Until now, developers haven’t had a mechanism or claim to proceeds from used-games sales. SwitchGames members who buy or sell will be able to direct a percentage of their transaction proceeds to a game’s publisher and developer.
“We want to tackle a fair concern head-on,” said SwitchGames founder and CEO Jason Crawford, “and I think we’ve arrived at a practical solution. Current annual used game sales of $2.4 billion are a goldmine for retailers. But neither game publishers nor developers can touch that revenue. SwitchGames is changing that. When gamers sell used titles on SwitchGames they’ll have the option to share a percentage of a used game sale with the people who actually made the game. Like everything else at SwitchGames, gamers are always in control and it’s up to them to decide whether they’d like to cut in developers and publishers.”
Today, SwitchGames also announced a developer contract provision available on its website. The contractual language entitles developers to a percentage of any proceeds paid to publishers by SwitchGames. SwitchGames encourages developers to copy and paste the text into their development contracts with publishers.