#FF00AA

A developer who worked on Spore (and Civilization 3 and 4) reacts to the latest anti-used-games initiatives of several game publishers (you can only get Gear of War 2’s revamped multiplayer maps from the first game, or Nintendo’s Wii Speak channel, if you buy the game or the device new, respectively) with several esoteric points and concluces with the one very pragmatic argument that I keep screaming at the top of my lungs every time I hear a publisher say that a used game sale is a lost sale:

designer-notes.com

The used games market increases the perceived value of new games.

Many factors come into play when a consumer decides if a specific game purchase is worth the money, and one of those factors is the perceived value from selling it back as a used game. In other words, people will pay more for a new game because they know they can get some of that money back when they trade it in at the local Gamestop. Importantly, this perceived value exists whether the consumer actually sells the game or keeps it. Wizards of the Coast has long admitted that the existence of the secondary market for Magic cards has long helped buoy the primary market because buyers perceive that the cards have monetary value.

To be fair, GameStop has extensively screwed the pooch, by actively deterring its customers from buying new games because they get a huge margin on used sales, and they partly deserve what’s coming to them; but, like in the music business, it’s always disheartening to hear the voice of reason coming from a content producer and now that the businessmen governing the industry are physically incapable to hear it.