Richard doesn't do himself any favours in how he goes about persuading the reader of his point. Judging by a lot of the comments here on HN a most people read t

Richard doesn't do himself any favours in how he goes about persuading the reader of his point. Judging by a lot of the comments here on HN a most people read the opening couple of paragraphs then drew their own conclusions, which may or may not have been on the money. The important take-away point for me (which I've never seen expressed before) is that so long as publishers are fearful of the pre-owned market, they will spend (waste?) development resources on features whose sole purpose is to further retention and disincentivise reselling games. Some of those features will be fun, but they will potentially alienate some gamers who feel they're no longer getting good value in their game. Witness how the First-Person Shooter genre has transitioned from story-based campaigns with a small multiplayer component into a far more multiplayer-centric experience, with a short single-player campaign which a lot of gamers simply ignore. Similar things have happened in other genres too. Where I find myself disagreeing with Richard is that because GameStop have ‘used the nuclear option’ already, publishers and console manufacturers should do the same; when your customers are the collateral in this exchange, they won't thank you for it. We're also in a period of upheaval with videogame retail (I don't know how well GameStop is doing, but certainly in the UK high street videogame retailers are dying). Maybe in a few more years’ time the problem will solve itself, with the majority of customers choosing to buy direct from online retailers; the tactics that GameStop employs that have such a dramatic effect can't be employed when you're selling second-hand games through Amazon. I can't think of a good interim solution off the top of my head, maybe there ought to be more stringent laws to prevent retailers from pushing used stock over new stock, or that they're prohibited from selling used stock at more than a certain percentage of the cost of new. These ideas probably have holes, but I'd rather see something along these lines pushed than see consumers be punished for somebody else's war.