Head honcho of overly beefy character game-maker Epic (Formerly Epic Megagames, soon to be known as Games when that old truth in advertising thing kicks in) decided to open fire on the general public with the beams of pure crazy that fire from his mouth whenever he speaks, stating that the industry needs to take action against its worst enemy; Game stores.

Apparently a “huge” issue, Capps is steamed that he’s not making money off of used game sales and rentals… somebody point out to this guy that Blockbuster’s stock didn’t fall off the back of a truck and that used sales have been going on for a couple of decades plus some change.

“The secondary market is a huge issue in the United States. Our primary retailer makes the majority of its money off of secondary sales, and so you’re starting to see games taking proactive steps toward that by… if you buy the retail version you get the unlock code,” he said of his misfiring synaptic fit about punishing you guys for something that keeps him from buying a 27th yacht.

“I’ve talked to some developers who are saying ‘If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free’. We don’t make any money when someone rents it, and we don’t make any money when someone buys it used – way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it.
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All I hear is Droopy Dog whining when I try to read the above quotes, personally.
Okay, so it’s amazing that games maintained a steady price tag of $50 (excepting Nintendo’s attempts to get us to buy the stinky Shadows of the Empire for $80) for the better part of two decades, but I think we’ve made headway against the rising cost of production by whoring out billboards and our characters’ cell phones to Motorola, right?

But no, apparently Capps and other exploding, syphilitic cankers in the executive wing of the gaming world believe that download-only games need that extra nudge, squashing the competition so that their great savings of… what, four dollars off for a caseless game that you lose with your hard drive? … is necessary.

We salute you, Mike Capps, for helping making this new feature possible.

As a special bonus, we present Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski in his latest attempt to convince you he’s hetero.