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avaeryesterday at 9:26 PM1 replyview on HN

Maybe you think gaming/media companies are greedy and should make less money. But if you want the industry to continue in the current state, keep in mind the price of games needs to be adjusted:

  price *= (total game sales / avg player count)
If there's a million sales but only 10 thousand people playing at a time, the price of the game needs to be multiplied by ~100x, because these copies can be shared, and the sales would be divided by 100x if the copies can be efficiently shared. The modern internet would make this buttery smooth to do (companies that make this easy will pop up overnight).

I'm not arguing either way, but this is the back of the napkin math to consider, and how that would ripple across the industry, for better or worse.


Replies

sciencejerktoday at 7:31 AM

The kinds of buyers who purchase pre-owned "used" games often CANNOT or WILL NOT shell out $70-100 for a new game. Social peer pressures might impact this (hey poor kid, do you really wanna lose your friends?)

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