One of Germany's largest video games publishers has said that the UK's retail¹ chains make it difficult for publishers to break into the UK market.

德国最大的视频游戏生厂商之一称，英国的零售链条使外国出版商难以进入英国市场。

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The lack of royalties for second-hand games is an issue

Georg Larch⁴, Koch Media's marketing⁵ director, also blamed the exchange rate and UK pricing structure for the difficulties faced by games publishers.

Industry experts say the second-hand market also stifles⁶（窒息，抑制） industry growth.

Mr Larch said at the Games Com meeting that a rise in digital distribution would make things easier in the future.

He told BBC News that while the firm's turnover⁷ in Germany had risen by 18% this year, in Britain that figure was much lower.

"We're seeing companies like Amazon take a larger market share, and the growth of digital distribution, but it's going to be a long-term development as people still want to have something in their hands," he said.

Mr Larch said that other economic factors were at work against overseas publishers.

"We can see a lot of cheap imports from the UK to Europe [due to the current exchange rates]."

Ian Livingston, president of UK-based publisher Eidos, told BBC News that publishers still wanted to work with retail.

"These aren't just shops, they are a marketing tool, a window into our world where software houses can display their wares," he said.

The problem that publishers have with retail, he said, was due to the growth of the second-hand games market.

"The pre-owned market is a serious problem, because there is no benefit to developers or publishers," said Mr Livingston.

While retailers⁸ have to pay a percentage to the publishers for a sale of a new game, there is no such requirement when selling a second hand game, with the shop pocketing all the profit.

Mr Livingston estimated that the pre-owned market made up more than a quarter of a video-game retailers turnover.

"A shop makes a bigger margin⁹（利润，边缘） on a pre-owned title, and can sell them six or seven times, so there is no incentive¹⁰ for them to reorder and the content creator gets no slice of the action," he said.

Industry experts say the landscape of what makes a successful video game is changing.

While software developers could turn a profit if a game made it into the top 20, with rising development costs and more platforms to develop on, a game often needs to be listed in the top 10 for publishers to justify¹¹ any investment.

This has made some developers more cautious on what they develop and has also seen retailers allocate¹² more space to the best-selling games.

Retailers may then refuse to stock so-called "tier（列，行） two" games altogether.