Amazon.com To Accept Game Trade-Ins 242
revjtanton writes "Amid all the discussion and argument about Gamestop's two-billion-dollar trade-in industry it seems Amazon.com is getting in on the action.
Like Gamestop, Amazon asks for the games to be in good condition, however they offer just a few more dollars for your discarded game (Gamestop listed Left 4 Dead for the 360 at $24 while Amazon had it at $26.50 trade-in value). Gamestop had already ruffled feathers in the developer and distribution communities with its practice of accepting used games; does Amazon joining the practice legitimize it?"
How is this worth it? (Score:5, Interesting)
On Amazon right now, there are 22 used copies of Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360) with the cheapest being $38.00. Why on earth would someone do this trade in when you could make at least ten more dollars just listing it on their own marketplace?
And what about PC games? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is anyone going to accept those for trade in? Because I have quite a few games I never play anymore and/or got burned on (doesn't work, faulty discs that the company wouldn't replace, game sucks balls, etc.) that I'd love to swap for something decent. But since they are "easier to copy than console games" *cough*bullshit*cough* I never seem to be able to do so.
Re:hmm? (Score:3, Interesting)
Whether you own it or not is one thing, but no publisher or developer has successfully argued that you do not have the right to resell a physical, original copy of a game.
Re:Good for Steam (Score:5, Interesting)
The more developers move to Steam, the less I'm going to buy their games.
What's to legitamize? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good for Steam (Score:5, Interesting)
And the problem here is what exactly?
IMO Steam is a perfect alternative to selling/buying your games on physical media. While Steam does work against the used market, it provides sufficent 'pluses' to make up for loss.
You gain the ability to download the game to any computer and play it, as long as no other computers are logged in as you. You gain the ability to redownload the game as many times as you need. You gain access to things like ingame messenging, even if the game itself didn't have such a system.
The real problem will be, and it will be a short lived one I promise you, when companies decide to kill the physical media while simultaneously attempting to roll their own digitial distribution system rather than use one of the currently established platforms like Steam. Those games are going to be abandoned by customers and publishers faster than you can say Rumplestilskin.
Re:Legitimising it? (Score:3, Interesting)
If reselling my used and unwanted games falls into a moral gray area, we had better start torching any library in sight - the evil communist hideouts! And add yet another reason to hate on used car dealers.
Re:hmm? (Score:5, Interesting)
Moderators must be high today. While your first line is true, it's not strictly relevant.
There is no clear cut line for what constitutes a loan, license or sale. Guidelines from the 9th circuit(Wise, 550 F.2d 1189) seem to indicate resale of a copyrighted work by a vendee who has sole control of the work can do so without permission from the copyright holder. The title of the agreement under which the sale or license occurs is not deterministic in revealing if the transaction constitutes a sale.
This is unlikely to apply to games purchased through Steam, since the copyrighted work still remains under control of the vendor. At most, the vendee would be liable to the copyright holder for breach of contract but the copyright act is not invoked. Even if the first sale doctrine were applicable, it doesn't require Steam to issue activation keys to the new owner of the copy.
Re:hmm? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ultimate thread of pointless arguments. Unless the open source community wants to provide huge amounts of open source games that are high quality that will keep the insatiable hunger for new content in check by gamers, this sort of move by Amazon will be fought and countered by every one of us in the development and publishing industry every way we can. The prevailing argument seems to be that, since re-selling is legal, you should be able to do it completely unregulated, regardless of the damage it does to the industries that provide you that content. So, if 10,000 copies of a game sell, but they go through a million hands due to rampant resales that the publishers/developers never see a cent of, well, there goes another dev. And that publisher, just had the same thing happen to their top 10 titles, so no more publisher. Guess there are no more devs or publishers left who can operate profitable businesses to provide your content.
The old hacker creed of "information should be free" may be the prevailing attitude on /., but it's taken to unsustainable and asinine levels both here and among "content consumers" in general, as if you have have a constitutional right to the (millions of dollars and tens of thousands of people months spent developing titles) games you consume every year without paying a dime. Make it so, and you'll run out of content faster than you can blink, because we'll no longer have a viable business model to generate that content. Dunno about you, but I still need to pay my rent and feed my family, and I'm not gonna work at Costco and spent another 80 hours a week making games "just for the fun of it", and neither will many others, beyond college students and people who still live in their moms basement at age 36.
I'm sure there are all sorts of flaws in my own dissertation, but if someone can provide a REAL business model that doesn't involve making every game subscription based (MMO) or based on 90% multiplayer (COD4) to keep people from selling them over and over and over again, I'd love to hear it. Because so far, all this thread is doing is defending the right of gamers and retailers to make the games industry completely unsustainable as a business.