The second hand market has long been the sworn enemy of the games industry. Taking a practically new game, and putting it up at £5 cheaper than a brand new copy, just a few days post launch, stores like Game and Gamestation have been capitalising on the bargain hunting nature of the British public for years. So successful has their tactic been, that new companies are jumping on board with each passing day - HMV, and even certain supermarkets are now starting to offer pre-owned games for sale, and buy games back off their customers.
This creates a problem for the games industry, as the developers and publishers only directly profit from the sale of first hand games. For pre-owned copies, 100% of the revenue goes straight to the shop you bought it from.
So, in a way to differentiate between new and old games - and offer an extra incentive to people who bought first hand, many developers started offering games with redeemable codes inside - allowing whoever bought the game first hand - and only the first owner of each copy - to download an expansion, or an extra level, for free.
One of the chief adopters of this policy has been EA, who launched "project $15" in 2009, in an attempt to ensure that they got at least $15 from every game sale - no matter whether it was second-hand, or brand new. However, in recent weeks, this new policy has been causing a few problems over in the US of A, where customers have been getting rather upset that they haven't been getting the downloadable content that's advertised on the box - to the point of taking legal action against GAME.
To try and avoid a similar situation in the UK, the retailer has made the decision to stick a sticker on the box of games that contain downloadable codes which can only be used once - which will at least allow the customer to make an informed decision. You can either to buy the game brand new, so that you can use the redeemable code; or buy the game pre-owned, spend less money on the game, but miss out on £12 worth of free downloadable goodies. It's a tough one.
Of course, if games were cheaper in the first place, there would be less reason for the second hand market to exist, and games would sell more copies brand new. A new approach has been needed from the industry on pre-owned sales for a long time. Cheaper games, combined with single redemption download codes would go a long way to solving the problem.
