Morality of used games

A couple of weeks ago, I set off from my house with a backpack full of games I knew I’d never play again. My brother had agreed with all of my choices, and we’d had them sitting in a box, waiting to be disposed of in any way possible, for a long time. This was stuff like Ape Escape Pumped & Primed, Pokemon Battle Revolution, games we either picked up in a bargain bin or as a well-intentioned gift. Maybe a few that seemed like a good idea at the time (Star Wars Force Unleashed, Ridge Racer 7). We’d tried selling them to our friends, through a yard sale, and we just couldn’t find anybody willing to give us any decent price for them.

        So I took them to the one place I knew would be forced to take even the worst game off of my hands: GameStop. I looked at the pile of games, and I said to my brother: “I almost feel bad for making them take these games. I’d refuse, if I were them.” I apologized when I went in, and the guy (the manager, I think) laughed. I unpacked all the games, he rang them in, and the total came up to around $90. If you buy a used game when you trade something in, they give you an extra 50% credit. New total: $134. The catch: I had to use all the credit right away.

        So I bought Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood used, which was 100% worth it. Then I bought Final Fantasy Tactics A2, also used. With $70 left, I couldn’t think of anything to get, and ended up getting Dead Space and Dead Space 2 - both used. I didn’t really want Dead Space 2, given that I haven’t played the first, so I asked my brother and we agreed to return it in exchange for a Portal 2 pre-order.

        This was definitely a great deal for me - I got rid of a box full of junk, and scored four games in exchange. But does that make it right? I got, literally, dollars and cents for most of the games. I got Arc the Lad: End of Darkness for $10 in a bargain bin, and they gave me $0.37 for it. That Ape Escape game got me $0.45. Pokemon Battle Revolution was worth about twenty bucks, and Yoshi’s Island 2 was worth $15. All of the games I sold them will be sold for a much higher price, the profits going solely to GameStop. The three games I bought used didn’t contribute anything to the developers beyond what they got from the first sale. Some people like to make the argument that “used game sales drive new game purchases” - yet GameStop gave me $45 just for buying one single used game from them. I could have just bought a $10 used game from a bargain bin, and gotten that bonus credit. There are no restrictions on it, except with pre-orders I think. You think they’d be doing that if it didn’t make them a profit?

        So, in short, I may be a bad (or at least selfish) person. I made a profit for a large corporation, and I contributed nothing to the people who genuinely deserve the money for the games.

        edit: I traded in exactly 30 games, if I counted the receipt properly - so an average of $3 each