It baffles me why the people who make it big on the bucks we spend to make them big are always quick to put down the ways in which they become big in the first place. Nevertheless, Obsidian Entertainment's Chief Creative Officer, Chris Avellone, has taken a shot at the used games market because obviously used games are equivalent to piracy.

In an interview with Industry Gamers [via GI.biz] Avellone, speaking about the transition of games going from strictly being available retail to being available digitally, says...

"One of the things I enjoyed with Fallout: New Vegas was that digital distribution of the DLC made things more flexible in terms of getting the content done. You didn't have to worry about production times for discs, and so you could take an extra week if you needed that to get things right."..." "Of course, one of the greatest things about digital distribution is what it does to reduce the used game market,"..."I hope digital distribution stabs the used game market in the heart."

Ouch. Harsh words for a huge part of the gaming industry's economic pie right there. Developers have continually been complaining about the used game market eating into profits and cutting out potential revenue because retailers don't give zip back to publishers or developers from any of the used game sales.

The problem is that if you axe out the used game market, all the money and exposure a game gets via being sold used gets axed along with it. Take into consideration that gamers who don't play online, don't buy digitally, who have a strict budget, who are frugal, or would rather test a game out when it's available for only half-price are the ones who end up being pillored in the cat and mouse game of brick and mortar retailers trying to earn an extra buck from used game sales versus devs trying to get an extra cut of the action.

That's not to mention that if digital sales start to hurt the used game market, where do you think most gamers who originally bought their games used will turn to next? If you guessed piracy you probably aren't wrong.

I doubt Obsidian even thinks about the fact that maybe most people who didn't buy Alpha Protocol or Fallout: New Vegas brand new and ended up getting the games used are potential fans that might turn out to be day-one buyers for whatever else they have cooking up. In short, never knock the market that could potentially make you billions down the road.

In the meantime, Obsidian will continue to do outsourcing and contract work until they can manage their own IPs, with Avellone saying...

"Our eventual hope is that we can stockpile enough resources to release our own titles digitally. Smaller games can be very satisfying projects to work on, and it would be great to do that. But it's going to take time for us to get there; we want to make sure we do it right."

You can check out the entire interview with Obsidian's Chris Avellone over at Industry Gamers.