Best Buy Breaks Into Used Games at the Worst Possible Time

Hot on the heels of incendiary remarks from THQ and Penny Arcade, Best Buy has decided to break into the used games business. The retail chain will exchange $20 gift cards for games on a rotating list starting August 29, just in time for the release of Metroid: Other M. Best Buy plans to pilot the program at 600 stores with eventual plans to expand that base.

This news comes in the aftermath of publisher THQ’s decision to deny online features to used game buyers in Smackdown vs. Raw 2011. Creative director Cory Ledesma had this to say about the decision, “I don’t think we really care whether used game buyers are upset because new game buyers get everything. So if used game buyers are upset they don’t get the online feature set I don’t really have much sympathy for them.” Used game owners can purchase the missing functionality, but the message is clear.

Popular Gaming webcomic Penny Arcade stirred up gamer ire about used games with a newspost likening used games to piracy (from the publisher’s perspective). Said Jerry Holkins, “The idea that THQ is somehow “disrespecting customers” with this kind of rhetoric misunderstands the situation as completely as it is possible to do so. In a literal way, when you purchase a game used, you are not a customer of theirs. If I am purchasing games in order to reward their creators, and to ensure that more of these ingenious contraptions are produced, I honestly can’t figure out how buying a used game was any better than piracy. From the perspective of a developer, they are almost certainly synonymous.” The continuing argument can still be seen at twitter hashtag #PAgamesdialog.

So good luck to Best Buy as they try to sell honey to angry bees.