Braben's the British computer programmer whose open-ended space-trading game influenced everything from games like to . He's also the founder of creator Frontier Developments.

So what's he mean by "defrauding"? Well, he

The shops are not giving us a way of distinguishing between pre-owned and new. So the shops are essentially defrauding the industry...

We've got a lot of retailers eating our lunch and refusing to sell full-priced games. I've been in a shop where I've tried to buy a copy of a relatively recent game, and I've taken an empty box off the shelf and they've given me a pre-owned copy. That, I think, is disgraceful. Not holding stock of new games, substituting them with pre-owned games at the same or much the same price... That is really destroying the shelf-life of our games.

Who can disagree with that? It's even happened to me, where I wanted the new version of a game, but all the retailer had was a stack of used copies. And it was definitely annoying.