News THQ: No sympathy for second hand game buyers

Dear THQ,

We, as consumers, have poured a not-inconsiderate amount of money into your general coffers over the years, spent over a variety of top-class and questionable titles on a number of systems.

I still own a copy of Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64, some classic Broken Sword titles, and when you announced you were submitting a THQ Complete Pack to Steam, I promptly opened my wallet, and coughed a giant wad of cash your way.

I want my money back.

I could live with the broken port of Saints Row 2, because deep down, I knew there was a fun game in there, just like the dumbed-down Xbox version I had the fortune to play. Company of Heroes was decent enough as part of the pack, but not enough to stand on its own merits. For every great game, there was a terrible one, but on the whole, I didn't feel like I'd been ripped off, and you know why?

I got these games on sale. A rather sizable Steam sale. So, I could weigh up good games against bad, and then think "Well, I can't complain. I got this lot for less than half price! So what if a third of the games are broken?"

The only problem I see here, is that Steam (and Valve themselves) state that sales are entirely down to publishers. So, you're quite happy to take such a massive hit on your games by your own volition, but horrified of the thought of one person buying a game at full price, trading it in for another game, and then someone else buying it, possibly getting hooked on a series of games you create?

My brother owns every single PS2 Spongebob Squarepants title going, mostly pre-owned as it was impossible to find them new anywhere. He's also a regular purchaser of your Smackdown Vs Raw games for the 360 (and goodness knows why - they're all absolutely identical with a couple of name-changes and some new grunt sound effects recorded), which he gets at release. His pre-owned purchases keep the game stores that sell your terrible spin-off merchandise open, and his new game purchases ensure that the staff at your studios are well-paid. Without one, the other would fail.

The horrible attitude exhibited by your spokesmen, without rebuttal or retraction from yourselves, only serves to show how little you think of your consumers. I do not wish to do business with a company that is happy to label its market as "cheaters".

Yours faithfully,

Will Scanlan

 

*+1

 

Let me get this straight....... developers want to reward first time buyers for purchasing the game at full price by giving them access to free DLC. Does this mean that for all games that have these unique codes to allow you to play online etc the first time buyer will get all DLC for free??

I don't think so! charging second-hand buyers for DLC - fair enough. You haven't made the money on the sale but you can still make the money by charging for the DLC. Generally, the prices for DLC are too expensive, especially when you have paid £40 for the game brad new, and allowing free DLC via a unique code seems a fair idea to me.

Also, what happens if you want to rent a game from blockbuster to give it a try to see if it is worth you paying full price for it? Your the 2nd person to rent the game, you fire up the multiplayer as this is main point your wanting to buy the game for, only to find out someone who rented it first has already registered the code! (Kind of a side point, but a valid one nonetheless).

I fear that with these codes (which i'm sure every developer will eventually utilize) will result in us buying half a game, and then being forced to buy the remaining half as DLC. This will be a sure way of killing off the games market, and will almost certainly result in massive losses of sales, and many more people resorting to pirated games.

Finally, not everyone earns 50, 60, 70 thousand pounds a year and doesn't have to worry about spending money like there is no tomorrow. The majority of people save money up or go without something else to buy a game, and shouldn't be ripped off by greedy developers/publishers.

 

Just make DLCs chargeable, like in Fallout 3. Patches should not be taken into consideration as, if the games were made properly in the first place, would there be bugs to patch or overlooked features that should have been there in the first place?

If I could earn 10 million dollars in nett profit from the sales of a piece of software, but ended up earning only 8 million due to 2nd hand sales, piracy, etc, etc, than it is not a loss (I still made an obscenely huge profit), it is a reduction in profit. A loss is when the income generated is less than the capital invested to create a product. Then again, recycled game engines don't really qualify as a "new" product if you ask me, not to mention that artwork such as images, meshes and textures etc can be reused with minimal or no modifications and rework. How much work really goes into a game nowadays (except for those using an entire new set of components) for the developers to have the right to shout about being ripped off? It's gamers who are ripped off for basically what is the same game with slight changes. Look at Fallout 3 and Fallout New: Vegas. They can practically pass off as the same game.

 

They sold 70,000 and 30,000 of people that bought that game were not happy with what they got, and sold it on.

They should be more worried about those that did not like their game after they bought it and what they did wrong to loose so many costumers so quickly.

 

Look at some of the older generation of systems: Atari VCS; NES (Famicom); Master System; SNES (Super Famicom); Mega Drive (Genesis); N64; Dreamcast;

Now look at some of the games on these systems, There are loads of classics - many of which you were probably unable to play upon release. And most* of them you cannot play on todays system (ignoring emulators on the PC for the moment - see Here for why).

I don't know how many games for these systems I missed out on when they were current, but I do know that without the 2nd hand market I would have missed out on a lot more than I did.

Also there are quite a collectors out there who buy old games (look on ebay for how much some of these go for).


*a very small number of these games are available on the Wii's marketplace or get re-made for current hardware but the fact remains the majority of them are obsolete.