this is so cliche..
"Not in America!!"
hahaa..
...
No, you're right to a certain degree, Mr. Belgium (how's the waffles?), people don't always own the content after they've bought something, but there are a few exceptions.
For example, most valve games come with an SDK that allow you to do with, as you please, most of the material. Of course they don't want you distributing material that they created themselves to people who didn't purchase it, however you can still make a mod, complete from scratch, and as long as that person owns one source based game and have access to the SDKbase, they can play your mod.
:)
Also, it has been said in here, that second hand sales, is protected by the U.S. goberment, on U.S. soil.

i read through these articles. from what each article claims, profits from used product sales is roughly 50%. the 70% figure you referenced earlier refers to an increase in total profits. the last article glosses over a relevant point, too:
"That’s an awful lot of revenue that isn’t being ploughed back into development or into marketing. All that money goes to GameStop, which doesn’t make games. GameStop opens stores in malls, sticks up shelving, hires inexpensive, unskilled local youth and sells product."
yeah, it's not going back into development, but by that paragraph's own words, the money is going back into marketing. what does the author think opening new stores and shelving more product is? this is how gamestop was able to get "its powerful network of 5,000 frontline stores," which means more eyes are seeing more product in more places. how can this be a bad thing?
no, i'm not. your b) option is currently not legally enforceable. this is why the first-sale doctrine is relevant. developers are not entitled to any money from the sale of used products. we're talking about 100 years of legal precedent, and courts are unlikely to budge on this. the only option developers do have is to make used games valueless, which means that used games won't be stocked at retailers anymore, just like what happened to used PC games when unique CD keys became tied to online accounts (doesn't everyone say PC gaming is doomed?). removing used games will price a whole segment of the consumer base out.
see above.
furthermore, doing away with the long held and long understood first-sale doctrine in the US will have ripple effects in other industries. if individuals have to compensate authors/inventors for the sale of a used product, people will not take the change lightly and it could have a devastating effect on other sectors of commerce. courts will not be thinking solely of software developers if this legal concept were to be challenged.
profit that they are not entitled to.

Unskilled local youth? That sounds like they're putting money into the community! Helping the economy! OH NOES!
Yeah, you're right, because if I don't have the right to sell off a game I think is pure crap, then I'm not going to buy any games unless I know I'm going to love them.
Good bye indie developers, good bye a majority of first hand sales for blockbuster titles..
A second hand market is very attractive to consumers as well as shops, because it helps us sell off the crap we don't farking want. If you were to say "Oh well there goes your 50$ out the window!" because I bought a game a developer shipped that was completely broken (see some glitches in KOTOR II, Superman 64), I wouldn't buy a game from them ever again.

Depends on where you buy it, I suppose. I prefer our beer though :p

This is an interesting topic you brought up. I'm going to chime in, with an example of my own.
If you buy - shall we say - a set of steak knives you are not automatically allowed to stab people with them. Does that mean you do not actually own the knives?
Of course not! The fact that you can't go around stabbing people has absolutely nothing to do with who owns what. Restrictions against things like murder or assault or trademark/copyright infringement are completely independant from ownership.
If I hold copyright over a piece of music, and I make a copy of it in the form of a CD, I own that CD. If I then sell the CD to Bob, I don't own it any more; Bob does. I have no claim to ownership over the CD whatsoever. This does not make Bob the copyright holder, it makes him the owner.
As the owner, Bob can do whatever he likes with the disc, but this does not imply any licence to violate other laws. He can sell his disc to someone else, because he is the owner and nothing says he can't. He can make his own copies of the disc (if there are no local laws against that) and he would own those copies to, and he also can play or read from the disc however he wants whenever he wants. But if he were to to break the disc in half and attempt to cut someone he would run afoul of laws against assault. And if he were to play it in the nightclub he owns without going through the proper channel (i.e. me) or try to sell the copies that he made, then he has run afoul of copyright laws.
The point I'm trying to get across is that when something is sold, ownership and the rights associated with it are transferred completely. Copyright has nothing to do with this and this has no effect on who holds the copyright - that is an entirely different matter.

Then how come i can rent my house that I own, but I can't automatically rent my CD's, DVD's or games that i own. This might of course be only specific for Belgium. I'm not saying a can't rent it, in the case of videos it is actually possible, but no by right, while game renting has been prohibited.
I'm not much of a legal expert, but i just like to be careful before i go around screaming:" I bought this, I own this and can do the <littlecutebumblee> what i want to do with it"
In the US apparently there is a law guaranteeing second hand trading, but I'm not sure if something similar is present in other countries. People just seem to take stuff for granted without actually reading the boring legal disclaimer that comes along with it.

No, it was in-line with the other statements within my post.

but there is no "third party" in any of the relevant transactions. it goes like this:
1) retailer buys game from developer to stock store shelves
2) person buys game from a retailer
3) person sells game to gamestop
4) gamestop then sells the game to another person
in each case, there are only ever two parties involved. the developer was paid when the retailer bought the game for stock. the retailer was paid when the person first bought the game. the person was paid when s/he sold the game back to gamestop. the person could have sold it to anyone, maybe a friend or an officemate. that individual then sells the game again. along this line, there is no reason to think that developers deserve a cut of profit of sales every time the product exchanges hands beyond the first sale.
publishers/developers don't. they are not entitled to that money.
you're getting into trademark law here, which is related to, but different from, copyright law. regardless, though, you still have the right to sell that EA flag without compensating EA.
right, but no one is arguing that individuals should be allowed to rent games for personal profit. we're talking about the right to buy and sell the products that we own. yeah, you can't rent out your DVD collection, but you can sell every single DVD you own to anyone you wish without compensating the movie studios. DVDs are as much a digital product as any software, and i don't think that video games deserve any kind of special treatment.

1) agree
2) agree, but retailer gets a profit, else the being a retailer would suck pretty much
3) games sells game with a loss to a shop. This obvious, the game isn't simply as much worth as it used to be.
4) The shop sells it again at a slightly less value as the new product and makes again a profit. Possibly more than from the original purchase.
I wouldn't even be surprised of some shops repackaging it nicely again and selling it off as new.
The reason I used the flag is to show that not everything you buy is completely yours as some people claim here. I did not use it as an argument to proof that reselling is felony.
I'm far from against second hand games, they allow me to expand my collection a bit cheaper. I however wouldn't be surprised that companies have or are trying to have different legal backdoors to stop this practice.
Hence my original question:
Second hand games: Second Life or death of games?
Do companies realize the benefits of it or do they only think about the loss of profit. How real is their impression of lost profits? Do they forget that young second hand gamers might turn into well paid first hand gamers, etc.

That is the most sensible thing I've seen throughout this whole thread! Not a single one of you are legally qualified yet are banging on about stuff being your right, comparing it to buying cars and saying you OWN stuff so therefore you'll do whatever.
Not a single person has yet actually stated that the EULA is legaly binding and has been tested in court. Some backstreet website forumites claim that it isn't, including here, but the fact is you don't own squat, you have bought the right to instal the software only and usually on only one computer.
This has been thrashed in court and tested despite some people believing that half of a EULA is illegal. It isn't.
You buy a game, you sell it on later after you have no use for it. Fair enough. But you can only "legally" do so if the EULA allows it. Then there's the subject of registration; if that game has already been registered you probably don't get an online activation although some developers allow a phone backup registration service. That is why a fair amount of sellers won't touch PC games and why renting a PC game is almost heresay.
You've bought into the world of the PC game, Pirates and companies who wish to protect their work.
You are presented with a EULA prior to installation. You chose whether to install or abort. Installing means that you agree to the EULA and are hapy with the consequences.
You really have no defence whatsoever afterwards to moan about what you believe you are entitled to do with it afterwards. You don't like it, don't install it and get a refund.
Second hand games are threatening the production of new ones but only in the 0.0005% bracket, it's the developers who bang on about it that makes this issue a real one. Look at all the many thousands of console games for rent / second hand sale! And yet they can still churn out many thousands of titles a year.
Kinda proves that second hand gaming does not threaten new games development.

The only problem, is that's been tested in courts here, and the EULA is not a legally binding contract, if it violates the Ninth Amendment of our Constitution.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment09/
you might also want to give this a read, Clagg..
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/306/1045306/is-the-half-life-2-eula-illegal

Misplaced concerns, since car manufacturers don't lose significant amounts of cash to used car dealers, pehaps?
So? In other areas, second-hand sales don't take such a large cut of the revenue to stifle innovation, so there'd be no need for such measures there.
And I'm still not sure how you can call the developers greedy when, for every dollar you spend on a game, the retailers already get thrice as much as the devs, seven times as much in case of used sales. (Yeah, I know, inaccurate math, you still get the point) Give just a 10% cut to devs and publishers, and they're still making twice the profit off used games, compared to retail. It's not exactly as if Gamestop is doing horribly.
Again this "just like every other" thing. I don't suppose every other second-hand retailer puts out a nearly identical product for 90% of the price, with a 50% profit margin, right in the window of opportunity for the original product, leveraging the marketing force behind it as well.
So no, not like every other second-hand retailer. But, as before, feel free to prove that wrong.
Publishers turning into retailers as well, huh. Good idea in theory, doesn't seem too practical, though - how much of a chance would they stand against the already established large retailers?
That's nice, but pretty irrelevant. Sure, it's legal, doesn't mean it isn't driving gaming into the ground (it's not like it's in a good shape as it is, either).
Yeah, marketing of used products - which developers don't see a cent from. It's not like Gamestop doesn't promote used games over new ones.
Doesn't mean it wouldn't be better for gaming. And supposedly, it actually is legally enforceable for PC software, according to one of the linked articles.
Yeah, and look at the sort of sales they have to achieve to be profitable (80% fail that, supposedly), and at the amount of risk publishers are willing to take with innovative games. How many big name titles are original IP nowadays? It's all sequels and movie licenses and brands and franchises.
'course, that's not solely due to second-hand sales, but they're certainly part of the problem.

@pkt-ze0 I have a couple of question just to make sure that I know where you're at. You're saying that the state of game companies is in a bad place? As in they are spending way too much money for how much they are making or what? I feel like the game industry is raking in more money than it used to, but I may be wrong. And second, your problem is with stores like Gamestop that make money by selling overpriced used games or with people selling used games like at a yard sale or through craigslist and the developers not getting any of that cut?

not exactly. the legality of EULAs has been ruled on differently in different lower courts, and thus, is currently a legal grey area until a higher court takes up the issue. the US district court of california ruled in SoftMan Products Co. v. Adobe Systems Inc. that EULAs are not legally binding because of the nature of the transaction. the court ruled that simply calling a product a license doesn't make it one. another US district court in missouri heard Davidson & Associates v. Internet Gateway Inc., which challenged that ruling in california.
whether or not EULAs are legally binding has not been settled.
i was talking about the fact that gamestop has new product on their shelves. have you been in a gamestop lately? used games are right next to new games, and the display size is nearly identical. if you don't want to buy used, you don't have to. they offer new titles as well, which is my point.
er, no. i don't recall any of your linked articles stating that developers can legally require retailers to share the profits from used games. forcing retailers to give the developers X% share of used game sales is not legally enforceable. sure, retailers could do so voluntarily, but that's not what we're talking about.

You're quoting the Inquirer's guesswork and questions as proof? And there was me thinking you were one of the less theatrical here.
Not one EULA has been proven to be illegal, except under business conditions where extra implied warranties were used not the EULA proper. For example "Opening the box implies that you have read and understood the EULA in the box " Extreme I know but I know how fluffy some people get when reading stuff.

EULA's have been challenged as Illegalyouth has just quoted but if you, illegalyouth, were to read what it states instead of just quoting, (no offence intended but have a proper read) the EULA was challenged in the context of a boxed set which could be distributed under the Copyright act 1976 as an exhaustion rule. They did not rule the actual EULA to be illegal just a boxed collection to be placed under a blanket standard EULA which prohibits resale. You need to understand what you're quoting.
As a systems maintainer and general bodgit and scarper for my company my bosses read, understand and scrutinise EULA's for a living to escape nasty pitfalls with new software. If EULA's were illegal they would have been stopped many, many years ago by the business sector well before us mere consumers.