that content before it becomes bundled? Whoever holds the current copy of the game. That encourages people to hold on to their copies if they want the new content right away and if they do resell before that and want the new content, they have to re-buy the game.

Again, even beyond this about how much damage or benefit or neutral equilibrium the used game market does to publishers, right of resale is an important consumer right to balance out the power differential between companies and consumers, especially when dealing with copyrighted material for which the company has exclusive rights to (first-)sale.

An issue known as the "Steam sale" problem in the industry nowadays. Instead of 200,000 buying a game for €50, you now have 400,000 buying the same game for €10.

Hmm, just the other day I read some gaming article (from 2012) about the biggest fallacies about the gaming market. They specifically mentioned also "used games market destroys the profits of gaming companies" and "game development costs have skyrocketed".

I personally am not really craving back to second-hand market to PC gaming, mainly because that is very incompatible with DRM/copy protection-free gaming. I rather have DRM-free gaming than the ability to sell/buy used games (with DRM and/or copy protection). And PC game prices have eroded so heavily anyway for various reasons that I wouldn't even see the point of trying to sell my older games away, or hunt for second-hand copies.

But for the development costs, the article mainly pointed out that while some costs of game development have risen, some have plummeted, e.g. regarding development tools. They gave as an example that e,g, the development costs of Shenmue (the original 1999 Dreamcast title) were quite a bit higher than most AAA-titles made today, especially considering it wasn't a multi-platform release, but only for one console.

Googling for some data, Shenmue apparently costs $70 million to make (for just the Dreamcast version), while e.g. GTA IV, which is touted as one of the most expensive games ever made (as of at least 2012), cost $100 million (and I presume that means all the platforms it was made for, at least initially).

And also it was pointed out that the development costs fluctuate a lot anyway, e.g. when a new gaming engine is introduced, the costs are much higher than subsequent games using the same engine.

I really should try to find that article, I ended up there from some gaming link in these GOG forum discussions, which had a link to that... I didn't fully agree with that article though, but I felt there were some good points there, and some data to support it too.

You and I are not that far apart :) I would like to see a market where DRM/copy-protection gives clear right of resale, while if DRM-free digital gaming does not, I'd be okay with that. :) (mostly because I can't figure out how to do the latter in a way that protects companies' rights too - someone would need to create a copy-protection scheme for digital games that doesn't involve DRM, which I'm not sure is possible and would still be copy-protection - which isn't as bad as full-on DRM)

For games that require an online pass, I'd agree, but otherwise: why so judgemental? If people buy used games, they indirectly support the game by playing it, spreading the word and giving the original buyer some funds to buy more games. Not everyone has the funds to buy games new, and most of the people who don't (and also the people who do) don't have paypal accounts with which they can buy cheap games online. If they can get a game on sale, all the better, as the money goes partially to its creators rather than all of it going to a fellow consumer, but many gamers, especially PC and Wii gamers, only get their games from the store downtown or down the road, and checking for sales there requires a lot more effort than checking for sales on Steam, GOG or elsewhere.

Not forgetting that the used game market is the only place many of us can get out-of-print titles.

How do you delete posts? O.o

I know a lot of people who buy games brand new ,but after they hit the 30$ mark. This may seem odd to some , but there are cases where a game's sales grow a lot bigger when it hits 50% or less mark than when it's priced at full price. So this is why I said that even buying a brand new game at 50% off helps.(it doesn't help as much as buying a game new when it's released , but it's something)
Ugh , don't even get me started on GameStop. Their "return the game in one week ,if you don't like it or you completed it" policy is pretty annoying.