The fix is in
If, like me, you spend your news reading hours avoiding anything coming from the general direction of Washington, DC you will have likely missed a recent change in legislation that may have some interesting effects on the gaming world. About 96 years ago the Supreme Court decided that vertical price fixing, when a manufacturer sets the price at which a retailer can sell the manufacturer's goods, was uncompetitive and violated anti-trust laws, as of late June that was no longer the case. Our conservative majority Supreme Court now holds that agreements between manufacturers and retailers regarding the minimum price at which something can be sold is not per se anticompetitive and should be judged by the rule of reason by the local judiciary.
So what does that mean for gaming? What possible effect could a manufacturer's ability to set a (reasonable) minimum sale price for it's goods when sold by resellers have on you?
Internet retailers anyone? Hit the jump for some gaming manufacturers take on the issue, and the potential effects this could have on online deep discounting.
The fine folks over at ICv2 News took some time to interview 3 corporate mucky-mucks in order to get the scoop on if they intend to shut down online discount retailers of their products. Interviewed was Loren Greenwood, President of Wizards of the Coast, Joe Hauck, EVP of Sales, Marketing, and Product Development for Wizkids, and Jay Tummelson, owner of Rio Grande Games. Now not wholly unsurprisingly the interviewees were (with the exception of Jay Tummelson) reticent to divulge any real information regarding their plans to institute price fixing for their products.
Would you tell an industry it was about to be brutally raped? I thought not.
Loren Greenwood makes a lot of noise about WotC products being geared toward the hobby channel, which if you have any experience in gaming you realize immediately. In being asked any question she re-words a response of "We tailor our products to brick and mortar stores, We support the hobby channel, Must...feast...on...braaaaaaains", providing very little insight into whether or not WotC actually gives a shit over their products being resold at a deep discount.
Joe Hauck had much the same response, although he did address the immediate response that most people take to online discounting, the increase in market saturation. In response to being questioned on whether online discount was a positive force he indicated that online retailers provide visibility for their products. Sounds good right? Interestingly, WizKids has policies in place that specifically prohibit online retailers from selling their products at all...
We have a written policy in place that defines the core hobby distribution channel as brick and mortar stores, with a business license, in a commercially zoned area, with at least 40 hours a week open to the public, and a yellow pages ad.
And finally we Jay Tummelson who gets right to the point:
I do not feel it is my job to tell retailers how, where, or for how much they should sell my games.
That's the sound of Jay Tummelson laying a whole mess o' interview smackdown on his forebears. The rest of the time he just responded with "No".
So start picking up those discount Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering cards while you can, because while no one is saying they're going to set pricing guidelines these companies are only doing their jobs if they're robbing you blind.
Thanks to Wade for the tip.
