Pre-OWNED

You. Yes, you. You’re a thief. Well, you’re a gamer, and that means that you probably have some pre-owned titles on your shelf. And according to Sony, that makes you a common crook, unworthy of fully-featured games because you’re too tight to cough up for a sealed copy.

We’ve learned that Sony thinks this way from their recent treatment of Socom: Fireteam Bravo 3 gamers. Apparently, if you buy this PSP game second-hand, you can’t go online unless you stump up $20.

Now, I’m all for measures to stop piracy. Sony have indeed confirmed that illegal downloaders of this title won’t be able to access the online features at all, for any sum of money (other than the price of an actual copy of the game...). This is a good thing.

It is crucial that companies take measures to stamp out piracy, and more importantly, to establish that it is both illegal and damaging to the industry. But should second-hand game owners really be lumped in with the download bandits and punished, too?

Well, no. Despite what the likes of Sony, Microsoft or Activision may tell you, the second hand games industry is actually very beneficial. While it is certainly true that fresh copies are sometimes overlooked for pre-owned games which are $5 cheaper, it is also true that the availability of quick trade-ins fuels the new game market. If all stores stopped accepting trade-ins tomorrow, you could expect to see a huge downturn in new game sales by next week. One of the reasons that downloadable games haven’t yet quite taken off is because you’re stuck with a duff title if you make the wrong choice.

Take away the trade-in schemes and you add a sense of caution and slight uncertainty to every gamer’s next purchase. All but the most established franchises would see sales drops, and this would only further stifle an industry not exactly renowned for breeding innovation in recent years. After all, why buy an interesting new IP when you won’t be able to trade it in if you don’t like it?

Single player games would be hindered, too. There’s less incentive to buy a six-twelve hour offline adventure if you can’t trade it in when you’re finished. Slapping some wonky online multiplayer onto every title is not exactly the brave new world I want to embrace either, and will only serve to undermine the single-player experience if developers are forced to divert their attention.

All in all, the second-hand games industry was created out of necessity. It is there to help cash-strapped gamers fund new purchases. It’s there to give niche franchises a chance to gain momentum (after all, you might try a quirky-looking game on impulse if it’s only $10, and you might buy the full-priced sequel as a result). It’s there because we need it to be. No-one is suggesting that the second-hand book market, or the pre-owned car market, is akin to piracy. They’d be laughed out of the country.

It’s time, then, that the games industry treated the second-hand market with a little respect and realised that it does more good than harm for gamers and developers alike. Sony’s ruthless strategy of charging pre-owned buyers for online access is simply greedy and unfair.

Pre-owned buyers are legitimate purchasers, too, and if games companies want to pursue anyone, it should be the greedy stores which perpetuate the second-hand market, making miniscule offers to gamers and slapping second-hand titles on shelves at huge mark-ups. After all, games companies do own the rights to their titles, and if they stipulated that titles require a small percentage of sell-on money if they are re-sold, the stores would have little choice but to stock them and pay the compensation. After all, if Sony required ‘sell-on contracts’ with stores before allowing them to stock Gran Turismo 5, what choice would they have? This would be the fairest compromise for all.

Fairer than shutting out and victimising second-hand buyers, that’s for sure.