Shops "defrauding the industry" - Braben Comments by Oli Welsh

I'm fairly sure they're not the first non-specialist retailer to offer trade-ins for games. It's just the first one that's publicised it and didn't cancel it after a week.

If you want to buy a NEW copy of a game then you should get a NEW copy of a game. If some yokel store grunt is passing off per-owned gear as new then that is fraudulent.

Game & Gamestation have stickers all over the game boxes/covers and manuals denoting pre-owned status and HMV should be doing likewise.

There are already "Not For Resale" versions of games out there, typically those that come bundled. However any glance at a shelf in GameStation or CEX will show lots of the PGR3 and GoW ones

Whine, whine, whine. You already sold the game. You got paid for the lunch. It belongs to someone else. What they do with it after that, how many times they sell it, how much for and who to is none of your business.

I don't recall writers getting their knickers in a twist over secondhand books, I don't recall Stephen Spileberg having an apoplexy over secondhand VHS sales of his films. Secondhand sales are a reality that other media have to live with, I don't see what makes games so fragile and in need of special protection.

How about bringing the prices down? If the prices weren't so ridiculous I would have bought more games instead of having to choose just three titles for the last quarter of this year. Nobody wants smeggy secondhand copies but games often don't have a very long shelf life and by the time I can afford it, secondhand copies are either difficult to resist or all that's available.

I hope to see Braben protesting outside his nearest jumble sale in the near future.

Braben moaning again.

He should get himself a hobby.

You know what else is a serious threat to the industry?

People talking about games despite having not brought one out in the past 8 years, then saying that pre-owned is killing the market.

Well done, David. *slow clapping*

''On HMV's move into selling pre-owned titles - the first non-specialist retailer to do so''

I think you will find Block Buster to it too...

/Tips Hat.

Nowhere near as much of a problem as pikies with pirate copies

Im not making enough money. Wah Wah Wah ! The second hand market funds terrorism, u watch that will be the next thing. What Id imagine he would love is everyone pays £49.99 for a game, i.e RRP and you cannot sell it or lend it or even have a mate around your house to play it.

This Braben dude seems to moan a lot.

What a load of bollocks. Dear me. Makes him sound like a fascist. Ban civil liberties! Prevent people selling anything once they've purchased it! Crown Elite as the GOAT!

It's been said a million times before but here we go again:

MAKE A BLOODY GAME THAT PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO SELL!!!

FFS, CoD4 is still £40 pre-owned; there's a REASON for that, you dumb fecker.

Now shut-up and get on with the next Elite, then you'll get your lunch money.

He's fighting the tide on this one - it's supply and demand.

GBP25 full-priced game! By God, make it happens, I won't resale my games no more! I swear!

I'm sure I'll get crucified for this - but as someone who works for an independent games studio - you lot really haven't got a clue how tight money is for developers. Think we are all getting rich off the proceeds from games? Bollocks are we! We are struggling to make a living as every penny is squeezed from us in retail, and with piracy and pre-owned markets.

Make better games!? Yeah? With what, tuppance?

I don't recall writers getting their knickers in a twist over secondhand books, I don't recall Stephen Spileberg having an apoplexy over secondhand VHS sales of his films. Secondhand sales are a reality that other media have to live with, I don't see what makes games so fragile and in need of special protection.

Name one high street book, music or film retailer that sells 2nd hand copies of the books, music or films right alongside and instead of the new copies. And then I'll conceed that the situation between the mediums is the same.

Your time starts...now.

I think one possible issue is that reception this interview would receive on, say, Gamesindustry.biz and the reception it is getting here are a bit different.

I very much doubt his comments were directed at a consumer gaming audience.

And comparisons with books and films are a bit unfair. If Waterstones were buying second hand books and ranging them in the prime areas in store in preference to first hand stock, the book publishers would blow their stack. What the film companies would do if HMV started selling loads of second hand DVDs doesn't even bear thinking about.

It's obviously beneficial to HMV because if they sell a used game for £20 they get all £20 ... a level of profit they'd never match from a publisher.

And with most publishers advocating a move to digital distribution at some point (Steam, XBLA and PSN are the obvious starting points) then there's basically a war brewing.

8-12 times? i just dont 'buy' that figure.

@Rev. Stuart Campbell
"Whine, whine, whine. You already sold the game. You got paid for the lunch. It belongs to someone else. What they do with it after that, how many times they sell it, how much for and who to is none of your business."

And by selling the games second hand they are taking away sales which actually contribute to the people that make them. I'm not saying ban the practice, but I can understand where he's coming from.

@Lebowski
I bought COD4 brand new £25 quid 1 month after release.

Maybe games are too expensive??? Noooooo that can't be it.

HMV marks clearly on all preowned products that they are in fact pre-played that may be the issue. Every other entertainment medium has to contend with second hand purchases, it just seems like game sector seems more vocal on the issue. If you really don't want people to trade in games then follow Criterions route and make downloadable content people actually want, or much easier make your game actually worth owning.

I'll be trading in Mercenaries 2 tommorow to get some money off Fallout 3, why? Because Mercs 2 is an incredible average game, not something I wish to go back to in years, scratch that, weeks to come. Developers and publishers need to try harder by either supplying game codes with each of their games that link to online profiles, or alternatively stop moaning like little children when retailers want a piece of the interactive profit pie.

either

1) make your games better, so the consumer wont want to part with it

or

2) make retail games cheaper, dont give me the "cost" bollocks, some games gross more than movies, for a fraction of the production and distribution costs.

or

3) STFU

take your pick.

I think he makes some sense, and if you follow the current trend of retailers preferring to sell pre-owned software instead of new software, eventually the diversity of titles will suffer as the most populist titles will be the only ones with shelf space. I'm not sure I agree, but he's not a raving idiot, and it's an issue worth thinking about.

I'm not sure why Braben is being pilloried just because he thinks he has identified a situation potentially damaging to the industry and is talking about it. There seems to be a knee-jerk negative reaction to any statement of opinion (or possible necessity to change) made by just about anyone these days.

Make better games!? Yeah? With what, tuppance?

I'm not sure that good games are inherently any more expensive to make than mediocre ones. But this is simply the industry's business model coming back and biting it on the arse. If games weren't completely unjustifiably priced compared to other entertainment media, there wouldn't be a significant second-hand market in the first place. How many High Street stores do you see devoting half their shelf space to used DVDs and CDs?

Make games cost what DVDs do and you'll obliterate the problem. Some of us have been telling you that for 15 years.

waterstones dont sell 2nd hand books, but we have librarys where you can just take them for no money at all.

FRAUD ACTION!

Also, lower game prices.

cost to make peggle - 20p, time I played it for = hours and hours and hours and hours, and still do

cost to make crackdown - not that much relatively speaking - time i played it for - see above.

cost to make GTA4 - bajillions of dollars - time I played it for - about 20 hours, got very bored.

Woolies did pre-owned too, for a while. Managed to get a fair bit off them for old titles in the past, and pick up a load of "fake" pre-owned stuff for about £4 each too.

going back to the 8-12 times figure (which i just do not see any truth in). this would mean that digital distribution could quite happily sell a £40 game for £5 and still increase profit.

not going to happen is it.

I don't recall writers getting their knickers in a twist over secondhand books, I don't recall Stephen Spileberg having an apoplexy over secondhand VHS sales of his films. Secondhand sales are a reality that other media have to live with, I don't see what makes games so fragile and in need of special protection.

Don't be an idiot. Games aren't like books or movies, which don't only have multiple post-release revenue streams (films: cinema releases, DVD releases, licensing for television screenings; books: republishing deals, optioning rights for production in other media), but, unlike games, don't have a VERY RESTRICTED shelf life relative to other media. A game, at best, only really lasts about six months at full price at retail. The price of books goes up relative to inflation - War & Peace will set you back over a tenner most likely. A film you could buy on VHS twenty years ago, you could buy on DVD ten years ago and you can buy online or on Blu Ray now.

And like Braben indicated the movie industry is VERY PROTECTIVE of how you go about legitimately redistributing their material.

Buying second hand games fucks over the people making those games, lines the pockets of the retailers and, ironically, is probably a factor in pushing up new game prices.

Yet another reason why next-next-gen consoles and games should go all digital distribution.

]attacanteblue wrote:
"I'm sure I'll get crucified for this - but as someone who works for an independent games studio - you lot really haven't got a clue how tight money is for developers. Think we are all getting rich off the proceeds from games? Bollocks are we! We are struggling to make a living as every penny is squeezed from us in retail, and with piracy and pre-owned markets.

Make better games!? Yeah? With what, tuppance?"

Its a fair point and a understand your pain, but that's an issue with Publishers and Retailers not giving Developers what they deserve and we the customers shouldn't be punished for that with restrictions on what we can or cannot do with a product we have legally and legitimately purchased, nor should we have the pre-owned market taken from us.

"PlugMonkey wrote:
cappy wrote:
"I don't recall writers getting their knickers in a twist over secondhand books, I don't recall Stephen Spileberg having an apoplexy over secondhand VHS sales of his films. Secondhand sales are a reality that other media have to live with, I don't see what makes games so fragile and in need of special protection.

Name one high street book, music or film retailer that sells 2nd hand copies of the books, music or films right alongside and instead of the new copies. And then I'll conceed that the situation between the mediums is the same.

Your time starts...now.""

I really have no idea about books since I generally buy all my books online (although Amazon do sell 2nd hand right next to brand new), however with film/DVD Blockbusters sell brand new and 2nd hand right next to one another.

How many High Street stores do you see devoting half their shelf space to used DVDs and CDs?

THAT'S EXACTLY THE FUCKING POINT YOU DIV! THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT BRABEN IS TRYING TO POINT OUT TO YOU!

If HMV started selling second hand DVDs the movie studios would go apoplectic and stop selling to them. It'd be financial suicide. You don't think there's a market for 2nd hand DVDs and CDs? Have you tried looking on eBay? They're there all right, but they're not in the highstreet stores because they dare not bite the hand that feeds.

With games, for some reason, they don't seem to give a fuck. There is a storm brewing over this and it will get nasty soon, and Braben is absolutely right to point it out. It is going to shape the future direction of the industry, because the situation where retailers make more money out of a game than the developers isn't going to and cannot last.

Its the people willing to accept £12 for a two week old game that will be sold for £37 that I dont get.

And like Braben indicated the movie industry is VERY PROTECTIVE of how you go about legitimately redistributing their material.

What drivel. In the context he's talking about they're no different to games - once you buy a DVD there's not a damn thing anyone can do to stop you selling it on.

And sweet baby Jesus, is someone still wanking on about the old "multiple revenue streams" excuse for games being so expensive? Is it still 1994, or what?

>Yet another reason why next-next-gen consoles and games should go all digital distribution.

If the infrastructure is there for digitally distributing 50 gig of data to a million people then they'll be all over it

But remember that you can't digitally distribute the console and peripherals in the first place. And no retailer is going to sell the console if they know that's the last time they will see the customer. The publisher / trade relationship would break down.

And when direct download is standard fare we consumers will naturally see some of the savings publishers make handed on to us...

There are 2nd hand markets for lots of other kinds of media/items, books and cars as an example. If the games industry is so strapped for cash that it cant cope with that, it deserves any hardtimes it enters and must seriously look at its own practices Or shall we ban all second hand sales of anything? Ludicrous. And it pains me to say that as I love my games. I do feel sorry for the small independant companies, but again, look at your business practices, dont blame your paying customers.

Id hate for it to go to the model of "not for resale" games. Iif I buy something, I want the right to sell it later. It would only work if the "not for resale" version was significantly cheaper, but I doubt that would happen.

I do agree shops shouldnt be selling preowned games as new without notification, but thats a different problem and is illegal anyway. As others have said, preowned games are nearly always clearly marked as such. The only thing that baffles me is who buys so many of the preowned games, as its very rare that they are priced competitively. £40 for a new title or preowned for £35, hmmm. My own view is that the extra fiver is worth it for a pristine disc (if the counter monkeys are carefull when retrieving it from their scratchy plastic wallet drawer).

The one word that sums up most of my sentiment is GREED.

MVC used to sell 2nd hand dvd's

DVD's and music are cheap so there is much less reason to trade them in for £1 to be able to afford the latest release. Selling them on ebay is pretty much pointless now unless its a month old release as the postage and fees will cost more than you can buy it new for.

If HMV started selling second hand DVDs the movie studios would go apoplectic and stop selling to them.

Don't be ridiculous. The studios would go bust overnight if they shut off their main retail outlets. The reason there aren't stacks of used DVDs on the shelves is that the price of a used DVD is - proportionate to a new one - far higher, because the price is lower to start with. Hardly anyone would buy a used one when a shiny new one is only £3 more. When you can save £10-20 buying a used game instead of the new version, that's a much more compelling proposition, so it's much more lucrative.

@daz_john_smith
"Its a fair point and a understand your pain, but that's an issue with Publishers and Retailers not giving Developers what they deserve and we the customers shouldn't be punished for that with restrictions on what we can or cannot do with a product we have legally and legitimately purchased, nor should we have the pre-owned market taken from us."

Actually I think you hit the nail on the head in describing the two opposite camps arguing on here.

On the one hand - you've bought a game, why should you not do with your property what you wish?

On the other hand - fine, do so, but why should retailers pockets be lined twice when money should really be going to the developers?

He's terribly out of date regarding the rental thing with movies, not sure if the law in the UK is different to the US, but in the US once someone has bought the DVD from any source they can do what the hell they like with it.

I hate the fact that they don't think we deserve to own games and that games should not be treated as something to collect and play many years in the future.

If you claim that making games is some kind of art form as Braben has done in the past then the benefits of the copyright system should place an onus on you to make sure it will be available for all to enjoy once the copyright runs out.

jack_klugman
Don't be an idiot. Games aren't like books or movies, which don't only have multiple post-release revenue streams

_______

No siree. Not on xbla or wii vc. Nope.

DVD's, CD's and Books, none of these mediums are anywhere near as expensive as games and that needs to be taken into consideration. I doubt the 2nd hand markets for other entertainment media are anywhere near as lucrative as the pre-owned games market and if they were more major retailers would be taking advantage of them. The retailer's sole goal is to rape as much cash from the consumer as they can.

"Name one high street book, music or film retailer that sells 2nd hand copies of the books, music or films right alongside and instead of the new copies."

There are plenty of places that sell used and new books and films etc. try Tottenham Court Road for instance. Small independent shops rather than major retail chains admittedly, but that's beside the point, people have had that choice for a long time why should it be taken away just for games?

The problem is that games are ludicrously expensive. Often, the only way people can afford new games is to trade the titles they just finished. The industry starts cycle off itself with sky high prices, that's where the steady supply of recently released secondhand games comes from in the first place. Game sales would be even lower if people were prevented from trading in games they don't want.

The industry has ended up cannabalising itself, games lose value so quickly that for instance, trading recent titles 'X' and 'Y' for hype of the week 'Z' actually puts you ahead since there is a massive disparity between RRP. and what people actually think the titles are worth. Play it on week one, trade it on week two, buy it back for a fraction of the price next year if you really liked it.

Anyone, absolutely anyone who disagrees with what Braben says is an idiot.

Quite simply second-hand games sales do have a knock on effect and could even kill developers.

Think about it for one moment. You've made a game and it's sold 200,000 copies. You needed it to sell 300,000 to break even so you're fucked and forced to close the studio. However, 50,000 get traded in and re-sold 4 times, in effect meeting the 300,000 you needed, but you dont get the last 100,000 sales because the shop doesnt give anyting back to the publisher/developer if they're selling it second-hand.

How is that cool?

Someone compared this to second books sales. Idiot. It's nothing like that whatsoever.

@ Udat: The way you are talking, you'd think pre-owned games were a new thing....I've been trading in and buying pre-owned since I got my Mega Drive in 1994. The industry didn't implode then, it won't now.

I agree with many of the sentiments here that games need to be good so people won't sell them. Why should I not be able to make some money back on a game that was terrible?

I'm sure I'll get crucified for this - but as someone who works for an independent games studio - you lot really haven't got a clue how tight money is for developers. Think we are all getting rich off the proceeds from games? Bollocks are we! We are struggling to make a living as every penny is squeezed from us in retail, and with piracy and pre-owned markets.

Make better games!? Yeah? With what, tuppance?

As someone who IS an independent games studio, I have got a clue how tight money is. And it isn't. Microsoft have provided me with Visual C# Express for FREE. XNA3.0 for FREE. Then I got my 3d modelling package (Blender) for FREE. And I have a free audio creation tool. Which was FREE. But I've forgotten what it's called.

Now, I'm making games in my spare time. It will take me a whole 2-3 months to make a complete game. And that's writing my re-usable engine first. It'll probably contain about 10 hours playtime. It then goes on XBL Community Games. Then money rolls in. My outgoings: £0. My income: More than £0. Maintenance costs: £0. Therefore everything I take in is PROFIT.

If me, on my own, can make a decent engine, decent graphics, decent sound, and people will pay for my game, then a studio which employs EXPERTS will make a game more quickly and to a higher standard than me, thus making more money than me. Fact.