Piracy, no question.

If you buy a game used, you save money and you could later buy another game full-priced. Also, reselling your game allows you to earn money, which again you could buy games full-priced. And also, as stated in the article, gamers who bought a games used could use the saved money on buying DLC.

Pirates, on the othert hand, buy no games. No money is brought into the circle. That's why the numbers on revenue loss are borked. You can't count a pirated game as full-priced loss, if the pirate wasn't going to buy the game in the first place, but it looks like the industry will never cease to use that argument. I'm not going to defend piracy here, but what the industry makes is nothing more than false propaganda to get the media on their side.

"Even if we forget about the numbers that those two categories of people account for, it's wrong to assume that every person who purchased a used copy would have purchased the game at a full price."

And it is also wrong to assume that everyone that bought the game at full price would have done so if not for trade in credit of previously sold games, or for the ability to sell it on after finishing it.

At least money from a 2nd hand sale goes towards buying new games or consoles. Nobody ever sees any money from a pirated copy. (Well apart from pirates that sell bootleg dvd's or hdds loaded with games)

Used games. Why? Well, both give no money to the developer, of course. But the difference between pirates and used game buyers is that the used game buyers definitely had the intent to purchase the game. To use a hypothetical but common situation, a retailer can persuade the potential buyer to buy a used version, and what would have been money in the developer's pocket goes to the retailer instead.

Furthermore, people who trade in games don't necessarily then buy a new game with their money (this is brought up quite a bit as an argument in favor of used games); indeed, many just go on to buy used games, and a cycle is born.

A lot of pirates never intended to buy the game in the first place (or, at least, would never buy it fully priced), so it's not necessarily lost money; you can't prove that there was ever a potential sale there. Some did intend to buy, but then again, some pirates also go on to buy a game after they've pirated it (yes, that's actually not very common and people use that excuse for justification a lot, but it does happen).

So I say the secondhand market, to some degree, hurts developers more. That said, they're both pretty awful and I despise piracy in general.

Used games hurts the industry more

Pirates pirate games because they like free shit. In the event that the pirates cant pirate, they wont go out of their way to buy the games anyways as their too cheap ass to fork out their own money.

Used games buyers on the otherhand, has the money and would buy the game new given they cant get it used.

As an example, yeah sure, anecdotal but what you gonna do?.. I use to buy used games for my PS3 because I want to save a few bucks. But if I cant get it used, I would usually end up buying new. Now, I had a DS and I downloaded a bunch of DS games. But if i couldn't download those games, I wont give a shit about buying those DS games and never would.

EDit: Yes, I do like free stuff and am now too cheap ass to buy luxury shit given the economy.

I disagree. Every used game I ever bought (and it's a few) I would never have bought new, and the likelihood of new copies of said games being at the price I bought them is extremely low. So the industry hasn't lost a cent off me, because with no used game market I wouldn't have bought the games. And knowing I can sell games at some future time to get back some money is sometimes is part of my personal justification for spending money on those games that I do buy new.

I borrow games off friends and family members and they borrow off me. Is that evil now too? I have 3 gamers in my house, should we each buy a copy of the same game to keep developers and publishers happy? After all game sharing is tantamount to used game trading. How many people do developers expect to play each copy of a game that's sold new? If I live a lone with no gamer friends and I buy a game that only I play, then sell it to someone else how is that different to me living in a house with 3 gamers who each play one copy of the game? Are developers going to put DNA tags on discs and in consoles so that only the person who first touches the disc gets to play the game without having to pay an extra fee?

I dispute the validity of both the revenue loss figures. (piracy and used game sales) The assumption being made is that every pirated game or used game sale = a new game sale lost. But as in my case it's simply untrue. Those games I bought used I bought because they were B or C list games for me: games that I may want to play one day, but only if I can get them cheaply.

Don't even get started on job losses. What crap. Video games are a non-essential industry, and skilled developers and other IT professionals can readily get jobs in IT industries that are far more important to our lives and well being. So I shed no tears for the number of people who could have found jobs in the gaming industry but had to "settle" for IT jobs elsewhere on the relatively small % of sales that the gaming industry are maybe losing due to used games. IT jobs have been pretty recession-proof from what I can tell. My friend owns a small IT company with 300 employees spanning 2 countries, and he wants to expand his workforce by at least 10% right now, but they aren't getting the skilled people applying.

People who ONLY buy used games are cheap arses. But I figure the gaming industry gets its pound of fles out of me, so I have no qualms about stacking my games library with a few used games.

And now they have online pass, and soon there will be online activiation required for all games, once activated the game won't be playable on any othe3r person's account without paying for another activation.

So companies can stop crying about used games.

Neither hurt the industry in any significant way. Piracy's real damage is minimal (the constant refrain here is that the number of "paying customers" who are turning to piracy is small, out of the total sample of piracy).

Used games actually help the industry. That a used market exists serves somewhat as an insurance policy against buying a game you dislike. If you dislike it, you have the option of reselling it and recouping your losses to an extend, so that you might pay $20 for something you hate altogether and play only 2 hours, rather than the full $60. If that insurance policy runs out, suddenly you have a $40-$60 crapshoot in your hands, and consumers will start spending less money on riskier games

Short-sighted idiocy leads to all these "online passes." Any executive who thinks "online pass" is a good idea should be suspended without pay until they re-take economics classes.

clearly Zynga

Used games, cause its making Gamestop rich.

Piracy.

At least in the case of used games they got some sort of investment back, whereas piracy is just theft of the game without paying anything for it, although in theory one is as bad as the other, but then again, very few games are worth it new.

Used games = someone had to buy it new to begin with. Whereas piracy, one copy can be played by thousands if not milions, so considerably smaller profit for the developer.

Im sorry but i cant for the life of me understand how piracy has less of an effect than used game sales on the industry???

Used game sales, and the money that is involved there usually finds its way back in the industry. Most gamers who sell games back to retailers use that money to buy more games, im pretty sure this is the most common scenario. Very seldom will you find people taking that money and going and buying something completely unrelated to gaming with it. Now you could argue that was a lost sale...but really how on earth can we really know that? I could argue then that because they couldnt sell games back to retailers it actually prevents them from buying new games which would oddly enough also be a lost sale. So i dont see the point in arguing what if's we should rather base our opinions on things that we know. And what we do know is that gamers use used game sales money to buy more games, which is a good thing.

Piracy on the other hand, has a very small positive impact on the industry...which i would put down to free marketing, and possible chance that the gamer goes out and buys the game or maybe buys the sequel. However for the most part, people who pirate are indeed gamers, and you will find that some buy games as well and some dont. The point is that they are gamers, and they see value in games, but its become way to easy to pirate games so they just rather pirate than go buy, even if they can afford it. I find that a lot of the poeple who pirate games can actually afford it, its just not really an option because apparently its ludicrous to pay for something you can get for free. If it wasnt this easy a good % of people who pirate would actually go out and buy those games, maybe not all but some.

Main point: revenue is better than no revenue at all.