There was a time when Publishers and Developers only hated GameStop due to the resale of used games. It makes sense, since the Publishers and Developers in turn lose money on the sales. Many studios have by-passed this by making certain modes, or online functionality only available if the game was new. Even more importantly, some studios skip retail altogether and only offer their games digitally, which for retail stores like GameStop isn't ideal, since there is no way to resell that digital content. Or is there?
Selling used digital content might seem completely farfetched, but apparently GameStop CEO Paul Raines hinted that it might in fact be possible.
"It's very interesting," said Raines. "There are some technologies out there in Europe, and we've looked at a couple that are involved. We're interested; it's not a meaningful business yet. Right now we're not seeing that as a huge market, but I think we're on the leading edge. There are a few companies, a few start-ups, out there that we've talked to that are doing this."
What does this mean exactly? Well it's mostly bad news for Pubs and Devs who counted on the fact that digital sales was a fool proof method of securing sales. For consumers however, it might be yet another great way to access digital content on the cheap, without the need to wait for Steam Sales.
I'm still racking my brain at how this process is done, especially considering when you register a key for a digital game, you become the owner, and to my knowledge, there is no way to un-register that key. It's certainly an interesting move for GameStop, and I really wonder how they're planning on implementing this.
