The head of Ready at Dawn Studios, Ru Weerasuriya, does not appreciate video game retailer GameStop's preowned game sales policies, saying that they negatively affect both developers and consumers. Weerasuriya, whose studio is busy at work creating The Order: 1886 for the PlayStation 4, sounded off on the retail chain to GamesIndustry International:
"I think the problem is right now there are retail outlets that are really taking everybody for a ride. You can't make a living at the expense of everybody else. Unfortunately, they're not just making a living at the expense of developers but also the consumers because the consumers will see less and less games come out if developers can't get revenue to make more new titles and keep going as a business...I think this is something we need to curb on the retail side. We're putting the consumers in an awkward spot and we shouldn't have to. Why should they be the ones to deal with a flawed system? They are the guys we do this for. They are the ones who should be able to benefit the most from being able to buy it."
What is interesting is that Microsoft tried to implement an unpopular policy that would cause gamers to have to pay a fee for using preowned games, but have since bowed to pressure and reversed this position. This fee would have allowed publishers and developers to profit from used game sales, instead of getting cut out of the process by retail chains. Sony will continue their current policies on used games, meaning that retailers such as Gamestop will continue to get 100 percent of the profit from used games. Weerasuriya believes that if developers offered a wider range of price points for games, then gamers would be more willing to buy full-priced games and thus reduce the used games quandary to more manageable levels:
"Think about it this way. What the consumer wants is choice. It doesn't mean we have to kill the $60 game, but you should have the choice for other price points. I would love to go home and play a two-hour game at night right before I go to bed. You play the game, get a full experience and a full story and go to sleep afterwards. I love that idea, but I also love the idea of playing the 15-hour game that I have to pay more for. I think there's room for different tiers. And I think the market is already breaking those out,"
We'll just have to wait and see how the future of used games evolves in these increasingly digital times.