Being out with a flu bug makes my rant meter worse so to keep my pent up rage from hitting a poor unsuspecting Nintendo fanboy I took the day off. Which ended up a good thing considering the interesting discussion I had last night at the NeoGaf forums about the Video Game Rental industry. We were lucky enough to have some industry people weigh in on the discussion about video game rentals and if they were bad for the developers and publishers, or not. Those in the industry were pretty quick to say the video game developers (publishers) were being hosed.

Now I have been renting ever since I was a young gamer with my NES. Going to the old Mom & Pop store and picking out one game for the weekend to play while the parents went out Friday night. So to me, its not like the rental industry is new, it’s pretty much in my blood. What astounded me was how much pent up vitriol I found in some industry insiders and even with fans of the industry accusing renters of being just half a step away from piracy.

The problem with the discussion was neither side can come up with clear numbers for or against rentals being bad for the industry. Some people didn’t even care about numbers, just that publishers and developers get their cut from every rental. This of course reminds of the same old corporate greed that has dragged other industries into the muck and mire like the RIAA and now with the writers strike still going on. Everyone wants a piece no matter where it comes from.

The problem with this is a lot of misconceptions about rentals and how they work. Having direct experience with the rental industry I found a lot of claims ludicrous. For instance saying one game gets rented 100 times or more. Maybe with the advent of Gamefly this has changed but in my experience we would get 10 or so of a popular game in the store to rent. They all may or may not rent that first weekend but within two or three weeks only half of those would be always out with the rest just warming the shelves. And these are only 8 dollar rentals on games that cost at wholesale $50 or more a piece, which the publishers already got their money for.

Then there is the misconception that every renter would actually be buying all these games if not for rentals. I am sure I will be blown away by Devil May Cry 4, but I am not paying $60 for something I’m going to get through in half a day. If I were to buy that game it would be when it’s marked down to greatest hits for $20 or $30 bucks. And guess what, even though I’m renting it now I still will probably get it at that price new. Then of course you have the games that you just aren’t even sure if they are going to be any good or not. If it’s not good I certainly can’t ask for money back on the item. Demos do help on this front but that model is still in its infancy and has a way to go.

And yes, all the bleeding hearts will say support your game industry and buy everything new. Unfortunately the rest of us are not millionaires who can give freely to charity. I still buy games, just as I’m sure the majority of renters do. I have a preorder right now for Culdcept Saga (which you should all be supporting). I need value though for my dollar, just like anything else I buy. I won’t complain if you mark games up to $60 dollars, just don’t expect me to buy them at that price with no demo and no value for that money.

So no, I say the onus of claiming that rentals are hurting the industry fall flat on the publishers plate. Rentals have been around for years now and we have only seen growth in this video game industry so it would take pretty hard evidence to convince me. In the meantime you industry cheerleaders can continue to label me and my Gamefly subscription a pirate. Yarrrr Matey!