New Start Up Video Game Retailer Will Share 10% of Used Game Profits With Publishers

[theclaw]

$20 less than MSRP is suicide. Hell, $60 list price would mean they'll have to pay $40 for Lair trade-ins. Lair.

And we all know popular opinion on that one. Sony has never lowered their suggestion.

[jb143]

I don't even think publishers own the copyrights to the games in all cases. The studios do in many cases. How the heck would that be handled? Leave it to the publisher to get the money to the "rightful owner"? Or does it even matter? And would they even have the financial infrastructure in place to accept the 10%? Not that they'd refuse free money but it could be like trying to pay your $75 speeding ticket to the cop when he hands you the ticket or trying to pay a bill 10 years in advance...you'll be met with "sorry sir, you can't do that" or "we can't enter that into our system". I just don't see this working on so many levels. It actually sounds more like a case of "there's no such thing as bad publicity".

[theclaw]

Yup that's one big tangle web. Sometimes neither publisher or studio... Let's not forget the good Crash Bandicoot games.

[Bojay1997]

I don't even think publishers own the copyrights to the games in all cases. The studios do in many cases. How the heck would that be handled? Leave it to the publisher to get the money to the "rightful owner"? Or does it even matter? And would they even have the financial infrastructure in place to accept the 10%? Not that they'd refuse free money but it could be like trying to pay your $75 speeding ticket to the cop when he hands you the ticket or trying to pay a bill 10 years in advance...you'll be met with "sorry sir, you can't do that" or "we can't enter that into our system". I just don't see this working on so many levels. It actually sounds more like a case of "there's no such thing as bad publicity".

That's actually a really interesting point. I work for a large entertainment company that has a game division and my office is one that used to be occupied by the head of a licensing division and random checks literally show up daily still to his old mail station and there is apparently a whole group of clerks who spend hours every day trying to figure out why certain checks have come in and there are apparently hundreds of checks a weeks that can't be traced right away and require more follow-up. Even after all that, sometimes they just can't figure it out and the checks are either sent back or allowed to expire. I can only imagine a game company would have a lot of trouble figuring out why a bunch of small checks were coming in from this company. Frankly, in the video rental heyday of the 1980s, Blockbuster and other companies paid licensing fees directly to a rights entity set up by the major studios that would handle the accounting aspects of dividing up the money, but I would imagine the game studios aren't going to set up anything like that for a tiny company that isn't going to generate any significant income.