The proxy war on pre-owned | The Sopa Box

So while the fascist Jim Sterling was off ignoring actual women who have talked about how Abby isn't realistic. Spending 23 minutes of his time on about how it totally shouldn't matter that Abby isn't realistic and people should stop criticising her while getting upset multiple times because another video game didn't fit the claims about history he'd heard from a Tumblr user. The same Jim Sterling who previously was seemingly upset about Quiet. While he was off doing that I the champion of the people actually was on the trail of an actual new scummy little bit of trickery the video game industry is trying to sneak past you.

So pre-owned games sales. The place for people to save some money or for people who can't always afford a full priced release because they may be students or on very low wages or be dealing with other things like expensive medical bills. The AAA industry with its tax avoiding multinationals and multimillionaire CEOs really don't like used games and a few years ago now they waged a war, of a kind, against them in the form of project $10, where portions of games or even online play was locked off on used purchases unless you paid the publishers $10. I say the Publishers because this really wasn't helping the developers, in its release window Homefront was the best selling game that month but 3 months after release Kaos studios who made the game were forced to shut down due to financial issues. So much for project $10 being there to support and help developers. As some-one who foolishly bought the game day 1 without reading reviews just based on how much I enjoyed their previous title Frontlines Fuel of War I can say when I went to trade it in due to not enjoying the game, only a few weeks later, my local retailer was swamped with used copies of the game that just weren't selling with people only wanting to buy new. Project $10 eventually died off as an idea as developers and more likely publishers had found how lucrative more DLC and even Season passes could be plus the possible first ideas about microtransactions or even pre-order bonus DLC.

The death of project $10 was seen and a big win for the used games sales market. The war on used games was over. I'm here standing on the Sopa Box this week to tell you the war never truly ended and over the past few years has seen a new phase. This is less of a full on assault style war and more one of subterfuge and trickery. It's a proxy war on pre-owned that I'm shocked no-one else, not even many of the normal vocal pro consumer advocates have picked up on. The idea of live services, content incomplete games and adding grind, all together these are elements of the proxy war on pre-owned.

Live services are an obvious because often there is the promise of more content to come, in some cases the implication is new content free for all supported by just people buying microtransactions willingly. Sometimes the games might not release in the best state but hey there's the promise of more coming and the game getting better. Thus it encourages players to hold onto their games and not sell them on, especially during the all important release week or month. After all that's when it's deemed the majority of sales will happen and has always traditionally been the more important time in a games life in terms of publishers making their money.

Incomplete games are next and people likely will hear that and be scratching their heads. I mean games don't launch incomplete right? Well some do and this is a tactic that isn't used much but I expect to see happen more and more. A feature or piece of content is held back from the games release and put in later say 2 weeks to 1 month after release. It sounds crazy until you realise that's what happened with EA™ Star Wars™ Battlefront™ 2. On release some of the single player content was held back and the reasoning was allegedly the claim it would spoil or contain plot elements relating to The Last Jedi. Did it? I can't say as I never bought the game. I listened to reviews and saw what it was and noped out of there because after Homefront I did learn my lesson (mostly) about the importance of being an informed consumer. The nefarious little thing in Battlefront™ 2 likely wasn't noticed by most people because of the huge awful anti-consumer elephant in the room in terms of the lootboxes and overall progression system but I spotted it, I remembered it and I'm saying about it now so history doesn't forget about it. 

Taken from EA's own website

It wasn't just Battlefront™ 2 that saw content release post launch as GTA Online being part of GTA 5 and Red Dead Online part of Red Dead Redemption 2 also came out after launch. While you could argued that it was so they could sure up servers knowing roughly the exact number of players with the game based on the sales data it's also entirely possible and I'd say likely the delay in releasing said modes fully was to dangle over the heads of players the potential, the unknown hoping they'd wait just that bit longer to see what said modes had to offer out of curiosity or the allure of what could possibly be coming. With day one patches being the norm seemingly these days to fix critical game breaking bugs it seems like the logical step for AAA companies is to just not complete the game and ship it then and release the rest of it later. I mean EA already did it for Battlefront™ 2 and that was done for the single player mode and it's somewhat surprising to me we've not seen other publishers notice this or try their own version of it, especially in games with shorter single player campaigns where the main focus is multiplayer. It's surprising because I'm sure there are some people out there who blitz the single player campaigns in a weekend or less and then trade the game in the next week as they have no interest in the multiplayer mode. The thing is it's entirely possible other publishers are starting to realise about this and we can possibly now expect content to be cut from a games release only to be dropped say a month after release to try and convince people to keep the game a little longer and help stop pre-owned sales in that all important launch month.

The final method of trying to stop pre-owned sales is kind of the most insidious and while it's also not fully taken root yet it very much could do. The idea of making the game more of a grind to make the experience longer somewhat artificially and in at least one case selling the option to reduce the grind. Initially this might look like normal AAA gouging of the player however I think it could be far more sinister. It's making it so the early buyers can't finish the game as quick unless they pay for that EXP booster which means they can't trade it in as quickly having finished it which help reduce the number of pre-owned copies and as such potentially boost new sales. The really insidious part here is it's not the pre-owned buyer being charged the extra money but the initial buyer, if they are the kind of person who trades in their games towards their next title and regularly blast through games and trade them in quickly after launch.

I entirely expect to see one or more of these methods starting to become more common in the games industry as the push for ever increasing profits, with no end to please fair weather inventors, looks for ways to try and get just a little more money one way or another. At least before the industry's present bubble bursts. But now you know the reality. The War on pre-owned never truly went away it just evolved into a proxy war.

The time will come for the games industry and when it does remember.

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE LIVESTREAMED!