Major publishers all uniformly hate used game sales since they don't get a single dime from such transactions. To compensate, online passes have become the norm, so anyone wanting to save a few bucks by buying a game second hand will still have to fork over some cash to the publishers if they wish to maximize their experience.
But what about people who want to play a game for just a short duration of time, like those who rent them? It's easily to guess that publishers are not fans of GameFly and its business models either. So online passes hurts its customers as well.
Actually more so; it's one thing to ask someone who bought a game used to pay an additional $10, but someone who only has it for the weekend? Wouldn't that just frustrate customers, enough to possibly drop the service?
Well according to co-founder Sean Spector, when speaking with GamesIndustry, the impact is "very little." And that "it's probably frustrating for some [customers], but the overall impact is negligible."
Certainly a surprise answer. Given the rapidly changing landscape of the video game industry, the service is managing to hang in there, though the real question then is for how long this will last.
And when asked how his company will continue to face the future, Spector didn't have much to say otherwise:
"Unfortunately, no one has a crystal ball, and since I am not privy to the hardware companies' decisions, we have to proceed on the console side as we have always done — listen to our customer and give them good value for our service.
We have made a lot of investments in digital for both PC and mobile and will continue to do so. The good news is there are more gamers today than ever before."
