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Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack Says Used Games Hurt Developers
In a new interview, Denis Dyack, the outspoken head of Eternal Darkness and X-Men: Destiny developer Silicon Knights, claims that used games "cannibalize" new games sales, threatening the health of the industry.
Speaking with Gamesindustry.biz, Dyack spoke about his concerns regarding used games. Dyack commented, "There used to be something in games for 20 years called a tail, where say you have a game called Warcraft that would sell for 10 years. Because there are no used games, you could actually sell a game for a long time, and get recurring revenue for quite a while. Recurring revenue is very key."
He went on to say, "If used games continue the way that they are, it's going to cannibalize, there's not going to be an industry."
Interestingly, Bobby Kotick, the head of Activision, which published Silicon Knights' last game, X-Men Destiny, takes a more measured view of used game sales, saying "What we've tried to do is to really support our audiences and, you know, when you talk to players, they like the idea of having a currency. They like the idea of being able to take a game they no longer want to play and use it to get a credit to buy new games."
[Full disclosure: Game Informer is owned by GameStop, which sells used games]
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