The Used Game Market: Is It Any Better Than Piracy?

Cory Ledesma, the creative director for THQ, recently issued some strong words to the buyers of used videogames. THQ’s release of Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 has upset many used game consumers by preventing online play of the game unless gamers input a code that can only be used once, essentially limiting the functionality of the game unless the consumer buys it new. In the article at CVG he states, “I don’t think we really care whether used game buyers are upset because new game buyers get everything. So if used game buyers are upset they don’t get the online feature set I don’t really have much sympathy for them.” He would go on to state that, “We hope people understand that when the game’s bought used we get cheated.”

These statements may not have rocked the industry to its very core, but they have stirred up the whole “used games debate.” I myself am moved to respond after the esteemed and venerable Jerry “Tycho” Holkins at Penny Arcade stated (in a longer article that clarified his position more clearly so by all means actually read the whole thing and not just this quote), “…I honestly can’t figure out how buying a used game was any better than piracy.” With respect – and genuine respect, mind you, not the usual thing where “With respect” is clearly synonymous with “I hate you, please die” – I disagree. There’s an enormous difference between piracy and the used game market. They’re both problems, but with used game markets the biggest problem isn’t the consumer, it’s the entire retail videogame industry.

Let’s back up a bit.

As I get older and hopefully more mature, I find myself increasingly jaded with the issue of piracy. I’m working as a film critic right now and just the other week I overheard two studio executives at a screening talking about a television series one of them liked. The other one hadn’t seen the series in question, and the other executive suggested that they simply download it on Bittorrent. I’m still aghast from the irony. Right now, if you were with me, you could see my Aghast Face. Here were two of the supposed victims of piracy, promoting piracy simply because it is convenient. How is contributing to the devaluation of your own industry convenient, exactly?

But I am forced to admit that there is a difference between pirating a film or game to the internet and buying/selling used media. When you upload something to the web for anyone and everyone to acquire for free, you are without a doubt contributing to piracy. But when you buy or sell a used game, DVD, book or what have you, you are – to the best of my understanding – entirely within your rights as a consumer. You purchased a product, not the concept of that product. It has physical mass. It occupies space. And you paid good money for the thing that occupies that space. 

As such, you can do with it what you please. If you’re done with it and give it to a friend, is that really morally questionable, even though it prevents that individual from buying the game at full price from a licensed retailer? I don’t believe so. If your friend offers to pay you a little money for the game, and you accept it, is that morally questionable? We’re getting into a grayer area here, but I still think not. If you exchange the product that you own for cash in what is essentially a pawn shop, are you still within your rights? Technically, even though you’re severely damaging your ability to purchase more quality games by contributing more to the middlemen than the actual creators of the content.

But we’re arguing the principle of the thing, and the principle being espoused here – that buying and selling used products is itself “a bad thing” – doesn’t hold up. Pawn shops exist outside of the used game market and haven’t thrown our entire economy into a tailspin (the economy was able to take care of that all by itself, thank you very much). The problem is that in the videogame market in particular, pawn shops have overtaken the market. The most prominent firsthand retailers are also the most prominent secondhand retailers. You can enter a Gamestop, or really most other videogame-centric retail establishments, and have the option of purchasing either a new copy of Red Dead Redemption or a used copy – essentially the exact same product – for a few dollars less. There’s not much incentive to buy the new product, and buying the used product only aids the store, not the makers of the game.

But… Pirates are IN this year!

You don’t tend to see this in other markets. Most bookstores limit themselves to only selling new books or used books. The former tends to have larger chains and readily available product for the everyday consumer, while the latter focuses on harder to find or out-of-print titles, catering to the niche market. The point is that for the most part the “proper” retailers and the pawn shops in this case have established a kind of equilibrium. Used bookstores may not achieve much financial success but can remain afloat. The videogame industry doesn’t work that way. Of course a large part of this is because it costs a hell of a lot of money to buy a videogame, but that’s a very large discussion for another time.

Small secondhand videogame vendors don’t seem to be the problem here. Whenever anyone complains about the perils of the used videogame market they tend to single out Gamestop because that seedy little store down the street from you that focuses on old NES games (and has a surprisingly large Virtua Boy selection) isn’t the problem. The videogame industry could handle that. Those stores have the potential to maintain equilibrium. And frankly, we need at least some of those stores because after a while certain games become difficult if not impossible to find new, either because the publisher closed down or the system is no longer supported. It’s the chain of ubiquitous pawn shops in every shopping center in the country that is the problem. But how do we solve it?

Many studios and developers are attempting to maintain a happy medium by offering exclusive content to gamers who buy new products, which means that secondhand gamers will have to settle for less product for their money. But these types of exclusives are generally add-ons that many of us – myself included – can do without. I don’t particularly need more skins for my horse, nor do I particularly need those few extra multiplayer maps which will inevitably be available for download later anyway to boost the publisher’s DLC numbers and repopulate their waning multiplayer boards. THQ and EA are both taking firmer stances in this field, offering not just incentives but entire swaths of content that are only available to customers purchasing new copies of the game. Frankly… it’s a step in the right direction, but consumers aren’t going to like it one bit.

There are two options available here, and neither one is all sunshine and roses. The first option is the one we’re obviously headed towards: Making all games downloadable content. It solves the piracy issue (except for some particularly dedicated hackers), but the downsides are mixed. New game systems with ridiculous amounts of memory will gouge consumers dry, but without the need for physical media, shipping and so forth, the price of games should go down (and if they don’t, publishers are simply being assholes – there’s no other way to look at it). The other way this option could go would be keeping games on physical media, but requiring online codes to unlock even the most basic of content: Not just online play, for example, but even large chunks of the Single-Player campaign. But this will even eliminate the Mom & Pop used retailers that the very medium of videogames needs to proliferate. I’m not a fan of that, since there’s no way that every game ever made to date will be available for download, and without a readily available access to videogame history, videogames won’t be much of an artistic medium at all.

The other option – and publishers this is entirely on you – is to boycott Gamestop. Not a consumer boycott, but a publisher boycott. Tell Gamestop that you will not be supplying them with new product, or at least incentives, reshipments, etc. unless they cease and desist the resale of your games. I know what you’re thinking. It sounds scary. It’s a big step. But pussyfooting around the issue is getting you nowhere. This is how effective boycotts always get started, with somebody making a stand. But not just anybody can do so. We need the big guns to step in and make this thing happen or Gamestop won’t risk financial loss as a result. Activision, EA… This means you.

Then again, even boycotting can go too far…

There’s a conclusion here somewhere, but it’s way down the line and nobody knows exactly what it looks like. Piracy is a problem, and as games get increasingly expensive (a problem in-and-of-itself) the used game market may turn into an even bigger problem. But they’re not quite the same thing. Piracy involves a consumer knowingly circumventing legal channels to acquire a product for free, while the used game market involves consumers acting within their rights to purchase products of their choice, from the licensed retailer of their choice. The problem in this case is the licensed retailers, not the consumer. THQ is entirely within their rights to curb the used game market however they see fit, but it would be nice if they didn’t perpetuate the myth that consumers are the enemy here. It’s not blaming the victim (that would be the games industry), and it’s not even blaming the murderer (Gamestop and its ilk). It’s blaming the gun.

Consumers? You’re the gun. No matter what the industry does here, it’s up to you to be more careful who you aim at, and who you allow to pull your trigger. Don’t be mad at THQ, EA or any of the rest of the videogame industry for trying not to get killed. Be mad at an industry that’s trying to use you to destroy itself.