With Electronic Arts and THQ both offering premium services to the original purchasers of their products, Take-Two CEO Ben Feder recently stated that his company is currently exploring ways to participate and benefit from the pre-owned market as well. Though Feder acknowledges that the resale of copyrighted material is protected by law, he does believe that developers and publishers should benefit from those sales in one way or another.
Speaking at the G7 Think Equity conference last week, Feder stated that “we think the used game market is large, it’s an interesting market and something we should participate in.” Feder was unable to specify whether an “online pass” system similar to the premium services being offered by EA and THQ is currently being considered.
Over the last several months, more and more major publishers have begun to take a stand against the sale of pre-owned games. EA and THQ have already implemented methods to make the purchase of pre-owned games less attractive to consumers, while Activision-Blizzard has indicated that it will begin to focus more on providing post-release DLC in general to draw in revenue. In the past, Ubisoft has also indicated that it is working on methods to benefit from the sale of pre-owned games, though this system has not yet been implemented.