I don't really consider Alpha prime dead when meridian just had a fantastic sale on it.

Really? Used sales have been around as long as there have been games to sell. And yet, the industry has been making more and more money each year. It passed the movie industry a few years ago. Exactly how are used sales killing the industry again?

I'm kind of curious abouth that one myself...

Whenever you plan on buying a PC game, you should know what you're dealing with. You should know if your PC is up to snuff when it comes to run it, where you can get it the cheapest, what vendor you can trust, and what sort of protection the game has.
Someone used going to the movie as an example of why you should not have to do research. I feel that this is a very flawed argument. When you go see a movie, the theater has the means to make it look and sound good, and if the movie craps out, you get a full refund. It's kind of like console games; you have all the required hardware to run it, since the game was made to run on this one piece of hardware that everyone who has a PS3 or 360 owns.
With PC gaming, a lot of more risk is involved. Your computer may be too slow, may not have a high enough Shader Model, a powerful enough graphics card, ect. ect. There might even be another reason why it doesn't work, like bad drivers, a piece on the motherboard that frizzled out or lack of hard drive space. Not to mention that several activation programs a game might have could be horrible, horrible things, like TAGES or StarForce.
When you buy a PC game, you know the risks. You must research it, or be left with a $50 piece of plastic that fails to work. If you refuse to look before you leap, you're just being foolish and reckless.

It's just dumb the gaming industry has become so complicated and greedy. I remember all you had to do was boot up your 486 and with a little configuring your new game was ready to play. You liked it or you didn't, no internet to tell you if you liked it or not. No unlocking key codes required. Just fun.
Not this who's stealing from me stuff. Back then even game designers were flattered when people pirated their games. They could tell by the amount of "replacement" manuals sold versus games. All in all it's just a big chess game.

The whole "used games are killing the industry" is just the latest bit of complete and utter bullshit that some game companies have been coming out with. Used game sales have been around since the very beginning of the gaming industry, and the right of first sale has been something every industry has had to be aware of for centuries (and is a basic right associated with any sale of goods). This is just a few execs whining because when their companies release games at high prices and with little replay value quite a few of them end up being resold. And for some reason that's shocking and horrible in their eyes. The entire complaint should be placed right along such thoughts as "people not being forced at gunpoint to buy our products is killing the industry."

My thoughts exactly and that last sentence of yours sums it up quite nicely.
Nevertheless, it would be interesting to ear from somebody who thinks otherwise on how second hand sales are 'killing the industry'.

Your games will never be completely under you control. Even if you buy a game on a disk only the physical product is yours, nothing stored on the disk. It's kind of like buying a coaster. Even if your games have no DRM you have no legal rights to them.
GOG is a lot like Steam because you are buying a subscription and your account can be terminated at any time. You also can't resell your game on either. There is a small risk involved, but if the service is making money you probably don't have much to worry about.
Steam is still buggy and uses too much memory, and I don't really like using it. What a lot of people don't know is that games can usually be launched without Steam running by running the game executable buried in the Steam folder (based on the games I own).
Nobody likes DRM, but I would rather deal with Steam activation than securom activation.

You're wrong.
The IP upon which the game files are build are not and will never be yours, but the game files themselves are yours provided you're using them in accordance to the EULA (i.e. to play the game)
And this is neither here or there, because it's pretty clear what ekj7 means when he mentions control, and he clearly doesn't mean control over the IP but control over the ability to play the game whitout interference from DRM schemes.
Please tell me you're joking :)

because each used sale ends up as being a point for piracy instead of counting correctly.
remember, they said many people had played Assassin's Creed, but it only sold so many copies, well how many of those copies were resold, or shared between household members? it's ridiculous.
piracy this, piracy that, I smacked a pirate with a baseball bat.

I don't think they're "killing the industry" but they certainly are unfair to publishers and developers, and I wish they would go away. Know why? Because there is no loss of product quality from new to used when dealing with media.
When you buy a car and then sell it used, the buyer is getting a lesser vehicle than you got originally... it's had wear and tear, cosmetic damage and does not have features newer cars do. Same thing with a lawnmower, a TV, whatever...
A piece of media on the other hand is exactly the same... the game experience, the movie, whatever... the original buyer is getting the same game the second buyer is. This difference means a secondary buyer is getting the complete game experience without giving any money to the original developers and publishers and there is little to no incentive to do otherwise.
In a medium where smaller dev teams are constantly going out of business and the PC as a platform is suffering from lower sales and a general air of disinterest, it is important we support developers and publishers by purchasing games in a way that benefits them for their hard work.

So? Why is that a concern for anyone who's bought the product? In your entire argument you ignore two absolutely key points. First, and by far the most important point, once a product is sold the original creator no longer owns it, the buyer does, and is free to do with it as they please. Reselling it means the creator doesn't get to make as much money? Too fucking bad, it doesn't belong to the creator anymore, they get no say in what's done with it. The second key point is why people resell items: they don't want them anymore. If your products are hitting the resale market so quickly that they're taking a big cut out of your initial wave of sales then perhaps you should try to make a product that people see value in keeping for longer than a week.
If a dev team goes out of business because they aren't able to recover their initial investment before the market is flooded with used copies then perhaps they should have created a product that people saw value in hanging on to for a bit longer. Their business failure is not the customer's problem. No one has a right to make money off of what they produce; they only have the right to try to sell what they've produced. If not enough people are willing to buy their product because of what else is also available on the market (including used copies), or simply because their product is not worth the asking price for most people, then tough shit. Welcome to the real world that the rest of us have to live in.

If you're invested in the industry continuing to prosper and more PC games being made, you care about developers.
You don't own media/software, you license it. If you want to buy a game, own it and do whatever you want with it you can do that, but it would cost you millions and millions of dollars.
Well, our medium consists of a lot of different game styles... some last a long time through multiplayer or mods, and some are shorter, more focused cinematic experiences. You're basically saying one deserves continued sales and one doesn't, which is silly.
I agree... if you can't generate interest in your product, tough cookies. That has little to do with our debate though... I can agree with you on that and still say I support the eradication of the second-hand market for games.
The issue here is media's differences from traditional physical retail product and ownership. If you're not going to acknowledge that difference in the discussion then it's a pointless debate.

Without second hand games, some people wouldn't be able to play those games.
Some people can't afford to pay £30-£40 for a new game, but they can afford half that. They lose out on being able to play it when it's released, but are able to play it 6 months later for a much reduced cost.
Every developer gets hit by 2nd hand sales. You have to focus on the potential sales available, and make your budget reflect that. If you're worried about the bottom line, reduce development costs. If you can't reduce your costs by enough to make a good profit, then perhaps you aren't making the right product.

You are focusing only on raw data, not on anything else. A retail game is a physical product, subject to wear and tear, the same as any other physical product. I've bought plenty of used games in my time, and have also gotten a few that flat-out did not work, because the disc was scratched. Likewise, manuals, covers, etc., are subject to damage just like anything else.
A used game also does not have features that newer games have. Actually, it doesn't matter if it's used or not. No copies of Quake 3, either used or new, magically get the features of Crysis, just because that has been developed in the mean time, so I'm not really sure what your point was there.