=> It is morally questionnable as the buyer is the owner of a game. Same as a car, if I buy it it’s mine. I am not allowed to replicate it (legislation may vary), but I am certainly entitled to sell it.

=> It is outright stupid as Gamestop actually helps developpers. They increase the gaming market and allow developpers to get more money from market segmentation. Take a new hot game. Let’s assume a market model with fans and budget gamers. Without Gamestop, you could sell it either 60$ or 40$. 40$ will get you more sales (fans and budget gamers), and maybe less cash. 60$ will loose you sales to budget gamers, but you’ll get cash from fans.

Gamestop helps you selling your game :
60$ to fans (most of who won’t resell it)
60$ to 50% of budget gamers (who will sell it at gamestop for 20$, effectively paying it 40$)
0$ to budget gamers who will buy it 40$ from Gamestop, but only if it available from other budget gamers who purchased it full price.
Basically Gamestop allowed you to sell your game 60$ to fans and 60$ to half budget gamers. Gamestop increases the value of your game, buy making it a marketable commodity.

My model only relied on the hypothesis (easily confirmed in practice) that :
* many fans won’t resell the game at gamestop, especially as they won’t bother ot will want to keep the game so long that it will have lost market value
* many fans won’t buy it from gamestop, as other venues exist and people like to pleasure of a “new” thing
* some budget gamers will buy the game 60$ as they rely on its 20$ resell value

Gamestops’s margin (20$), the time needed to complete a game is large enough so that the transaction costs prevent a game from being used by an average of 10 users

=> I think this idea is dangerous to developpers as :
* fighting Gamestop will loose you sales (Gamestop creates sales)
* DRM hurts user. They hurt HARD. I got an hard drive burned by them, I hate the hassle of having my single player games temporarily blocked from me if my internet connection goes funny (f… you Steam).
Though I have the money and respect to buy games, too many DRM’s mean I’ll get them from bittorrent, which happens to offer DRM free versions.

a) close to day of release where the early adopters/hard core fans want a copy now

b) later when it is more of an impulse buy as the price has dropped.

even publishers make use of option b by rereleasing games as budget titles. The industry complaint seems to be that the price is dropping too soon. If that is the case then the product obviously wasn’t worth the price it was being sold at, and will be finding its way to the bargain bin soon.

the second hand shops actually do the market a service, by

a) encouraging people to make the initial purchase knowing that there will be some form of secondary market

b) enabling the publishers to avoid producing short runs of old titles (thereby reducing costs), while still keeping their games in the shops.