Here's something you are missing. If a company only sells one item, then that means it's a shitty item. If nine people end up getting rid of your item, that's not their fault, it's YOUR fault for not making an item worth keeping.

You want people to not buy used games? Make your product worth keeping and *gasp* people won't want to sell it off, which would cause a natural reduction in the used game market. Don't shit out yearly sequels. Support your item with real DLC (not $15 for 3 maps). Give your customers physical items that they probably wouldn't get with a used copy. Give your game actual replay value.

Break even costs can be reduced by eliminating some of the grossly overpriced and frankly not-worth-it costs involved in game making. Do you really need to have graphics so detailed that you can count the pores on a person's face or individually modelling each strand of hair? Do you really need to pay 9-10 figures for big-name voice actors? Do you really need to license the latest pop single for the soundtrack? Do you really need a credits list of personnel that is 15 minutes long?

Oh, and you fail for equating used game sales with piracy.

It's only a problem if you focus on possible, not-at-all-guaranteed sales rather than focusing on making sure the people who bought your product get the best experience possible. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, after all.

Not to mention that libraries can result in additional sales like game and movie rental stores. If after they rent it but realize it's a piece of crap, well they have the right to find out it's a piece of crap before they commit to buying it or not.

One person reselling a game over and over and over again is NOT enough to establish a used games market. One copy changing ownership many times over does not affect sales in any way. And remember used sales are subject to the same supply and demand that new sales are - in fact worse so because supply is so constrained. You can only sell the number of used games that people have already bought and now never want to play ever again. Lets take several examples even ignoring the presence of DLC, expacs, and other retention methods:

1) A new game, is great, has high replay value. Every one wants, they buy it. It has replay value so the game has a high retention. Very few if any resell the game in the first year or more so that number of used copied in circulation is very low. This means their price is high because demand for the game is strong and the used game supply is low. This means the price of the first-sale game can remain high with occasional small sales to match or beat the used price. Eventually after a long while, the publisher/developer can lower the price of the game through a massive sale or permanent price cut, but get to do so later and having sold more first-sale games at higher price for longer.

2) A new game, is great, has low-medium replay value. Every one wants, they buy it. It has some replay value but the game can be found fairly easily used. However, demand is still high so both used and first-sale can command a reasonable price without price drops we see. The price of the first-sale game can remain high with occasional medium sales to match or beat the used price. Eventually after a long while, the publisher/developer can lower the price of the game through a massive sale or permanent price cut, but get to do so later and having sold more first-sale games at high to medium price for longer.

3) A new game is ... okay, has varying replay value. Not a huge first sale run, some people try to offload it, others don't but at any time is still hard to find a copy - demand isn't that high, but neither is supply of used copies since that many people bought it in the first place. Supply constrains the system again. As in the first two case, price drops are more steady and less of a cliff edge than the current system.

4) A new game, is shit. Possibly high pre-orders/initial buys but everyone who bought it tries to sell immediately. Few buyers for either the used copy or the first-sale copy, price plummets on both. Very little change from what happens when a current bad game is released. Bad game will sell badly.

Now add DLC, expacs, etc ... People who buy used before they are released and like the game are likely to buy those new. If the DLC and expacs are good, they may encourage original buyers to re-pick up the base game - probably on sale, but still represent a sale. Thus you have increased the number of buyers of later and previous content via used sales. Since in order to enjoy the expac and DLC, previous sellers have to buy the game again, this also represents a huge advantage no other industry gets. Further used games don't just boost the sale of games down the line, they boost initial sales as well since people know they can resell them.

Lastly this is an issue of consumer rights. Once they sell me the copy it is not their right to determine who I give that copy to - I cannot duplicate my ownership, but I am allowed to transfer it. This has been true practically since copy-commerce was born and somehow the books and movie industries have "survived" - by which I mean made massive profits. Used game markets do not hurt the industry. Far from it, they help the industry. The current system is NOT fucked! Well actually it is but only because the game companies are trying to kill the used game market and not because the used game market exists! This is a case where consumer rights and what is best for the industry are actually the same thing, but the industry is too myopic to see it. They absolutely have the right to offer a service to monetize the selling of used games and make money off of the used games market. They do not have the right to stop it from existing or demand that you use their service. This isn't piracy and framing the arguments as such shows a lack of understanding about the basic underlying economics of the situation. Supply and demand don't go out the window because of the existence of a used game market. A healthy used game market does benefit everyone. That's what were trying to get across!
Actually your even giving the used market short shrift :) - you neither have to have huge replay value nor cut costs for a publisher to release a game with a used market in existence. Now high cost games with low replay value and no expacs or DLC and that are only so-so? okay yes you're in trouble, but then such a game would've been in trouble without a used games market anyway! It's only in very slightly more trouble. :)

Your post is full of "common wisdom", there's probably very little factual information indicating that PC gamers have higher income or any of the other stuff you said. The only reason you think that is because people have said it a bunch, but it started as an assumption and probably hasn't changed status much, if at all.

Second hand sales are in no way organized to prevent new sales, they're organized to get people to spend money. The video game industry has made sure there's nearly no margin for retailers on the sale of new games, which is why retailers are forced into it if they're boutique shops.

But the real reason for used games has to do with the buyer's rights and ability to resell. I don't give a crap about Gamestop or the publishers/devs and who gets the most money, I give a crap that I, and other consumers, get a good product and most of these anti-secondhand sales schemes actually greatly reduce the value of said product. In any other industry you'd call it anticomptetive douchebaggery, but since you love video games and the people who make them the publishers put these guys (your heroes) up as shills to get you to buy into this stuff that's bad for you, bad for all consumers, and frankly bad for videogames.

No, it doesn't really mean that since most newer used games are sold for only 10 bucks off and are pretty much identical to a brand new game and the only difference is that it cost less. Maybe I'm talking as a PC gamer here that doesn't own a conosle and never has (other than a C64) but most console games are like summer blockbuster movies - they are great fun but aren't supposed to have lasting value. So you buy Gears of War 3 play it for 10 hours and then you are done - great fun but not something you wanna do again. And that's just the nature of the beast - they are designed for the Red Bull Generation!
Yes costs are way too high but that's because people crave high fidelity in their games - You simply cannot sell a AAA title if it doesn't have graphics on the level of Crysis. And again you can blame the Red Bull Generation for that. I don't need it and I wouldn't mind if a brand new game could cost 8 mill. to make rahter than 80 mill. but that's not how it works. Also I NEVER equated used games with piracy - I simply made a comparison about the mechanism behind both. I NEVER said that people who buy used games are equal to pirates since one is legal and the other isn't.
I also stated this in my post and completely agree with you. More transparency in the gaming industry would be great.

I agree that supply and demand also counts for used games and that it tends to follow the same pattern as with the new game so that if the new game is popular then the used version will also be so but you are forgetting how screwd these retailers are because 5-10 years ago they would stock say 2000 copies of a AAA-game (just a guess on my part) and then could resell some of those when gamers came back with the now used game, but today the store will only stock 300 copies but the encourage the gamer to come back with all kinds of sweet deals like instore credits, discounts on other gamers, exclusive tournaments, VIP member cards etc. And remember that the big retailers like Gamestop and Wallmart pretty much dictates under what conditions they want to buy games since no publisher can affort not to sell to them so the publisher agree to pretty much anything they say.
Publishers on the other hand try to stop this with DLCs and Online activations/passes but so many gamers hate that and will not buy games that use Day1 DLC or Online Pass so the publisher are really stuck here. Yes, it's about our rights as costumers but I do think publishers also have rights. Used games follow a different pattern than most other consumer products since you will never see Day1 used cars, Day1 used pants or even Day1 used books. The only 2 other industries that you could compare are music and movies and I personally think they are different because it's easier to know what you get with a movie or music. If I buy a new CD with Sade then I pretty much know what I get and hence I don't resell it on Day1 but with Bulletstorm it's much harder to gauge if I will like it or not - especially because big review sites like Gamespot and IGN are to biased towards AAA titles. So I think both consumers and publishers and retailers need to yield some of their rights in order to protect the industry.

Well we can't say for sure that Ferrari owners make more money than Ford owners but given the nature of the beast it's very likely that they do. If you want a high-end PC then that could easily set you back 2000 bucks whereas a console only cost 250-300 bucks. Yes, price is not the only factor here - a friend of mine just had his first kid and he found the XBox to be much easier to switch on and off than a PC when the kid needs him But for the most part the lower price point of consoles atract people who can't affort the higher end stuff like a PC.
Unlike you, I actually DO give a crap about the gamind industry and it's survival. I'm currently umemployed after finishing my Masters last year so money is tight for me but even so I'm not interested in ONLY getting the best deals if it hurts the entire industry. That's why I'm "defending" publishers here because I prefer a fair and balanced system where everybody wins rather than a darwinistic one that is all about fucking everybody else over as much as humanly possible. Like I said before I have no doubt that publishers like EA and Activision are evil scumbags that would sell babies if they could make a profit by it and I hate to defend them but I really don't think that ONLY thinking about one self that you do, works here.
All I'm saying is give the publishers a small cut of the profit from the second-hand marked and that's all.

And all we're saying is they have no claim on any of the money from the second hand market. It's not about not giving a crap about the industry nor is it about a Darwinistic screwing over of everyone else. It's about the fact that the gaming industry somehow thinks it's special over all other industries with regards to second hand sales. They're not.

$10 off is $10 off. I'll let you in on something...people don't get rich by spending money they don't have to spend. That $10 can be either put towards other products or saved. I don't spend money that I don't have to spend. If I see the same item with all the bells and whistles, I'd be an idiot to spend more money than I have to. And you would be wrong. People STILL play Halo 3, even though it came out over four years ago. Why? Because it offers the user a constantly changing experience and gives the player the opportunity to craft their own experiences through Forge and the ability to tailor the experience to your own desires. Want to try a level on Legendary using only the Plasma Pistol? Go for it. It only "works" that way because of people like yourself telling us it "works" that way. People don't crave high fidelity, they crave STORY. They crave FUN. It doesn't matter how hi-fi your game is if it doesn't hit at least the FUN factor. All the pixels and bump mapping and shaders don't mean squat if you don't have something to back them up. Yes, actually you did equate the two, IMO. Not in terms of legality, but in terms of net effect upon the developers and publishers.

I think the biggest problem here is the blurring of the lines between customer and retailer. I think that royalties passed on to the publishers (unfortunately), defaulting to devs after how ever many years has passed (hooray) would be an ideal solution, with personal transfer of ownership remaining as is, similar to how royalties work (ideally). Play a song in your store and pay for that use of IP, play it in your house for your friends, or in a school for educational purposes etc, and you don't, the personal and commercial spheres are dilineated.

I don't think it will happen though, as the customers are an easier target than fighting for a fair reform in the legal systems of each individual country. We can dream though.

I really don't understand how anyone can defend the greed of the video game industry expressed in the linked article. I've been reading the arguments back and forth here and I remain unconvinced that there is anything special that distinguishes the videogame industry from any other past or present in terms of property rights and second hand sales.

If I sell my used Ford automobile to someone, then one could reason Ford lost out on a brand new automobile sale at a significant loss of revenue. Should Ford be allowed to retain an interest in my car and take a cut when I sell it? Should Ford be allowed to dictate whom I let borrow my car? Because I like my Mercury Marquis automobile should I have so much loyalty to the Ford brand that I am fine forfeiting my consumer rights to make sure that Ford in particular and the industry in general will remain profitable rather than expecting them to manage as a business like any other?

See where I am going with this?

I could apply the above example to virtually any consumer purchase. How would it be if I owned nothing I have paid for but rather simply licensed it all under various terms and conditions meant to limit the value of my purchases, retaining maximal value for industries that provide consumables? How would it be if all second hand sales markets were subject to the conditions that the videogames industry seeks in its case?

What is it that makes videogames as a consumer product so unique and special that they deserve this special treatment and added revenue?

In light of this when you think about it, how can you possibly defend software publishers having some inherent right that no other business has to retain control over what should be your purchased property? What makes them special that they should get a cut when I sell something I purchased new from them? Would you tolerate that for automobiles, appliances, houses, music, books, clothing, anything else?

As has been repeatedly referenced in this thread, second hand markets have never kept publishers of various media previously from running successful, highly profitable businesses. This case is no different.

I maintain my position that this is purely about greed and seeking maximal undeserved profit at consumer's expense.

Could we please, for the sake of this and all future discussions, avoid comparing game to physical goods*? Pretty please?

Excluded books and dvds, as they are the "physical" binder for digital/virtual goods.

On what basis? What does the form of the property purchased matter?

Is a Kindle version of a book worth less or more than a paper bound one for some reason? Would you say Kindle books deserve to make more money than paper bound ones which actually cost more to produce?

I'm just curious why you think this matters somehow in terms of this discussion.

Because physical goods decay. They abrase, scuff, etc. With each mechanical usage of a physical good, it loses some of its value. Even books fade with time (but books are a bad example anyway, because they often collectors items. A game is always in the same shape, whenever you want to play it. The circumstances change (new OS, hardware, even the physical packaging may suffer etc) but the game remains pristine every time, no matter how often or how long you play it.

And other physical goods, like cars, are often high value items of which you will buyuse a handfull during your whole life. Games are cheap, they rarley cost more than $50 new.

This is like calling piracy theft. Or comparing the penguin to an eagle and saying he is a shitty bird because he can't fly.

A better example would probably be toys. Same price range, same usage. How many of you buy used toys (or did your parents for you?).

Purchased goods are purchased goods. I disagree that they cannot be compared to one another for the purposes of this discussion especially in terms of consumer rights to them.

Back on topic, do you agree with Jameson Durall's views expressed in the linked article in the original post?

I don't personally and I think I've made a good case for why I feel the way I do.