The death of second-hand gaming

PlayStation Network Pass. EA Online Pass. Ubisoft UPlay Network Pass. Gears of War 3 Season Pass. Steamworks. Games for Windows Live. Free Downloadable Content for day-one purchasers. Inability to delete progress for Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D.

 

These are just some of the names of methods publishers are using to provide what they would call bonus features for people who buy new copies of their games, and to deter people from trading them in. Buy Uncharted 3 new, you get a code which allows you to play it online. Buy it second hand, chances are that code has been used, and in order to play the game online, you'll have to buy an unlock code for £6 or so. Buy a season pass for Gears of War 3 or Saints Row 3, chances are you'll stick around for a few months until all the content is released and won't trade your game in. Hell, buy a game with Steamworks or Games for Windows Live support and your serial number is tied to your account so you can't even trade it in anyway. The methods vary between games and between publishers, but the aim of all of these 'features' is the same: to stem the appeal of pre-owned games, usually by locking out content. The big question is why games should do this, and whether it's actually doing the industry more harm than good.

 

 

From the point of view of a games publisher, the reasons for locking out content to gamers who pick up second-hand copies of games is pretty straightforward: its a way of clawing back money for them. After all, when a game is traded in to a store and re-sold, they don't get any income from that second sale, and a game might logically pass from user to user over the course of a few weeks, essentially robbing the publisher of 2, 3, even 4 or more sales of the game. In the first few weeks of a game's release, that could amount to a massive loss of revenue.

 

Multiplayer passes and bonus DLC are a simple and fairly elegant solution: include a code in the box that can be redeemed to let a player access the online portions of the game, or bonus content. That way the person who buys the game new gets the full experience, whilst someone buying a pre-owned copy of the game will have to fork out a few coins for the features, money which goes back to the publisher and effectively recoups their lost revenue from the sale of the game. Game's are, after all, big business, and publishers are in it for the money. And there's no denying that it does hurt the prospect of picking up a second-hand game - you might be able to pick the game up for five or ten quid less than a new copy, but when you then have to spend almost as much to buy unlock codes for multiplayer or bonus content, you may as well have bought the game new, and got a nice shiny shrink-wrapped box for your efforts and an instruction book that definitely won't smell of tobacco.

 

That's only one way of combating the issue, though. Another is with the sale of a Season Pass, in which a user pays a lower price in advance for content that will be released over the course of the next few months. This effectively 'locks in' the buyer, ensuring that they'll keep the game at least until all the Season Pass content has been released, and deters them from trading in the game, limiting the game's exposure in the pre-owned market and encouraging more users to pick up new copies. 

 

A less agreeable solution primarily used for PC games comes with tying the game's license code to a users account, whether through Steam / Steamworks, Games for Windows Live, UbiSoft UPlay, or similar, which basically renders the game unsaleable: once you've bought it and registered it, you're stuck with it, like it or not. There are some ways around it of course; there are reports of users creating new accounts for each game they buy so that they can then sell on the account with the game, but it's a far from ideal prospect.

 

 

For many gamers, the methods implemented by publishers to stem the flow of games into the pre-owned market don't matter. They're happy to pick up new games on day of release, pay the asking price and get the most from the game. Perhaps they'll eventually trade it in somewhere down the line, perhaps they'll keep it; it doesn't matter, because they'll go and buy another new game anyway.

 

For others it's a more contentious issue. Consider the gamer that doesn't like the game he's bought. These days, demo's are increasingly rare, so there's little chance to try-before-you-buy, which renders every game a risky purchase. If a game isn't liked, but its trade-in value is reduced because of used multiplayer / content codes, he's going to feel a bit miffed; even more so if its a PC game and he actually cannot sell it on. 

 

But there's a bigger problem here: not everyone can afford to buy new games, or at least not all of them. So what do they do? The answer, in the past, has been to trade in old games in order to fund the purchase of a new one. But publishers are actively reducing the value of the second-hand market, some even trying to quash it altogether. But what they apparently fail to realise is that many gamers wouldn't be buying new games at all if they aren't able to trade older ones in.

 

Take the latest FIFA release, for example. How many gamers will have bought the shiny new 2012 version only after trading in their copy of last year's game? The same with Call of Duty, with UFC, etc etc: when publishers are releasing games on a annual cycle that effectively render previous iterations obsolete, gamers will naturally want to use the cost of last year's game to offset the cost of the successor the following year.

 

We should note as well that other mediums don't have this kind of restriction. Take books, or films, for example: for years users have been able to sell on old, unwanted novels or movies without having to worry about things like restricted content. What's next; Blu-Ray Discs coming with unlock codes to access the 'Extras' menu? Books requiring a key to unlock the epilogue? Yet publishers in both of those industries continue to perform well. Apple has practically built its empire on the second hand market, with yearly updates to its product range affordable by many simply because the products carry a high resale value, enabling, for example, everyone who bought a 1st-gen iPad to sell it and get an iPad 2 without being massively out of pocket.

 

There's also a question of, if not necessarily legality, then at least of morality - if you're paying for a disc, why should you then have to pay to unlock some of what's on that disc? That's probably a bigger argument for another time, but its something to think about.

 

In the meantime, publishers will continue to fight the existence of second-hand games, whether by providing extra value for first-time buyers or by charging more to unlock features of pre-owned purchases. But if the second-hand market dries up completely, those same publishers may find themselves struggling to sell as many copies of their latest games, especially if the trend of years updates continues and in the current economic climate. Gamers only have so much disposable income, and when they can't supplement that with the ability to trade in unwanted titles, it will be the publishers themselves who will suffer.