New US retailer promises to share used game revenue with publishers

A new US online retailer has made the bold move of offering to share revenue from its used game sales with publishers.

Unlike most high street game stores which pocked all the cash from secondhand sales, EKGaming will give 10 per cent of a title's price tag back to its publisher.

Not only that, but it promises 20 to 30 per cent better trade-in prices on used games than competitors.

How can it afford this? Well, it claims it's passing on savings made by not having a traditional bricks-and-mortar presence.

As for its motive, EKG explained that used sales have fueled the rise of online passes, DLC and digital-only sales, negatively impacting gamers, especially those "who just want to do what they have done since the dawn of the gaming industry some 35 plus years ago; that is buying, selling, trading and collecting physical game media in the form of cartridges, floppy disks and more recently game disks."

It believes handing money back to publishers will help create a healthy "circle of life" between the two ends of the video game sales chain.

CEO Mike Kennedy also argued that gamers will benefit as publishers might be more inclined to take risks on innovative ideas during development if they see more return from the used market.

"Publishers are spending record amounts of cash on new game development," he said.

"This increase in dev costs is steering them in directions that don't necessarily jive with gamers, causing them to take less risks on new and potentially exciting IP's or game mechanics and sticking with tried and true properties that are more of a guarantee.

"We want to share our used game revenue with them so they can continue investing in new gaming experiences without worrying about the negative effects used games could be having on their operation(s)."