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http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/8/25/
Basic treatise: If you buy a publisher's game used then you're not a customer of theirs so they don't really care if the "one time use" code thing pisses you off:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/8/25/words-and-their-meanings/
And boy did the responses start coming in:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/8/25/lets-talk-about/
And now they've started posting some of them (with permission, I'm assuming):
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/8/25/lets-go-phones/
Very interesting...
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 313 replies.
The fact is, there is no black and white to this issue. Some games are download-only (XBLA, steam) and have little or no resale value, some games can only be played in an arcade, but the vast majority are sold via physical discs with no registration requirement. Why? because that's currently the optimal money-making distribution scheme for everyone involved, specifically the developer and publisher. If they start making people jump through hoops, they will see fewer total sales, even if they completely eliminate used sales - fewer people will experience their game, and they will receive less compensation for their work. They won't magically start selling new copies to the people who like to pay less for them, unless they make the games cheaper at the same accessibility level, and then they lose the added revenue from the higher price point of the people who would buy it there, and the used market will just sell them cheaper still - it's a downward spiral with little benefit.
Simply put, the market can bear a used game market, and trying to subdue it will most likely have a contractionary effect on the total revenue of game developers. Publishers are experimenting with registration codes, and maybe the market will shift to a new optimal distribution of funds, but I doubt that the total elimination of the used game market is actually in anybody's interest.
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