Passed Around

Unsurprisingly, games publishers aren't terribly happy with the situation. Several have tried to cut down on the second-hand market through tactics such as EA's well-known "Project Ten Dollar". Others have simply been outspoken in their denunciation, some even arguing that the second-hand market is more damaging and insidious than piracy itself.

Consumers tend to react badly to attacks on the second-hand market, and quite rightly so. It's called different things in different countries, but the concept of "right of first sale" is enshrined in the law of many nations, and in the mentality of every consumer. If you buy something, it's yours, and you're entitled to sell it on if you choose to do so.

Attacks on the pre-owned market are seen as attacks on a basic consumer right - and to some extent, of course, that's exactly what they are.

On the other hand, many savvy consumers are also equally unhappy with the actions of retail chains in this regard. Stores such as GAME and its ilk are arguably abusing the concept of "right of first sale".

Rather than creating a free market for second-hand goods, they create an artificial system in which they cream off a huge profit from each game re-sold, and often undermine brand new sales by placing second-hand copies (which have higher margins for the retailer) next to them for only two or three pounds less. It's an entirely legal practice, but a morally dubious one.

The distinction is important. Few in the publishing or development industries have a problem with, for example, the existence of Amazon's Marketplace, or Play.com's PlayTrade, or with eBay itself. Customers selling their games directly to other customers is a healthy expression of a free, self-regulating second-hand market - and while each of those companies takes a small fee from each transaction, the actual prices are set by the buyers and sellers themselves.

Not so with pre-owned systems at high-street retailers, where the retailer simply sets a price that undercuts the brand new copy while keeping as large a margin as they possibly can - and, of course, giving the customer who sold them the pre-owned game as little money as they can get away with.

That's capitalism, of course, and the reality is that if customers wanted to break out of that cycle, they should start selling on eBay, or on Amazon Marketplace, or on another equivalent service.

Publishers, meanwhile, will be sighing loudly as Best Buy becomes the latest retailer to trumpet such a second-hand service from the rooftops - although whether publishers will ever develop the backbone required to start actually punishing so-called business "partners" who treat them in this way is another question entirely.

It may not even be the most relevant question, however. Reading Best Buy's pronouncements, in the wake of GAME's tough results and announced closures, gave me pause to wonder - just how many GAME stores would be left in the UK if publisher pressure actually forced them to shut down the second-hand business, or simply start running it less abusively? Would Best Buy even bother making games into a serious part of their offering, if they couldn't profiteer from second-hand sales? Would HMV?

It's hard to say - but this, I suspect, is the sword which game publishers feel hanging over their heads whenever the topic of second-hand sales is raised. They hate it, of course - but it's not the power of high-street retail that forces them to tolerate it. On the contrary - it's the weakness of those retail chains, their commitment to games propped up mostly upon pre-owned profits, that stays the hand of the publishers.

Is the games business better off as it is now, with major chains like GAME and HMV selling pre-owned games? Or would it prefer for those chains to be vastly diminished, games relegated to a dusty corner of HMV and GAME itself relegated to a dusty corner of the shopping centre, but selling only brand new games?

Right now, the former is the lesser of two evils - but the fact that any such choice is having to be made at all is another nail in the coffin of high-street retail, because one day, the balance won't be quite so clear.