Ebay not helping the war against piracy.
Have Ebay’s recent changes increased the chances of dvd, cd and game piracy?
Well they certainly haven’t helped the fight against piracy, read on for my reasons why.
I am an avid gamer who tries to purchase new titles on or around the release date, normally paying top dollar for them. I will play the game to completion and then jump online with it and make the decision to keep it or trade it. Once upon a time I would take it to my local game shop and get a fair trade in price and swap it for something else and would continue to do so until I get a game that I will want to keep. Now the major stores (Game & Gamestation) have lowered the trade in value of games so dramatically it just isn’t worth it, let me give you an example: Silent Hill Home Coming on the 360, 2 weeks after release date I tried to trade it in and was offered £7 by Game and £12 by Gamestation. They were selling the game for £39.99 new and £35.99 pre-owned, my copy was in pristine condition and was only 2 weeks old!
So the only alternative to get some money back from my games would be to stick them on Ebay. Most of my new games I will put on with a buy it now price but I used to pick up older titles and would sell them on when I played them to completion. This is not financially viable since Ebay ammended its postage fee’s on CDs, games and DVDs.
Again let me give you an example, I bought Disney’s Car’s a couple of years ago for £30 brand new. It has been played a few times but both disc and box are in immaculate condition. If I wanted to trade it in I would get £3 for it which is not very fair considering I have seen a tatty version selling in Game for £20 PRE-OWNED!! So I would normally put it on Ebay with a starting bid of 99p knowing that if it didn’t sell for more than £3 I have still gained more due to the low fee’s and postage costs. Now they have forced all users to sell games without being able to charge p&p, which means if the game only sell’s for £1 I would not make any money from the sale at all and in fact it would cost me about 50p!!! Can you imagine giving someone 50p to take a game from you!
Now this got me thinking, I am now less inclined to buy brand new games because there is every chance that 6 months down the line when its trade in value is only £5 I can’t put it on an online auction because it could end up costing me money!!!
There will be other people in this position who won’t just stop buying as many games, they could start downloading the titles. I love to own the boxes so pirating the games just isn’t an option for me but it will be for some people. This is why I think that Ebay is not helping the industry fight piracy!
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