With DRM being the talk of the town for some time now, publishers have become more vocal about piracy. But publishers' intent to limit the used game market has come to light in recent months as a by-product of all the DRM talk, and an increasing amount of big-name companies are going on the record with comments regarding the used game industry. The latest publisher to speak out is Atari, as it has said that used game stores are "extremely painful" for the industry.

Two key Atari executives—CEO David Gardner and president Phil Harrison—spoke this week at an Atari event in London about the ways in which second-hand sales are hurting their games. "Second hand game sales represent consumer choice and desire," said Gardner. "Obviously, it has economically been extremely painful for the industry... the publishers don't benefit." Harrison continued, reinforcing the stance. "There's no doubt that second hand games sales has a macro-economic impact on the industry and a lot of people get miserable about it," he said.

Gardner went on to point out that games were getting more "network centric," and post-release content was crucial to getting the most out of a game and helped to mitigate used game sales. However, Harrison noted that the key was to create games that "don't get resold, that don't get traded and that's perfectly in line with [Atari's] future strategy so we're not that concerned about it." Given the trend toward putting incentives in games to discourage used game sales, one wonders how quickly those "don'ts" become "can'ts" for the end consumer.