{{
`${userDetail.user.displayName}${userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode ? `#${standardizeBungieGlobalCode(userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode)}` : ""}`}}
{{getUserClans()}}
6/18/2013 11:27:32 AM
4
Your whole argument falls apart when one thing is considered: server costs. The sale of the game not only goes to pay the developers, the publisher, and fund the next game, it also goes to keeping the company's servers up and running.
Now, let's analyze this further.
Game A is sold to person A. Out of that $60 around $45 goes to the developer/publisher, which covers the paychecks and server costs.
Person A stops playing Game A and moves on to another titles. One server space is now empty, which is what the developer was expecting.
Person A sells Game A to GameStop, where it gets bought by Person B for $45, all of which goes to GameStop.
Person B begins playing the title online. One server space is taken up, but in this case nothing was paid to the developer/publisher to keep that space running, what you have now is "double dipping".
-------
Now there is a problem here. The model of the developer/publisher was that there'd be one purchase per server space taken up. This is no longer the case. As time passes by more and more used copies become available, and people naturally buy the used copies because they are cheaper. Eventually you get to where only about 40-50% of the online population actually made an investment into the online client, which means that the developer/publisher now has to take money away from the development of their next title to pay for the servers. That, or begin to market DLC.
English
-
Edited by OrderedComa: 6/28/2013 7:33:17 PMThere is no way for a developer or publisher to track who is or is not playing the game any longer, your argument has no leg to stand on. Selling a game or trading it in has no change on population whatsoever, not everyone is playing their game online 24/7/365, and there is no way to track who is just taking a break, or who has abandoned a game entirely. Person A playing the game for a while, both online aspects and offline, and then deciding he doesn't want it anymore and selling it, and then Person B buying it does not have any impact on servers or online population count whatsoever. Your argument is inherently flawed because you do not grasp how running the online even works, populations don't suddenly grow again out of thin air, once a game starts declining, it almost never picks back up again. The developers and publishers already made their profit when they sold the shipments to places like Gamestop, Best Buy, Target, or Walmart. And more people buy new than people buy used....used purchases aren't even that frequent until [i]long[/i] after the game has been out and new versions decline in value anyway.
-
As for the server cost, you missed one detail. The person who sold the game back to the store is no longer taking up that space on the server, the person who buys the used game will then take over their place. Also population for multiplayer decreases over time in any game reducing the need for a large amount of servers over a long period of time.
-
The person who sold the game back to the store is no longer taking up that space on the server, yes. This is what the publisher was anticipating. If another person comes in and fills up that space without investing into the servers (buying the game used), then there's a problem. It's like buying a television with a five year warranty, selling it to someone else, and that person getting another five year warranty for free.
-
This is where the population drop comes in though, the company no longer has to run lots of server space. Take a Halo game for example, it starts of with 1,000,000 players online at peak at launch. 3 months down the line the population doesn't hit 100,000 at any time anymore, So the company no longer has to maintain servers for 1,000,000 people but 100x less than the initial amount. The massive population decrease renders used game players on the server fairly irrelevant, since if the company was prepared to cope with 100 times the amount currently playing. The used game cost comes from the store not the dev/publisher as the OP pointed out, so really it isn't having that huge of an effect. Call of Duty has a large amount of used game sales and yet they still manage to churn out a new version year after year to make a ton of profit. I don't normally buy used games, since amazon will sell them new for roughly the same price as the used games a few months post launch.
