Bungie: Used Game Sales Hurt Halo

There is this little thing called the "FIRST SALE DOCTRINE", established by the Supreme Court
in 1908.

It says: Section 109(a) of the Copyright Act , The owner of a particular copy...lawfully made under this
title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to
sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy. "

Thus it is clear that no police authority or copyright owner can legally demand that a retailer or individuaL cease to rent or sell lawfully made copies or legal copies obtained by purchase, trade, gift or license.

Blockbuster got stung by this earlier last year with their "Exclusive Rental" of Weinstein Movies, when they tried to stop independant movie stores from stocking and selling Weinstein movies purchased
from other retail channels. They ended up in court and had to back down because of existing copyright law prevents them from making anyone else who rents that movie from an other source other than Blockbuster seem like they are breaking the law. Their exclusive rental is in marketing form only! It is really smoke and mirrors.

This is a very good thing, because if this law did not exist, any company including a software
company could come after you for selling any copyrighted material YOU owned even at a garage sale.

It is good for everyone.

Mark S

I'm stealing this comment from someone else on the shack but if you don't want your game to be hurt by used games sales...make it good enough so people don't want to return it.

I've never seen the orange box used in my EB stores.

Halo I don't think has that big of a user game sale problem because most people will keep it for the multiplayer since thats all it has...(ok this last statement was pure opinion)

This argument is even worse than lies about sales lost due to piracy. The moral of the story is "don't let your sound guy talk about economics".

This ridiculous whining by game companies needs to stop. Do music companies whine about used CD's? What about the used car market? Used DVD's?

The simple fact is this: if they want to overcome the used market, they should drop the prices on their products FASTER. No one WANTS to buy a scratched up game disc without a manual.

But seriously stop whining, EVERY OTHER INDUSTRY EVER has a used market.

I'm so sick of this shit. For the billionth time, its no different than selling/buying a used car. The manufacturer only gets to profit once. Get over it.

Lets see if we can find common ground folks.
The developers are not saying gamers should not be able to buy used games at a discount
The gamers are not saying developers should not make money at each sale

so why not let developers make money on a game they have created every time it is sold?

Possible solution would be that every game comes with a license agreement that the buyer can sell the game, but the reseller must pay a fee to the developer at the time of resale (say $10 each sale).

everybody wins then
1) The developer makes money at ever sale
2) The gamer can receive money for each trade in
2) The re-seller makes money at every sale
3) The gamer has access to used games at a discount price

Please discuss

~D

its disappointing to hear from a such a well respected developer such greed-based whining bullshit.

GM doesn't take a cut of the used car sales mate, get over it.

The games industry is filled with so many fucking crybabies.

lol it is so pathetic. That's how it was for the last million years. Stuff you buy, you can sell. You don't need to track down the original owner somehow. This is how selling works. You give them the right to: Use, modify, sell and destroy. You can do what you want with your stuff, as long as it doesn't hurt the right of others.

They should stop fucking whining, it's unbelievable. They whine for money.


Awww, Baby got 10k less dollars because people doing what they have the right to because they paid baby money. Good grief.

Somebody please explain to me why the subject of piracy invokes widespread fury about people playing games without developers seeing any of the money, yet when it comes to used game sales developer earnings are no longer an issue. And very often a lot of the same people arguing as strongly in both cases.

Keeping the developer earning and making more cool games is the real issue, right?

Yes, but what about the people who get new games only because they traded in their old ones? Those sales would be lost. The trade in programs help subsidize, the new games that come out. So less would be bought in my opinion. Many gamers are poor.

The most ridiculous statement is "It's hard to gauge the effect of used game sales on Halo, but I'm sure it's big," so you have no information but you are sure it's big? Well now, that is super informative.

I am 100% with Gamestop on this. If game publishers and developers think Gamestop's used game business is such a cash cow, then why don't they figure out a way to get into that business themselves and get a piece of the action. There is nothing stopping EA or Take 2 or Microsoft from opening their own chain of game stores to compete with Gamestop if they want to. Stop whining and trying to fuck your customers instead of serving their needs and competing fairly in the marketplace.

While I agree that it sucks that no share of the money goes to game developers, this is one area where I side with the consumer.

The first sale doctrine must rule in this respect.

The way I see it, if they want to reduce used sales the honorable way, they should work in some more replay value. I haven't run through 2 and 3, but once I played through 1 a couple of times, it was shelved. I'm not much of an MP person, but when I am, I get sick of certain games faster than others.

I think it would be awesome if publishers fought back with their own used game trade in program. If only to make Gamestop's practices more fair.

Or how about someone set up a kind of Craigslist/eBay for selling used games? Make it like a consignment sales shop.

I agree with the devs on this but I blame them and their publishers for not coming up with something reasonable to solve it. Whining is whining but hopefully it'll eventually warrant action.

One of the main reasons I have stopped buying pc games as much, is that I can't resell/trade in my pc games. When I am done with a console, I want to be able to trade it in along with all the games I don't care to play any more and get some trade in value. Then, I go and buy another console (whether it's new or been out for a bit) and some new and used games (generally I buy new games). If Bungie or someone wants to start locking down your copy of the game to just one console one way or another, then it'll start to hurt the game industry. The PC game industry is hurting because of this. They try to lock down your copy of a game now to the piece of hardware you bought it for originally. What do people have to do when they get a new computer? Rebuy all those games? Most people would never do that. Also, It's been years since I've been able to trade in my used pc computer games.

The real problem is the entire cost system of games is fucked.

Games are very expensive to make - a quality game take a lot of people a lot of time to create and these folks don't work for free. Its a fairly well paying job but it is also very demanding.

Distribution is expensive. And only getting more so.

Advertising is expensive. Possibly money could be saved here if the publishers start to go with web only ads but stuff like TV spots for a game are insane. This is a factor that is often not "counted" in other media (such as movies) for the budget, a movie with a 100 million dollar budget can have 40 million dollars of ads that is on TOP of the 100 million and usually not reported.

Publishers want their cut, this is of course the area were the price jump is the highest - but the publisher also covers the advertising and distribution.

Compared to many other things that follow this form games either need to sell several 100,000 (or more) copies at the $50 to $60 or be failures.

You simply cannot compare them to cars or movie or music - those have sales in such a higher magnitude that they operate in a different way.

Resale does hurt game companies. But not allowing resale hurts game stores - places like Gamestop literally cannot exist without resale ability.

Now a days even a movie that sucks and fails in the theater makes its money back once it hits DVD - games don't have this ability. Games are still a niche market compared to other forms of media.

The game industry has grown to far to fast and is attempting to imitate the movie/music industry in operation - which of course isn't working - but the publisher hold most of the cards and they are to stubborn or don't want to take the risk of attempting something new. Throw the last 2 generations of console sales into the mix and how Sony/MS/Nintendo have made no attempts to fix this disparity in how they operate.

And honestly anyone who complains about a $50 or $60 dollar game is a fucking whiner. People will spend far more on far less. Games are almost always a good deal (as long as you enjoy the game of course) for their money. The fact that they havn't really risen in price since the first NES games is something that most people forget, by inflation they should be closer to 3 or 4 times their current price.

Come on people, he was obviously asked a direct question, what's he going to answer, 'no'?

He also fully admits it's hard to justify them complaining, and says it's much tougher for smaller developers.

This isn't whining.

Pretty asinine. The existence of a used game market increases the market value of games. That's basic economics.

It's hard for him to estimate the losses due to used games, by what about the gain due to the fact that a used market props up $60 games? Also hard to estimate...

Why is it Ford and GM don't cry every time a used car is sold?

Why is it music companies don’t cry about shops that sell used CD’s?

I really don't see why he shouldn't just give me ten thousand dollars.

Used games are a gimmick at Gamestop. They sell it $5 less than the new game, and give you less than 50% of what they resell it for. The margin is huge. Anytime a used game is sold, they receive $20-30 profit.

This is pathetic. WIth piracy, I am 100% behind these guys. I despise thieves not named Garrett. But used sales of any product are well within the rights of the customer. This is really, really whiney, and is highly deserving of a STFU Award.

Tough call.

I think the Dev's lose out on sales because of the used game market. At least some of those people would have purchased a 'new' copy, and that's a sale that the dev's deserve.

However, I don't think the Dev's deserve a portion of the 'after-market' trading. That's just greed. The person who sold the flour to the baker doesn't get a kickback when Quizno's sells the sandwhich. It's a one time shot, and anything that happens after that happens without him.

Maybe they should called it 'environmental tax.' If everyone bought a new CD with each game, then there would be millions of little plastic discs around. However, the used market makes it so not as many CD's need to be produced. So, the lost sales can be seen as equivalent to the 'enviromental tax' the producer's would have had to pay if they would have made all those CD's.

That's the distributor and not the developer though...but you know that any charge on the distributor side gets stolen directly from the developer's pocket.

How pathetic Bungie.

"Complaining about sales when you have a multi-million seller is somewhat difficult to justify..."

This is where he should of shut up. I know it's tough your money bin is only 20ft deep, and you'd like to build a high-dive into it, but until you milk your franchise for its next 2 or 3 sequels you'll just have to make do.

Yeah. What the big game company speaking manz failed to access. Was the fact that those old game resales give the same company a shot at hooking a new customer into a game series. If a kid buys
used halo 2 and loves it... guess what he will be buying new next time.... The point being... the lower price helped convince the kid to try it in the first place. The really doubt that the game resales market hurting them more than helping them.

Question: Does console game rentals hurt them too?

Gamefly makes me a bloody thief if so.

Cue in install limits for consoles that ties the game to the hardware.

But it's all to combat piracy, I promise!

I think the games industry is sometimes too focused on squeezing out the most dollars of their existing customer base. The first priority for them should be to try to significantly increase the install base of consoles.

I think used games help the cost of entry for new consumers. Retailers like Gamestop may overcharge, but I do think the very existence of retailers is very important from a marketing stand point. People get exposed to the games section in best buy and they sometimes see a Gamestop store, which I think is helpful to get games to new consumers.

I don't like Gamestop, but I think it's important for the industry as a whole, and they need to be profitable as well.

Making games that have lasting appeal and that don't become completely worthless after you experience the core gameplay would probably help too. Why would I not make my copy of the game available for someone else to buy once I'm done with it if it no longer has any value for me in holding on to it?

I would buy more games but because of the $60 price point I'm limited to only buying a few that I know will last and then renting or buying used later down the line...with gamestop's policy of returning a used game within 7 days for a full refund it makes no sense to buy a game at full retail price if it only takes 10 hours to beat it...halo I bought because of the multiplayer...but I've saved so much money from not buying games like dmc4...heavenly sword...ratchet and clank...kameo...etc...

quite simply if it wasn't for used games or rentals I would've never played those games to begin with

If they got rid of the next-gen tax I might give a shit, but this just sounds greedy.

Drop the price of games to a certain level and you kill off the viability of used sales. Gamestop etc wont pay much for a game if all they can sell it for is $20 ($10 under 'new'), and it may make it less likely that gamers will baulk at the price or even think its worth trading the game in because the value is even lower than it is now.

I've always wondered if microtransactions were partially a result of used games being so popular.

It all points back to the initial over-price of 'new' games. Games should not cost $60 +. If games were even $15 - $20 cheaper we would all splash out on new games more often.

I use my old games to buy those rare new ones that I want at launch. Otherwise I would buy few and far between.

He does have a point though, used games are hurting the industry. A new games company needs to break the million copies sold barrier, in order to stay in business. What use is it if half of those million copies sold came in as 'used' games?

Used games sales hurt only Halo

Dear Bungie,

STFU. Halo 3 sold 8 million copies. It's the best-selling game for the Xbox 360 and likely of every Xbox platform.

Sincerely,
The First-Sale Doctrine

WHINE.

In general, a used game is in no way inferior to a new one, so why the hell would I pay more for the new one if I have a choice? That's just stupid.

If the industry ever does away with selling used games, new game sales will drop. A lot of people (myself included) take the sting out of $60 titles by trading in or selling games we've finished. If we can't do that, then we're not going to buy as many new games at full price. The only way they could avoid that would be to lower the standard retail price for new games, which you know is never going to happen.

Even though Marty seems like he's complaining about something trivial, I do agree that the used videogame sale system at Gamestop does suck. Fortunately, most of my game purchases are not from there anymore.