Used Games and the Industry

It seems to be a growing trend on the internet to shun and attack people who buy second hand videogames. Why is this?
Apparently, us used buyers hate game developers. We exist for the purpose of bankrupting the people who make nice things that we pay money for. Or at least, we're apathetic enough that we don't care if they go hungry just so we can save a few pennies buying games cheaper than retail price.
Where did this belief come from? At a guess, I'd say the major publishers started it. At the very least they definitely propagate it. Unhappy with the size of their already lucrative profit margins, the corporate giants decided to crack down on people who aren't giving money directly to them, by cutting content from games and releasing one-use codes with new copies to get that content online. It's like if a car manufacturer put a thumbprint scanner on their in-car stereos just so that people who didn't buy the car directly from them can't use it. And just like that comparison, the lengths these publishers go to so they can lock people out of part of their product is not only an expense to them but an inconvenience to the consumer, in an age when convenience is one of the most marketable things in the world.
So to them, people buying used games rather than new is a "problem". Or at least, a threat to their gargantuan profit margins.

Ignoring the fact that the preowned market and the major publishers, not to mention the huge rental industry, have all thrived and grown for well over a decade without destroying each other, let's assume there actually is a "problem".

Why do we buy preowned? Personally, I rely on them as a way of catching up with older games I missed (of which there are many).  People who aren't me rely on trade-in credit from their old games. And some of us just can't afford the stupidly high prices that are demanded for brand new titles these days.
If we assume that these people are genuinely unwilling or unable to pay full price for games then if anything this continual resale of games is nothing if not profitable to the publisher once you realise how paid downloadable content works and add in the always important yet unmeasurable value of brand image and how it makes people more inclined to pay more money in future.
Brand image is more valuable than money, folks. Being able to get a high quality product cheap makes people more inclined to buy the next one for more.

But the burden of blame- if there is anything to blame for- is not on the player for wanting to resell his used goods or buy things cheaply- any halfway decent businessman will tell you that you should sell unwanted assets and buy things cheaper when you can, so I'm not going to defy these ideas just to fill the pockets of someone who would do the exact same thing.
 Let's pretend we want to "solve" the "problem". To do that, we need to understand it.
Why does the preowned market exist? Where do used games come from? Obviously, they come from the people trading them in. Why do people trade games in? Because the money or store credit they can get for them outweighs their desire to still own the game.
In other words, if a game is being sold preowned, it's because at some point between it being bought new and ending up on the shelf in front of you, someone decided they no longer wanted to own it.
If within a week of releasing a game, a substantial percentage of the people who bought it are filled with a burning desire to be rid of it, then there is probably something wrong with the product.

Now hold tight because I'm about to propose a solution that will rock worlds and blow minds.
What if someone released a game that was so well made, that people wanted to actually own it for more than a weekend? What if people bought that game, and they liked it enough to not only play it for more than a day, but to put it up on their shelf afterwards with the intention of playing it again in the future?
Once upon a time games like this were made. You may call them holy grails or ancient relics of a golden age long past. I call them "decent games". If you were to take but a single step into my room, then as you gazed upon my shelves you would see many examples of games, not only weeks but years old, that I once bought and never traded in. Games that were never sold on to other players at the expense of a new copy. Games that were so good that I actually hold onto them by choice. Games I like owning, that I keep so as I may later re-play them. Games that mean far more to me than the trade-in credit I could get for them.
Oh, and Spyhunter 2. I keep that out of circulation as a public service. Call it first-world humanitarianism.
But I digress.
If more games were released that people would be anything better than ashamed to own, preowned sales of those games (for the first several months anyway) would drop dramatically and new sales would be forced to take their place.

Publishers shouldn't blame customers for terrible sales. Customers should blame publishers for terrible games.


This is Carl, still looking for a catchy sign-off.