(i'm sure not everyone in the industry agrees with my views..)
People in various industries tend to see consumer rights as a threat, and view whatever government market interference that helps the bottom line as a good thing. Big surprise, people tend to support what makes them richest quickest. However, because (at least under the free-market principle) our rights to own and trade property are inherent rather than granted to us of the benevolence of our corporate masters, it truly does not matter whether people in industry consider our rights to be a good or a bad thing. We may as well say that if the government does not find our rights to free speech, association, press, etc beneficial, we should not have them. Whether a right should be taken away or not has nothing to do with whether or not someone out there feels they could be making more money or have more power were this right taken away.
In fact, some rights are actually intended to restrain and hinder certain entities. For example, free speech, press, association, etc are in the US Constitution for the purpose of preventing government power from expanding to the point of tyranny. This right is to positively thwart the government and make it
less efficient and powerful. Similarly, one purpose of property ownership rights is to prevent private entities such as corporations and entrepreneurs from exerting tyrannical control over our lives. Another purpose of the free market principle is to prevent weak, poorly managed, ineffectual, useless companies from tying up financial resources and crippling growth in necessary areas.
My hope is that developers & publishers we be free to trade there produce without fear of some secondary market springing up that undercuts sales that we *could* have been making..
Translation: You are against the free market, period. You should be intellectually consistent and be against the sale of
all used goods, despite your counterfactual belief that video games do not depreciate on the open market.
I just don't see things getting better on a software development front with regards to costs & unless something drastic is done to change the current business model at least at some point in the future, I fail to see how it can continue to be a viable business..
If it's not a viable business, it should go out of business. If it comes to the point where it is impossible to make a video game and make a profit, what that means, as much as this will sadden you and me, is that our culture and society no longer needs a video game industry. However, I doubt this will ever happen. Innovative, clever, resourceful companies will always find a way to make video games and make money. Video games are fun. People will always like them. It may be that the market can't sustain too many games that cost $25m+ to make, and that's just the way the market works.
Companies go bankrupt because they spend more money than the market actually values their product. Now you may think that games with $20m budgets are a beautiful, special thing that human society actually needs. However, if you as a developer blow $20m making a game, and you're only able to sell ~125K copies at $60 a pop before people lose interest in buying the title new for full price, it is you, the developer, who has failed to produce a valuable product, not the government who has failed to take away someone else's rights or the consumer who has failed to exercise them.
Now you've complained before that it's tough to figure out how to produce valuable product. According to free market principles, and this is the dog-eat-dog principle everyone hates,
companies that aren't smart enough to figure out the market don't deserve to be in business. Take Ford for example. Ford is way, way, way more important to our civilization than any self-important video game developer. Ford's an American icon, part of American history, part of our whole mythos and culture. But you know what? They're poorly managed, they don't know how to deal with unions intelligently, and they can't figure out how to make a car that people actually want. As a result, their market share is falling like a stone, they haven't made a profit in ages, and they're rapidly selling assets. And as much as I love cars and don't want to see Ford disappear, I can tell you straight-up that if Ford can't figure out how to make a car that people want to buy, they don't deserve to be in business. I don't want the government to step in and force used car dealers to give Ford cash kickbacks on used sales. I don't want consumers to be forbidden to paint "4 sale $5000" on the windshield and park their F150s at the end of the driveway. When the government starts taking away individual rights to keep various people in business, like they did with the DMCA, we are in a lot of trouble, because once governments start taking away rights, they don't really see any limits.
