DRM News

You might have heard that Walmart, Best Buy and Toy R Us are getting back in the used game market. While there is no news about how far into it Toys R Us and Best Buy are going to be doing this, Walmart at least seems to think they can make this work. They are rolling this out to 5 stores and will ‘monitor with great interest’. Walmart is taking a smart approach, going slowly and making sure things work for them. Used sales is a large market and rushing into it as they did before with the kiosks was a bad move. At least they’ve learned some lessons and are taking a more sensible approach.

Right on the heels of this announcement by big box retailers, Andrew Oliver, co-founder of Blitz Games, has said that used sales is more of a problem than piracy. He told Develop:

“Arguably the bigger problem on consoles now is the trading in of games,” he tells Develop.

Now this is nothing we haven’t heard before. Back in January I wrote an article that talked about how Bungie, EA, Take-Two, and Epic have all come out and said pretty much what ‘ol Andy said, its just that ‘ol Andy said something pretty stupid that I have to point out.

“So while retail may be announcing a reasonable season, the money going back up the chain is a fraction of what it was only a few years ago.  This is a much bigger problem than piracy on the main consoles,” he added.

Uhmmm… I don’t know where he has been hiding the last few years. Maybe a gated community and driven to and from work in a limo while eating caviar and drinking champagne? Maybe he just missed the economic collapse? I mean even then you’d have to have your head so far up your ass checking your tonsils to miss everything that has happened over the past few years. (for the purpose of my allegory I am going to assume he still has his tonsils)

Well, I am sorry Andy, that people aren’t buying more copies of iCarly or Karaoke Revolution. I know that must be a shocker to you. You know what else is a shocker? Not having a job. Graduating from college to find out that you can’t find work. Or finding work only to find out you can barely make bills. This is the world we live in right now and you finding excuses why people aren’t buying your absolutely fabulous games is just pathetic. If you missed it ‘absolutely fabulous’ was sarcasm, I feel the need to explain that to some people (I’m looking at you, Andy).

The truth is that publishers could be making more money if they lowered prices. Both Steam and GamersGate have proven this. In Gabe Newell’s speech to DICE about video game pricing being too high, he quoted having a 3,000% increase in sales by cutting prices.

Illustrating his point, Newell showed the results of a Left 4 Dead promotion Valve ran last weekend, which cut the price of the game in half to $25. The discount (and promise of new content for the game) rocketed sales of the game on Steam by 3,000 percent.

"We sold more in revenue this last weekend than we did when we launched the product," says Newell. "We were driving a huge uptick in revenue and attracting new customers."

GamersGate had even greater success when they did the same thing. Again, what does this tell you? That lower prices means more sales. Has anyone changed their pricing habits? Nope. Games are still priced high and instead of being proactive and working on real solutions, publishers are just complaining. Back in January, when I wrote my article, I concluded with this:

I simply do not understand why game companies are taking this road. Second hand sales are the ‘gateway drug’ to future sales. I can’t tell you how many used games I’ve bought or traded for that I ended up liking the developer and buying more games from them, new games too. Almost every gamer I have talked to has done the same thing. If you take this away they are going to lose a revenue stream. Although typical bean counters cannot see that, they only see the huge second hand sales market and claim they are losing money.

I really cannot add anything more to that, so this time I will simply leave you with this. A dog eating peanut butter.