Always on the lookout for game deals, yesterday I joined the flock of vultures picking on the festering carcass of my local Hollywood Video store. I was greeted by a huge sign: “Store Closing! Everything Must Go!” Knowing that they rent (or used to rent) video games, I decided to see what bits of gaming flesh might be left on the store’s bones after being picked clean by the local predators.

To my surprise, aside from the years-old stuff that nobody wanted to play (even when it was new), I found a fairly good assortment of new Xbox 360 and PS3 games that hadn’t yet been snapped up. Notable in their absence were any Wii games; either they were the first to go, the store owners are hiding them, or they’re keeping them for themselves. Two items caught my eye: Killzone 2 and The Saboteur, both for the PS3. They were displayed in the New Release section and did not have price tags attached. This puzzled me, since by almost any reasonable definition of “New Release,” Killzone 2 should’ve been off that list six months ago, having been released in February 2009. So, I went to the sales counter to inquire, and was told by the teenage goth with studs in his chin that, if there’s no price tag, they’re not for sale (perhaps the huge sign in the store window lied to me when it said “Everything Must Go”?). “Come back in five or six days,” the counterwaif told me, while not even bothering to look up from what he was doing.

This got me thinking about the ongoing controversy regarding the sale of used games. Those who buy them say that they have no problem playing games that someone else has already played, they’re willing to take the risk that their purchases might be damaged beyond use, and getting them at a discount is always a good thing. Those who don’t buy them say that to do so would be to deny the developers their fair share of the fruits of their labors.

I come down firmly on the side of the buyers, and I’ll tell you why.

Ninety-nine percent of all the games sold in a box are sold by the publishers to the GameStops and Wal-Marts of the world at wholesale dealer price. The retailers tack on the balance of the MSRP (usually $50 to $60) and claim a significant chunk of that as the price of doing business. Even at dealer price, that’s a considerable chunk of change (how many hundreds of thousands of copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 were sold at full price?). So all of you who think that buying used games is keeping cash out of the hands of the talented folks who make them can rest easy; I think it unlikely that you’ll see the Bioware doctors or Will Wright or Cliff Bleszinski or Randy Pitchford in line at some dingy LA soup kitchen looking for handouts in the near future. Hell, the original Doom was released as shareware in 1993, but nobody has seen John Carmack or John Romero trading in their Carreras for Corollas (no, I don’t know what cars they drove, but it makes a nice alliteration, right?).

I’d prefer to own virgin game disks, ones that I touch for the very first time. But I don’t have the kind of disposable income required to make those purchases with any real regularity, so I will occasionally buy a used game from a reputable retailer, provided that a mechanism is in place that will allow me to return it if it’s defective. And so far, every used game that I’ve purchased has worked perfectly (knock wood). After all, it’s in the store’s best interest to make sure that the used games they sell are not scratched or warped or otherwise unplayable. If word got around that your local GameStop sold defective games, how long would it be before they too would have the huge “Everything Must Go!” sign in their window as well? True, sometimes you don’t get the luxury of the original packaging or even an instruction manual. But who really cares about the box, as long as the game’s title is on the spine so that you can find it on your bookshelf? And if I were to ask you to raise your hands if you actually read your game manuals, I’d bet that there’d be very few raised hands in the room.

If I have any problem at all with the used-game market, it’s with the prices that are being demanded by the retailers. A few months ago I went into one of my local GameStop stores (they seem to be springing up like weeds around here; there are two in the local mall alone, one of them one floor above the other) in search of a copy of Rock Band 2; my boss’s teenage daughter talked me into it, and she’s one person with whom you don’t argue. I found a copy in the used collection for $19.99, and I was just about to pick it up and buy it when I found a brand-new copy for the exact same price, mere yards away on the same wall. Why on earth, I asked myself, would someone buy a used copy of a game when you could have a factory-sealed copy for the same price? I’m sure there’s some kind of top-secret depreciation schedule that applies to things like this, and the naïve part of me says that the used-game market gives the store the financial flexibility to buy more copies of the new games, which then become part of the used collection, thus completing the retail circle of life.

But in the end, it boils down to one thing: Greed. Gordon Gekko was right; greed is good. As long as there are people out there who would consider buying a used game for a new-game price, there will be store owners getting rich at our expense. The anti-used games loyalists have the right idea, but they’re targeting the wrong bad guys. Instead of railing against the people who buy them, they should be sharpening their pitchforks and marching on the corporate headquarters of the companies that try to take advantage of the consumer to line their own pockets.

Or better still, just bypass the stores and buy your games from Steam or the Xbox Live Marketplace or the Playstation Network. Each one of these has some amazing bargains for you, and you don’t have to worry about scratched disks or salespeople who risk being fired if they don’t convince you to pre-order something that doesn’t release until the next decade (how many of you actually pre-paid for your copy of Duke Nukem Forever? Don’t be embarrassed; we all make mistakes). Bottom line: there’s nothing wrong with buying a used game. But, like everything else in life, caveat emptor.