Here’s Why Bethesda Blocked The Evil Within 2 Resale, Not For Profit But Accuracy

[dar0ck]

It’s been in the news for a while now that Bethesda is threatening legal action against a fan of theirs who is selling a sealed copy of The Evil Within 2 on Amazon. However, Bethesda’s Pete Hines has explained the company’s decision on the Evil Within 2 resale, and it’s not because of profit.

Apparently, the main sticking point of the resale wasn’t that he was selling the game at all, but how he described the product. He was selling the game as “New”, which it wasn’t in Bethesda’s mind despite not being removed from its packaging and its seal. It was used, and not new, because it had been previously owned, and therefore in Bethesda’s reasoning should have said that it had been previously owned.

Amazon allows a number of different tiers for used products that people are attempting to resell on the website. While “new” is definitely a tier, there are also a number of used categories that could be the same thing, such as “mint” or “near mint”, and those could also be used.

The reasoning is that there’s no way for anyone to tell that it’s new, and for all anyone knows he could have taken the game out, played it, then put it back in and shrink-wrapped the package to market it as new. Various retail stores often have specialized cases or labels for used games, but there’s no such way to guarantee that with used games sold online, since it’s going from one gamer to another.

Pete Hines says that despite the kerfuffle over the Evil Within 2 resale, Bethesda does not want to completely block the sale of used games. Accuracy over the Evil Within 2 resale is the only thing that they apparently have on their minds, so if you want to sell a Bethesda game online, make sure that you put it in the “used” category, even if you haven’t touched it.