I know that I didn't buy games before Steam, or at least as much as I do now. But price is also a factor. I really have to think about it when a game costs more than $15, but Steam usually has good games on sale anyway. Steam and other digital distributors have made me more of a gamer.
Who buys used PC games? Why should I trust you not to have copied the CD key? This is a reasonable enough argument for not buying digital titles on a console, but seems irrelevant in regards to the topic at hand, which is PC gaming.
>I finished both games and I was thinking of reselling them or giving them to a friend to play. However, these are both Steam activated games that had a required Steam registration code I had to enter -- and validate on Steam -- as part of the installation.
Here's the website for CEX - a UK shop - with second hand PC games:
The problem with used PC sales is that, particularly when it comes to multiplayer games, there is no way to guarantee that the seller isn't going to hang on to the CD key and keep using it.
I've long since moved onto Steam, but I remember very distinctly that before digital distribution, stores outright refused to take used PC games that are primarily multiplayer, and made no guarantees about multiplayer CD key validity for the rest. It's a huge gaping hole in the used market.
Now look at that page you linked to - of the ten games on that page, only one has a multiplayer component, and even then it was far from what the game was known for. Second-hand multiplayer PC games simply aren't resellable.
That page was the first (of many) listed by price, highest first. They have over 3,000 games in stock. People buy them; people sell them.
The people selling them know that they can risk cash on a new game; if it's bad they can sell it secondhand and buy something else. Stopping sales of secondhand games (which is something that some people want to do; and is something that is clearly happening) stiffs the customer. You buy the right to use the content, but you may never ever transfer that right.
This desire to restrict what people can do with content is baffling to most customers yet rife within industry.
When Disney were shown domestic video players they were worried that you could not tell how many people were in the room watching the video; how could you charge people to watch a movie if you didn't know how many people were watching it? See also their attempts to create a "watch once" video.
And all this inconvenience to real customers - people who want to buy games (and who need to sell them second hand to afford it) has zero impact on pirates. I suspect (but have no evidence) that it doesn't send any money to the people creating the games either.
I don't see the relevancy of the StackExchange question at all.
As for the business that resells PC games, they are doing so at great risk to themselves. I'm aware of every small game store in Toronto and I have never seen one that would even begin to consider reselling PC games. There might be a way to do it with a strictly warehouse model but in a brick and mortar situation it's just not feasible. Simply verifying if CD keys are active would absorb way too much time and money.
One business has made a go at it, it's still hardly standard for the industry and TBH I wouldn't buy anything from them and neither would 99% of people. The CD Key system is designed for one user/one seat. Anything past that is strictly on the honour system. As someone who has been burned by pirated hardware carts, I don't trust a used PC game for a second.
This is not a common thing at all, and I still think the "reselling used games" argument is basically irrelevant when it comes to PC games. We lost that fight decades ago, it's time to move on.
>I don't see the relevancy of the StackExchange question at all.
The parent asked "Who sells PC games anyway?" The stack exchange question is from someone who wanted to sell / give away retail boxed games with Steam activation.
I never meant that I didn't think anyone wanted do, just that nobody does it. The StackExchange question doesn't contribute to that, he wanted to but found out he couldn't and so he didn't.
I would suggest that you pay attention to the prices on Steam during Summer and holiday sales. You can get best selling, triple-A titles for less than five dollars. I think Mass Effect 2 was down to 3 dollars.
At the sale prices I would think that the convenience of being able to download it from Steam would outweigh not being able to re-sell it for you.
Unfortunately for you, the game's industry is slowly and inevitably moving towards personal subscription based purchases.
This is slowly driving down the price of games (which is a good thing), and hopefully it'll lead to higher revenues for publishers so (the good ones) can continue to make more and better games.
More money for publishers and cheaper games for individuals? I think it's pretty win-win. The second hand game market really short changes the publishers, and it's very expensive to make a top title!
Imagine how much Portal 2 cost Valve to make, was it worth it?
>Unfortunately for you, the game's industry is slowly and inevitably moving towards personal subscription based purchases.
It's my guess that this model will work until the first major publisher, for whatever reason, collapses - or simply stops bothering with providing access to older games. Then people will realize how insane and retarded this entire system of "paying for access" is. Same goes for cloud computing, by the way.
Besides, you are confusing publishers and developers. Valve is a rare case where both are one and the same, making them a very weird exception, but in general, direct distribution is bad for publishers (which is a good thing). It's really the same as with the (major) labels.
>Imagine how much Portal 2 cost Valve to make, was it worth it?
Valve is also a rare case in that they still make games worth playing. Most of the rest of the industry is a sea of bland, uncreative genericness with fancy graphics. I acknowledge Valve for this, but I still refuse to pay for access to games. I want a copy that plays where I want, whenever I want, and that still works three decades from now.
Until this insanity stops, I hoist the black flag. Yarr.
How about this alternative: "Until this insanity stops, I don't purchase their product, and instead buy indy games or games from publishers that support my policies". Voting with your wallet will encourage these policies in developers.
If you don't adopt this approach, you look more like the normal "entitled, rationalising pirate", a story I see regularly going something like:
1) I want games that aren't just fancy graphics! Give me gameplay, and I'll pay!
2) Oh, so there are these games now. Well, now I want easy access! Give me downloads, and I'll pay!
3) Hold on, I can download? Well, now they're too expensive! Make them cheaper and I'll pay!
4) So iOS games are about $4.99 for a high quality title? Well, that's still to expensive! Make them cheaper, and I'll pay!
5) Oooo, $0.99. Well, that was published by EA, sooo - use a publisher that doesn't use DRM on any title, ever, even back in time and I'll pay!
n + 1) Insert new demand here, then I'll pay!
The result here being that, actually, said person didn't actually want any of these things. They just want excuses to rationalise away their taking the work of a group of people that they evidently do want (otherwise, why bother pirating it) without any kind of remuneration so they can do those crazy greedy things like feeding their family and raising their kids.
You should check out the roaring indie game scene. The Humble Indie bundle (http://www.humblebundle.com) has given me spectacular gameplay for very little money. (No, I don't pay pennies for the bundle).
I know a bit about and highly respect the indie scene. They are, in my opinion, the future of game development in general. I paid for the second bundle, and was highly entertained for quite a while. It's a very cool project.
Thanks for the link! The concept from part 3 of treating the axes as unit vectors that default to (1, 0) and (0, 1) but can be rotated at will really helped bridge the gap in my mind between rotating vectors "manually" and using matrix multiplication.
I love buying these bundles to support the charities and the developers even though I never really play the games. But it does seem to me that there is more innovation occurring in the indie space than from the mainstream developers.
This is definitely a better analogy, but I actually agree that the second-hand games market is hurting the publishers, particularly the legitimised selling of pre-owned titles by bricks and mortar retailers.
There are always going to be x% of people who will get hold of the game for free (and x is going to rise as the means of obtaining them gets easier). So let's say 1,000,000 people are interested in playing 'Super Mega Hooper!' and 500,000 will find a way to obtain this for nothing. Before the dramatic rise in pre-owned sales, 500,000 would buy it from a retailer, and 500,000 lots of cut would go to the publisher. Now, only - say - 250,000 lots of cut go to the publisher with the other 250,000 people giving more of a cut to the retailer.
I'd say that over the last ten years of so the average price of a full-price game has remained reasonably constant given inflation, and the cost to produce (AAA) games has risen. Therefore: net loss to publishers using the traditional retail model.
(Of course, there has been plenty of opportunity for publishers to move away from the traditional model, but I'd argue that the culture of buying pre-owned is definitely having an affect on them.)
If you're comparing the experience of playing a video game to a physical good, yes, but really you're paying for the right of use to interactive content. Comparing 'owning' a video game to owning a car is fallacious.
I think you'll find that when you look at car ownership rights and digital content ownership rights there is completely different legislation and laws for both, and with good reason.
The physical media distribution of a game has merely been a cost effective delivery method. If publishers could distribute their games directly to your device over the internet or whatever they'd have done that as a first option.
If the contract of sale determines that your license is non-transferrable then, well, that's that, if the publisher can enforce it. It's the way things are going for digital content, get used to it!
The car-intellectual property comparison is dubious when the MPAA is comparing downloading movies to carjacking, and it's equally dubious in this situation.
When you're sold a DVD in a game on it, you're buying the physical DVD to the same degree to which you're buying the wrapper when you buy a candy bar - as a container of the useful purchase. When you're buying a car, you're buying a car.
I don't sell games, but if you wait a short time (or purchase indie titles) you may end up "paying" the same amount as purchasing a title new and then selling it a while later. There's a huge number of games available on Steam for $10 or less, and often you can get "4 packs" for a rebate and sell them to your friends.
In my area, the only reasonable way to buy and sell used games is online. But during the holidays, Steam sells a lot of games at a 75-90% discount. During those sales, I spend on Steam what I'd normally spend on postage.
I also get a lot of titles by smaller developers that are only available digitally, too.
