Used games raise prices, threaten industry - Dyack

The money saved buying games secondhand could cost the industry a lot more in the long run, according to Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack. Speaking with GamesIndustry International, Dyack said used sales are actually pushing up the cost of games and threatening the industry as a whole.

"If used games continue the way that they are, it's going to cannibalize, there's not going to be an industry," Dyack said. "People won't make those kinds of games. So I think that's inflated the price of games, and I think that prices would have come down if there was a longer tail, but there isn't."

Dyack said it used to be possible for a game like Warcraft to continue selling over a 10-year life span, but the used market has changed that.

"Now there is no tail. Literally, you will get most of your sales within three months of launch, which has created this really unhealthy extreme where you have to sell it really fast and then you have to do anything else to get money," Dyack said.

Best known for games like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Too Human, Silicon Knights last year launched the licensed action game X-Men: Destiny. The studio subsequently laid off almost half its employees and said it was at work on "one of its most requested titles for the next generation."