Gears of War 2 Logo

Believe it or not, one of the biggest goals of game developers is to make money.  Not helping developers achieve that goal is GameStop, with its huge used game market.  Every used game bought is one less new copy of the game bought; developers and publishers don’t receive profits on any used game sales.

But, so far, the only way publishers and developers could fight back against used game sales was to not sell their title to GameStop, which obviously since so many copies of their titles are sold at GameStop locations.  So what is the solution?

Well, let’s turn to Epic to get that answer.  In the upcoming Gears of War 2, Epic is bundling a little coupon into every copy of the game that will allow you to download five, slightly tweaked Gears 1 maps.  Oh, one thing: the coupon is only redeemable once.  Do you see the brilliance of this plan?  Anyone who wants these maps will have to buy a new copy of the game to get them because all used copies will have already used codes.

Now this method has already been tried by many developers; I can remember getting a one-time 48 hour Xbox Live trial in my copy of Crackdown.  However, none of these incentives have been enough to warrant spending an extra $10 to buy the new copy of a game.  Essentially, who wants to buy a 48 hour trial card for $10?  With Epic giving five maps which are, at this time, exclusive to those people who have the coupon, they are giving gamers a big enough incentive to warrant the extra cost.

Hopefully developers everywhere see the logic in this strategy and start giving goodies out to those of us who buy new copies of games.  Hey, we’re supporting you guys; I think we deserve a little something-something.