UnNews:Why Game Developers should STFU about 'Used Games'

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

16 July 2009

North America, USA, New York, New York

by Captain Obvious on his video game habits and behavior.

Listen up Game Developers, we gamers are tired of paying $60, $80, $100, up to $1000 per video game. Yeah we know you got that cushy job at the big software company earning millions to develop a single game. We gamers can no longer afford full price on video games anymore and buy them for half-price at Half.com, EBay, GameStop, or the local Pawn shop, and there is nothing you can do to stop us.

Sure most of the population are stupid enough to pay full price of the game, and maybe you'll get five million suckers to pay full price, but about one million of us are smart enough to buy that same game from a used game store for half price when 1/5th of the users decide your game sucks enough to sell it off.

What are you accusing us of piracy? No way, because we paid money for the "original" copy and not downloaded it off of BitTorrent or something. It is the complete original game, and there ain't nothing you can do about it. Gamestop alone earns $2 billion US Dollars a year on used games, and that is money you and your big software company won't be seeing because you charge twice as much as you should for the game in the first place.

Look it is a bad economy because George W. Bush screwed it up, and Barrack Obama hasn't fixed it yet. Economics 101 says you can buy used stuff cheaper than new stuff, like used cars, used computers, used TV sets, and even used video games! So this isn't Communism, this is Capitalism in that people stupid enough to pay full price end up selling it to a used game store where people like me buy it at half the retail price.

Look you pampered pricks, you get paid enough and are lucky that big software company doesn't offshore the programming work to India for pennies on the dollar and lay you off. I applied for those million dollar jobs and didn't get accepted because I did not lie on my resume as you did, so I worked a lower paying job that can barely get by this bad economy right now, and my only entertainment is half priced used video games as I cannot afford anything else.

So whatcha going to do about it, lock the game to the game console serial number so the game cannot be sold as used? Watch as people boycott your video games if you are stupid enough to do that. Then your sales will tank and then the big software company really will lay you off and offshore the work to India.

Hey did you know that video rental stores also rent video games? That way I can rent a game, try it out, and if it sucks I won't buy it and return the rented copy. I'll bet you don't like the video game rental stores either? Well hard cheese! Nothing you can do about it.

It looks like we smart gamers will be enjoying our half priced used video games for a long time to come now, ah the joys of the free market and used game shops.

Sources

• David Thomas "Why Game Developers should STFU about 'Used Games'" Crispy Gamer, July 16, 2009