Have you noticed that nobody seems to be talking about the scourge of "used games" anymore?

I've certainly noticed quite a bit of quietude on this front. Why, it used to be we couldn't go a day without someone in the industry ranting about the evils of GameStop, and how the "churn" of used games through retail stores was destroying the finances of publishers and developers. Given that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One aren't any different than the previous generation of consoles in terms of how games are distributed, and because high-end games aren't getting any cheaper to make, one would think this discussion would have, if anything, amped up.

And yet: Crickets.

I was reminded of this yesterday with word that game developer Insomniac is teaming up with GameStop to publish its next game this summer, and someone suggesting in so many words that this was an odd alliance.

I've written quite a bit about used games over the years, but I think all that may be coming to a close. We may finally be done talking about used games. Whyzat? Well, it's a whole bunch of reasons.

The Xbox Disaster

You may remember that Microsoft attempted to do away with "used games" with the launch of the Xbox One. (Yeah, they made some hand-wavy claims of players being able to trade games at "participating retailers," but the DRM scheme meant you couldn't borrow, lend, sell them on eBay, etc.—what people think when they think "used games.") The backlash was tremendous. Sony got a standing ovation at E3 for announcing that PS4 would have used games. Jimmy Fallon reiterated this on his late-night show.

Locking down discs with DRM was a massive blunder that forced Microsoft to change course, but the wheels were already in motion. Sony recently said it has sold nearly 36 million PlayStation 4 consoles, whereas Microsoft has said that... oh wait, Microsoft doesn't even report Xbox One console sales anymore. (Recent expert estimate pegs it at about 18 million.)

To be sure, Microsoft made other mistakes that caused the gamer audience to split (hello, Kinect) but used games became a massive kerfuffle, and everyone remembers it. So there's something of a chilling effect on complaints about the used-games biz, because even those who are still worried about it probably understand what a disaster it is if you try to take them away.

Everything Is Going Digital

A recent study pegged the global market for games at about $74 billion, but retail sales account for just $19.7 billion of that. You don't need the numbers to understand this, though, just look around. Indie games are digital, mobile games are digital, time-sucks like League of Legends are digital.

Barring the passage of some law that says consumers have to have the right to resell digital content—which, who knows, might happen and then start all this up again—"used games" simply isn't a concern for these game makers. They have concerns, of course, but not this one. And they represent a much, much larger slice of the pie.

Everything Else Is Pay-to-Win

The last triple-A, disc-bound game I played through was Assassin's Creed Syndicate, last year. Like many action games today, this series borrows role-playing game mechanics: Your character gains experience points, levels up, unlocks new abilities. Many games that aren't RPGs have such features today because players enjoy them, but software makers have additional incentives to structure their games in this way: It allows you to sell items that allow you to advance in the game more quickly. In the case of Syndicate you can purchase in-game currency that lets you buy more and better items immediately, without having to wait.

When I first heard the latest story about a minor racking up thousands of dollars of charges on a videogame, I assumed as you might that it was a free-to-play iPhone game. Nope: It was FIFA on Xbox One. Just jumped in to Destiny and want to level yourself up to match your friends' experience levels? Thirty bucks oughta do it.

When your $60 console game can hit players up for anywhere between $30 and $8,000 after they put the disc in the drive, who cares how they got that disc? Now you're not even talking about "sales" anymore, you're talking about "user acquisition," about getting a new pair of eyeballs and a new credit card number into your customer base. If somebody lends his disc to a friend who pops it into the PlayStation for "free," that guy's doing you a huge favor, depending on how good you are at monetizing that guy when he spins the game up.

This has been much more successful than the game industry's last attempt to wring money out of those with pre-played discs, including—remember, Electronic Arts literally did this—having nude strippers walking around in the game who had censorship bars over their lady-areas if you bought it used. This tactic backfired because it was a punishment. Level-boosters and other pay-to-win mechanics are all carrot, no stick.

I don't have much trouble predicting that most games that come on a disc and go into your Xbox or PlayStation will seek to add as many of these extra money-making opportunities, capturing "whales" as free-to-play games do, over the course of this generation, for as long as "used games" exist. And if somehow discs survive this generation (you never know!), we'll see even more of this. Nobody's talking about used games because the future in which it simply doesn't matter anymore is very, very close.