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Jim Sterling vs David Jaffe: Debate on Used Games Market and Online Passes

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
Who doesn't love entering 25 digit codes with the 360 (is it 25? I can't remember if it's 5x5 or 4x5 or 4x4...I know PS3 is 12) dpad?
 

DaBuddaDa

Member
Buy game. Install. Patch. Input online pass code. Input codes for RETAILER EXCLUSIVE BONUSES. Check for DLC. Finally play.

On the other hand, put all of that DLC on the disc, avoiding checking for downloads and installations, and users get in an uproar that it's on the disc so it should have been free. It's a bit of a lose-lose situation.
 

bc226

Member
On the other hand, put all of that DLC on the disc, avoiding checking for downloads and installations, and users get in an uproar that it's on the disc so it should have been free. It's a bit of a lose-lose situation.

If it already is on the Discs then why should i have to pay more for it?
 

kswiston

Member
I used to buy a lot of games used, but PC Digital Distribution has skewed my perceptions to the point that even used console games seem to be too expensive. I don't know how long the era of 6-12 month old AAA PC titles on sale for $5-10 will last, but until it is over, I am done buying anything but the most tempting exclusives on a console.
 

Atomski

Member
here is something even better for all those who feel a need to support the developer you do know that they already got paid the instant the game was finished and that all sales already were paid for buy the folks in retail.
Then the dev house gets shut down a week later because sales didnt do well enough..........
 
The "new game" routine is so ridiculous. Buy game. Install. Patch. Input online pass code. Input codes for RETAILER EXCLUSIVE BONUSES. Check for DLC. Finally play.

This is a shit user experience.

True, installing + patching + online code + pre-order DLC code... I could see all that together being annoying. Kinda funny how PC games now require less hassle to start playing than consoles.
 

Esura

Banned
Then the dev house gets shut down a week later because sales didnt do well enough..........

Which would of happened with or without used game sales. I'm honestly feeling that the industry is using the used game market as a scapegoat for their failures when its the way the gaming industry operates in general is more than likely the true culprit of dev houses getting shut down and all that.
 
Gamers get treated badly all the time.

We're the ones keeping this shitty industry alive. Sometimes I just want to burn it all down.
 
I really dont get all the hate towards Devs and publisher stance on used games. I mean they see no money when someone buys their product used, when that could have been a new sale and got the money for their work...instead of the customer saving $5 only to cheat the dev out of whatever their cut is.

I dont really have a firm stance on used games, I dont buy used games unless it's an out of print title on ebay. But I do sell games back to amazon on occasion and I prefer digital copies of games when they are available.

I just cant bring myself to get mad at publishers for trying to make as much money as they can off something they made and using the DLC and Online Pass tactics to make sure they see some money from their product.

I hate just about everything in your post. There's so much fail in it that I don't know where to begin. "Cheat" the developer out of their cut? Jesus.
 

GeekyDad

Member
My stand on the issue has always been: Fuck the consumers as hard as possible, worship the publishers/devs, and censor all speech that even whiffs of anti-publisher sentiment.
 
The "new game" routine is so ridiculous. Buy game. Install. Patch. Input online pass code. Input codes for RETAILER EXCLUSIVE BONUSES. Check for DLC. Finally play.

This is a shit user experience.

I was actually thinking the same thing the other day when I threw in Twisted Metal - how the new game experience really has gone to absolute shit lately.
 

Owzers

Member
I now try to schedule "putting a game in my system" for an earlier time then i want to actually play it due to installing and patching.
 

zeelman

Member
I don't know why we have to debate this "issue" that's not a problem in any other industry. The real problem is game development has gotten way too costly and now the publishers and developers are desperate for ways to make more money.
 

Kintaro

Worships the porcelain goddess
Sterling can't make up his mind at all on the used games issue. In one hand, he claims to be very pro used games/anti-online pass/etc. In the other hand, he is very pro digital download...which can not be sold as used. He can't make up his damn mind. So, I usually come to the conclusion where he is still simply a troll.
 

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
The "new game" routine is so ridiculous. Buy game. Install. Patch. Input online pass code. Input codes for RETAILER EXCLUSIVE BONUSES. Check for DLC. Finally play.

This is a shit user experience.

Exactly, and it's why I can't wait for next gen to come. The biggest issue with current gen isn't processing power, it's lack of HD space from old consoles. Next gen with larger HD's can go to a true Steam-like DD store and cut retail out altogether, and I can't wait.

I haven't bought a retail PC game since HL2. I can't wait for the day I don't have to buy retail console game. I could get rid of this stupid cabinet I have all my games in.
 

sixghost

Member
Sterling can't make up his mind at all on the used games issue. In one hand, he claims to be very pro used games/anti-online pass/etc. In the other hand, he is very pro digital download...which can not be sold as used. He can't make up his damn mind. So, I usually come to the conclusion where he is still simply a troll.

There's nothing contradictory about supporting both used games and digital downloads. As long as the DD service is run well, and they price their games to take advantage of have very little overhead, it's great.
 
Even though GAF hates him, I like Jim Sterling, he is one of the few industry writers outside of Eurogamer and Edge that I actually read extensively.

Gonna grab drink and listen hehe.
 

AEREC

Member
I hate just about everything in your post. There's so much fail in it that I don't know where to begin. "Cheat" the developer out of their cut? Jesus.

Well im sure thats how devs see it...try not to let a post ruin your day.

I would feel cheated if I made a game and someone bought the game but I did not see profits from it.
 

AEREC

Member
I don't know why we have to debate this "issue" that's not a problem in any other industry. The real problem is game development has gotten way too costly and now the publishers and developers are desperate for ways to make more money.

I dunno..maybe there are music or movie forums that have this same debate. Im sure Record Companies or Movie Studios dont like idea of not receiving profits from thier products...but then again it might not be as huge of a problem since most of the products in the those industries are below $20..and there's more of a digital market for music and movies anyways.
 
Online Passes have not affected be because I do not sell games and do not buy used, but they bug me because I freaking hate putting in those stupid codes. Come up with a better system please, such as biometric readers or blood extraction devices. That will work.

I agree with this. I don't give a shit about used game sales. I don't give a damn about online passes. I care that now my routine when I buy a new game is:

1 - install it
2 - gather up all my codes
3 - enter all the pre-order codes
4 - enter the online pass code

Fuck you gaming industry.
 

Kintaro

Worships the porcelain goddess
There's nothing contradictory about supporting both used games and digital downloads. As long as the DD service is run well, and they price their games to take advantage of have very little overhead, it's great.

DD is pretty much against what he argues for.

You can't take the game to your friends house.
It is usually tied to a form of DRM.
PC gaming has gotten DLC tastic to that "day one" online pass DLC codes he rants about have gone nowhere. They're just hidden from you.
DD on consoles will never be like DD on PCs. They will never be priced as such.
Finally, you don't actually own your game.

DD runs against pretty much a ton of his arguments he has made over the past couple of months. He has been called out on it many times in his own comments section but refuses to see it.

Bascially, if DD takes over, he'll just bitch about that.
 

bc226

Member
Well im sure thats how devs see it...try not to let a post ruin your day.

I would feel cheated if I made a game and someone bought the game but I did not see profits from it.

Except you did see what ever profit you sold the game for regardless if someone bought it you still sold it to the wholesale person and that person sold it to the store which sold it to the consumer. Who played your game and then decided to trade the game in.
 
In an ideal world, developers would be gamers' biggest supporters. After all, wouldn't the designers and developers of a thing want as many people as possible to experience it?

As it stands, developers are like an abused spouse (publisher) hoping that their partner gets a promotion at work so that they'll stop beating them.

Actually, it's even more indirect than that. It's like an abused spouse hoping that the multi-billion dollar company that employs the partner makes a bit more money so that they might promote the partner so that they might stop abusing their spouse.

yeah.
 

AEREC

Member
Except you did see what ever profit you sold the game for regardless if someone bought it you still sold it to the wholesale person and that person sold it to the store which sold it to the consumer. Who played your game and then decided to trade the game in.

You are really looking at this in a narrow way. Sure your initial run of games gets sold to retailers but after that if new games are not being bought then retailers are not likely to purchase more new copies to restock the game.

It's not like Devs/publishers look at the first week of sales and accept that that's all they will ever make off the game.
 
If you guys think games are priced high in America, you should try living in Europe. Everyone freaked out about Resi Revelations being $50, but... every new 3DS game here is pretty much that expensive.

Oh, and it's even worse in Australia.
 

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
DD is pretty much against what he argues for.

DD on consoles will never be like DD on PCs. They will never be priced as such.

We don't know that. PC's have had HD space large enough to handle a good library of DD games for quite sometime. Consoles on the other hand still have to deal with their lowest common denominator, which for the 360 is NO HD and for the PS3 20gb which is hardly enough at all.

When the next gen comes with 1tb HD's the issue of storage will be moot, and we can see a real DD service that doesn't have to worry about consumers running out of space.

Except you did see what ever profit you sold the game for regardless if someone bought it you still sold it to the wholesale person and that person sold it to the store which sold it to the consumer. Who played your game and then decided to trade the game in.

This makes no sense, of course they saw the 1st sale profit. They see nothing from the 2nd hand sale.

You can consider the 2nd hand sale a "lost" sale. It's not that simple, but it's that simple in theory.
 

bc226

Member
You are really looking at this in a narrow way. Sure your initial run of games gets sold to retailers but after that if new games are not being bought then retailers are not likely to purchase more new copies to restock the game.

It's not like Devs/publishers look at the first week of sales and accept that that's all they will ever make off the game.

And if the New games are not being bought why would a retailer want to buy new games yes its pretty narrow but guess what that's the way retail works
 

quest

Not Banned from OT
If the Dev's got their way and used games went away with out any other changes like significant cuts to prices or DD done right I would probably give up gaming. It is funny Sony had a chance to do it right with Vita and DD. They basically failed because it costs less to get games at retail than it does a un sellable DD version. Until console makers get DD right I will be against things that get rid of used games.
 

bc226

Member
We don't know that. PC's have had HD space large enough to handle a good library of DD games for quite sometime. Consoles on the other hand still have to deal with their lowest common denominator, which for the 360 is NO HD and for the PS3 20gb which is hardly enough at all.

When the next gen comes with 1tb HD's the issue of storage will be moot, and we can see a real DD service that doesn't have to worry about consumers running out of space.



This makes no sense, of course they saw the 1st sale profit. They see nothing from the 2nd hand sale.

You can consider the 2nd hand sale a "lost" sale. It's not that simple, but it's that simple in theory.

And they should not see any thing from the second hand sale. And its not a lost sale if the game was going to be bought new it would have been. This really is the only industry that really is trying to kill used sales and when that happens this industry will crash hard.
 

Kintaro

Worships the porcelain goddess
We don't know that. PC's have had HD space large enough to handle a good library of DD games for quite sometime. Consoles on the other hand still have to deal with their lowest common denominator, which for the 360 is NO HD and for the PS3 20gb which is hardly enough at all.

When the next gen comes with 1tb HD's the issue of storage will be moot, and we can see a real DD service that doesn't have to worry about consumers running out of space.

HDD space isn't the issue. The lack of an open, competitive market is the issue for consoles. So, again, it will never be like PCs.
 

AEREC

Member
And if the New games are not being bought why would a retailer want to buy new games yes its pretty narrow but guess what that's the way retail works

Well obviously part of that reason is because of used game sales...thats is what we are talking about here.
 
I don't know why we have to debate this "issue" that's not a problem in any other industry. The real problem is game development has gotten way too costly and now the publishers and developers are desperate for ways to make more money.

All industries are different.

In most of the physical industries, the used goods are not the same product (a used car value it has a less lifespan than a new one, etc).

In the case of movies, you have the cinema period, where most of the revenues are done with a single-use good (cinema tickets), in the case of music, is a kind of good that it has a longer lifespan (no one buy a music CD to listen during a weekend and then he consider that he "finished" the CD, and sell it back), etc.

But here, the used games is a debate that always end in a flame. If you simply understand the complains of the devs about losing all the future game revenues after the second week after the launch of the game (except if the game is highly focused to online), get ready to the shitstorm.
 

bc226

Member
You are really looking at this in a narrow way. Sure your initial run of games gets sold to retailers but after that if new games are not being bought then retailers are not likely to purchase more new copies to restock the game.

It's not like Devs/publishers look at the first week of sales and accept that that's all they will ever make off the game.

1st week no 1st month to month and half yes that is pretty much all the publisher is gonna look at. I mean look at the latest COD they crowed about how it broke records the first 24 hours of sales and now nothing. I can pretty much tell you that right now somewhere in a warehouse there are still pallets of Skyrim or Saints Row 3 or even GTA 4 floating around. and yet no publisher or developer is gonna get a single dime from those sales.
 

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
HDD space isn't the issue. The lack of an open, competitive market is the issue for consoles. So, again, it will never be like PCs.

No, that's been the fundamental problem with full retail DD games on consoles. Lack of HD space. When your market has from 0 to 320gb of space you don't have a full market to deliver too. Why would publishers want to commit to a full DD system that blocks out a large chunk of their market?

When HD space is no longer an issue (next gen) then that disappears and the full market has the open space to go full DD. Sure there are people without broadband access, but the % of people who own a PC and Console the % is quite high.

We won't see a full blown DD system of Day1 releases this gen, for that reason.
 
They sell used games as new and try to guilt trip you into preordering everytime you purchase something from their store.

Also devs are not asking to be paid twice...they would rather a new customer buy a new copy of their game instead of used.

Devs and Publishers ARE asking to be paid twice. They want a cut out of the product that I already bought and then sold to someone else. The item was purchased. The sale concluded. What happens to the item after that has fuck all to do with the Dev/Pub. If I sell it to someone else, it was my item to sell to them. My profit to make. Because, you know, I owned the game.

It's actually pretty damn common...otherwise they would not have that kind of reputation. Ya there are some non-pushy gamestop employees/store but those are not the norm.

No, its not. My town has 5 gamestops. That shit never happens. Saying something has a reputation because it has a reputation so obviously its true is the same reason stereotypes exist. Well, everything SAYS "X" so obviously "X" is true, right?
 

bc226

Member
Well obviously part of that reason is because of used game sales...thats is what we are talking about here.

Yup used game sales from someone that already bought the game new and then traded is it in so again why should a dev or publisher get a dime from a second hand sale?

It just make no sense from retail point of view.
 

AngryMoth

Member
This was one of the most interesting industry discussions I've listened to in a while. They got into a lot of interesting stuff besides just the online pass thing. I found Jaffe's analogy of how if Michael Bay made video game's the way he makes movies then he'd get awards every year particularly poignant, and I agree that that type of attitude needs to change.

The used games situation is a very difficult. Online passes and such are definitely anti-consumer and extremely annoying to deal with, but Gamestop's aggressive approach with used games is extremely anti-developer. If Gamestop had their way, they would buy only a handful of copies of each game and just keep reselling them, and hence every developer would go under, so I don't think you can take the black and white view and say that used games are a purely good thing.

I suppose it doesn't really matter since everything is going digital. I think my biggest takeaway here is that flexible pricing is definitely the way forward for the industry.
 

Zoe

Member
Gamestop in the US might be horrible, but over here I've never, not once, been pestered when shopping there, and I've never seen them try to sell used games as new. All the employees have been genuinely nice people, and none of them have ever pestered me about pre-orders, buying used instead of new, or subscriptions. The only thing they ask is whether I want game protection or not, which I'll just decline, and that's all.

This is commonly said because they gut nearly all new games. You have no idea whether the disc you're receiving is truly new. For instance, even if it didn't come from a previous owner, it's possible it was used as a demo or was borrowed by one of the employees.
 

FLEABttn

Banned
Another developer who is too much a pussy to stand up to Gamestop? It's ok, plenty of places for me to buy used games. Continue to lock content for end users because one retailer got too dominant, and you have no idea what to do with it.

I was under the impression the developer has no say as to which stores the game is sold in.
 
Basically what I'm hearing from Jaffe;

"I hate developers who say games shouldn't be $60 but their game is worth it. But, MY GAME IS TOTALLY WORTH IT."
"I like browser games, WAAAH"
 

bc226

Member
This is commonly said because they gut nearly all new games. You have no idea whether the disc you're receiving is truly new. For instance, even if it didn't come from a previous owner, it's possible it was used as a demo or was borrowed by one of the employees.

I guess some of us must have some wonderful gamestops then pretty much i have only seen 1 single game guted and that was for display purposes. And that is the norm for a new game. They gut a copy and sale the rest new till they get used copies in.
 

sixghost

Member
DD is pretty much against what he argues for.

You can't take the game to your friends house.
It is usually tied to a form of DRM.
PC gaming has gotten DLC tastic to that "day one" online pass DLC codes he rants about have gone nowhere. They're just hidden from you.
DD on consoles will never be like DD on PCs. They will never be priced as such.
Finally, you don't actually own your game.

DD runs against pretty much a ton of his arguments he has made over the past couple of months. He has been called out on it many times in his own comments section but refuses to see it.

Bascially, if DD takes over, he'll just bitch about that.
The argument is about value, he's not morally opposed to those ideas. Those are his problems with physical games because they are much much slower to fall in price if you are buying new. Buying a game on Steam is more restrictive in many ways, but they also are charging you much much less in almost every case, so it's easier to deal with the downsides when you bought the game for $20 three months after it came out.
We don't know that. PC's have had HD space large enough to handle a good library of DD games for quite sometime. Consoles on the other hand still have to deal with their lowest common denominator, which for the 360 is NO HD and for the PS3 20gb which is hardly enough at all.

When the next gen comes with 1tb HD's the issue of storage will be moot, and we can see a real DD service that doesn't have to worry about consumers running out of space.
Check out the XBL games on demand if you want to see Microsoft's efforts at DD. It's fucking horrible.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
This is commonly said because they gut nearly all new games.

No. They'll gut 1-4 copies per game as display copies. If there's 20 copies of a game in stock, the vast majority are going to stay shrinkwrapped. Most of the time, when you buy new at GameStop, you're going to get sealed.
 
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