In the aftermath of Microsoft's decision to reverse course and allow customers to sell, rent, borrow, lend and buy used copies of Xbox One game discs, more game developers have come out of the woodwork with essays promising hard truths about the used game market.
Former Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski promises "brutal, honest thoughts on this whole debacle" in a blog post. Writing for Edge Online, Bleszinski's fellow Epic Games alum Lee Perry lays out what he calls "a pretty unavoidable truth for consumers."
Fundamentally, both of these arguments boil down to the same thing: When you buy a used game, you're not supporting game developers; the triple-A game industry is not making money; therefore used games are killing the triple-A games industry and you should not buy them.
Sigh. Actually, there is a real hard truth that has to be confronted here, but that is not it.
I won't rebut these arguments again. I would like to quote one of the preeminent legal thinkers of our time – here I refer of course to Judge Marilyn Milian of The People's Court – who said, "Where you're going, I've already been there, had a soda, and come back." If you'd like to learn more about the fallacious logical underpinnings of this argument, please read:
- GameStop the ScapeGoat: Why the Used Games Debate Isn't So Simple;
- Videogames Can't Afford to Cost This Much;
- Study: Killing Used Games Could Be Profitable, Or Suicide;
- Xbox One Proves It: Don't Mess With Used Games; and as a bonus
- We Don't Need Game Publishers, Hardware Makers or Retailers.
The console videogame market is a vast, intricate and inextricably tangled web of interactions. It goes beyond the fact that there is no used game unless someone buys it new in the first place, and that the consumer is factoring in eventual resale value into the $60 sticker price in the first place (as mentioned in that study). It extends to other scenarios as well. One example: Guy who doesn't care about Gears of War borrows his friend's copy. Guy loves it and buys Gears of War 2 on day one for full price. Without "used games" – i.e., licenses tied to discs and not accounts – that doesn't happen.
Anyone who tries to tell you that they know, for certain, the effects of moving licenses from discs to accounts is grossly underestimating the complexity of the market. Is it possible that, in the final reckoning, once any and all effects of the current system of game ownership are accounted for, licenses tied to discs are a net negative for the game industry? It is possible. But there is not a whole lot of evidence in favor of that argument and a mountain of evidence against it, now including the fact that when Microsoft tried to take used games away, a huge part of the market voted with their dollars and pre-ordered the PlayStation 4 instead.
As I said, there is a hard truth here that some people will have to face. It is this: Increasingly, there are not enough people buying triple-A games, and they do not spend enough money, to make the production of triple-A games as it is undertaken today a financially viable endeavor.
If you are a maker of such games, it is much, much easier to believe that GameStop is the source of all the industry's ills than to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the business.
