Trade-Bait: An Immoral Choice?

Having built a reputation over the years as the ‘Bargains Guy’ on PALGN, I often receive questions from people asking me where the cheapest prices for games are. While I’m always happy to help and give advice, there’s one thing I do not tolerate – people who go out and purchase cheap games as ‘trade-bait’. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the term, trade-bait is essentially games that you purchase at a cheap price for the purpose of trading in. For example, JB Hi-Fi recently had a deal where you could trade-in two Wii games that were not on their exclusions list and get Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City for free. Now, this game was also on sale for $75, but there were a few people who managed to score some $15 games at Target the week before Christmas, and as such got it for $30.

So, what’s so bad about this? To be honest, I have nothing against trading. Not everyone has money to spend or wants to create some massive games collection, so these trade-in deals are a great way to get more value for your dollar in that regard. However, there are people out there who take advantage of these offers. Whenever a store has a clearance sale, they’ll purchase multiple copies of the same game just because it’s $5-$20. They’ll likely never play them, and just take them directly into JB to collect their prize. I’ll be blunt; it’s absolutely disgusting. Because they’re taking all the cheap sale items, it prevents others who actually want to play the game from getting their hands on a copy. Instead, they’re forced to pay full retail price or simply miss out. People sometimes dismiss that debate by saying “oh, well it was an old game anyway and it got crap reviews”. That’s just a pathetic excuse. I’ve played plenty of games that didn’t necessarily perform very well, but I still loved them and was entertained for dozens of hours.

Another thing, retailers are becoming aware of the whole trade-bait issue. GAME and EB Games didn’t used to have too many restrictions concerning trade-in offers, but now they have an ‘eligible trade-in’ list which specifically lists which games will be accepted for trade-in. Notably, EB Games still don’t even give you the game for free, instead offering a discount of $70-$80. As for JB Hi-Fi, they don’t offer Nintendo DS trade-in deals anymore, and even upped the PS3 trade-in requirements to three titles. As more and more people adapt to the trade-bait scheme, retailers will slowly make it difficult to grab a decent bargain. In the end though, it’s not going to hurt the people who go out and purchase multiple copies of Mass Effect for $10, it’s going to hurt those who legitimately play a game and then want to trade it in so they can play something else.

Moving on to a new point, it really ticks me off when people try and make a profit out of clearance sales. Sale forums, auction sites, newspaper advertisements, all these places are a breeding ground for the penny pinchers. Let’s take PALGN’s own Game Exchange forums as an example. I recall Target having a sale on Tigerz: Circus Life – it was a fairly new release at the time and it was on sale for something like $15. One week later, a forum member tried to sell copies for $30 plus postage. Again, it’s absolutely disgusting and shows the individual has no morals. That said, I’m pleased to have witness some generosity on the forums as well. There have been dozens of instances where members have gone out and purchased cheap games, only asking for a few dollars profit. I can understand a $5 profit for each game, they did take time out from their day to go to the shops, and let’s not forget travel expenses.

I can think of one more moment where I’ve been disgusted by people. When Fable 2 was released JB Hi-Fi were selling it for $79 and EB Games had a deal where you could trade it in and get $87 (or $95 if you had an Edge card). It was very sad watching people exploit the offer just to make a small profit. Sadder still was how the game was selling out everywhere on its first weekend after release, with all the cheap copies at JB gone and people being forced to pay full price elsewhere. Its okay if you bought the game and found you didn’t like it or whatever, but when you go exploiting deals like this it’s very shallow.

Okay, I’m going to be perfectly honest here: this entry makes me somewhat of a hypocrite as I’ve used trade-bait once before. Mid last year I purchased Battalion Wars 2 for $24. I don’t consider this trade-bait as I did intentionally want to play the game, sadly I just never quite got into it. A few months later, JB had a trade-in deal for Disaster: Day of Crisis and at the time I was little strapped for cash. I remembered looking through a GAME catalogue and seeing it there – Bratz: The Movie for $29. I checked JB’s exclusions list and discovered it wasn’t listed, so the next day I went out, bought it, and immediately traded it along with BW2. I felt a little silly trading in a Bratz title, and I honestly feel guilty about doing it. I did the very thing I thought was immoral, and now some kid is probably going to pay $45.95 for a pre-owned copy of Bratz: The Movie thinking it’s a great deal.

Regardless if you’ve used trade-bait in the past or not, it’s a growing issue in the gaming community. As I said, we’ll slowly see the deals become less appealing which ruins it for everyone, and it also prevents people picking up a cheap game they would have otherwise never played before. So the next time you’re thinking about grabbing a title for the sole purpose of making profit or trading it in, ask yourself if it’s the moral thing to do.