3 ms·

Pre-owned games pose much of the same problem on the console market as piracy does on the PC market. The end result of both is the same: people play our games w

Pre-owned games pose much of the same problem on the console market as piracy does on the PC market. The end result of both is the same: people play our games without a single bit of money ending up with the people who made the game. In the worst case, we end up paying a lot of money to keep servers online, while getting no money at all from the sale. In the worst case, we end up paying a lot of money to keep servers online, while getting no money at all from the sale. I find it hard to believe that he's making this argument with a straight face. When someone pirates a game then you have two copies of the game online. When someone purchases a used copy of a game then, sure, the publisher doesn't get any more money, but the servers still have the same level of traffic on them. This is like saying that selling a used car that's still under warranty is bad for the car manufacturers because they now need to maintain the car, even though it has a new owner. If your original price can't cover the cost of the services that you've promised to provide then clearly you need to raise your prices.

ghshephard 17y ago
Well, presuming that games have a lifespan, of say N hours, then there really is (from the producers side) very little difference between a game being resold X times or being pirated X times. In both cases, their servers experience X*N hours of usage, and they only get paid the original Y dollars. The car analogy doesn't hold up, because there is an expectation that the warranty would be used for the entire lifetime of the warranty, whereas games that are sold aren't done so with the expectation that after 40 hours of usage or so, they'd be resold continuously to other parties who would also play them for 40 hours, and so on. Perhaps a better analogy is that the warranty on a car has an explicit limit on the number of miles that may be driven, which prevents the warranty from being used by multiple parties driving the car continuously. As counterintuitive as it may seem (and, i expect controversial on HN) I actually think providing a service code with the original game (that can be purchased for $10 by future purchasers of the game) actually aligns the use of the service and payment to the server operators quite well, without getting into the ugly world of "You may use the online service for Z hours before your account times out." (going back to the Car Warranty analogy)

ghshephard 17y ago

Well, presuming that games have a lifespan, of say N hours, then there really is (from the producers side) very little difference between a game being resold X times or being pirated X times. In both cases, their servers experience X*N hours of usage, and they only get paid the original Y dollars. The car analogy doesn't hold up, because there is an expectation that the warranty would be used for the entire lifetime of the warranty, whereas games that are sold aren't done so with the expectation that after 40 hours of usage or so, they'd be resold continuously to other parties who would also play them for 40 hours, and so on. Perhaps a better analogy is that the warranty on a car has an explicit limit on the number of miles that may be driven, which prevents the warranty from being used by multiple parties driving the car continuously. As counterintuitive as it may seem (and, i expect controversial on HN) I actually think providing a service code with the original game (that can be purchased for $10 by future purchasers of the game) actually aligns the use of the service and payment to the server operators quite well, without getting into the ugly world of "You may use the online service for Z hours before your account times out." (going back to the Car Warranty analogy)