People need to stop muddying the water and realize that the purpose of copyright has not changed. If you, as a private individual want to do a one time transaction on a used good and recoup money on something you have no use for, you should absolutely ALWAYS have that right. The right to trade constantly in that product for profit, however, should not be taken away from the person or people who put blood, sweat and tears into creating it.

BUSINESSES and people who consistently move any kind of volume of used in direct competition with the new product, however are a different story. They are profiteering from copyright law’s inability to keep up with the modern age. When used game sales can eclipse new game sales while the new product is still relevant and interesting, it is obvious that the spirit of copyright law is being violated.

The only reason the problem hasn’t been addressed is that it’s sort of unique to video games. Outright piracy is more of a threat to the other mainstream forms of entertainment than used sales, because there is less of a “novelty factor” in movies and music. Secondhand markets for music and movies are NOWHERE near as big, because of relatively low resale value, and also because there seems to be a stronger attachment to them. A game has to be GREAT to keep a spot on most shelves, but a CD or DVD that is “okay” has a higher chance of hanging around in many people’s collections, waiting for the day when they’re in the mood for it again.

The first sale doctrine always has and always should protect those who bought something for personal use and for one reason or another, would like to sell it to be able to get something else that they want. It should NOT protect greedy people or corporations from amassing that product while it is hot and selling it en masse, in direct competition to the people who worked very hard to make it. If you want to make lots of money off of a videogame, you should have to make it yourself, just like with other things.

The used game market also helps support the new game market, because consumers are much more likely to buy new $60 games if they know they can sell them for $20 – $40 in the used game market a few months later. Also gamers sell used games and use the proceeds to buy more new games. For every game in the used game market AT LEAST one new game was sold.

All I can say is DON’T PAY $59 for a game!

Additionally this isn’t about the developers at all. This is about the publishers. This is about Sony, who wants thinks that Game Stop selling used Playstation consoles is cutting their revenue to shreds. You simply can not ask American consumers to accept purchase of something forever without resale options. This is about curbing piracy of games which is never going to stop. That’s why digital downloads through consoles have been slow to grow. There is no cost savings for the consumer, and an insanely high profit margin for the publisher. You can’t sell a digital download to someone and you can’t even reassign the ownership rights!

Developers aren’t hurting from used games because they don’t even get paid when you buy the new game.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/02/why-dont-more-game-developers-see-royalties-from-their-work/

Ta-da! At least Ars does their research work.

The reason the 2nd hand market is so big is due to the amount these games cost. I’m not a big gamer and I very rarely buy new games simply out of principle. The same applies with a music CDs, (for those who understand what those are).

If the games companies want to make money out of the 2nd hand market they should look at supporting games for longer. They could sell addons andor additional levels episodes even a couple of years later. Providing the price was right people who may have bought the game 2nd hand would still pay for these, therefore indirectly making money out of the 2nd hand buyers.

To distinguish software from these other scenarios would essentially create a system which involves two types of sales (the sale of the good itself – game disc for example – and the sale of the license to use the disc)

In this case, we as a society and as a legal question of property ownership are saying that your purchase of a game entitles you to only the disc itself, not its contents. This seems inherently more antithetical to our understanding of property ownership than failure of a producer to retain earnings from a second-hand sale.

Ford doesnt get a dime from the used cars out there. Those publishers should be trying to get customers to return the games to them to be sold as publisher refurbished.

I’m not sure why game developers and publishers can’t innovate a way to bring profit and value to a market segment that they’ve previously shown nothing but contempt and outright hostility towards. Seems like money left on the table to me.