HMV Says “No” To Resident Evil Trade-ins

TSA Staff 23 Comments

The reaction from the news that Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D doesn’t let you erase your save game continues.

First we were like really? and then we were fuming and then we heard that EB had pulled the game from store shelves.  Well, now UK retailer HMV has spoken out.

VG247 is reporting that the store will not take in copies of the game from anyone wishing to sell it on, although they will stock the game new for its release this Friday.

The reason, to “avoid any potential customer disappointment for those purchasing a pre-owned version.”

Our review of the game is here.

Ironically, everyone (including us at first) seems to be missing the fact that Super Monkey Ball 3D does exactly the same thing…

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Related stories from TSA

Capcom Explains Mercenaries Issue
EB Games Pulls Mercenaries 3D From Shelves
Review: Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D
I’m Sitting Here, Fuming About Capcom

23 Comments

  1. I can see why, can’t blame them really. The blame is firmly on Capcom

  2. The way to respond is to only buy it after hefty price drops, seeing as you’re buying something with no resale value.

    • Excellent idea. I would expect the price to drop quite quickly as well due to save-game/re-sale situation.

      • 3DS games haven’t really started dropping yet, have they?
        And this is arguably the second biggest game title on it, after Zelda…
        I wouldn’t expect the new price to drop too quickly, especially as stores know that they won’t be able to make more money on preowned sales to offset the loss due to the pricedrop.

  3. Was super monkey ball made by capcom to?

    • Nope, Sega. The difference being RE:Mercs actually looks decent ;)

  4. “Ironically, everyone (including us at first) seems to be missing the fact that Super Monkey Ball 3D does exactly the same thing…”
    My favourite pet peeve – There’s no irony in the above statement, just coincidence.

  5. I wonder what will happen over the next couple of weeks as more and more people realise that this is happening.

    • Surely Capcom and Nintendo have not overlooked the backlash that this is going to cause.
      Bad publicity is still publicity I suppose

  6. I am going to say that RE:mercs and Super monkey ball are just isolated cases of poor choices. However if i see another game that implents this then i think Ninty may be behind this.:( I’m not really suprised that HMV are rejecting preowned copies. I am actually hoping that both games will bomb just to teach Capcom and Sega a lesson.:(

    • To be fair, given how poorly the 3DS has sold so far, I can’t imagine either shifting many copies anyway

  7. Love the way this is working out for Capcom, truly, serves them right. Let’s hope this is a lesson for future developers.

  8. im against this but it is a very clever way of protecting sales, if marquee titles like zelda, mario and maybe even the vita lineup take this route you can say bye bye to second hand gaming.
    a personal nightmare of mine but it makes sound business sense

    • but the thing is, they have no right to do that.

      we own that copy when we buy it, and one of the rights we have with that copy is legally transferring ownership to another person, either by lending it, selling it or giving it away.

      the publisher loses the right to have any say over what we can do with the title once we’ve bought it, when it then becomes our property, so long as we remain within the law.

      they’re actually breaking the law by denying us our legal rights.

      • I think you’ll find that you are still entitled to resell the title, it’s not the publishers fault if the resell value isn’t high, it’s your fault for buying it.

        I don’t actually think this, I’m just playing devils advocate because nobody else was pissed with the whole PS3 Linux situation, which, when looking at your post, is oddly similar.

      • While i am sympathetic towards the situation they are not breaking any laws. If you buy this it is your own fault. You can still, sell, lend, give away…nothing has been taken away in that respect.
        Owner locking is a sure fire way to end second hand markets but it is also a sure fire way for us to only get games we know 110% are going to be worth the full amount of the price paid….hence sale losses overall.

      • ok, so this particular scheme is in all likelihood legal, though morally it’s a pretty shitty thing to do.

        my point is they do not have the right to prevent us selling the games we’ve bought.
        admittedly, i expect this is probably legal, they’re not locking the whole game, just the saves.

        but titles that do lock the whole game to a single user, which seems to include most pc games these days, i believe are breaking the law by violating our rights.

        this is all part of the same issue.
        them trying to take our rights away.

        the only difference is the severity of their actions.

        but if they do completely prevent us from selling our games then they are breaking the law in my book.

      • The hard truth here lass, is that capcom don’t care if you don’t think it’s morally wrong. They publish the game, they can see fit to do as they please;. Aswell as that, they’re not preventing you from completely flogging it; only HMV has so far comfirmed to be not taking back 2nd hand copies in the UK so far. Also, as roy and Uhyve pointed out, it’s the buyers fault it the resell is low, as they bought it in the first place.

    • thing is though is that they wont lose a penny in sales, say for example Bioshock vita is released to universal acclaim, a true masterpiece, they owner-lock it to prevent second hand sales, itll still sell bucketloads, people wont want to miss out on such a good game and any boycott made in anger at the lock wont amount to a hill of beans, we of the outraged internet are a tiny minority.
      our non-purchase simply wont show up even as a blip on the radar.

  9. As I wrote in an earlier post, this is actually not the first time with DS games. Apparently the same problem is on one of the Final Fantasy DS games and more DS titles.

  10. and the moral of this story is, nobody should buy this game.

    and i suspect monkey ball isn’t getting the same attention this title is because hardly anybody cares about that game compared with a resi title.

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