First of all, let me explain that I am a cheap bastard. Combine this with the fact that I’m unemployed and that my biggest hobby is “Gaming” and you can see that I am a walking personal economic disaster. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an idiot – I pay my bills. Though, honestly, living at home with my mom certainly reduces the amount of bills I have. That’s right, I live with my mom and am an avid gamer (but this is just a “personal disaster” and has little to do with the point of this article). I also don’t drink, smoke or spend what little extra money I have on anything other than movies and video games.
Since the money I have to spend on video games is extremely limited I try to exploit any and all deals I can find (slickdeals.net and cheapassgamer.com are two great resources for doing this). One of the major ways I did this was through trading in my old games and buying used ones. If you’re not familiar, most any big store (Brick and Mortar or Online) now has some sort of trade in program.
I know some people are very against buying anything “used”, but most of these places have a fair exchange policy so that if the game doesn’t work in any way you can get a different copy (as long as you do this in a timely fashion). What this means is that you can get a fairly new game for $5 to $10 less than the MSRP. With games starting at $60, the 8-15% this saves basically covers tax, but its still less than you would normally have to pay.
Given the option of paying full price or 10% less for the same product, what would you do?
I was an avid supporter of the used game market for 2 years, but no longer. Buying used games from these big companies is wrong and is hurting the Gaming Industry.
