Electronic Arts recently announced the controversial decision to make buyers of its pre-owned sports games pay an extra $10 to gain access to online gameplay and other features.  Now another publisher has sounded off about the evils of used games and how the industry has to take drastic action to prevent customers from "taking advantage" of gamemakers.

Blitz Games Studio's co-founder Andrew Oliver stated that used games are slashing the revenue to publishers and developers by 75 percent.  Blitz is best known for producing Dead to Rights: Retribution, Karaoke Revolution, and a series of SpongeBob SquarePants titles.

When asked about piracy, Oliver responded, "Arguably the bigger problem on consoles now is the trading in of games.  I understand why players do this, games are expensive and after a few weeks of playing you’ve either beaten it, or got bored of it so trading it back in to help pay for the next seems sensible when people are short of cash."

Oliver's estimate of 75 percent losses comes from his assumption that games are traded in on average 4 times (the real figure is likely not this high), which he says would mean that the developer/producers' cut would be cut in four (game retailers typically keep all the proceeds from sales of used titles).

He concludes, "So while retail may be announcing a reasonable season, the money going back up the chain is a fraction of what it was only a few years ago.  This is a much bigger problem than piracy on the main consoles."

Oliver says that a solution is to sell consumers digital copies of games through outlets such as Valve's Steam Client.  In doing so, he said customers can effectively be banned from reselling their games.

Is his statement fair, or illogical?  One thing's for sure, gamers will be sure to chime in on this one.