GameStop: The Market Needs To Have Used Downloads

As outlandish as this request is, it could actually happen. It would just take gamestop convincing one of the console makers, hey if we don't get used downloads we will push your competitors console to all the know nothing moms and impressionable kids that still shop at the mall. And if an old dumb CEO is there they might actually think people still go to the mall and cave in.
 
I never get rid of old games. I am just really careful not buy games I wont like.
Except for Steam where I buy shit I never play and somehow feel great about it.... DAMN YOU STEAM!
 
Thanks to bundle shovelware, there are games that I'd *pay* to have removed from my Steam account...
 
Scythe said:
Don't go away mad, Gamestop. Just go away.

Does anyone actually buy stuff from this place?:confused:
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Bingo, they marketed themselves out of a marketplace.

Sure, I'd love to sell back this game I paid for $60 for just $5-$10 so you can resell it for $55.

If they actually gave me an honest value for the trade in I may have done it, for the rates they give, I'd just rather keep the game. So I've switched to downloadable games that don't scratch and never get lost and I've never been happier.
 
There's no reason you couldn't sell your games on Steam. Since everything is tracked, you could easily move ownership to another Steam user. They won't do it though since it deprives them of a sale, and publishers would likely flip out. Same silly reason as to why you're locked out of all your Steam games when you want to let a friend play one that's on your account.
 
I don't mind the idea of still buying used hard copies of games. If the fiasco over the holidays taught us anything, it was that we should have some hardcopies laying around.
 
The Xbox One's original system would have allowed for "used downloads". It's too bad the Sony propaganda parade convinced MS to scrap it.
 
GameStop is a dying company. It'll be nonexistent soon enough. Had they pivoted years ago to establish themselves as a digital distributor, maybe they survive.

Someone will buy out the name.
 
See that red light blinking, Gamestop? That's your business dissipation light and it just went into overdrive.
 
Ordeith said:
The Xbox One's original system would have allowed for "used downloads". It's too bad the Sony propaganda parade convinced MS to scrap it.
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I never understood why Microsoft changed their stance. Giving into the Sony propaganda was the biggest fail of the Xbox One.
 
lucidrenegade said:
There's no reason you couldn't sell your games on Steam. Since everything is tracked, you could easily move ownership to another Steam user. They won't do it though since it deprives them of a sale, and publishers would likely flip out. Same silly reason as to why you're locked out of all your Steam games when you want to let a friend play one that's on your account.
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If Steam ever decides to allow you to sell your "used" digital purchases it would kill the chances of ever having decent sales since it they offer game X at 80% off today only, tomorrow when the price returned to normal the forums would be full of threads of people selling it for 50% off after having bought it at 80% off.
 
Things never go cheaper? Has been on the Steam, PS Marketplace, or Xbox Live lately? There are all sorts of sales and markdowns. Not on anything new, but you would only get like $5 taken off for it being used anyway, so I am not sure he knows what he is talking about.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
If Steam ever decides to allow you to sell your "used" digital purchases it would kill the chances of ever having decent sales since it they offer game X at 80% off today only, tomorrow when the price returned to normal the forums would be full of threads of people selling it for 50% off after having bought it at 80% off.
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That's the point. If "used" digital sales are allowed Gamestop would be stabbing at the advantage of their competition. The regular Steam sales would die.
 
Used digital games are definitely a no in my book. There is absolutely no reason to have them with how the sales of digital games happen as often as they do. If I had to choose to help subsidize an impatient person's need to have the latest and greatest game by buying their copy of a game verses just buying the game myself on sale and actually giving some money to the developer, I choose the latter every single time.

Gamestop wants this only because they know they are going to be screwed in the future to the point of bankruptcy. It might still be a little way off, but we all know that digital will be the future, there is just really no stopping it. They have at best till the US is wired properly. Their only hope is if these cable company monopolies/oligopolies keep their strangle hold on the broadband markets with caps and other consumer unfriendly crap. That's really the only reason that the current consoles aren't completely digital download only now.
 
xX326Xx said:
Bingo, they marketed themselves out of a marketplace.

Sure, I'd love to sell back this game I paid for $60 for just $5-$10 so you can resell it for $55.

If they actually gave me an honest value for the trade in I may have done it, for the rates they give, I'd just rather keep the game. So I've switched to downloadable games that don't scratch and never get lost and I've never been happier.
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As I mentioned before, if you got your $60 worth of entertainment value from it, you are at no loss to sell it however you choose. You have options of selling it elsewhere but if anyone chooses the easy, quick route then your loss of return was for your own convenience obviously. Why blame Gamestop? Did they force you?
Meanwhile, $55 for a used game is still a digital game. It's all 1 and 0's, just a physical transportation method which is all your really doing, so its certainly worth near full price perhaps to someone else....because again, you are paying for entertainment value. This isn't a used auto mobile or a used house, it's a used transportation medium with the exact same 1's and 0's that are transported from a server.

Why you guys keep blaming GameStop for everything is beyond me, since they are in a supply/demand market and people keep going there so obviously any problems you guys are imagining is towards their customers, not GS.
Also many console gamers aren't too interested in all digital distribution due to their lack of transferrable currency, especially kids/teens that like to pay cash, don't have checking accounts for debit cards or people that refuse to use credit cards or have no/bad credit.

It's more likely that in the event Sony/MS go all digital, that GS will cater to selling the equivalent of gift cards like Steam's card, other exclusive incentives like DLC's or packs as they do now plus they have the hardware side of things including retro titles, collectables..etc. There's always something to sell physically in a digital world or they could evolve in other ways as well such as invest in creating their own games or becoming a gaming publisher.
 
Haha the last time I walked into a Gamestop was back in 2005, xbox 360 release day to pick up the controller to use for PC gaming.
 
Kor said:
WTS 0's and 1's, slightly used.
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You wouldn't [strike=]download[/s] sell a used car, would you?

Oh, you would? Well in the publishing industry we like to have our cake and eat it too.
 
Skillz said:
If Gamestop wants to continue to be relative in this new digital age they better beef up their web site, add a bunch of servers and start offering digital downloads themselves.
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Gamestop does offer digital downloads. I recently bought the 3 Batman games from them for $15. And over Christmas they had Borderlands for $3.
_____

I'm always afraid that digital distributors will just keep the prices near initial retail value...i.e. Skyrim would stay near $60. Why do they offer such discounted prices?
 
According to the First Sale Doctorine this should have been legal from the get go, but the creators of intellectual property duped the public into believing that some creations of the mind do not apply to those basic laws.
 
Scythe said:
Don't go away mad, Gamestop. Just go away.

Does anyone actually buy stuff from this place?:confused:
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Scored a new Nintendo 3DS XL + two games for $142 out the door. The other places went as low as $150 without the games before tax. Would have been at least $60+ more at any other place. To be fair, Gamestop messed up by giving me a more expensive 2nd game. But a $20 off and $50 off discount stacked so I got a good deal. :D

Aside from that, I have not bought anything in years. Some used PS2 games. My only regret was not buying some extra Ace Combat copies for $1 when they had 4-5 copies in local stores. Last time I bought something that cost more than $2 aside from my console purchase? I don't remember. It has been so long.
 
westrock2000 said:
According to the First Sale Doctorine this should have been legal from the get go, but the creators of intellectual property duped the public into believing that some creations of the mind do not apply to those basic laws.
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If you read through that, it clearly states that digital copies have been excluded due to being iffy from the start due to the fact that you still retain your copy. First doctrine states that if you buy something you can sell it, lend it out... however you can't make new copies of that time. So I can't do buy a copy of a movie at the store, get home and burn 300 copies and go sell them for $1 a copy on the corner under that rule. What I can do is go home, watch the movie, then turn around and give you my disc to borrow or sell the physical disc to somebody. This gets to be harder with a digital copy as if I copy it to a flash drive or whatever I now have 2 copies so I have broken the first sale doctrine as I can't make a copy of said material. You would need some form of DRM (which everyone gets pissed off we have in the first place) that checks to verify that you own the material which means that need to be online at all times. And then if you want to give somebody a copy that would need to make your copy unusable for that time. Which actually the Xbox one was going to do that from the start till people started to bitch about the need for it to connect to the internet once a day for games to work. So they pulled the feature. Otherwise if I wasn't playing a game you could play my digital copy if you were on my list of 10 people that I wanted to let borrow my digital games. To then allow the selling, again there would need to be a DRM system in place at all times to fully remove all copies of your item and then give you back a code that could be sold or given away. So such a system could be put in place for this, and Microsoft was actually trying to work toward this some. However people will not accept what is needed for such a system to be in place and get pissed off with what little framework we have in place for this now.

Shmee said:
Things never go cheaper? Has been on the Steam, PS Marketplace, or Xbox Live lately? There are all sorts of sales and markdowns. Not on anything new, but you would only get like $5 taken off for it being used anyway, so I am not sure he knows what he is talking about.
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Don't fuck with their bullshit logic. You have never seen a game drop in price, you have never seen a sale, you don't have 2 dozen (or more) games you bought just because they were only $4.95

If you got the games cheaper being used you would be luckly. For Christmas my sister picked me up 2 used 360 games. $19.95 each. I pointed out to her a few days later that Walmart sells them in store, brand new for $14.95. And that is with free DLC that you only get for being the first time owner also. Not the first time I have found used copies being as much or more than new copies.
 
Exavior said:
If you read through that, it clearly states that digital copies have been excluded due to being iffy from the start due to the fact that you still retain your copy. First doctrine states that if you buy something you can sell it, lend it out... however you can't make new copies of that time. So I can't do buy a copy of a movie at the store, get home and burn 300 copies and go sell them for $1 a copy on the corner under that rule.
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Nope, that's why I said people have been duped into thinking that *some* copyright material is exempt from this law. You say that it puts a burden on the copyright owner when produced in this format.

Why is that the sellers problem? That "iffy-ness" should have been dealt with before the distribution channel made it to the consumer. Instead of just saying "It's super duper complicated, so you have to give up your rights".
 
Shmee said:
Things never go cheaper? Has been on the Steam, PS Marketplace, or Xbox Live lately? There are all sorts of sales and markdowns. Not on anything new, but you would only get like $5 taken off for it being used anyway, so I am not sure he knows what he is talking about.
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Not thinking long term enough. What will happen in 20 years? Will any of these games still be purchasable? Will the license still be valid?

Think about ALL the old video games out there. All of them, barring physical damage, still work (there are some rare outliers that needed network access). Anyone can go out and buy them and use them. And anyone is free to sell them.

How is that going to work in 20 years?

This game is 25 years old
Super_Mario_Bros._3_coverart.png


Do you want to live in a world where no one can play Super Mario Bros 3 *legally* because the authentication servers have all been turned off?
 
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