I'll repeat myself: It's not like I sell my game to Gamestop and suddenly 5 used copies appear out of thin air. Like Hodgman said, it's one copy, one user. Only one person can use that disc and play that game at a time.

In fairness, you're right there is a difference. Used games are actually worse than piracy if we use money here.

New game sale: $50

Used game sales total: $175

Total sales: $225

Publisher profit: $25

Gamestop profit: $125

So Gamestop makes 5x as much as the publisher. Now let's imagine that instead of buying used games, the people pirate %50 of their games and buy 1/2 new.

New game sale: $150

Used game sales total: $0

Total sales: $150

Publisher profit: $75

Gamestop profit: $30

Well, I see how that sucks for Gamestop, but even people pirating %50 of their content is better than having a used market. The publisher makes 3x more if people pirate half of their games than if they get them used. Bear in mind, the average used game passes through six owners over the course of its life.

It's pretty darn difficult to defend used games.

I'll repeat myself: It's not like I sell my game to Gamestop and suddenly 5 used copies appear out of thin air. Like Hodgman said, it's one copy, one user. Only one person can use that disc and play that game at a time.

In fairness, you're right there is a difference. Used games are actually worse than piracy if we use money here.

New game sale: $50

Used game sales total: $175

Total sales: $225

Publisher profit: $25

Gamestop profit: $125

So Gamestop makes 5x as much as the publisher. Now let's imagine that instead of buying used games, the people pirate %50 of their games and buy 1/2 new.

New game sale: $150

Used game sales total: $0

Total sales: $150

Publisher profit: $75

Gamestop profit: $30

Well, I see how that sucks for Gamestop, but even people pirating %50 of their content is better than having a used market. The publisher makes 3x more if people pirate half of their games than if they get them used. Bear in mind, the average used game passes through six owners over the course of its life.

It's pretty darn difficult to defend used games.

There are so many things wrong with this comparison that I'm not even sure where to start, but on a fundamental level you're still ignoring the basic fact that, with used games, for each copy of the game, only one person can have it at a time. If we assume that games have, for instance, no replay value, then the comparison might start to make sense (but not your numbers; you've left enough variables undefined that they don't actually mean anything), but this is an incoherent assumption.

Here's another pointless comparison: games that can be played more than once are one million times worse than piracy.

I could pirate a $50 game and play it once. The publisher would (in some vague sense) be "losing" $50 dollars. But what if I bought a game only once and played it one million and one times? Then the publisher would "lose" $50 million dollars. The true criminals are those who dare to think that buying a game entitles them to play it more than once!

Now, this doesn't make any sense at all, because the price of games includes the assumption of being able to play a game more than once; a game that I could only play once after buying it would be a different (and inferior) product, so it's very likely not worth the same to any given consumer.

Just so with games that can be re-sold: with such games I have the option to a) keep a game and play it forever if they like it and b) give it or sell it to someone else if I don't want it anymore. This is something that I know in advance, when I'm paying for the game initially.

Remove any or both of these features and it's not the same product anymore, so we can't assume that it has the same value. Any economic comparison that doesn't factor this in doesn't actually accomplish anything.

only one person can have it at a time

but not your numbers; you've left enough variables undefined that they don't actually mean anything

I'm using pretty well know estimates. Publishers make about %50 of the retail sale value on average. Gamestop makes about $10 on a new game. They make about $20-25 on used games.

I made that example to illustrate a point. Most people who buy used games use the "But I can't afford new games!" defense. Fine, but that's what pirates often say. I'm pointing out that it's better for the industry for you to never buy another used game, as they make as much money on used as piracy. That is a fact you cannot escape. Either buy new, or go grab a torrent.

Don't like that used games are the exact same thing as piracy? That is not my problem. The people buying used games are contributing the exact same amount of money into the publishing houses as if they just downloaded it. And when they buy used, they have less money to buy new.

People who say "If you can't afford to buy a game, you shouldn't play it" have a fair point. Especially when one considers the plethora of quality free games and sub $10 games on GoG and even Steam. But it applies to used just as much as piracy. Buying a used game does not one more thing for the industry. If you have $20 to buy a used game, then go hit up the year old discounted new games. Failing to do so because of a sense of "I want to play the newest stuff and screw the developers" entitlement, is a pirate mindset.

If we assume that games have, for instance, no replay value,

That's a really bad assumption to have as a part of any argument. Many games have replay value, that's a given. So it's hard to draw any conclusions relying on an assumption that is plainly wrong and not useful. So I can't even understand why that assumption leads to giving strength to BladeOfWraith's comparison. And yes there are unknown variables in his comparison, but since when do we throw our hands up in the air and go 'oh well, there are unknown variables, so anything we do or say is pointless'

Under that assumption (which, we both agree, is inaccurate) it is perfectly accurate to equate buying a game, playing it once, and then giving it away to buying a game, playing it once, and then giving away a copy. Without that assumption (or some other assumption), though, the two situations are no longer identical. That's all I meant by that.

I could pirate a $50 game and play it once. The publisher would (in some vague sense) be "losing" $50 dollars.

The publisher would be "losing" $50 in a very real sense, and you would be committing a crime.

No, and yes. No, they wouldn't actually be losing anything except relative to the case where I would otherwise have bought the game for $50. Piracy is a big deal, and no one is disputing that it's a crime. But not every act of piracy translates to lost revenue: it's perfectly possible that someone pirates a game to try it before buying it (and otherwise wouldn't have bought it at all) or simply pirates a game that they wouldn't have played at all otherwise. That doesn't make it any less illegal, but it does render useless any direct equation of piracy to lost revenue.

The license to play allows you to replay the game, I don't understand what you are going on about. I suppose you are making a hypothetical argument. It's true that I have to pay twice if I go and watch a film at the cinema twice, not that I'm personally someone who does that, though I know some people will watch a movie two or three times if they love the movie. They must pay each time.

Well, you do know what I'm going on about as evidenced in the rest of your post, and it's simply this: the license also allows you to resell the game, or at least it could/used to. In the same sense that a game that can only be played once is a different product (with different value) from a game that can be played over-and-over, a game that can be resold is a different product from one that cannot be resold, and consequently is (at least for some people) of different value.

Well to say the comparison doesn't actually accomplish anything is defeatist and I wonder how any of us get anything done, because nothing can be done perfectly. So many things that we do, we do inadequately.

The question is not and never has been whether the comparison can or should be made approximately. BladeOfWraith made a direct comparison that had all of these implicit assumptions, and then used very specific numbers. I did the same thing with my (very stupid) comparison regarding replayable games: the point is that if you assume equivalency where there is none, it's possible to derive anything (it's the principal of explosion, really).

It's only defeatist to give up at this point. The appropriate thing to do is to instead acknowledge that your comparison is approximate, come up with some reasonable (evidence-based) bounds for how the comparison actually works in practice, and carry this uncertainty through to the end of the derivation. Only then is it possible to (begin to) make sense of how much revenue would be gained or lost in different situations (sharable games, unsharable games, games with different kinds of piracy protection, replayable games, etc.)

Or, we can just assume that any arbitrary equation is always perfect, and we end up with nonsense like this:

Don't like that used games are the exact same thing as piracy?

Hint: they're not. To start with, one is generally illegal, and the other is not.

I guess second hand books, VHS's and DVD's are just piracy as well (read: no, they're not, and people comparing the re-sale of discs to piracy are just plain wrong)

If the good is a physical object, it can be resold. That's the law. Reselling books, DVDs or PS3 games is a right that everyone has. It's a perfectly sensible and long-accepted doctrine, and it's culturally ingrained. You cannot argue against the reselling of a physical good.

If you don't want your games to be resold, then you can bundle them with online activation and single-use keys in order to circumvent physical property rights.

Current console games have chosen not to do this, which means there's no reason you can't resell them.

The legal default in our society is that physical goods can be re-sold. Publishers have chosen so far to package up console games as physical goods, and thus they've chosen to give the consumer the right of resale.

Xbone is changing the medium so that this is no longer the case (the physical disc no longer represents the good, it's just a single-use ticket that you can redeem for the good).

That's fine, but it it's shaking up existing culture, so some negative reactions are to be expected.

n.b. you'll still be able to legitimately re-sell a physical xbone disc, it just won't have very much value compared to a 360/PS disc, seeing that it doesn't have as much utility (as it doesn't physically represent the game). Someone who wants it for the utility of being able to pay the license transfer fee and install the data from the disc, may still want to pay you a few dollars from your physical xbone disc

(...)his argument boils down generally to books/movies having more alternate streams of income than games where games rely much more on initial sales. Also books/movies are moving away from physical also, so I'm not sure that comparison holds much water in the sense that they are moving away from it in similar fashion.

I think many of us (certainly including me) have fallen into a trap of false equivalence. Buying a used game is like piracy, in that someone gets a copy of the game without the developer being paid. It's also unlike piracy, in that it has generally been legal, and it doesn't change the total number of people who own the game at any given moment. Piracy is like theft, in that it's illegal, and it causes someone to have something that they didn't pay for. It's also unlike theft, in that the pirated "object" itself continues to remain in the possession of the legitimate owner. Used games are like used movies, in that the important thing being shared is the data, not the physical media. They're also unlike used movies, for the reasons you're referring to.

The truth is that argument by analogy is not really a meaningful form of argument, in a strictly logical sense. It rests on saying that A is like B modulo membership in some set C, but if membership in set C is enough to make some claim about A, mentioning B is actually superfluous. If it isn't enough to make the claim about A, the argument is not valid. Argument by analogy is only really useful for exposing contradictions in one's thinking, e.g. believing that A has some property because it's a member of set C, while simultaneously believing that B, also a member of set C, does not have that property.

I guess second hand books, VHS's and DVD's are just piracy as well (read: no, they're not, and people comparing the re-sale of discs to piracy are just plain wrong)

If the good is a physical object, it can be resold. That's the law. Reselling books, DVDs or PS3 games is a right that everyone has. It's a perfectly sensible and long-accepted doctrine, and it's culturally ingrained. You cannot argue against the reselling of a physical good.

Total Biscuit did an interesting video about this. He's got a bit of a bias toward digital distribution as he's mostly a PC gamer, but his argument boils down generally to books/movies having more alternate streams of income than games where games rely much more on initial sales. Also books/movies are moving away from physical also, so I'm not sure that comparison holds much water in the sense that they are moving away from it in similar fashion.

I disagree with that premise only because Wii and by extension the Wii U have done an excellent job selling extraordinarily old games on their systems. Plus with Steam, GoG, and Gamefly the publishers at least are still making quite a bit of money off of older games. Plus his argument to me is not an issue with used games but an issue with revenue sharing in the industry and being slow to adapt to a changing environment.