Green Man Gaming, an upcoming digital distribution service is trying to bring something new to the digital market space by introducing digital trade-ins which essentially allows gamers to trade-in their digitally purchased and downloaded games.
These trade-ins will be in exchange for credit which can be used to avail discounts on future purchases and the game code will then be resold to another customer for a ‘pre-owned’ price, with publishers and content owners getting a piece of the pie.
Gian Luzio, COO for Green Man Gaming said,
Previously the minute you had paid and downloaded your game it had no resale value. This is extremely expensive for the gamer and does not encourage the consumer to try new genres or franchises. Our leading edge technology gives downloaded games a value that gamers can trade-in at any time.
We will pay significant royalties to the publisher each time the game is traded in perpetuity.
Game publishers have criticized the used used game market very often since it does not add any money directly in the pockets of those who create them which can be concerning for those who are struggling to profit or are barely breaking even. This service could help monetize the pre-owned market for publishers who have been making a lot of noise about the used games market lately.
There is a possibility that such a model will not remain unique for long and could easily be adopted by the likes of steam and other digital providers.
Green Man Gaming will launch with 400 titles at the end of March, with 2000 titles available by the end of the year.