GameStop is a far smaller player in this issue than Amazon and similar sites riding the long tail. If you're really fussy, about it, go after the big problem and not the small.

One chain of stores doesn't control the number of copies of a game in circulation, and most stores that sell games do not sell pre-owned copies.

There are a number of reasons that a new copy may be preferable to a used one, most significantly that you can't get a used copy of a game very easily for a little while after its release, and the quality of a new copy is guaranteed, while a used one is not. The re-sale price of a game tends to be poor on the part of the gamer (the stores do make a profit on re-sold games, after all), and it gets much worse as the game ages. Additionally, the savings of buying a used copy are negligible until the game has been on the market for a while anyways.

A player who resells games quickly after release (to get the best price, or play the most games with the best value for their money) is likely to buy a lot of games, almost certainly more than he or she could afford without resale. I'm sure that the market analytics of this are pretty complicated, but Player A puts $60 into the pockets of each of three developers when buying 5 new games, regardless of resale. Would Player A be able to do so without resale? And would Player B buy enough new games to offset this if there were no used games to buy, eliminating Player A's ability to buy so many?

Older games simply won't get shelf space in a retail outlet, especially if sales aren't stellar. How long could I have stumbled across Soul Nomad at Best Buy? If it doesn't get shelf space at the store, I'm not buying it because I won't see it to even make that decision. And with the pace of game releases, stores are not likely to keep very many games on the shelves for very long. If you're GTA IV that's not going to be an issue for you. But what if you aren't? If you're a smaller studio, are you better off not having shelf space anywhere, but getting a cut of all zero of your sales?

If developers want to add additional value to a new copy, then great, that sounds like a good way to address this issue. But I'm uncomfortable with the idea of buying an incomplete game or being forced to continue to pay for a game that I've already bought, especially in the age of buggy releases fixed by endless patches.

To close this rant-y post, I'll say that there exist market incentives to trade in used games, and a sizeable market for that behavior. As Hodgman explained, game studios can curtail this behavior in their licenses, but don't. So those incentives aren't going away from a game production/distribution angle. The analysis of the effect on studios is muddy, but it doesn't seem to be catastrophic, as game re-sale has been around for a long time. Rather than trying to eliminate business models that utilize those market features, game studios would be better off finding a way to make buying a new copy more attractive, if only because the former isn't going to happen.

You know I'm surprised that GameStop et al. aren't publishers for indie games. Go figure.

It could also be argued that selling the physical disc is legal and in no wise transfers the license. Though, if you read EULAs, though I could be a few years behind on this, it DOES allow you to transfer the license IF you provide all the materials that came with the game.

I've contacted the user via PM regarding his deleted messages which I assume are an attempt to privately converse with moderators.

I have advised him that we have a policy of not deleting topics unless they are spam or are made of up material not suitable for the forums, and that once posted he no longer owns or controls the direction of a discussion.

WAIT -- he's NOT deleting those posts -- sending an email on the mod's list, as someone has turned on "moderator preview indefinitely" for this user, meaning none of his posts appear visible in the forums without moderator approval.