Publishers have 2 problems to deal with. Piracy and 2nd hand sells. If you fix the first problem 2nd hand sells will go up... Pirates won't pay more than they have to anyway. If you fix the second problem you may lose customers that may have purchased your game. In fact by killing second hand gaming you could be hypothetically increasing piracy. This is because you are attempting to take away something that the public has forever had. The ability to remove curmmy/ finished/ beat/ all done games from there library and get them to others. Small games don't have this problem. 5-10$ games people know won't resale for much and thus keep them on a cell phone till it breaks. But when you have a downloadable 40-60 dollar game. It would of had resale value if it were a disk kept in good condition. Now you would have to sale the whole console and somehow protect your own information that was left on it. Plus if your console dies you could be out of luck. It keeps looking worse and worse.
For the most part I believe you companies complain a lot. If someone finished playing your game. Why shouldn't they be allowed to give it to someone else pending they don't copy it first. You are being a greedy association when you try to force 2nd hand gaming down the path of no return. However when you are being an upright company trying to prevent stealing by piracy. It is legitimately looked at.
Now to likely the real answer to your problem of second hand games. If you really want people to buy and keep your game. You need to make a really good game that sales well. I know people who still have there final fantasy 7 game because they liked it soo much. You need to not make crappy 40-60 dollar toss away games. As these are the ones most likely to be sold to others over and over.
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