Quote Originally Posted by 8-bitNesMan View Post
I see your points but the one argument I've never fully understood is that second hand used sales hurt manufacturers, publishers, and authors. Didn't there have to be a first hand sale when the game was new for there to be a second hand sale?
Sure there was a first hand sale, and that was great. Let's put it to math for a second (all fictional but easily illustrated numbers):

Let's start our example by saying that 1,000,000 people have played Super Jumping People (SJP) and I am playing the role of the publisher.

If the 1,000,000 people that played the game bought it first-hand at full retail and my cut of that sale as a publisher of $10, that's 1,000,000 * $10 = $10,000,000 in revenue.

Now let's play with the numbers a little bit:

The same 1,000,000 people have played SJP.

However, if only 80% of those that played the game bought it first-hand at full retail, that reduces my cut to 800,000 * $10 = $8,000,000 in revenue. Now I'm missing $2,000,000 since I don't get a cut of second-hand sales. All of that extra money is now going to either private dealers or second-hand game sellers. Either way, this is now money out of the pocket of the people that own the rights to the IP.

Now I see that there is a control that I can put in place to take those second-hand sellers out of the equation to get some of that revenue back into my pocket? After realizing that it's a risk vs. reward discussion to determine whether it's worthwhile for me to use it for my product. If I lose the small percentage of hardcore gamers that protest the product but the vast majority don't care and buy the product anyway, I still get a nice chunk of my revenue back. Starting to lean towards sold for me...