Dave Perry is obsessed with the issue of used games. His rants on the subject have been numerous, and now he’s implicated GameStop and its ilk in the game industry’s recent drive to pursue digital distribution. Claiming that his own digital service Gaiki has already made folks at GameStop “hate” him, Perry has basically implied that such services are the company’s own fault.
“I’ve made so much money from their store, so I can’t be mean to them about that,” says Perry, talking about Gaikai. “I can be mean about their used game policy, because they’re pushing the industry to digital distribution perhaps faster than it would have gone.”
Perry will likely never shut up about used games until the world has gone fully digital, but I really wish he’d can it. We get it — publishers love making vast amounts of money and they feel cheated that they can’t continue making cash off something they already sold once. Boo hoo, poor publisher.
Once again, I’ll reiterate what I’ve said many times before — it’s a fact of life and a part of business. Capitalism is great for the games industry when it’s using the system to make a fat profit, but sadly you can’t just cut out the bits of capitalism you don’t like. Take the good with the bad, the bad in this case being that GameStop has a right to sell secondhand products, just like car dealerships and charity chops can sell used cars and clothes.
I wish publishers would just sit tight and wait for the digital age. We all know they’re going to rape we customers with the fury of a thousand suns once they achieve complete market control, so the least they could do is shut up and take the hit while consumers still have a choice.
