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Video game developer concerned with pre-owned game retailing

July 22, 2013

A head of the video game developer Ready at Dawn recently aired his grievances with the pre-owned game market — specifically calling out the negative impact that GameStop has had on the industry's creativity and production.

According to an article on vg247.com, Ru Weerasuriya said pre-owned video game retailers are taking everybody for a ride.

"You can't make a living at the expense of everybody else," said Weerasuriya. "Unfortunately, they're [pre-owned game retailers] 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."

But Weerasuriya didn't advocate for the abolishment of pre-owned video games, instead hinting that such retailers should be sharing the profits with the developers.

"I don't think we should stop used games, but we should do something about getting part of the revenue back from GameStop and places like that," he said. "That's not penalizing the consumers; they'll still get what they want. But I don't know who's going to address it."

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