Does the purchase of used games hurt the gaming industry?
Ask yourself that question, and perhaps five of your friends — you will more than likely get a mixed bag of answers. David Breban, a British programmer behind the open ended space-trading game ’Elite’ seems to think used games sales do in fact bugger the industry. Braben’s reasoning behind his view adds a new twist when answering the question at hand: “The shops are not giving us a way of distinguishing between pre-owned and new. So the shops are essentially defrauding the industry… We’ve got a lot of retailers eating our lunch and refusing to sell full-priced games. I’ve been in a shop where I’ve tried to buy a copy of a relatively recent game, and I’ve taken an empty box off the shelf and they’ve given me a pre-owned copy. That, I think, is disgraceful. Not holding stock of new games, substituting them with pre-owned games at the same or much the same price… That is really destroying the shelf-life of our games.” Most game shops we visit keep the ’pre-owned’ titles on a shelf cle
