Well, it’s been a few months, time for game developers to start complaining about used game sales hurting their bottom line.  Even the sales juggernaut that is Halo has to throw their helmet into the ring and say that the used game market has undoubtedly hurt their sales.

Here’s the quote that bugs me the most.  “Complaining about sales when you have a multi-million seller is somewhat difficult to justify, but it seems to me that the folks who create and publish a game shouldn’t stop receiving income from further sales.”

Well Marty, that’s true, they shouldn’t stop receiving income from future sales of the copies they actually own.  The copy of Halo, Halo 2 and Halo 3 that I bought?  Once purchased by me, they were mine.  Mine, mine, M-I-N-fucking E.  If I want to sell them, I can.  If I want to set them on fire, I can.  If I want to cover them in chocolate, drizzle them with caramal and eat them, I can.  Bungie, as a developer, did their part.  They made the game.  I, as a consumer, did my part.  I paid for the game.  Once the money changes hands, there is no reasonable expectation that Bungie has any continual ownership over the product.  You simply can not tell me what I can do with it as long as what I’m doing with it does not interfere with your copyrights.

Now, Bungie would say “Oh, we don’t mean you, dear gamer, we mean stores.  Stores like GameStop who buy the copy from you for 20 bucks and sell it for $55.”  Well, that’s all well and good and I appreciate you looking out for my best financial interests, an interest which, by the way, was strangely absent when you sold me $180 bucks of mediocre storytelling, piss-poor game play and the same fucking level repeated ad nauseum, but here’s the thing. You do mean me.  Oh sure, I don’t rake in billions of dollars in sales every year from selling used games, but in terms of what a consumer is able to do with a product once they have purchased it, there is no difference between GameStop and myself.  The difference to you is that GameStop sells your games right next to their cheaper, although marginally, used games.  By extension, the biggest difference to you is that GameStop is pounding you in the nether regions, and I am not, so, obviously, the best way to deal with that is to pound me in my nether regions by stating that you should be able to tell me what I can do with the item I bought from you.  That makes complete sense.

I can’t think of one situation where the seller of a product continues to realize sales from that product in the used market unless the seller of said used product is also the seller of the new product.  When I sold my house, I didn’t have to pay the builder any additional money.  When I traded in my car, I didn’t cut Nissan a check.  It’s bad enough that when we buy your games and we don’t like them, or they’re buggy we have no recourse to return them because everyone, including you, thinks were dirty pirates but now you have to tell us that we can’t sell that which we now own?  Give me a break.

Look, I understand your frustration, I do, but alienating your consumer is not the way to fix it.  If you don’t want people selling their games, you have to give them a reason to keep them.  Halo, for all that I don’t like about it, is phenomenally good at continual support, be it with new maps, or new game modes or a robust multiplayer community, so that people don’t want to sell their copy.  Rock Band 2 with it’s one time use code for 20 new songs, and the upcoming Gears of War 2 with the free maps are both excellent ways to encourage people to buy new copies.  Now, not all games can be multiplayer extravaganzas or have the ability to leverage new content, but the point is that instead of making efforts to deny the consumer the ability legally sell stuff that they own, why not give them a reason to not want to sell it in the first place?  Or you know what, make it so that they can’t sell it, by offering it to them digitally and just charge less for it.  When I buy a game on the Xbox Live Arcade, I don’t care that I can’t sell it.  I’m getting  game for, at most, 20 bucks.  To paraphrase Tycho here, 20 bucks is essentially free to me.  I know that 20 bucks is a stretch for a 60 buck game like Halo 3 but what about $50?  I get a new game for less, you realize the sale and it undercuts the used market.

The bottom line here is that by trying to tell the consumer what they can and can’t do with their stuff, you risk alienating them outright to the point where they’re not buying what you’re producing, and then, where are you?  I know that times are tough for game developers and publishers, but they’re tough all over and if you start pissing people off, they’ll take their disposable income and go spend it on the thousand other things they’re offered in any given day.  In the immortal words of John McClain, “If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem. Quit being a part of the fucking problem…”