“Would an end to used game sales be good for developers?

German developer Crytek sold 3 million copies of Crysis 2. Another 4 million copies were pirated, making it the most pirated game of 2011.

“It’s very flattering and upsetting at the same time,” Crytek’s director of creative development, Rasmus Højengaard, told CVG. “Obviously you miss so much revenue, it’s so clear that a lot of people want to play your game but they don’t really want to pay for it, which is unfortunately really disappointing.”

“It’s also a little flattering because people are willing to bother download these 10GB files or whatever the game takes because they think it looks great. We obviously want to avoid that this time, but even if we can convert 25 percent of those gamers into paying customers [you have an extra million sales].”

The thing about piracy that is often left unsaid is that not all of those pirated copies would convert into game sales even if we could eradicate piracy entirely. 4 million pirated copies of a game is not the equivalent of 4 million lost sales, even if it may indeed represent lost revenue. This isn’t to either justify or condemn piracy – it’s a complicated issue that stems largely from a lack of trust – but simply to point out that sometimes combating piracy is not the best way to staunch the bleeding.

Which brings us to used games, another phenomenon Crytek would be happy to end if it could. Asked whether he’d like to see a used game blocking feature in next-gen consoles, Højengaard said:

“From a business perspective that would be absolutely awesome. It’s weird that [second-hand] is still allowed because it doesn’t work like that in any other software industries, so it would be great if they could somehow fix that issue as well.”

(…)

The inevitable end of used games is probably just around the corner. Why change anything on the console side of the equation when the problem will “self-correct” on its own?

As to used games themselves, I’d be pretty happy with a digital download service like Steam replacing discs altogether on consoles, used games included. I’d be much less happy with some sort of built-in mechanism that renders used games useless without activation. What if my console breaks and I need to replace it? Would I need to pay to activate all my old games if I wanted to use them on the new machine? From a consumer perspective it would most definitely not be awesome.

That being said, the GameStop business model is hardly laudable. Yes, gamers should be allowed to sell their own games, but that doesn’t make GameStop an admirable middle-man for those transactions.

CVG’s Tom Ivan thinks that Crytek “would have received a great deal more revenue, were it not for second-hand game sales and piracy.” But it’s impossible to say if an end to used game sales would increase new game sales any more than an end to piracy would. People might simply buy fewer games, or fewer new releases.”

Source: Forbes