Used Games = Piracy?

[Magus]

The used games industry is not "racketeering", it is straight up lawful capitalism just like used car lots or Suncoast selling you used movies. Selling used games at not-really-very-good-prices is no less unethical than selling this piece of shit WWE game at full-price in the first place. People have a problem with GameStop because they're sort of monopolistic in that they purchased/merged with EB Games so there isn't another big used games company out there, plus trading in games is not at all a good idea for the consumer, but that's just common sense, I only traded in a game once and didn't like the price I got, didn't bother with it again. This is not really hard to figure out.

GameStop also sells new games and unlike Wal-Mart if you want a specific title, they have it! New! Day one! The games industry ignores this fact because they want to pretend that their profit is being hurt by GameStop. Hey, maybe it is! But is it unfair for GameStop to hurt their profit? Hell no, it's fair as fair. Get over it.

In any case, this shit with non-transferrable DLC and DRM-locking and not being able to buy used copies of Starcraft II is going to screw over PC gaming pretty quickly if it hasn't already. Like, I'm afraid to borrow my bro's completely legitimate Starcraft II disc to play on my own PC for a few days because I'm afraid that it probably won't even work on my comp, plus it has to be connected to the internet, which is pretty damn lame. Blizzard is driving me nuts, frankly, and so are all the other companies producing games for the PC market.

Basically, console games work on any copy of that console forever, since PC games don't do that I can't see the PC market ever competing with console games, which they're already having a problem with and have been. Like, there was this period for about four years there where I thought the PC market had "got" it, and it was going to be a great future for it, but then shit went downhill fast.

EDIT: Also their argument for the $60 price point is total bullshit, because the cost of development has not actually gone up just because the graphics are prettier. This is also why Blu-Ray price points is fucking ridiculous as well, since they can release the film on DVD at a lower price, though at least here maybe they can argue the Blu-Ray disc cost five dollars more to make (prolly not true but I don't really know). Resolution has jack-all to do with development costs, and graphical horsepower has jack all to do with development costs, either. If they can release a 100 million dollar movie like The Dark Knight on DVD for 20 dollars they can release a 100 million dollar video game on a Blu-Ray disc for 50 dollars (or hell, 55 at most if that extra 5 is actually justified by actual costs). The 60 dollar price point is based entirely on the elasticity of market demand, not increased development costs. I know this because SNES games used to cost 60 dollars new, too, try to tell me that wasn't just because of market demands, try to tell me it cost that much more to make an SNES game because the graphical horsepower the coders and designers were working with was more powerful than the NES. It's bullshit.

Hell, they had more of an excuse because cartridges were expensive as hell.