# French court rules that Valve must allow for Steam users to resell their digital games



## olembet (Sep 20, 2019)

finally after so many god damn years? digital copy finally got resale value?


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## erikas (Sep 20, 2019)

Hopefully this spreads to the rest of the world and other platforms


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## Mythical (Sep 20, 2019)

I'm not really sure if I think this is silly or not.
I would like to know why they think it violates their laws though.
Being able to transfer your license to someone else would be nice though, but what's stopping everyone from endlessly swapping games out


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## erikas (Sep 20, 2019)

also this would end grey markets like g2a


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## Rune (Sep 20, 2019)

This will probably cause the price of digital games to rise as well.


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## templeofhylia (Sep 20, 2019)

honestly very intrigued to see where this goes and what kind of global precedent it may create, if at all...


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## Hells Malice (Sep 20, 2019)

Well this won't be endlessly abused and lead to significant problems, especially with a huge rise in steam account compromising leading to a ton of innocent people becoming victims of stolen games.

No definitely not.

Definitely wasn't a legitimate reason digital media has historically not had something this stupid be possible.


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## MockyLock (Sep 20, 2019)

France and freedom have a long story together


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## tranceology3 (Sep 20, 2019)

Go ahead, enforce these laws. It will be obsolete in 5-10 years when all games are streamed from servers and you never "own" the games Think of it like, can you resell your Netflix movies?


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## ThoD (Sep 20, 2019)

What are those high courts smoking? Because that's some damn powerful shit if they think this makes ANY sense! With all the keystores around, Steam sales and bundles, you can get even 50-60€ games for dirt cheap, getting to resell them after they go back to normal price only means shit is gonna hit the fan VERY quickly!:/


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## Rahkeesh (Sep 20, 2019)

The claim here is that Steam is violating EU rather than French law? Couldn't this potentially spread if so?

I would like some consumer recourse but just plain forcing this is kind of dangerous. There's inherent inefficiencies with physical goods that just do not apply to digital ones, particularly ones that are semi-consumable. If its too easy to sell your old games through a middle man site you will find all but the very top games drop to near worthless after a month. That is taking into account that all the cheap sales/bundles on new games would probably vanish completely. Companies facing down that will surely move to creative DRM practices including of course subscription models.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

This is still subject to appeal, which is good because it has a lot of potential consequences for the sale of ALL digital items which I don't think the court took into consideration.  Not the least of which being that it would accelerate the push toward streaming services and therefore impede our ability to own local copies of our digital games/music/movies.


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## J-Machine (Sep 20, 2019)

can't wait for people to hack my account and sell all my games... the digital world isn't the same as the physical. piracy is rampant as is gray markets to get games for less. I appllaud refunds but this is just gonna force closed ecosystems like streaming services and console exclusivities to florish


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## Alexander1970 (Sep 20, 2019)

> Valve must allow for Steam users to resell their digital games



That is a good decision.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

Rune said:


> This will probably cause the price of digital games to rise as well.


Prices wouldn't necessarily rise, but at the very least, digital games would be discounted at a much slower rate.  Sites like GreenManGaming and Humble Bundle would be hit hardest, probably shut down altogether, and we definitely wouldn't see any type of launch discounts happening any more.


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## BastarB (Sep 20, 2019)

Oh, poor little Valve, I feel so very sad for you *Sarcasm*


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Good. It only makes sense, the owner of the licence should be able to resell it.


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## ThoD (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Good. It only makes sense, the owner of the licence should be able to resell it.


Sure, it "makes sense" to allow people to buy things on Steam with stolen money then sell the games effectively using Steam to launder their illegal cash like they do with G2A or for people to pay 1€ for a bundle then sell the games at their normal price making 100€ in return /s


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## KingVamp (Sep 20, 2019)

Seems like something that would eventually hit consoles as well, if this passes. 


tranceology3 said:


> Go ahead, enforce these laws. It will be obsolete in 5-10 years when all games are streamed from servers and you never "own" the games Think of it like, can you resell your Netflix movies?





Xzi said:


> This is still subject to appeal, which is good because it has a lot of potential consequences for the sale of ALL digital items which I don't think the court took into consideration.  Not the least of which being that it would accelerate the push toward streaming services and therefore impede our ability to own local copies of our digital games/music/movies.


If these courts keep this up, next thing you know, they will require downloads with cloud services.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

BastarB said:


> Oh, poor little Valve, I feel so very sad for you *Sarcasm*


This isn't limited to Valve.  If it's ruled that the ability to resell digital items is mandatory, every storefront-launcher on PC, as well as all console digital storefronts will be affected.  Not to mention digital music and digital movie storefronts.  Apple, Google, Amazon, basically every tech company has a vested interest here.


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## MohammedQ8 (Sep 20, 2019)

I never laught so hard hehe.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

KingVamp said:


> If these courts keep this up, next thing you know, they will require downloads with cloud services.


Now that would be a move I'd definitely support, but OTOH I could see it causing the price of Xbox Game Pass, Netflix, and etc to skyrocket.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

ThoD said:


> Sure, it "makes sense" to allow people to buy things on Steam with stolen money then sell the games effectively using Steam to launder their illegal cash like they do with G2A or for people to pay 1€ for a bundle then sell the games at their normal price making 100€ in return /s


That sounds like a Valve problem, not a me problem. Digital rights supersede minor inconvenience, the onus is on Valve to ensure that the transactions on their marketplace are legitimate. When you purchase a video game, physical or otherwise, what you're actually paying for is a license to use software. It stands to reason that you should be able to resell this license if that is your fancy - you paid for it, it belongs to you.


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## MasterJ360 (Sep 20, 2019)

oof! I think Steam will throw a punch back to punish us somehow.


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## Bladexdsl (Sep 20, 2019)

how are you supposed to resell your digital games than...just through steam? and how will you be paid...with cards and gems? yeah fuck that


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## PrincessLillie (Sep 20, 2019)

So does this mean we'll eventually be able to resell "used" games from our library? Interesting. I see several ways this could be abused, but interesting nonetheless.


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## erikas (Sep 20, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Prices wouldn't necessarily rise, but at the very least, digital games would be discounted at a much slower rate.  Sites like GreenManGaming and Humble Bundle would be hit hardest, probably shut down altogether, and we definitely wouldn't see any type of launch discounts happening any more.


While there is a possibility that discounts would not happen as often, I do think this is the right decision, because all my digital games now have resale value. If i cannot sell it then i do not own it. This was the reason i do not ever buy digital games on consoles. And its not like this isn't happening to some extent already. Sites like g2a and kinguin exist, and you can sell steam gifts on those. Companies have been pretending for years that digital goods are real in places where it suits them, but not where it suits the consumer.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Xzi said:


> This isn't limited to Valve.  If it's ruled that the ability to resell digital items is mandatory, every storefront-launcher on PC, as well as all console digital storefronts will be affected.  Not to mention digital music and digital movie storefronts.  Apple, Google, Amazon, basically every tech company has a vested interest here.


Anyone in their right mind should hope to God that it does stand then, and becomes a global standard. It's a travesty that this isn't the status quo as is - since the dawn of digital storefronts people have always complained that they don't "truly own" their digital copies. Well, time to own them, boys and girls. To me this is a basic digital rights issue - if you pay for something, you own it and you get to do whatever you want with it, which includes the right to resell. Any deviation from that ideal is an infringenent of self-evident rights of the user that must be corrected.


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## MasterJ360 (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Anyone in their right mind should hope to God that it does stand then, and becomes a global standard. It's a travesty that this isn't the status quo as is - since the beginning of digital downloads people have always complained that they don't "truly own" their digital copies. Well, time to own them, boys and girls. To me this is a basic digital rights issue - if you pay for something, you own it and you get to do whatever you want with it, which includes the right to resell. Any deviation from that ideal is an infringenent of self-evident rights of the user.


Pretty much, we have to resort to 3rd party tools/files just to play our games offline as a bypass from Steam.


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## Costello (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Anyone in their right mind should hope to God that it does stand then, and becomes a global standard. It's a travesty that this isn't the status quo as is - since the dawn of digital storefronts people have always complained that they don't "truly own" their digital copies. Well, time to own them, boys and girls. To me this is a basic digital rights issue - if you pay for something, you own it and you get to do whatever you want with it, which includes the right to resell. Any deviation from that ideal is an infringenent of self-evident rights of the user that must be corrected.


spoken like a true libertarian! lol

But yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's not because the physical storage medium is different that you should have less rights over your purchase. 
Go french courts! hope Valve loses the appeal. Power to the consumers


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

MasterJ360 said:


> Pretty much, we have to resort to 3rd party tools/files just to play our games offline as a bypass from Steam.


That in itself is egregious, Steam API integration should be an entirely optional element of software that can be disabled at will. Launchers are getting more and more embedded and the amount of resources they hog only ever goes up. I truly miss the days of just double-clicking on an executable and getting straight into the game, I really don't need a zillion mandatory launchers to complicate a process that used to be so simple.


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## Randy95354 (Sep 20, 2019)

So is it possible to create a french account even though im not in france just incase i want to sell my games?


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## Ev1lbl0w (Sep 20, 2019)

Honestly I'm not sure if this is good or not, but I believe this is opening a big can of worms.

Like, what is the market of "used" digital games? Can they be resold for full price, or they count as "used" and less valuable? What about games that became free, for example? (CS:GO, on the top of my head) And what about other resellers who already sell these games for lower prices?

This is such a gray area, I don't understand how things will evolve if this law passes.


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## ThoD (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> That sounds like a Valve problem, not a me problem. Digital rights supercede minor inconvenience, the onus is on Valve to ensure that the transactions on their marketplace are legitimate. When you purchase a video game, physical or otherwise, what you're actually paying for is a license to use software. It stands to reason that you should be able to resell this license if that is your fancy - you paid for it, it belongs to you.


The license you pay for is basically a permission to use something, it's non-transferable for many reasons. It's like saying that because you bought an album on iTunes you are allowed to resell it to someone else, basically a roundabout way of paid piracy if you think about it, since the creator of the item in question doesn't make anything from said resale. Physical products are different because you pay for the product directly, not a license, so people need to stop confusing the two.

As for the "it's on Valve to regulate" BS, no it's not, you can't expect them to regulate every single transaction among the largest playerbase in the world just because you say so, it's not their responsibility. Also, if this actually becomes a thing, you can kiss discounts goodbye forever, almost all games will be full priced at 60€ and there won't be ANY free giveaways anymore, which will pretty much kill anything relating to selling media licenses online, be it for games, movies, music, anime, books, etc. and will affect EVEN storefronts like GOG despite it selling games directly instead of just a license. If you think selling the stuff in your library is worth never having any discounts again and all storefronts eventually shutting down because people will stop paying for games and just pirate everything (which means less money goes to devs and less games are made on top of that), then go ahead and support this nonsense.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Anyone in their right mind should hope to God that it does stand then, and becomes a global standard. It's a travesty that this isn't the status quo as is - since the dawn of digital storefronts people have always complained that they don't "truly own" their digital copies. Well, time to own them, boys and girls. To me this is a basic digital rights issue - if you pay for something, you own it and you get to do whatever you want with it, which includes the right to resell. Any deviation from that ideal is an infringenent of self-evident rights of the user.


The problem being that this is just as likely to result in less individual ownership and a faster push toward streaming services so that publishers/developers retain more control over distribution.  Existing digital games will quickly be devalued because there are millions of perfect copies in circulation at any given moment; digital licenses don't degrade as physical items do, and thus don't maintain the necessary balance of supply and demand.


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## Deleted User (Sep 20, 2019)

Well, this court decision may look silly, but the full digital market is completly dumb to begin with.

We are dealing here with gaming digital data, sure, but it has always been provided with physical supports simply protected with encryption systems and serial keys.
It makes NO SENSE AT ALL to sell something purely virtual, stored in SOMEONE ELSE'S SERVER. *Everyone working in the market of precious metals will tell you that: ETF are for suckers, always buy physical. *
Why ? Because the real physical owner of the product, the seller, has no obligation to give you access to the vault where are your belongings.

*Every virtual purchase on steam should be logically accompanied with a physical copy, sent at home, without any internet connection necessary for installation.* *End of controversy.
Carry on "UFC que choisir" ! *

Being able to resell virtual stuff is a small compensation, but every private company knows how to profit of this situation (creation of a new market, its control, credit card registration becomes mandatory, which will make easier next transactions for impulsive buyers etc...).

What about piracy then ?
History showed us that its impact on industry is more a myth than something determinant.
On the other hand, Indie games would need physical copies, which is more difficult for them...Disks including several small studios works would be an elegant solution.


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## Youkai (Sep 20, 2019)

Wouldn't hurt Multiplayer games much (like shooter that most people only play online) but for single player Story based games ... you play it, finish it within a week and resell it again ... 
Guess this would finaly kill most single player / story based games as it would probably be much less of a hassle to sell trough steam than the find someone who trusts you pays and then having to send the game over by post.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

ThoD said:


> The license you pay for is basically a permission to use something, it's non-transferable for many reasons. It's like saying that because you bought an album on iTunes you are allowed to resell it to someone else, basically a roundabout way of paid piracy if you think about it, since the creator of the item in question doesn't make anything from said resale. Physical products are different because you pay for the product directly, not a license, so people need to stop confusing the two.
> 
> As for the "it's on Valve to regulate" BS, no it's not, you can't expect them to regulate every single transaction among the largest playerbase in the world just because you say so, it's not their responsibility. Also, if this actually becomes a thing, you can kiss discounts goodbye forever, almost all games will be full priced at 60€ and there won't be ANY free giveaways anymore, which will pretty much kill anything relating to selling media licenses online, be it for games, movies, music, anime, books, etc. and will affect EVEN storefronts like GOG despite it selling games directly instead of just a license. If you think selling the stuff in your library is worth never having any discounts again and all storefronts eventually shutting down because people will stop paying for games and just pirate everything (which means less money goes to devs and less games are made on top of that), then go ahead and support this nonsense.


Absolute nonsense and poppycock. The author of the music album, film or video game *already got paid*, they got paid the first time the copy was sold. There is absolutely no reason why ownership of digital items should not be transferable or should operate in any way differently from the ownership of physical copies - it's the same license, only the storage medium and method of delivery is different. It is *absolutely* up to Valve to ensure that transactions on their platform are legal - it's their platform. I'm sorry that you're afraid of people breaking the law, but that's no reason to curtail basic consumer rights. If they do not wish to be responsible for reselling digital copies, they have the option to allow users to convert their copies into Steam keys that they can resell themselves via different means, but they *should* provide some method of selling them.


Xzi said:


> The problem being that this is just as likely to result in less individual ownership and a faster push toward streaming services so that publishers/developers retain more control over distribution.  Existing digital games will quickly be devalued because there are millions of perfect copies in circulation at any given moment; digital licenses don't degrade as physical items do, and thus don't maintain the necessary balance of supply and demand.


Then don't do business with companies that infringe upon your consumer rights or offer you goods in a format you don't like. I don't understand why you people are so desperate not to rock the boat, we've been waiting for an opportunity to push something like this through for years.


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## KleinesSinchen (Sep 20, 2019)

ThoD said:


> The license you pay for is basically a permission to use something, it's non-transferable for many reasons. It's like saying that because you bought an album on iTunes you are allowed to resell it to someone else, basically a roundabout way of paid piracy if you think about it, since the creator of the item in question doesn't make anything from said resale. Physical products are different because you pay for the product directly, not a license, so people need to stop confusing the two.
> […]


I do not see a difference between a license with a physical medium (cartridige, disc) and purely immaterial license:

Customer A buys a license *with* physical medium → number of sold valid licenses increases by 1 and the creator gets money.
Customer A sells their license *with* physical medium to Customer B → number of  valid licenses stays the same and *creator gets nothing.*

Customer A buys a license *without* physical medium → number of sold valid licenses increases by 1 and the creator gets money.
Customer A sells their license *without* physical medium to Customer B → number of  valid licenses stays the same and *creator gets nothing.*

In both cases the customers don't own the game but a license to use it. In the first case there is a storage medium involved in the second not. I fail seeing "paid piracy" in either case. If reselling immaterial licenses is paid piracy, this is also true for licenses with physical token.


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## auntnadia (Sep 20, 2019)

I’m finding it hard to read these comments from folk who seem desperate not to have any rights as a consumer. If you buy something, you should own it and if you own it, you should be able to treat it like any other item in your possession.

Netflix etc are subscription based and it’s fair enough that you can’t just pay for one month then attempt to download the entire server. 

I’m fine with games not being discounted as much, if I can resell a game I simply don’t want to play. I’ve got several consoles and devices full of stuff I don’t want and would gladly trade them in for something new.

Makes you wonder how the hell companies are going to control it though if this escalates quickly.


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## Bladexdsl (Sep 20, 2019)

steam about to turn into a subscription service. it's the end...


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Then don't do business with companies that infringe upon your consumer rights or offer you goods in a format you don't like.


I don't see how this is a response to my concern.  If the entire industry accelerates toward streaming services as a result of this ruling, there will be nobody offering goods in a format that I like.



Foxi4 said:


> I don't understand why you people are so desperate not to rock the boat, we've been waiting for an opportunity to push something like this through for years.


If I had some assurance that this won't result in something much worse, that'd be great, but nobody can offer that type of assurance at this point.  Best case scenario, digital downloads continue to be offered with fewer and slower-paced discounts than before, and I get to resell a few of the games I have no interest in keeping at $1 per (after associated taxes and fees).  Hardly seems worth the trade-off.


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## Dankstorm (Sep 20, 2019)

Xzi said:


> If I had some assurance that this won't result in something much worse, that'd be great, but nobody can offer that type of assurance at this point. Best case scenario, digital downloads continue to be offered with fewer and slower-paced discounts than before, and I get to resell a few of the games I have no interest in keeping at $1 per (after associated taxes and fees). Hardly seems worth the trade-off.



If you can sell, yo ucan also buy. There will be rarer discounts on stores but we will be able to grab games "used" in steam directly instead of g2a and other shady sites. The market prices will be based on selling prices and demand, I cannot see why it isn't a good point to finally own your games.

Proud french for this decision UFC que choisir made.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Xzi said:


> I don't see how this is a response to my concern.  If the entire industry accelerates toward streaming services as a result of this ruling, there will be nobody offering goods in a format that I like.
> 
> If I had some assurance that this won't result in something much worse, that'd be great, but nobody can offer that type of assurance at this point.  Best case scenario, digital downloads continue to be offered with fewer and slower-paced discounts than before, and I get to resell a few of the games I have no interest in keeping at $1 per (after associated taxes and fees).  Hardly seems worth the trade-off.


Corporations will offer goods and services that sell. Streaming is expensive to implement and requires substantial buy-in from the consumers themselves - vote with your wallet. Companies like Valve, Epic or EA are in this business for the money - if there is demand for digital delivery and little demand for streaming, they will deliver the product their consumers are willing to buy. There are simple technological solutions to this problem that none of the storefronts have implemented yet because they function as a protection racket for publishers - there are no legitimate reasons why I shouldn't be able to convert my rightfully and legally owned digital content back into codes that I can gift to someone or sell just like I would transfer a physical copy, the only reason why this isn't a feature is because it directly affects the bottom line of digital storefronts. I don't care about Valve's bottom line - I care about my bottom line and your bottom line. They're already raking money in hand over fist by selling digital goods which do not entail the same level of expenses as physical distribution does for full retail price. What is this, Capitalist Xzi Hour? Take from the rich and give to the poor, unless it's Valve? This isn't like you at all.


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## TunaKetchup (Sep 20, 2019)

Reselling digital games is goofy

What are you even reselling? You don't really own anything

Used digital keys would cost the same as new digital keys...Why wouldn't they?


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

TunaKetchup said:


> Reselling digital games is goofy
> 
> What are you even reselling? You don't really own anything


You technically don't own your physical games either, a software license is not a piece of paper, it's a legal instrument.


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## TunaKetchup (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> You technically don't own your physical games either, a software license is not a piece of paper, it's a legal instrument.



But its something you can hold and hand to someone else

I can't hand you a digital game


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

TunaKetchup said:


> But its something you can hold and hand to someone else
> 
> I can't hand you a digital game


You should be able to, that's what this thread is about. You have a license to use software, you should be able to transfer that license to another user if you wish. Your physical games are perishable, they won't function forever, eventually the medium will break, but that doesn't mean your license for the software has expired. You're still entitled to use the software, you just can't because the medium is faulty. In fact, in many cases you're entitled to a replacement.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> I don't care about Valve's bottom line - I care about my bottom line and your bottom line. What is this, Capitalist Xzi Hour? Take from the rich and give to the poor, unless it's Valve? This isn't like you at all.


You misunderstand my concern.  I expect currently-available games to be devalued down to nothing near-instantly, while future games remain more costly for a longer period of time, even accounting for the option to buy from other users.  And that's all assuming that the industry doesn't move to fuck us all over further - as capitalism often does - by pushing toward multiplayer/streaming titles only.  There are plenty of places to buy third-party Steam keys as-is, and Valve receives nothing on those transactions.  If this ruling stands, those third-party options disappear.

I'd be happy to see Valve and all other corporate entities taxed at a much higher rate in order to provide for the working class, but that's largely an issue separate from my interest in digital sales/distribution as a gamer.



Foxi4 said:


> if there is demand for digital delivery and little demand for streaming, they will deliver the product their consumers are willing to buy.


The problem with this is that I don't have unlimited buying power as one person, it requires me to have faith in other consumers/gamers.  The people who have made Fortnite and FIFA the most financially successful franchises of the last decade via micro-transactions.  There are a lot of fools out there willing to part with a lot of money, which overrides whatever voting I might do with my wallet.


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## ThoD (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Absolute nonsense and poppycock. The author of the music album, film or video game *already got paid*, they got paid the first time the copy was sold. There is absolutely no reason why ownership of digital items should not be transferable or should operate in any way differently from the ownership of physical copies - it's the same license, only the storage medium and method of delivery is different. It is *absolutely* up to Valve to ensure that transactions on their platform are legal - it's their platform. I'm sorry that you're afraid of people breaking the law, but that's no reason to curtail basic consumer rights. If they do not wish to be responsible for reselling digital copies, they have the option to allow users to convert their copies into Steam keys that they can resell themselves via different means, but they *should* provide some method of selling them.
> Then don't do business with companies that infringe upon your consumer rights or offer you goods in a format you don't like. I don't understand why you people are so desperate not to rock the boat, we've been waiting for an opportunity to push something like this through for years.


How much of an idiot do you actually have to be to not understand the full mess this will cause? Here, I'll explain some things to you:

To begin with, the license you pay for is license to USE, NOT to redistribute, those two are COMPLETELY different.

Second, HOW is it any different than someone buying an album from a licensed distributor and selling it in the open market (something which is actually ILLEGAL in most European countries since you require a redistribution license)?

Third, physical copies deteriorate over time and are, like their name suggests, PHYSICAL, meaning you own the actual thing, licenses for digital products are more akin to video clubs of old where you payed to watch a movie, not sell it after watching it, but instead of having to return the movie afterwards you keep it for infinite uses, you can't treat physical and digital the same under any circumstance, one is actual ownership (but even this prevents redistribution and is highly illegal despite owning it) and the other is simply permission to use something.

Fourth, the "basic consumer rights" are there and have always been there, don't like Steam's terms? Go to GOG or buy physical, simple as that, nobody ever forced you to use Steam, YOU of your own accord accepted their terms and conditions, that's called consumer choice and it's by no means a violation of consumer rights. What you are supporting is violation of copyright ownership though, since, again, unlicensed sales of a product that contains copyright is actually illegal. The reason you can sell physical things is because of a loophole in the old laws that treat those sales as sales of the disk/cartridge rather than the actual data on it.

Fifth, for the last time, allowing the reselling of something gotten for FREE or heavily discounted means that the storefronts straight up LOSE money because actual product sales will plummet and Valve only gets a small part of the earnings from each game, the largest part goes to the DEVELOPERS and that will pretty much quite literally kill any Indies or small developers altogether unless they flock in droves to itch.io (which will also be affected by this BS for the record), so screw Indies and any non-AAA company, right? If this passes the only companies that will be able to afford to develop any more games are the huge budget AAAsholes with pay to play 60€ titles (and that's hoping they don't jack up the prices further to make up for the losses).

Sixth, I'll also bring up once more how this can allow money laundering among other things. Also, the sheer volume of transactions that all this will entail will be more than enough to down servers often at peak times or allow for things to slip past. To add to that, you DO realize that if you sell something you are LEGALLY REQUIRED to include it in your tax report, whether you got money physically or digitally, right? Unfortunately, that also means anyone under 18 will either be unable to resell games or will have to go into their own separate tax report from their parents, on top of Steam having to validate EVERYONE's age (aka you have to give even more personal information out to them and legal documents proving age and even tax papers to cover the transactions as you will essentially be considered a seller), as otherwise they can't legally allow you to resell something on their platform in exchange for actual cash (before you say "hey, they do that with skins/cards/etc.", under the law those are considered as too small transactions to be recorded since they are, for the most part, under 1€ each, but if you look at Steam's explanation on legal things you will see them mention how for larger transactions you need to do all the tax stuff I mentioned).

That should do for now, but that's not even half the reasons, just bored of typing, I assume you can predict the others without lengthy explanations like how this will only affect EU accounts so will cause a lot of troubles with regions, how this law if successfully passed will affect ALL storefronts regardless of those selling licenses or products directly and so on

PS: Just to give you an analogy of your point about "I should be able to sell my license", it's like having a Netflix account which grants you licenses to watch shows basically but you want to be able to sell the license to watch X show to someone despite keeping the account yours, see how absurd that sounds? If you REALLY want to sell your old digital stuff, sell the account altogether, that's legally allowed AND is done in mass scale in many auction sites, simple as that, then with the money you make re-purchase the 5 or so games you want to keep and you still have a ton of money leftover.


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## Arras (Sep 20, 2019)

KleinesSinchen said:


> I do not see a difference between a license with a physical medium (cartridige, disc) and purely immaterial license:
> 
> Customer A buys a license *with* physical medium → number of sold valid licenses increases by 1 and the creator gets money.
> Customer A sells their license *with* physical medium to Customer B → number of  valid licenses stays the same and *creator gets nothing.*
> ...


There is, in my opinion, one big issue with reselling digital licenses - they never degrade, there is no shipping involved and depending on implementation, there would probably be little to no scam risk. If you buy a physical second hand game, the disc might be damaged, the box might be damaged, it might take a while to get to you or have expensive shipping. Generally it's just slightly less convenient and slightly risky. Not having those issues sounds like a good thing, but if someone sets up a decent environment for second hand reselling, there is literally no reason to ever buy new again when a second hand copy is the same in every way. This will absolutely drive up prices, and god know what else this would do. I'm not really opposed to more control over your digital licenses, it's just that the potential consequences are worrying.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Xzi said:


> You misunderstand my concern.  I expect currently-available games to be devalued down to nothing near-instantly, while future games remain more costly for a longer period of time, even accounting for the option to buy from other users.  And that's all assuming that the industry doesn't move to fuck us all over further - as capitalism often does - by pushing toward multiplayer/streaming titles only.
> 
> The problem with this is that I don't have unlimited buying power as one person, it requires me to have faith in other consumers/gamers.  The people who have made Fortnite and FIFA the most financially successful franchises of the last decade via micro-transactions.  There are a lot of fools out there willing to part with a lot of money that overrides whatever voting I might do with my wallet.


I'm not one to judge Fifa and Fortnite fans - if they get their jollies from buying lootboxes, more power to them. You're under the mistaken impression that the industry *won't* try to move towards streaming anyway if you neglect to defend your rights as a consumer - they will, and it won't pan out as long as consumers are aware of what streaming content exclusively entails. So far there have been numerous attempts to remove physical media from the gaming space, dating from the PSP Go to the most recent Xbox One S Digital, and they all bombed catastrophically. There have also been numerous game streaming services and they too bombed horrifically. Besides, the question of where the computing is being performed is a separate issue from the question of licensing and the ability to transfer licenses. I don't see a huge issue with old games getting devalued on the digital market just as much as they get devalued on the physical market - in fact, it could potentially do wonders to old games which would finally be obtainable cheaply. This in turn would revitalise their player base which I see as beneficial. There are other revenue streams that can be tapped into here, we're not throwing the baby out with the bath water.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 20, 2019)

I too find myself somewhat surprised at the "poor companies" line and people in a terrible hurry to piss away some rights they technically always had but are now seemingly going to be enforced.

I could see the "will push streamed games" a bit as someone will probably crack it eventually (as speed of light is a thing I imagine there will be localised (possibly to cabinet or exchange level) servers for major areas) but even then if the game industry collectively decides to lift its head up high and blow its brains out I will sit by with some popcorn and an umbrella, before going back and sorting my backlog, playing some mods and waiting for open source gaming and indies to spin up in earnest.

Roll on French court. Hopefully others follow along in short order, or it spreads wide by itself.

Will also be nice to see "delisting" be as troublesome as "game no longer being pressed/cartridges no longer being made". Wonder how long it will take either the services themselves or some enterprising investors to do a final batch buy of a few thousand or whatever to also ensure some stock on such platforms.

Edit.


ThoD said:


> How much of an idiot do you actually have to be to not understand the full mess this will cause? Here, I'll explain some things to you:
> 
> To begin with, the license you pay for is license to USE, NOT to redistribute, those two are COMPLETELY different.
> 
> ...




1) While companies might like them to be different most places have a right of first sale (in US parlance) or something akin to it where if you have something you can dispose of it however you will unless you sign away the right to do that.
2) Got any links to that? Such a thing would generally seem to be against most principles of commerce for non dangerous goods. Companies might try to constrain and regulate their supply chain but once it is out in the world then it is generally considered a free for all.
3) I have books that are hundreds of years old, and books simply outside copyright is trivial to find. They are not rare and hard to come by (you can buy the signed first edition stuff if you want but the day to day books are in line with second hand games). Also as mentioned the nature of the license is itself infinite -- assuming you don't upload most courts would be hard pressed to do anything about it if you got a scratched disc and downloaded the game.
4) I don't follow here. Leaving aside Steam being in a monopoly position of sorts (there are plenty of high profile works you can't legitimately get outside it) there are such things as unenforceable contracts, and rights that can't be rescinded. Seems a court has decided you can't forgo the ability to resell.
5) So the market will stabilise again. Not seeing a problem.
6) So there are some problems with the concept, ones that technically always existed. Too bad and I would rather have my rights.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> I don't see a huge issue with old games getting devalued on the digital market just as much as they get devalued on the physical market


That's the thing: certain physical games only increase in value over time, particularly if they're maintained in good condition.  Unlimited resale of digital games will potentially kill the value of their physical disc/cartridge counterparts, speeding the demise of those formats.  I suppose that's just a hypothetical for the time being, but so is the rest of this conversation.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

ThoD said:


> How much of an idiot do you actually have to be to not understand the full mess this will cause? Here, I'll explain some things to you:
> 
> To begin with, the license you pay for is license to USE, NOT to redistribute, those two are COMPLETELY different.
> 
> ...


You are not "redistributing" software per se, you are transferring your license to use the software to another user. You do not have a master copy that you use to reproduce the work and resell it, you do not have a stack of copies on consignment that you distribute on behalf of the publisher, you have one singular perpetual use license, and you transfer it to another user. The amount of active instances of the software does not change, only the ownership of the license to use said software transfers. It is not illegal to sell a music album in Europe if you've obtained it from a licensed distributor, also known as "a store", you have the Right to Resale . There are entire stores dedicated to trading pre-owned discs, vinyls and tapes, they operate legally, I don't know where you get this information from but it's inaccurate. In fact, the European Court of Justice recently upheld the decision to confirm the Right to Resale specifically for software licenses in Oracle v UsedSoft. You are incorrect when it comes to the nature of software licenses - they're perpetual use licenses for one or more stations, depending on the terms. There's nothing wrong with being able to resell something you've received for free, I don't see the issue here. I don't care about other people's profit margins, I care about my immutable rights. You own the license, you get to do whatever you see fit with it. As for taxation, how is this any different than selling an item on eBay? You're truly grasping at straws.

EDIT: Your Netflix analogy which you keep coming back to doesn't work, I'll do my best to explain why. Netflix doesn't sell you a perpetual use license for its catalogue, Netflix is a service which gives you limited access to its catalogue for a nominal subscription fee and for the duration of the subscription - it's more like a cinema. The reason why you cannot share that privilege is because you don't own a perpetual use license, or even the license to perform - Netflix does. This is *fundamentally* different from how gaming storefronts work. For this reason and this reason alone you can give your friend a copy of The Lion King on DVD and he can watch it at his leisure, but you cannot buy a projector, display the film on a side of a building and start charging people an entry fee - you do not have a license to perform the work. Netflix does, and that's what you pay for.


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## KleinesSinchen (Sep 20, 2019)

Arras said:


> There is, in my opinion, one big issue with reselling digital licenses - they never degrade, there is no shipping involved and depending on implementation, there would probably be little to no scam risk. If you buy a physical second hand game, the disc might be damaged, the box might be damaged, it might take a while to get to you or have expensive shipping. Generally it's just slightly less convenient and slightly risky. Not having those issues sounds like a good thing, but if someone sets up a decent environment for second hand reselling, there is literally no reason to ever buy new again when a second hand copy is the same in every way. This will absolutely drive up prices, and god know what else this would do. I'm not really opposed to more control over your digital licenses, it's just that the potential consequences are worrying.


True. Immaterial licenses never degrade. And? Is my argumentation invalid because of this? I don’t see “paid piracy” in reselling digital licenses.
Some people are impatient and want their games "*ON DAY 1!!!" *If there is a high demand for a game/movie/whatever, there have to be a lot of valid licenses. Where do they come from if “there is no reason to ever buy new again”?

I’m not in a position to have a deep opinion on these kind of things since I avoid platforms like Steam at all costs. I just wanted to reply to the “paid piracy” statement.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Xzi said:


> That's the thing: certain physical games only increase in value over time, particularly if they're maintained in good condition.  Unlimited resale of digital games will potentially kill the value of their physical disc/cartridge counterparts, speeding the demise of those formats.  I suppose that's just a hypothetical for the time being, but so is the rest of this conversation.


Those physical copies are valuable because they're collectible, the code on the storage medium does not bestow any additional value. In fact, many times the boxes aren't even open - it's the ownership of the physical item that's considered valuable and it is not impacted by digital sales.


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## Ericthegreat (Sep 20, 2019)

ThoD said:


> Sure, it "makes sense" to allow people to buy things on Steam with stolen money then sell the games effectively using Steam to launder their illegal cash like they do with G2A or for people to pay 1€ for a bundle then sell the games at their normal price making 100€ in return /s


Well I can agree that if you own a license you should be able to resell it, but this will fail in appeal probably.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> I too find myself somewhat surprised at the "poor companies" line and people in a terrible hurry to piss away some rights they technically always had but are now seemingly going to be enforced.


I suppose if there's an upside to this decision potentially being upheld, it's that 'Johnny come lately' opportunists like Epic might be driven out of the PC gaming market when confronted with the up-front costs associated with bringing their storefronts in line with applicable laws.  The one high school student they employ to make improvements to EGS can't even produce a functioning shopping cart, so I'd love to see him have a go at coding a secure digital resale marketplace. 



Foxi4 said:


> Those physical copies are valuable because they're collectible, the code on the storage medium does not bestow any additional value. In fact, many times the boxes aren't even open - it's the ownership of the physical item that's considered valuable and it is not impacted by digital sales.


Well, the overall rarity of a legitimate copy of the game is also part of the equation.  No disc/cartridge game produced after the advent of digital sales has become particularly valuable, but cartridge games like Earthbound are fairly expensive, even just in fair condition, and despite the existence of ROMs.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 20, 2019)

Xzi said:


> I suppose if there's an upside to this decision potentially being upheld, it's that 'Johnny come lately' opportunists like Epic might be driven out of the PC gaming market when confronted with the up-front costs associated with bringing their storefronts in line with applicable laws.  The one high school student they employ to make improvements to EGS can't even produce a functioning shopping cart, I'd love to see him have a go at coding a digital resale marketplace.
> 
> 
> Well the overall rarity of a legitimate copy of the game is also part of the equation.  No disc/cartridge game produced after the advent of digital sales has become particularly valuable, but cartridge games like Earthbound are fairly expensive, even just in fair condition, and despite the existence of ROMs.



While I still find the shopping cart thing in this case one of those near pointless differences people have a habit of jumping onto I can also see it being an additional burden of sorts. Though transfer of keys between accounts should be easy to sort (maybe hour two of learning database programming there) and if then kicked to external platforms -- play it similar to how domains are transferred where you generate a code and that code takes from you and gives to another I can't see it being a major issue, no reporting requirements, no payment woes, just whatever theoretical* bandwidth bump there might be in those cases. Alternatively if things have a gifting service then that.

*bandwidth is cheap but not free so I am sure they have some equations like people often buy, download maybe once and then never again (or possibly even never at all), this despite being theoretically free to redownload and delete daily (or more often) and this would add into that. I don't know if this sort of thing would allow for a "reasonable reproduction fee" type setup similar to said aspects of backups or distributing open source software on physical media. I imagine most would instead see the potential for another slice of the pie and offer an auction service and handle all that it entails but that is a different matter.

Has it been long enough since downloadable games went widespread for things to become valuable? Ignoring what might become of stuff like this then a limited supply of physical with a shuttered online store or delisted title would surely pump things up a bit. Even more so if it is like that company that does limited runs of otherwise digital only titles.


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## Engezerstorung (Sep 20, 2019)

i really like that all the "against arguments with dramatics exemples" that are made also work with physical games... (well okay, scalled up since its the internet)

"i can see people swapping their game indefinitively" : oh, you mean like when you lend them or borrow to friends?

"people will buy cheap game and sell them for more" : like irl when they buy discounted or in store that sell lower and then resell them more on user markets?

"they will buy with stolen money and resell to wash the stolen money" : like its already done with "anything" in real life?

"they will hack my account and sell all my games" : like when someone break into your house?

etc

ps : and yes, again, i know that all of this would be easier and faster on the internet, but still, your points made against consummer right to "protect the market" could be (and surely alreay have been) made against the physicals items (and not only games) in real life...

ps2 : and you know that everything are not forced to be made in an "extreme way"? like "totally not exchangeable" (like now) versus "totally exchangeable without restriction"
like for the possibility of indefinite swapping it could be done in a way that once you sell/give a game to someone you need to either buy it full price from store again or to wait a fixed amount of time before being able to buy to a user or be given the same game again?

there is always solution to mitigate issues, dont take extrem exemples that could go wrong to totally dismiss something, even more when its about people rights...


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Well, the overall rarity of a legitimate copy of the game is also part of the equation.  No disc/cartridge game produced after the advent of digital sales has become particularly valuable, but cartridge games like Earthbound are fairly expensive, even just in fair condition, and despite the existence of ROMs.


I beg to differ, there's a number of titles that are remarkably short in supply and fairly expensive to obtain. It's all a question of supply and demand, Dead Space: Ultra Limited Edition which was only produced in limited numbers can sell for upwards of $1000, you're welcome to check eBay for some listing. I can trip over a copy of Dead Space for pennies in any charity shop, that doesn't seem to devalue the highly collectible edition of the game.


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## Jiehfeng (Sep 20, 2019)

Wait so, since digital copies/licenses or however you want to call it don't deteriorate with time, how do you assess their value? People would just sell it at slightly lower than the selling price to "beat" steam, and others would sell lower to compete. Steam would then have a extremely massive drop in sales, this so called used market is a brand new condition market. Who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea? Yes it would be nice if as customers if we're treated as royalty, but this is going too far. This could very well potentially drive Steam out of business, what then? Where's your licenses now?

Similar to what ThoD said, you do agree to Steam's ToS when you use their service, there is no violation by them here. If you don't like it, buy from somewhere else, or make your own key reselling store.
Please think a little before going all guns blazing saying I want everything beneficial to me and everyone else has to adjust, that's now how this works.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> Has it been long enough since downloadable games went widespread for things to become valuable?


Hard to say.  Digital distribution started becoming popular in the early 2000s, and I'd wager there are a number of PS2 games which would be more valuable now if not for repeated remakes and being listed on Steam, but that's largely speculative.



Foxi4 said:


> I beg to differ, there's a number of titles that are remarkably short in supply and fairly expensive to obtain. It's all a question of supply and demand, Dead Space: Ultra Limited Edition which was only produced in limited numbers can sell for upwards of $1000, you're welcome to check eBay for some listing. I can trip over a copy of Dead Space for pennies in any charity shop, that doesn't seem to devalue the highly collectible edition of the game.


I wasn't arguing that collector's editions don't go up in value, just that standard physical copies of games can also increase in value depending on rarity/appreciation of the title.  If it's rare AND a collector's edition, well that's a double whammy.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> Wait so, since digital copies/licenses or however you want to call it don't deteriorate with time, how do you assess their value? People would just sell it at slightly lower than the selling price to "beat" steam, and others would sell lower to compete. Steam would then have a extremely massive drop in sales, this so called used market is a brand new condition market. Who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea? Yes it would be nice if as customers if we're treated as royalty, but this is going too far. This could very well potentially drive Steam out of business, what then? Where's your licenses now?
> 
> Similar to what ThoD said, you do agree to Steam's ToS when you use their service, there is no violation by them here. If you don't like it, buy from somewhere else, or make your own key reselling store.
> Please think a little before going all guns blazing saying I want everything beneficial to me and everyone else has to adjust, that's now how this works.


You can say literally the exact same thing about physical copies - if you're patient, you can buy the exact same game a month or two after it's been released for half the price. It hasn't "deteriorated" much in that time, has it now? This is a flimsy defense, and Steam's ToS doesn't get to alter my right to resell things I legally own, this includes software licenses. There is no reason why there shouldn't be a used digital software market that operates on the same principles as the used physical software market. The "deterioration of the storage medium" is irrelevant as that's not what you're paying for, it's merely how the software is delivered to you. I'm both cases you pay for a software license, that's the valuable element of your purchase, you don't own "the game" in either instance. A video game isn't a car - it doesn't lose value because it "deteriorates", it loses value because it's old and in less demand than when it was new.


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## Engezerstorung (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> Wait so, since digital copies/licenses or however you want to call it don't deteriorate with time, how do you assess their value?


all game bought digitaly arent going to end on the resell market, and people die, dont go on it anymore, etc, so the sold digital copy will go down. also take into consideration that some game stop selling at some point (Fable 3 on steam for exemple) and people could want to buy them by putting some money in it



> People would just sell it at slightly lower than the selling price to "beat" steam, and others would sell lower to compete. Steam would then have a extremely massive drop in sales, this so called used market is a brand new condition market. Who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea? Yes it would be nice if as customers if we're treated as royalty, but this is going too far. This could very well potentially drive Steam out of business, what then? Where's your licenses now?



again : like in real life, did the physical resell market destroyed the market and shut down all sellers? no (but digital un-resselable copy did, the irony)



> Similar to what ThoD said, you do agree to Steam's ToS when you use their service, there is no violation by them here. If you don't like it, buy from somewhere else, or make your own key reselling store.
> Please think a little before going all guns blazing saying I want everything beneficial to me and everyone else has to adjust, that's now how this works.



ToS arent law, law prevail, ToS cant do things that are against the law. So this is not even an argument


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## Jiehfeng (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> You can say literally the exact same thing about physical copies - if you're patient, you can buy the exact same game a month or two after it's been released for half the price. It hasn't "deteriorated" much in that time, has it now? This is a flimsy defense, and Steam's ToS doesn't get to alter my right to resell things I legally own, this includes software licenses. There is no reason why there shouldn't be a used digital software market that operates on the same principles as the used physical software market, the "deterioration of the storage medium" is irrelevant as that's not what you're paying for, it's merely how the software is delivered to you. I'm both cases you pay for a software license, that's the valuable element of your purchase, you don't own "the game" in either instance.



Comparing this to a physical market with different scenarios will not get you anywhere with this situation.
Think of it this way, there is one Steam.exe you launch. There will be a Store Page and a Market page. You can go to the Store Page and get a game for $60, or you can go to the Market Page and get the game for $50 or less with no difference at all. Why would anybody even touch the Store Page ever again other than to buy to resell? There would be much fewer sales which is not good for developers.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> Comparing this to a physical market with different scenarios will not get you anywhere with this situation.
> Think of it this way, there is one Steam.exe you launch. There will be a Store Page and a Market page. You can go to the Store Page and get a game for $60, or you can go to the Market Page and get the game for $50 or less with no difference at all. Why would anybody even touch the Store Page ever again other than to buy to resell? There would be much fewer sales which is not good for developers.


The Community Market already exists on Steam and works perfectly, does that "impact the developers" too? Not being able to resell my car and always having to go to the dealership would probably be good for car manufacturers, but it wouldn't be good for consumers, how is this different? Why are developers supposed to be treated like holy cows that are exempt from participating in the free market? Here's what's going to happen - if the average Community Market price for a game is $20, guess what bucko - time to slash that $50 price tag down to $19,99 to compete, because apparently that's how much the game is worth. Some users might be unwilling to resell their game for significantly less than what they paid for, which coincidentally is *how the market works in all walks of life*. This is a protection racket, plain and simple - you buy and own things that you are artificially restricted from getting rid of. If you can't sell your games, you never really owned them in the first place - might as well just rename the Buy button to the Loan button.


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## Edgarska (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> Comparing this to a physical market with different scenarios will not get you anywhere with this situation.
> Think of it this way, there is one Steam.exe you launch. There will be a Store Page and a Market page. You can go to the Store Page and get a game for $60, or you can go to the Market Page and get the game for $50 or less with no difference at all. Why would anybody even touch the Store Page ever again other than to buy to resell? There would be much fewer sales which is not good for developers.



According to the developers themselves, most sales happen in the 2 weeks after a game comes out. How do you suppose that the people looking to save money will find second-hand digital copies during those two weeks? Keep in mind, someone looking to resell their copy for cheaper than Steam still has to pay full price for it, so buying with the intent to just resell doesn't work as it does with scalping.


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## SonicRings (Sep 20, 2019)

Rune said:


> This will probably cause the price of digital games to rise as well.


You mean drop? There'll be more ways of getting them.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Edgarska said:


> According to the developers themselves, most sales happen in the 2 weeks after a game comes out. How do you suppose that the people looking to save money will find second-hand digital copies during those two weeks? Keep in mind, someone looking to resell their copy for cheaper than Steam still has to pay full price for it, so buying with the intent to just resell doesn't work as it does with scalping.


The advantage of the digital market space is indeed the fact that there's an infinite supply, so scalping isn't a thing. I suppose you could make 10 accounts and buy 10 copies during a sale just to resell them later when the price bumps back up, but I can't imagine how that would be profitable with millions of people doing the same thing *and* I can't exactly fault the thought process.


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## NoNAND (Sep 20, 2019)

That's a nice policy and all. Once you're done with a game, and especially if you don't want it anymore just resell and uninstall it.
The thing is that I could see this getting abused which could lead to piracy and false sold/bought claims.


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## Engezerstorung (Sep 20, 2019)

and again, you can implement things that mitigate the "i will buy it cheaper" by implementing some "buy new" incentive
like you could have some included bonuses when you buy the game that are not resselable (something that already happen in the physical copy market, sometime you feel like you better put those extra 10€ to get the "full game experience" as a luxury, liken when you buy a collector with a huge plastic slob that will stay in its box)
like, game licence could be resselable but not virtual added content (like skins and shyte)


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Engezerstorung said:


> and again, you can implement things that mitigate the "i will buy it cheaper" by implementing some "buy new" incentive
> like you could have some included bonuses when you buy the game that are not resselable (something that already happen in the physical copy market, sometime you feel like you better put those extra 10€ to get the "full game experience" as a luxury, liken when you buy a collector with a huge plastic slob that will stay in its box)
> like, game licence could be resselable but not virtual added content (like skins and shyte)


That would be an excellent way to incentivise the sale of new copies - unique items that are only available to the "first owner". Plus, the catalogue of in-game unlockables is obviously not transferable, the software is.


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## Edgarska (Sep 20, 2019)

NoNAND said:


> That's a nice policy and all. Once you're done with a game, and especially if you don't want it anymore just resell and uninstall it.
> The thing is that I could see this getting abused which could lead to piracy and false sold/bought claims.


Piracy exists no matter what. If allowing the customers to treat the products that they paid for the same as every other market does leads to losing revenue, then your business was flawed in the first place.


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## Jiehfeng (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> The Community Market already exists on Steam and works perfectly, does that "impact the developers" too? Not being able to resell my car and always having to go to the dealership is probably good for car manufacturers, but it isn't good for consumers, how is this different? Why are developers supposed to be treated like holy cows that are exempt from participating in the free market? Here's what's going to happen - if the average Community Market price for a game is $20, guess what bucko - time to slash that $50 price tag down to $19,99 to compete, because apparently that's how much the game is worth. Some users might be unwilling to resell their game for significantly less than what they paid for, which coincidentally is *how the market works in all walks of life*. This is a protection racket, plain and simple - you buy and own things that you are artificially restricted from getting rid of. If you can't sell your games, you never really owned them in the first place - might as well just rename the Buy button to the Loan button.



I guess it could work that way, but it will be very hectic. I'm not talking about scalpers, I'm talking about people who play a game and when they don't want it anymore after a month or so, they sell it at a lower price to garner a sale. With many doing so, Steam would have to reduce the price, but how would that work exactly? Multiple users would be pricing lower than the next, and Steam goes even lower? That's how much this game is worth? Would that really show how much the game is worth? 

Developers are treated fine at the moment, I'm not saying to treat them better any further. Consumers here are treated very well with steam, all the massive discounts people are taking for granted, we're all treated well enough here.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> I guess it could work that way, but it will be very hectic. I'm not talking about scalpers, I'm talking about people who play a game and when they don't want it anymore after a month or so, they sell it at a lower price to garner a sale. With many doing so, Steam would have to reduce the price, but how would that work exactly? Multiple users would be pricing lower than the next, and Steam goes even lower? That's how much this game is worth? Would that really show how much the game is worth?
> 
> Developers are treated fine at the moment, I'm not saying to treat them better any further. Consumers here are treated very well with steam, all the massive discounts people are taking for granted, we're all treated well enough here.


Flip this around. Why *shouldn't* they be able to sell the game after a month, hell, after an hour, if they don't like it? People already do it right now by abusing the returns policy, this makes zero impact.


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## Reiten (Sep 20, 2019)

It would be nice to be able to sell games from my Steam library, but I also think that this is the wrong way to go about the matter. I' m not sure the court has thought this one through carefully. I also find the term of 1 month implementation kind of stupid. We would probably get some shoddy implementation that would cause all kinds of problems. At least give them a year or two to make a good system.

On a side note, wouldn't this kind of make selling MMO accounts and by extension items legal?


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## Edgarska (Sep 20, 2019)

Reiten said:


> It would be nice to be able to sell games from my Steam library, but I also think that this is the wrong way to go about the matter. I' m not sure the court has thought this one through carefully. I also find the term of 1 month implementation kind of stupid. We would probably get some shoddy implementation that would cause all kinds of problems. At least give them a year or two to make a good system.
> 
> On a side note, wouldn't this kind of make selling MMO accounts and by extension items legal?


Not necessarily. The MMO subscription and items are different from the license to actually download the game. It's the same deal as buying a used physical game, you get the game, but all preorder content has already been used, so it doesn't come with it.


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## Engezerstorung (Sep 20, 2019)

> I guess it could work that way, but it will be very hectic. I'm not talking about scalpers, I'm talking about people who play a game and when they don't want it anymore after a month or so, they sell it at a lower price to garner a sale. With many doing so, Steam would have to reduce the price, but how would that work exactly? Multiple users would be pricing lower than the next, and Steam goes even lower? That's how much this game is worth? Would that really show how much the game is worth?



again : like people resell their game after finishing them in real life?
i can go on any resell platform and buy the game for 35€ when its 50€ new. did it destroyed the original sellers stores?

people that sell back want the most of their money back, they are not going to undercut indefinitively, its not an MMO where you loot something that cost you nothing (except time) and you want to make some bucks out of it.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Reiten said:


> It would be nice to be able to sell games from my Steam library, but I also think that this is the wrong way to go about the matter. I' m not sure the court has thought this one through carefully. I also find the term of 1 month implementation kind of stupid. We would probably get some shoddy implementation that would cause all kinds of problems. At least give them a year or two to make a good system.
> 
> On a side note, wouldn't this kind of make selling MMO accounts and by extension items legal?


Not really, no. An account and the items tied to it are a manifestation of your participation in a service, you don't "own" them, per se.


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## ombus (Sep 20, 2019)

If digital game cost the same 60 usd a physical one does wich can be resold, then i expect to do the same to the digital game.
Pay the same and have less rights over the stuff? Nah.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 20, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Hard to say.  Digital distribution started becoming popular in the early 2000s, and I'd wager there are a number of PS2 games which would be more valuable now if not for repeated remakes and being listed on Steam, but that's largely speculative.


Some effect, sure (indeed prices of Final Fantasy vs various remakes and respins are a fun one here) but despite far superior versions on various consoles since the N64 Rare games are still quite high. Resident Evil might make another interesting test case. Of course Nintendo are probably the exception here (keep finding myself linking https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-hit-video-games-with-ml-1341bd9b86b0 but it does show interesting things).

I would guess it is some function of rarity in general, desirability on that console (most of the new to the PS1 final fantasy games had near simultaneous PC releases of reasonable quality), desirability of that console (give or take the neogeo and similar such things -- I doubt the wonderswan is going to do much here but did have several notable versions of games from the same era), quality of any remakes (see final fantasy IOS remakes which somehow spread to the PC, the silent hill collection debacle), how official something is (I am still shocked at the extent of love people have for the mini retro consoles as with the exception of the PS1 everything has been trivial for years and the PS1 was not so bad either) and a few things like that.




Jiehfeng said:


> Wait so, since digital copies/licenses or however you want to call it don't deteriorate with time, how do you assess their value? People would just sell it at slightly lower than the selling price to "beat" steam, and others would sell lower to compete. Steam would then have a extremely massive drop in sales, this so called used market is a brand new condition market. Who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea? Yes it would be nice if as customers if we're treated as royalty, but this is going too far. This could very well potentially drive Steam out of business, what then? Where's your licenses now?
> 
> Similar to what ThoD said, you do agree to Steam's ToS when you use their service, there is no violation by them here. If you don't like it, buy from somewhere else, or make your own key reselling store.
> Please think a little before going all guns blazing saying I want everything beneficial to me and everyone else has to adjust, that's now how this works.


Again there are rights you can't forgo in a contract (see unenforceable terms) so this could be one of them, indeed the court seems to think it is. 

Do physical games deteriorate quickly enough in sufficient volume to not cause the same scenario? I am sure there are some that buy games in cash, slip on (and shred) the receipt on the way to pop it into the console and in doing so snap the disc/cart in half as they land on it but the majority of things don't and as such you could find just about any 2 year old game in mint condition. If that represents the vast majority of income for most (the percentage of games that go on to dominate multiplayer spaces, or indeed become a sport, become test case games or become elder scrolls/GTA/similar in their ubiquity is minimal -- probably comparable to those tech companies that not only get venture funding, not only succeed but don't get bought and then become one of those players that buys other companies) and has not happened yet/did not happen during the decades since software was divorced from hardware then is it likely to change much here? Ditto most physical goods while there is ebay and amazon around?

If people presumably had to buy the thing in the first place then the incentive (barring need for a quick sale) is not to lose the money. It would mean Steam has some competition but that does not seem like a bad thing. Such competition could also happen if one of the alternatives actually manages to take off.

Is this customers being treated like royalty or allowed the rights every peasant is granted?

As for steam going out of business (oh what a glorious day that might be) then technically the licenses are still extant. But yeah it is a problem associated with DRM encumbered goods -- wouldn't be the first and won't be the last. It is generally considered part of the bargain. If Valve truly are the magnanimous gods of the gaming world that some paint them as then they could strip the DRM from it (or whatever they legally can strip... I don't know what goes here as far as agreements with other companies) as a parting gift, and I imagine some company would rush in to take over the Steam database.

Edit


Reiten said:


> It would be nice to be able to sell games from my Steam library, but I also think that this is the wrong way to go about the matter. I' m not sure the court has thought this one through carefully. I also find the term of 1 month implementation kind of stupid. We would probably get some shoddy implementation that would cause all kinds of problems. At least give them a year or two to make a good system.



They already have a gift function which allows you to send your friends your "unused" games. Compliance by virtue of actually deleting a bit of code that says "if played then don't allow gifting" (though in reality probably if location = France then allow, they presumably already have fairly decent geolocation services baked into it) and telling people sell it on third party services could easily be achieved in a few hours.


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## Engezerstorung (Sep 20, 2019)

ombus said:


> If digital game cost the same 60 usd a physical one does wich can be resold, then i expect to do the same to the digital game.
> Pay the same and have less rights over the stuff? Nah.



its kind of off-topic but totally agree, when they came up with digital game the big argument was "but it will be way cheaper for consumer since there will be no packaging, no transport logistics, intermediary cuts, etc", and then 2019 here we are...


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## Jiehfeng (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Flip this around. Why *shouldn't* they be able to sell the game after a month, hell, after an hour, if they don't like it? People already do it right now by abusing the returns policy, this makes zero impact.



I can't really think of a reason why shouldn't they be allowed to do so, I'm more worried about the negative consequences. 
That's if you played the game for under two hours and if the purchase was made within the week, how is that abuse?


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## Edgarska (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> I can't really think of a reason why shouldn't they be allowed to do so, I'm more worried about the negative consequences.
> That's if you played the game for under two hours and if the purchase was made within the week, how is that abuse?


As consumers, it's not our responsibility to worry about negative consequences of exercising our consumer rights. 
If being forced to respect their consumers' rights has negative consequences for a company, then they're doing something wrong on their end and they need to fix it.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

ombus said:


> If digital game cost the same 60 usd a physical one does wich can be resold, then i expect to do the same to the digital game.
> Pay the same and have less rights over the stuff? Nah.


That's the thing: nearly any Steam game I've wanted to buy at launch was available for $45 or less from GMG or elsewhere.  Not to mention the price drops much quicker after release than on consoles, whether physical or digital.  If this ruling is upheld, I expect to kiss these benefits goodbye, as I don't see individual resellers pricing games as competitively as established third-party key resellers have.  Particularly at launch.


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## Jiehfeng (Sep 20, 2019)

Edgarska said:


> As consumers, it's not our responsibility to worry about negative consequences of exercising our consumer rights.
> If being forced to respect their consumers' rights has negative consequences for a company, then they're doing something wrong on their end and they need to fix it.



Do consumers really have such a right in this regard though? It is a license, permission to use.
Have you ridden those horses in the parks that you pay a few bucks to go a few rounds? You don't own that horse, you're just allowed to use it with the conditions set. You can't really sell your permission to ride the horse to another person, the permission was given to you by the condition of a full purchase made, only to you.


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## Axido (Sep 20, 2019)

I don't mind higher prices since this only moves the lower prices from one side to the other. And this time it's the consumers who profit from it instead of keyselling companies. In the long run it'll pay off at least for me.

And it's a good way of tidying up my library filled with stuff I never touched once.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> I can't really think of a reason why shouldn't they be allowed to do so, I'm more worried about the negative consequences.
> That's if you played the game for under two hours and if the purchase was made within the week, how is that abuse?


Oh please, this is a common problem. People "purchase" a game either for a laugh or with the intention to speedrun it, sometimes they stream it or create YT content based upon it and immediately refund it. You're also forgetting that Valve reserves full discretion when it comes to returns and those rules are merely recommendations - a user can simply say that they encountered a game-breaking error that only surfaced after the initial 2 hours, or that they were unaware of the returns policy, or a number of other things.

https://www.polygon.com/2017/11/15/16657156/sonic-forces-refund-steam-twitch


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## Edgarska (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> Do consumers really have such a right in this regard though? It is a license, permission to use.
> Have you ridden those horses in the parks that you pay a few bucks to go a few rounds? You don't own that horse, you're just allowed to use it with the conditions set. You can't really sell your permission to ride the horse to another person, the permission was given to you by the condition of a full purchase made, only to you.


Can you make your point with examples that are actually comparable?
For example, try to keep people from reselling their car and see how that goes.
For an example comparable to your horse analogy, netflix has already been presented before in the thread.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> Do consumers really have such a right in this regard though? It is a license, permission to use.
> Have you ridden those horses in the parks that you pay a few bucks to go a few rounds? You don't own that horse, you're just allowed to use it with the conditions set. You can't really sell your permission to ride the horse to another person, the permission was given to you by the condition of a full purchase made, only to you.


Again, you're comparing digital goods with a permanent use license to services subject to a time limit.


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## Deleted User (Sep 20, 2019)

I don't think the Australian lawsuit was about a refund policy. It was about the consumer guarantees act which valve still offers no way to make a complaint over despite saying they will comply with it in tos. Consumer guarantees act supercedes store policy and warranty.


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## Jiehfeng (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Again, you're comparing digital goods with a permanent use license to services subject to a time limit.



I don't understand how the fact that the time limit changes the fact that it's just a license. You could buy permission to use something, it doesn't make that something yours for you to be able to do anything with it. I still don't understand how you would resell permission.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> I don't understand how the fact that the time limit changes the fact that it's just a license. You could buy permission to use something, it doesn't make that something yours for you to be able to do anything with it. I still don't understand how you would resell permission.


I see the problem. You are under the impression that, at any stage, you own *the actual game*, code, assets et all. You do not - you own the license to use said game. You are not "selling the game", the license to use said game is transferred from you to another person for a nominal fee. Ownership of the actual item is never in question here - the developer/publisher/copyright holder own the game, you own the right to use it, and that right is both permanent and transferable. This is wholly different from receiving a service from a third-party. A rancher owns the horse and provides a service, namely horse riding. You are given a set amount of time during which you can ride the horse in a designated area, and do just that. At no point you are "licensed" to do anything, the rancher renders a service that you take advantage of. There are no "permissions" here, you're not leasing the horse for your own purposes, you are using the horse for the purpose designated by the rancher.


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## Edgarska (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> I don't understand how the fact that the time limit changes the fact that it's just a license. You could buy permission to use something, it doesn't make that something yours for you to be able to do anything with it. I still don't understand how you would resell permission.


The time limit is the whole point. It's why reselling a movie ticket is illegal in the USA, while reselling your old bluray of the same movie is legal. You don't own the movie itself, you can't make changes to it or release your own version of it, but you do own the copy that you bought and you can sell it or give it away if you want.


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## Rune (Sep 20, 2019)

sonicrings said:


> You mean drop? There'll be more ways of getting them.


I meant the original price of the game might rise, not the price from the resellers.


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## DarthDub (Sep 20, 2019)

I don't care about reselling my Steam games. What I want to do is being able to gift someone a game that I bought for myself that I don't want anymore.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Rune said:


> I meant the original price of the game might rise, not the price from the resellers.


There is a point at which the price for an item is capped as the customers are only willing to pay so much for it, and not a dime more. Considering the fact that digital copies of games are already priced the same *or higher* than freely resellable physical copies, that point has already been reached. If we'd see price increases, they would be minimal - additional costs are always passed on the consumer, but there is a limit to what the consumer is willing to pay.


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## Roamin64 (Sep 20, 2019)

MythicalData said:


> I'm not really sure if I think this is silly or not.
> I would like to know why they think it violates their laws though.
> Being able to transfer your license to someone else would be nice though, but what's stopping everyone from endlessly swapping games out


Exactly the same thing that prevents you from lending/selling your physical copies to friends , nothing! If I want to lend you my car, nobody can say otherwise.. Why would things be different when we buy something that is digital instead of physical..


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## Engezerstorung (Sep 20, 2019)

Jiehfeng said:


> Do consumers really have such a right in this regard though? It is a license, permission to use.
> Have you ridden those horses in the parks that you pay a few bucks to go a few rounds? You don't own that horse, you're just allowed to use it with the conditions set. You can't really sell your permission to ride the horse to another person, the permission was given to you by the condition of a full purchase made, only to you.





Foxi4 said:


> I see the problem. You are under the impression that, at any stage, you own *the actual game*, code, assets et all. You do not - you own the license to use said game. You are not "selling the game", the license to use said game is transferred from you to another person for a nominal fee. Ownership of the actual item is never in question here - the developer/publisher/copyright holder own the game, you own the right to use it, and that right is both permanent and transferable. This is wholly different from receiving a service from a third-party. A rancher owns the horse and provides a service, namely horse riding. You are given a set amount of time during which you can ride the horse in a designated area, and do just that. At no point you are "licensed" to do anything, the rancher renders a service that you take advantage of. There are no "permissions" here, you're not leasing the horse for your own purposes, you are using the horse for the purpose designated by the rancher.



@Jiehfeng and the "you can't really sell", well what you can or cant do depend on what the law say, if the law dont put any limits on what conditions the owner of the horse can make, then yeah the owner can say that you cant resell your ride ticket, but also the law could say that its in a consummer right to do so, and then the owner of the horse would have no other choice than to comply (or could try to bluff his way in this by making you think you cant resell your ticket while you have in fact a legal right to do so; and thats why sometimes company are called to court because they made illegal ToS and stuff)
Like its like now sometime when you buy a train ticket its nominative and you need to prove your identity so you cant resell it, but some years ago it wasnt, so you could resell it/ give it to someone you knew.
And thats also why to avoid some abuse they often put a mention "cant be sold" on press copy of game, invitation tickets of music event, and stuff like that, so people dont sell back stuff non-nominative stuff they didnt bought in the first place

and thats also something steam and co could put in place to avoid g2a abuse who sell review copy and stuff, they could be "key for press review content, can't be re-sold once activated"

there is sooo much things that can be put in place to prevent obvious abuse if you take your time to think about it
the argument of but if we "if we "extreme implementation in the worst way of a something" then its going to be the apocalypse", is the scare tactic we see everywhere to kill stuff that dont please the "economic liberalism" that fck up people rights


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## Roamin64 (Sep 20, 2019)

ThoD said:


> Sure, it "makes sense" to allow people to buy things on Steam with stolen money then sell the games effectively using Steam to launder their illegal cash like they do with G2A or for people to pay 1€ for a bundle then sell the games at their normal price making 100€ in return /s


What the fuck are you saying ? Wether the money is stolen or not changes absolutely nothing. If we go by your logic , nobody can ever sell anything for a profit ?  Are you saying that valve is not making profit with the games that they are selling us ? That's how life works , you acquire things at a certain price and sell them for profit.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

To play the devil's advocate, I can understand the concern that developers would see diminished profits as a result of implementing a resale policy. However, I think we can have our cake and eat it. There is absolutely nothing stopping Valve from charging a nominal fee for using the Community Marketplace, much like eBay charges for hosting auctions on the website. If a set portion of the "profit" goes towards the developer, they could in fact see some additional profit, particularly in the Indie sphere, coming from users who wouldn't normally pay full retail price for the title, but would happily purchase a "pre-owned" copy. This also opens the doors to new users purchasing DLC for the games they found to be "good deals" on the marketplace, adding a secondary revenue stream. We're talking about making some money versus making no money here, that doesn't sound like a bad deal. If implemented correctly, this could work for everyone involved.


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## Xzi (Sep 20, 2019)

Will be very interesting to see how this unfolds and how fast the fallout from this decision hits other tech companies if it's upheld, that's for sure.  Given how quickly the Steam trading card market crashed with a similarly 'unlimited' supply, however, I think people should probably temper their expectations on what the resale value of any particular game might be.


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## odeon (Sep 20, 2019)

Bladexdsl said:


> how are you supposed to resell your digital games than...just through steam? and how will you be paid...with cards and gems? yeah fuck that



Doesn’t take much imagination to figure out a system for resale. Just need an option in steam to convert a game to a key. Then you can sell the key however you like or even give it to a friend. The other party then redeems the key on steam.


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## GilgameshArcher (Sep 20, 2019)

Hells Malice said:


> Well this won't be endlessly abused and lead to significant problems, especially with a huge rise in steam account compromising leading to a ton of innocent people becoming victims of stolen games.
> 
> No definitely not.
> 
> Definitely wasn't a legitimate reason digital media has historically not had something this stupid be possible.


 
But all those ppl that lost their account was not due to their own mistakes? (ex: bad password, not updating their client and falling into scams...)

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



tranceology3 said:


> Go ahead, enforce these laws. It will be obsolete in 5-10 years when all games are streamed from servers and you never "own" the games Think of it like, can you resell your Netflix movies?



Play all game with absurd lags??? I will never accept that, I can spent the rest of my life replaying only what is there now.


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## Flame (Sep 20, 2019)

Rockstar already regrets making a windows store front.


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## Jonna (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> To play the devil's advocate, I can understand the concern that developers would see diminished profits as a result of implementing a resale policy. However, I think we can have our cake and eat it. There is absolutely nothing stopping Valve from charging a nominal fee for using the Community Marketplace, much like eBay charges for hosting auctions on the website. If a set portion of the "profit" goes towards the developer, they could in fact see some additional profit, particularly in the Indie sphere, coming from users who wouldn't normally pay full retail price for the title, but would happily purchase a "pre-owned" copy. This also opens the doors to new users purchasing DLC for the games they found to be "good deals" on the marketplace, adding a secondary revenue stream. We're talking about making some money versus making no money here, that doesn't sound like a bad deal. If implemented correctly, this could work for everyone involved.


Liked because it's the only solution I've seen that would actually help indie Devs while simultaneously giving consumers their rights back. Couldn't care about the mainstream devs, but the solo devs pouring their heart into a charming game deserve as much profit as they can potentially get.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Jonna said:


> Liked because it's the only solution I've seen that would actually help indie Devs while simultaneously giving consumers their rights back. Couldn't care about the mainstream devs, but the solo devs pouring their heart into a charming game deserve as much profit as they can potentially get.


I like the sentiment, but not at the cost of consumer rights - those should be de facto enforced. I'm sorry if the profit margins are tight, but nobody said business was going to be easy peasy lemon squeezey. If the product is good, it will sell either way - some people *must* buy the games new for the "pre-owned" copies to exist in the first place. I sympathise and I can get behind solutions that help, but the priority here is the consumer.


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## Techjunky90 (Sep 20, 2019)

tranceology3 said:


> Go ahead, enforce these laws. It will be obsolete in 5-10 years when all games are streamed from servers and you never "own" the games Think of it like, can you resell your Netflix movies?


Lmfao! You're an idiot if you think game streaming will ever be anything more than a proof of concept. It's already been proven time and time again that physical games are not going anywhere. The world's internet infrastructure is decades away from being capable of streaming games reliably.


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## warweeny (Sep 20, 2019)

If this goes through i already know how it will be implemented (probably).

It will be like the second hand market, people put up their games with a price-tag, if a purchase is complete, money will be transferred from one steam account to the next (no real money, just steam wallet) and the licence goes with it.
Only caveat they could implement is that steam games that were activated through a steam key cannot be resold since it was not bought on their platform.

I think this would be a great solution because sites like G2A are then quite obsolete. This is pretty much the same idea, but with keys bought from steam, so nobody is selling "stolen creditcard" games.

I am all in for this idea.


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## DJPlace (Sep 20, 2019)

do this for sony systems or GTFO. (i know that sounded rude) but i have so much shit sitting in my Download list it's not funny.


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 20, 2019)

This is an interesting situation.

Note that for this, I'm purely looking at indie titles, AAA shit sells regardless.

The good:

A death knell for G2A and similar slimy sites.
Forces an answer to the age old issue of not being able to resell digital goods which always seemed weird to me.
You'll be able to buy games for a cheaper price in _general_ second hand.
The bad:

Makes Steam less attractive to developers, we might see developers pull their games from Steam if this goes through. More on that below.
Less revenue for developers if Steam directly offers second hand resale through it's own platform. This _could_ be fixed by making resales through Steam force a cut for the developer?

Causes developers to lose control over the value of their game. Right now, as it is on many online storefronts, the developer essentially holds full control over the price of their products. You'll often find that on second hand slimy sites, the prices for games tend to be exactly those as the "lowest registered" price. This would essentially remove this control.
Will likely cause people to sign up with Epic Games more (YMMV on if this is good or bad, personal preference means I'm gonna put it on bad.)
I doubt Steam is gonna win the higher court call, and the last time this happened (was with refunds), not just Steam, but every major online games store at the time quickly followed through on instating policies surrounding the matter.
So... yeah, let's see where this goes.


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## Bladexdsl (Sep 20, 2019)

odeon said:


> Doesn’t take much imagination to figure out a system for resale. Just need an option in steam to convert a game to a key. Then you can sell the key however you like or even give it to a friend. The other party then redeems the key on steam.


and what happens when everyone is just buying the game from users on the marketplace cheap and not from the sellers? the sellers abandon their games and less sellers want their games on steam that's what.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 20, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> The bad:
> 
> Makes Steam less attractive to developers, we might see developers pull their games from Steam if this goes through. More on that below.
> Less revenue for developers if Steam directly offers second hand resale through it's own platform. This _could_ be fixed by making resales through Steam force a cut for the developer?
> ...



Is that a bad thing? Or are you assuming this ruling only applies to Steam? It is a French court so precedent is not as all encompassing as the US but it still forms a basis for a lot of things.
So devs which are artificially getting more now won't? Oh well.
Not seeing the downside. Not to mention the usual workaround is multiple region versions -- not so many peeps in Europe know Russian well enough to play a game in it. If a bit later some kind of saturation is reached then oh whoops a patch dropped.


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## the_randomizer (Sep 20, 2019)

Hope this hurts EGS big time


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## 8BitWonder (Sep 20, 2019)

Can't say I feel strongly for or against this.
But it's a neat idea and it will be interesting to see how Valve's appeal plays out.

For folks worried about hacked accounts and libraries being sold;
Steam already places traded/sold items on hold for up to 15 days to prevent people from hacking into and selling entire users' inventory. This way there is time for the user to cancel them and change their credentials.
I doubt Valve would handle it any differently when it comes to selling contents of your library.

Additionally, you can add 2FA to make it even less likely/impossible for someone to break into your account without physically taking your 2FA device and knowing your username/password.


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## chaoskagami (Sep 20, 2019)

Part of me likes this, since it means games will inevitably reach a cost equilibrium over time and make things cheaper for us. The other part of me feels that this is almost worse than piracy for developers and really shouldn't happen.

Arguably, the whole concept of "used" digital games makes no sense, because digital games are always bit-for-bit the same as another copy - and data can be replicated infinitely, unlike a physical product. So were you to buy a "used" copy off someone else, you're getting exactly what the developers sell off the Steam store. Once market saturation of a game is reached, the developers are going to be completely unable to turn a profit and there will be an excess of "free" licenses floating out there, which will drive the price straight into the ground as people try to get rid of copies.

To put it bluntly, I see this crashing the whole game industry and being very bad for Valve.


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 20, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> Is that a bad thing? Or are you assuming this ruling only applies to Steam? It is a French court so precedent is not as all encompassing as the US but it still forms a basis for a lot of things.
> So devs which are artificially getting more now won't? Oh well.
> Not seeing the downside. Not to mention the usual workaround is multiple region versions -- not so many peeps in Europe know Russian well enough to play a game in it. If a bit later some kind of saturation is reached then oh whoops a patch dropped.


The refund lawsuits were Australia based, not US.

And it's more from a value perspective. If you buy a physical product second hand, there's a not unlikely possibility that it's used or damaged in some form, which is often why those products are sold at a cheaper price: they've been damaged through use, so it's acceptable to agree that the price is lower.

This obviously doesn't apply to digital games, where each install is downloaded from Steams (or what have you store) CDN.

I'm not saying the ruling applies just to Steam, the last bit is me considering if it could migrate to other storefronts as well (although Epic Games seems much more like the company that would gladly do another lawsuit to not do it if they believe the actual sales earn them more money than the fines do.)

I'm also talking about indie titles, games which often aren't sold for a very high price to begin with (a game that jumps to mind real quickly here is the excellent Pony Island, which is not only sold for 4 bucks but is also just... not replayable at all since it's highly story driven), so multiple languages aren't always an option either due to developers not speaking multiple languages or not having the budget to hire a developer. 

Also, keep in mind that this is something that _Steam_ must implement, which would make me guess that they'll end up adding something like a "buy game second hand" button which would region adjust itself to match the game.

Honestly, the most likely side effect of this for AAA games is that we go back to those dumb "insert this one-time use code to play online" things and have Steam email the code to you if it's a first buy and alternatively offer the online code through an in-game market, whilst indies are getting screwed over since they often don't have online components.


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## DKB (Sep 20, 2019)

Cool idea.


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## XDel (Sep 20, 2019)

Would like for this to go International again. I want to sell my entire library.


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## eriol33 (Sep 20, 2019)

very interesting, but I am not sure whether it will do the good for the developers.


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## deinonychus71 (Sep 20, 2019)

I wonder why our dear LREM specifically targetted video games.
Why not the music industry and movie industry then?

Ooh right. Cause they have personal interests in that and that wouldnt be technically feasable anyway.


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## snobbysteven (Sep 20, 2019)

Most people probably think this is great and everything, but overall this could reallyyyy screw us if this happens. Increased price of digital games, less game developers, less games. As much as I would like to get some money for my old games, this is really bad.


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 20, 2019)

deinonychus71 said:


> Why not the music industry and movie industry then?


I mean, the Movie and Music industry both are mainly rooted into streaming services (Spotify, Netflix et. al) at this point, rather than direct sales.

Video games in that regard are still pretty much the only digital medium that hasn't been converted in a streaming service (although Google Stadia kind of wants to change that, but I doubt it will), mainly due to technical limitations (not everyone has Silicon Valley levels of internet speed), so it makes sense to go after them first from that point of view.

EDIT: Also, this is a whataboutism.


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## Subtle Demise (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> That in itself is egregious, Steam API integration should be an entirely optional element of software that can be disabled at will. Launchers are getting more and more embedded and the amount of resources they hog only ever goes up. I truly miss the days of just double-clicking on an executable and getting straight into the game, I really don't need a zillion mandatory launchers to complicate a process that used to be so simple.


Yep. Right now I have my entire PC library spread out across Origin, Epic Games Launcher, UPlay, and Steam. There are a few exceptions like GOG who still do standalone installations, but even pirated games often require that the respective launcher be at least installed for the crack to work.

As for the court ruling, I feel like Valve has enough money that they may find it cheaper and easier to just pay the fines rather than spending time and money developing and maintaining a complicated digital resale system. Assuming they lose the appeal, but I think they will win honestly. Game companies keep insisting that game licenses are services and not goods, including software and firmware on game consoles. If Valve loses then the precedent is good for consumers, assuming they are also held responsible for abuses of a theoretical resale system.

I can also imagine that if by some small chance they are forced to implement it, then it will certainly be geolocked. Likely only be able to re-sell games purchased in the region where the law applies, and only to other people in that region.


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## Attila13 (Sep 20, 2019)

olembet said:


> finally after so many god damn years? digital copy finally got resale value?


They always were, while there was an option to buy games as gifts and store them in your library and resell them after they got removed from the storefront. (ex. licensed games that like games tied with movies and such)


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## Subtle Demise (Sep 20, 2019)

snobbysteven said:


> Most people probably think this is great and everything, but overall this could reallyyyy screw us if this happens. Increased price of digital games, less game developers, less games. As much as I would like to get some money for my old games, this is really bad.


How so? If Gamestop can be considered a legitimate business, why would this do any damage? It's the same license transfer concept but physical media just has a physical token tied to it.


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## DEFIANT (Sep 20, 2019)

i just wanted to chime in and ask....how will this work for online games or games that cant be played without an online connection? will this force severs to stay online or cause lawsuits when a digital game gets sold that cant be activated because the server is no longer being maintained?


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Subtle Demise said:


> Yep. Right now I have my entire PC library spread out across Origin, Epic Games Launcher, UPlay, and Steam. There are a few exceptions like GOG who still do standalone installations, but even pirated games often require that the respective launcher be at least installed for the crack to work.
> 
> As for the court ruling, I feel like Valve has enough money that they may find it cheaper and easier to just pay the fines rather than spending time and money developing and maintaining a complicated digital resale system. Assuming they lose the appeal, but I think they will win honestly. Game companies keep insisting that game licenses are services and not goods, including software and firmware on game consoles. If Valve loses then the precedent is good for consumers, assuming they are also held responsible for abuses of a theoretical resale system.
> 
> I can also imagine that if by some small chance they are forced to implement it, then it will certainly be geolocked. Likely only be able to re-sell games purchased in the region where the law applies, and only to other people in that region.


It's not a question of whether they'd be able to pay fines or not, it's a matter of whether they'd be allowed to trade at all without providing such a solution. I direct you guys once again to Oracle v UsedSoft, the highest courts of the land have already affirmed the right of users to resell their software licenses, including licenses for software acquired online. For those unfamiliar with the case, it concerned the Exhaustion of Rights principle - the rights of a right-holder are considered "exhausted" upon the first authorised sale of a work - this means that the work can be resold without the right-holder's permission. This model often referred to as the First-sale doctrine, particularly in the United States - the developer gets a cut from the first sale, the initial distribution run - what happens to the copies after that is none of their business, they have been compensated for them. The wheels of the legal system turn slowly, but they always catch up.


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## Bladexdsl (Sep 20, 2019)

Subtle Demise said:


> How so? If Gamestop can be considered a legitimate business, why would this do any damage? It's the same license transfer concept but physical media just has a physical token tied to it.


no it's not! physical copies have to be there to be sold digital ones can be obtained much easier and sold on a large wider marketplace to the whole world not just one store!


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## Subtle Demise (Sep 20, 2019)

DEFIANT said:


> i just wanted to chime in and ask....how will this work for online games or games that cant be played without an online connection? will this force severs to stay online or cause lawsuits when a digital game gets sold that cant be activated because the server is no longer being maintained?


Don't think it will affect those at all. I imagine those games where the server gets shut down would be de-listed and I doubt they would allow de-listed games to be resold. Also, there is now a preservation exception in the DMCA that allows for reverse engineering of server code in order for consumers to run and use private servers when the official ones go down.


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## deinonychus71 (Sep 20, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> I mean, the Movie and Music industry both are mainly rooted into streaming services (Spotify, Netflix et. al) at this point, rather than direct sales.
> 
> Video games in that regard are still pretty much the only digital medium that hasn't been converted in a streaming service (although Google Stadia kind of wants to change that, but I doubt it will), mainly due to technical limitations (not everyone has Silicon Valley levels of internet speed), so it makes sense to go after them first from that point of view.
> 
> EDIT: Also, this is a whataboutism.



Whataboutism  not a "automatically win the argument" wildcard although people love to think so. It is used against faulty comparison fallacies, otherwise it makes no sense.
Digital content is digital content. Steam do offer digital licenses, just like Uplay, Battlenet etc but also like VUDU (not in France ok), Amazon, Itunes, etc.

They're just arbitrarily trying to apply a legislation on some of it while leaving the rest (where quite a few of our legislators DO have interest in) alone.

Direct sales are pretty much still alive (thankfully). You can still buy music off amazon, you can buy music from Itunes and you'll get it DRM free.
For video content, you do -buy- it to be streamed indefinitely. You own the license indefinitely (or until the service cease to exist).

And how is that even an argument "well most people mainly just stream today", there are people who don't.
So with that logic the day Stadia becomes mainstream it'll be ok for video games too just because more people directly stream, even though we'll still pay full price?

UFC is like the SNCF of consumer associations (there, free faulty comparison), they love to bitch about stuff that will end up biting us later.


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## Subtle Demise (Sep 20, 2019)

Bladexdsl said:


> no it's not! physical copies have to be there to be sold digital ones can be obtained much easier and sold on a large wider marketplace to the whole world not just one store!


What do you mean? Do ebay and sites like play-asia not exist for physical media? Garage sales? Facebook marketplace? Our own trading forum?


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Subtle Demise said:


> What do you mean? Do ebay and sites like play-asia not exist for physical media? Garage sales? Facebook marketplace? Our own trading forum?


Tfw a young Templing accidentally discovers the post office.


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## Dontuuch17 (Sep 20, 2019)

Man, all I foresee is tons of abuse if this becomes more widespread.


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## Dr.Hacknik (Sep 20, 2019)

Ugh, why do governments feel the need to police the internet or global business'.

Reselling Steam games was and is already an option. Not exactly directly within the platform, but honestly I would prefer to keep things as is. As others have iterated, I cannot see having it directly within steam, especially with rampant account hackers and bans; this would be a hacked users nightmare.


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## Ryccardo (Sep 20, 2019)

deinonychus71 said:


> Why not the music industry


Most legal downloads are drm free nowadays in the first place, aren't them? (for one time that Apple does a mostly-original and pro-consumer thing...)
Movies, for "whatever" reason, weren't caught in the same flow - but do enough people actually buy them digitally to have a mass of complainers?


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## Chrisssj2 (Sep 20, 2019)

olembet said:


> finally after so many god damn years? digital copy finally got resale value?


Only for france..


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## Teletron1 (Sep 20, 2019)

good to see Microsoft was talking about digital transfer of ownership even the ability to allow someone to borrow ownership / they were also talking about a disc to digital service 

it's only the right thing to do when it becomes a full digital age hopefully this has a trickle effect even for movies and music (scary thing with movies some companies like to pull movies from your library) MA/Old UV


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## tianchris (Sep 20, 2019)

I wonder if some companies will just let gamers to rent it's product rather than sold it. I mean it's the easiest way to avoid this ruling. I wonder what the rate will be to rent games in the future.


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## Haloman800 (Sep 20, 2019)

I'm glad. DRM is bull and this weakens it a bit.


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## sweis12 (Sep 20, 2019)

How about they just dont operate in france anymore? Seems like a better solution.


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## Voyambar (Sep 20, 2019)

Why do the courts always have to come in to make good shit happen


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## fischermasamune (Sep 20, 2019)

(I read all the first seven pages of the thread. I may reuse and repeat some ideas if they match mine, with no references and direct credit provided. Still, I believe there are some new thoughts on the following.)

If the decision on upheld, and then expanded to the EU and the rest of the world, I think it would be a good thing (there are three subscenarios in this case). Not because it would necessarily change prices, supply and demand, but because it would force the industry (we focus on the video game industry, but it also affects music, movies and software). Let's say this this goes into effect.

1) Then buying a game online allows the user to sell their game. The process should be something like that:

a) There are new games which are sold from Steam, which people can buy, to become an owner of a license of playing that game [I'll say "own the game" for simplicity].

b) A legit owner of a copy can sell their game, typically offering in a online store. Steam would likely offer this service (of facilitating sale for a fee) through a service of its own, like eBay, but it would not be able to be a monopoly (because if it tried, it would be sued for monopolizing the market and not really allowing sales of used games). Other services would allow it, with different fees and features. It would also be possible to sell it by person-to-person, at no fee, say it by transferring a encrypted file or something.

c) They can sell for any price they want. It would be less or equal that the price the original copies of the game (original meaning that the buyer would be the first buyer; won't clarify it again) are selling for at the official Valve/Epic/GOG store (in case the original distribution ceases selling, then the price could rise, the same way that happens with physical copies no longer printed, according to the process that is commonly called supply and demand). At the same time, it would not be 1 cent. It would be a fair compensation for the seller to lose the game and the buyer get the game.

d) Upon sale, the current owner of the game irrevocably loses the license to play the game. This would need to be implemented technically by Valve and other stores. (I can see people try to circumvent whatever the method is, trying to make pirate copies, specially now that they legitimately hold the game for some time in their possession. But there are two objections to the destructiveness and novelty of the issue. First, piracy already exists, with physical and digital games. If piracy is effective in preventing people from buying legit copies, the price adjust itself, like it happens with physical games, or even GOG, which allows the files to be downloaded DRM-free. Second, that happens also in other markets, like books. What if I buy a physical book, scan all the pages, then sell my book? Same thing. Note that piracy allows one to have a lesser copy of the product. Even for a digital game, the moment it's pirated, can't be sold as a legit copy [or rather could, but it would be fraudulent].)

e) The new owner would get a legit copy of the game. Used, but legit and legal and complete. I saw people arguing there could be a special gift, let it be a skin or weapon or another piece of in-game asset for the first owner only. I don't believe it would be possible to make it illegal to sell whatever it is to the buyer along with the game. As such, there could be timed offers of exclusive in-game assets, for example with pre-orders, but it would not be possible to make first-owner-only offers.

2) This would certainly affect the prices of digital games. There are two reasons in which digital games differ from physical games. The first is the ease of creating and distributing copies (currently easier than printing media and sending to physical stores). The second is the fact that the digital games can't be resold (at least not without many conditions). If games can be resold, it will be something like the market for physical copies. There will be fewer of very drastic discounts, which entice you to buy something you'll possibly never play (I guess many of us have enormous libraries with hours and hours of untouched games), and more of a steady decline of the price of the product. At the same time, an original copy may be sold for more than $60 (which is a common price for brand new, just released games) as being able to sell the game is a feature the first buyer would be purchasing with the game. With a new regulation and with price changes, it alters the industry a bit. That is, what was profitable before, may not be. Other options may appear (streaming, and others no one has ever thought about). The market would adjust. Probably to the better to some but not all customers, depending on their spending patterns and many other factors.

2.1) It is important to note that I don't believe that the games that are currently owned will be able to be sold, and that was the hypothesis I was working with. I think that it's more likely that the court decision, if upheld and expanded to other countries, would apply only to new purchases of games, not retroactively. Either way, it would affect prices, not invalidating what I wrote previously, except that it would in general push the prices down a bit (after all, supply is being created).

3) Now I believe that there could be a new modality of sale: loaning/rent/borrowing. That it would work exactly as it does today, but now it would have it's correct name: you are borrowing a game for unlimited time, but are never the owner of the game, and can't resell it. Let's examine the three possibilities (the fourth is that digital selling of games disappears, extremely unlikely), called A), B) and C), depending on the legality of selling and lending.

A) It would be possible for a customer to either buy or borrow (for unlimited time) the games. That is, when interested in an original game from Steam, the user can either buy the game, which would allow him to sell it, or to borrow it for unlimited time, in which he would be constrained by the restrictions of today's digital games. Obviously borrowing would be cheaper. This would be the best case scenario, and actually the most likely if the court decision if upheld and expanded. The rule would be: it is legal for Steam and others to lend a game as long as they can purchase the complete, resalable game.

B) The court forbids borrowing: only complete sales are allowed. This case was treated in 2). I believe that since, for example, one can at the same website or store have offers of selling and lending a physical book (at different prices obviously), it would be true also for digital games.

C) The court forbids the practice of lending a game and calling it a sale, but it allows the lending of a game without the need of a sale offer. In that case, the market would be pretty much as today, but we would refer to the acquisition of nontransferable licenses to play games as borrowing a game (or maybe getting a game loaned, or a new word that hasn't been invented) instead of buying a game.

4) I believe that in any the three scenarios A), B) and C), we would be better off. A) for the variety of options, B) for the consumer protections and C) for the honesty about the transactions.


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## gamesquest1 (Sep 20, 2019)

personally i think people should be allowed to resell their digital games, although i can see how this would mess up many services such as steam etc, i can imagine there are ways to mitigate such issues, such as tying digital licences to a certain number of downloads, i.e each licence is valid for 10 downloads, once that limit is hit you need to pay an extra $2 for each additional re-download of the title, that way steam still gets some money for running the servers....sure i would prefer we get unlimited re-downloads but i'm willing to accept that steam would need to adjust their business plans to cover server costs if they don't get to lock games to each account

but it makes complete sense that people should be allowed to gift/resell games they no longer want as they always could with physical media, i would even settle for easier more user friendly family sharing, the current system sucks forcing you to give your password to your cousin etc so they can sign into your account and locking your library to one game so your friend/family cant just play one of your old games while you play another


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## xBleedingSoulx (Sep 20, 2019)

If this happens I'm gonna be rich.


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## Wuigi (Sep 20, 2019)

They would probably have to generate a new license every time a used license is sold, should be no problem with the trillions of possible key values I think.


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 20, 2019)

@fischermasamune gonna just mention you like this since including your full reply to just ask you a question is a quote unquote dick move.

I like your response, you seem to have thought about it a lot. 

What I'm curious about is how you think it would influence general sales estimations of video games on a long term perspective. As it currently stands, AAA companies are breaking their backs over constantly expecting higher and higher sales figures to show to their shareholders (often to the point of insanity, which causes it to be taken out on their general employees when they inevitably fail to live up to expectations). I don't think it would be a stretch to assume that this massive overshooting of expectations is because as it currently stands, AAA companies hold essential full control over their game sales (most titles still get retail, but even then I'm pretty sure that since garbage bin sales exist, AAA companies consider every shipped retail copy to a store a succesful sale for them and they hold an obvious control over the digital market).

Do you think that these estimates for AAA companies (and the subsequent abuse leveled on the studio employees) would be lowered if this comes to pass?

On a similar note, is there any considerable chance that we see the entire games industry crash (I doubt it, but this could feasibly occur) due to the lack of ability for especially small time developers to make a living from their games, as eventually people will realize they can just start passing copies around to one another, which for less replayable games could mean a death knell?

I'm just asking these questions out of curiosity as these are the concerns and questions I had and you seem to have a good idea of the situation.


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## snobbysteven (Sep 20, 2019)

Subtle Demise said:


> How so? If Gamestop can be considered a legitimate business, why would this do any damage? It's the same license transfer concept but physical media just has a physical token tied to it.


Well just because it's legitimate doesn't mean it's good. Game developers hate gamestop because of it. For awhile they tried adding keys to their 360 games so that to play the game online you needed the key and it was a one time use key and if anyone else bought the game they had to rebuy the key.

If I am a small time dev and this goes through. My first thought is okay, we are going to lose a lot of money on sales because of people buying used copies instead of buying new, so lets increase the price on the new copies to compensate for it. So prices of smaller games will go up and less people will buy them because they are more expensive now, so the dev's will still get less money, less money means they don't have the funds to continue making games, and so forth.

I worked at gamestop for a few years, reselling a game is great for the consumer, but not for the dev's. Specially if you make a game that cost's lets say $5 and takes an hour to beat. After say the first week or two, everyone will be selling their copy because they already beat it and who would buy it new when it can be bought for $2 used. So pretty much after the first few weeks of sales that game dev won't make a single penny anymore because everyone will just buy it "used" for half price. The only way I could see this not being quite as bad is if valve slaps a decent sized fee on reselling a game and part of it goes back to the dev. Not to mention reselling a game through steam would be so much easier than going on say ebay and selling a physical copy, then having to deal with shipping it. So I think reselling digital games would be quite a larger profit cut for game devs then it was for physical copies.

Me personally, I have a ton of physical games that I beat that are just sitting there, have no interest in playing again, but I don't feel like dealing with having to list them on ebay and ship them or going to gamestop, but if I could list 20 of my games for sale on steam with a few clicks of a button, and 5 minutes of my time. Never have to even get out of my chair. I would be selling games left and right. Which I imagine everyone else will be doing as well.

Sorry this ended up being quite long Lol. But yeah, I just think in the long run this could hurt how many games we have to pick from as a consumer because there will be less games being made.


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 20, 2019)

snobbysteven said:


> Well just because it's legitimate doesn't mean it's good. Game developers hate gamestop because of it. For awhile they tried adding keys to their 360 games so that to play the game online you needed the key and it was a one time use key and if anyone else bought the game they had to rebuy the key.


I mean, I'm pretty sure AAA will sell regardless. It's indie titles, those with often low sales to begin and those that aren't really replayable that I think are the real ones in danger here.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> @fischermasamune gonna just mention you like this since including your full reply to just ask you a question is a quote unquote dick move.
> 
> I like your response, you seem to have thought about it a lot.
> 
> ...


I think @Edgarska put it best - if your business model requires you to disregard basic consumer rights and deny your consumers the same privileges they are afforded in any other industry, there is something fundamentally wrong with how your industry functions and the onus is on you to fix it. Developers may not be fans of the secondary market, but it's not up to them to decide whether consumers participate in it or not - they already received compensation for the copies sold as "pre-owned", they're not entitled to be paid multiple times for the same goods. If they want to continue monetising their titles after they are released, they must necessarily support them with additional content in the form of add-ons, expansions and other DLC's, it's how it works with physical games, it's how it should work with digital ones as well.


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## KingVamp (Sep 20, 2019)

Couldn't devs and Valve still take a piece of the profits on resold licenses? Even if this passes, they still have control on how reselling will work, right?



tianchris said:


> I wonder if some companies will just let gamers to rent it's product rather than sold it. I mean it's the easiest way to avoid this ruling. I wonder what the rate will be to rent games in the future.


With all these game services, companies are doing that already.


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## snobbysteven (Sep 20, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> I mean, I'm pretty sure AAA will sell regardless. It's indie titles, those with often low sales to begin and those that aren't really replayable that I think are the real ones in danger here.


Yeah I completely agree, AAA will sell a ton regardless, the first few weeks/months at least. I know a lot of people who buy new physical copies of AAA games over used because they want the nice new case and disk, not something someone else has touched. So they don't mind paying more for new. But with digital I don't think anyone will really care because there is no difference in what you get when you buy new or used. The only way someone will buy new over used for digital is if they want to support the dev.


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## pedro702 (Sep 20, 2019)

This is a hard subject i meanwhen you buy something "NEW" it has a value becuase its brand new, mint condition, when you sell it it was  worn and such and the buyer either has to wait for shipping and pay it, or go meet in person and whatnot, so it always goes for a lower value, no garantys and such.

now with digital games buying an used digital game is same as new becuase there is no wear or anything,its just a license and you download the entire game from servers, so developers will loose money big time lol.

imagine a games sells 50.000 copys digitaly at 60$ then people play the game and sell them digitaly for lower the price of the dev then everyone can just keep buying it, and developers will need to lower and lower and lower prices to match the used digital game, they will never be able to do that, becuase people will be selling/trading for always the lower price as the developer cost.

This could potentialy kill digital gaming profits and make devs go for consoles more if their pc margins go down the drain.


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Developers may not be fans of the secondary market, but it's not up to them to decide whether consumers participate in it or not - they already received compensation for the copies sold as "pre-owned", they're not entitled to be paid multiple times for the same goods. If they want to continue monetising their titles after they are released, they must necessarily support them with additional content in the form of add-ons, expansions and other DLC's, it's how it works with physical games, it's how it should work with digital ones as well.


The difference mainly is that with physical games (and really, any physical good), the game is usually cheaper to begin with due to wear and tear affecting the product. With digital games, you're not changing the product at all.

There's also the entire thing that typically indie games don't go retail unless they're massively successful (and even then they tend to be more "limited runs" in the same sense that a special edition of an AAA title tends to be).

I don't care about the AAA industry in this situation, I think those scumbags will not even feel a dent in their pile of money but will whine about it like the little squeely pigs they are.

I'm concerned with indie developers who often are reliant on their games income to give them their basic neccesities. Those are the ones that could be hit the hardest, especially since their often more diverse approaches to game design tend to not neccesarily lend well to easily replayable experiences (ie. stories that are meant to send a powerful/meaningful message you can really only tell once, replayability will hurt the message there) which means that anyone who is mercenary enough to sell a game they've beaten with zero replayability (yes I'm attributing this as a negative moral value for this situation, and _only_ if it's indies) as second hand is essentially damaging their ability to make a living.

Worst case situation, this could lead to an _extreme_ amount of homogenization within the game industry as a whole to move towards some really shitty practices or make all games online multiplayer shooters and essentially shoo out all the indies, and eventually could result in another market crash. Probably not as doomsday as I'm making it sound, but that could be a real risk.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 20, 2019)

pedro702 said:


> This is a hard subject i meanwhen you buy something "NEW" it has a value becuase its brand new, mint condition, when you sell it it was  worn and such and the buyer either has to wait for shipping and pay it, or go meet in person and whatnot, so it always goes for a lower value, no garantys and such.
> 
> now with digital games buying an used digital game is same as new becuase there is no wear or anything,its just a license and you download the entire game from servers, so developers will loose money big time lol.
> 
> ...


Is there really significant wear on media since... VHS, cassette tape and vinyl records stopped being a thing? I mean I heard that line for each of those (nobody will ever have to replace anything, woe is us) and... the last few decades have been OK. I am perfectly content to buy second hand games because I know they play just fine.

Similarly the new thing I bought I still have to go to the shop for, or pay for shipping and wait. If I download it then I also have to use some of my limited bandwidth and personal storage space to store it.

And yeah the second hand market or your own previous product eating your potential profits is a problem within business. Always has been. Somehow we muddle through anyway. People still seem to buy new houses, games, CDs, books, cars, not wait for sales... despite the second hand market and time being a great thing to play to.



KingVamp said:


> Couldn't devs and Valve still take a piece of the profits on resold licenses? Even if this passes, they still have control on how reselling will work, right?



They could try. Why would I care to give them anything though? As for control then nope. Same as every other business -- once you sell the product to someone else then they can dispose of it how they will.




snobbysteven said:


> Well just because it's legitimate doesn't mean it's good. Game developers hate gamestop because of it. For awhile they tried adding keys to their 360 games so that to play the game online you needed the key and it was a one time use key and if anyone else bought the game they had to rebuy the key.
> 
> If I am a small time dev and this goes through. My first thought is okay, we are going to lose a lot of money on sales because of people buying used copies instead of buying new, so lets increase the price on the new copies to compensate for it. So prices of smaller games will go up and less people will buy them because they are more expensive now, so the dev's will still get less money, less money means they don't have the funds to continue making games, and so forth.
> 
> ...



And said key bundling was considered a horribly anti consumer practice and stopped.

Increasing the price of the product is one way, not the only one though.

Why would the devs be entitled to any of this theoretical money if people had got new sales instead? People have been able to resell their items for longer than software has been a thing, indeed it has been enshrined in the laws of many lands (if you want a US example it made it to the supreme court, in a surprisingly relevant to this discussion case, in 1908 https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/250/bobbs-merrill-co-v-straus ). If it is in place, known and accepted long before they even made the game (or indeed before anybody presently alive was there to remember it) then what right do they have to complain about anything?

As for the points (or pain points if we are going to use business terms) at which you would consider selling things then OK. Not sure what particular bearing it has here -- I have been buying second hand computer games since before the internet was a thing but ebay changed the game radically then and made everybody a game seller if they wanted to be. I don't see the functional difference between the introduction of that and this.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> The difference mainly is that with physical games (and really, any physical good), the game is usually cheaper to begin with due to wear and tear affecting the product. With digital games, you're not changing the product at all.
> 
> There's also the entire thing that typically indie games don't go retail unless they're massively successful (and even then they tend to be more "limited runs" in the same sense that a special edition of an AAA title tends to be).
> 
> ...


Pre-owned games are not cheaper due to wear and tear, they are cheaper because the further away you are from the release date the less intrinsic value they have - the key time frame for any new release is the first two weeks during which they're actually worth the full retail price, they devalue gradually over time due to decreased demand. The warranty for pre-owned software is exactly the same, and in many cases *better* than the warranty for mint software. The whole "wear and tear" argument is ridiculous, the medium you buy as a "pre-owned" game is exactly the same as a brand new one and must necessarily be fully functional in order to be sold by a retail store. It's not like a used kitchen mixer where the motor or other moving parts might be affected by prolonged use - it's a disc or a cartridge, there are no moving parts, and scratched discs are either not accepted as trade-ins or buffed with dedicated cleaning equipment that resurfaces the optical layer. People need to get the "wear and tear" argument out of their heads, the pre-owned copies sold in stores are *exactly* the same as new ones, minus any codes that may have been in the box. We're not talking about 15-year-old discs that might be affected by improper storage, moisture etc., we're talking about discs that are, worst case scenario, a few years old. You're not paying for the medium, you're paying for a software license, which is self-evident as stores are *required* to replace faulty discs within the returns policy period which should be enough time to verify whether they're good or not. Games traded in to a store like Gamestop are *not* evaluated by their physical condition, they trade in and sell regardless of whether or not they're still wrapped in cellophane. Your copy isn't worth less because it's been used, it's worth less because it's pre-owned, it's a part of the secondary market.


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 20, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> and scratched discs are either not accepted as trade-ins


Most second hand sales aren't trade-ins.

They're people selling their shit on eBay or the local equivalent or just rummage sales.


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## comput3rus3r (Sep 20, 2019)

Rune said:


> This will probably cause the price of digital games to rise as well.


Exactly. Making digital media seem more "tangible"


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## CMDreamer (Sep 20, 2019)

Kinda blurry...

In Valve's business point of view, the allowance of reselling digital games would impact on their servers and network resources negatively, as "the game" would be "salable?" indefinitely at any given time the actual owner want (whom would change every time the digital game is sold and the digital owner rights over it are transferred to the buyer). All at the expense of Valve's network/server resources.

Another good reason for not getting digital games on any gaming platform (Android is out of bounds on this chance). Even less as I don't like Steam at all.

I prefer playing/collecting the physical copies (when available) and if they're not available I just don't play them, period.


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## raxadian (Sep 20, 2019)

What if Valve agreed to allow digital games to be resold but that they must be sold at the current price they have in the Steam store?  That way they would be agreeing with the court order while at the same time making it pointless.


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## Foxi4 (Sep 20, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> Most second hand sales aren't trade-ins.
> 
> They're people selling their shit on eBay or the local equivalent or just rummage sales.


I'm not so sure about that, most people don't bother with selling their old software on eBay by themselves, they usually trade it, at least in my experience. Either way, the same rules apply, besides the resurfacing - the software you purchase is exactly the same regardless of whether the disc is new or not, "wear and tear" is not a part of the equation unless you're a collector who's specifically looking for the physical manifestation of the software in good condition to put on your shelf.



CMDreamer said:


> Kinda blurry...
> 
> In Valve's business point of view, the allowance of reselling digital games would impact on their servers and network resources negatively, as "the game" would be "salable?" indefinitely at any given time the actual owner want (whom would change every time the digital game is sold and the digital owner rights over it are transferred to the buyer). All at the expense of Valve's network/server resources.
> 
> ...


Nobody says that they can't charge a nominal fee for putting your software up for sale on their server, provided they introduced software resale to the Community Marketplace. It's a wee bit monopolistic to only allow it on their service, but ultimately it is a Steam copy, do it's inseparably connected to the Steam ecosystem. Perfectly tangible solution that doesn't cost them as much as straight up converting the software back into a download code that can be resold outside of Steam.


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## AbyssalMonkey (Sep 21, 2019)

I'm not going to read pages 5-9, they're probably mostly the same old tired arguments as were had in the first 5 pages.

This is nice.  If this catches on, it could force other industries to follow suit.  Games could be used as the beach head to force larger industries to comply with basic goods rights.

I guess the one bad part of this is that regional pricing, arguably the most beneficial part of having a non-transferable license, will likely get the cut.  In the real world, games usually only come with the language of the country they are sold upon, while digitally you have to offer every language for regions you want to be able to reasonably sell in.  This alone, plus importing costs, keeps an extremely vast majority of games resales between regions locked to that region.  There is probably no good fix for this on digital goods which can probably be trivially patched to include any language.

The regional pricing argument is the one I would bet would hold the most traction.  Currently, regional pricing is a great boon to equity, and allows poorer regions of the world access to the same tools as richer ones.  The destruction of this means effectively destroying the progressive movement.  I fear this could cause a lot of turmoil.  In any case, this isn't going to be the last we've heard of this case.


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## KingVamp (Sep 21, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> They could try. Why would I care to give them anything though? As for control then nope. Same as every other business -- once you sell the product to someone else then they can dispose of it how they will.





Foxi4 said:


> Nobody says that they can't charge a nominal fee for putting your software up for sale on their server, provided they introduced software resale to the Community Marketplace. It's a wee bit monopolistic to only allow it on their service, but ultimately it is a Steam copy, do it's inseparably connected to the Steam ecosystem. Perfectly tangible solution that doesn't cost them as much as straight up converting the software back into a download code that can be resold outside of Steam.


This was pretty much what I was getting at.


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## piratesephiroth (Sep 21, 2019)

beautiful


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## Xzi (Sep 21, 2019)

As others have been pointing out, there is a third (likely) possibility here.  If the decision is upheld, and the court doesn't go after other tech companies with equal fervor, Valve will probably just pay the fine and leave Steam unchanged.  €540,000 is nothing for them in the long run.


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## the_randomizer (Sep 21, 2019)

This won't be abused at all, I'm sure


----------



## SonicRings (Sep 21, 2019)

Rune said:


> I meant the original price of the game might rise, not the price from the resellers.


Wouldn't that discourage people from buying from them and encourage them to buy from resellers?


Xzi said:


> As others have been pointing out, there is a third (likely) possibility here.  If the decision is upheld, and the court doesn't go after other tech companies with equal fervor, Valve will probably just pay the fine and leave Steam unchanged.  €54,000 is nothing for them in the long run.


Don't you mean €540,000?


----------



## AbyssalMonkey (Sep 21, 2019)

sonicrings said:


> Don't you mean €540,000?


It's still pennies.



Xzi said:


> As others have been pointing out, there is a third (likely) possibility here.  If the decision is upheld, and the court doesn't go after other tech companies with equal fervor, Valve will probably just pay the fine and leave Steam unchanged.  €54,000 is nothing for them in the long run.


I would bet that this is what is going to happen.  The thing is, UFC has stated that they are going to actively go after others in the industry as well, not just games storefronts.  This could mean things like Google/Amazon Video that you buy to own have to be resellable too.  Think about all the old iTunes catalogues.  The digital distribution has a boatload of goods rights breaches, and UFC may go after them too.

If this does get upheld, it could also lead to widespread litigation by other consumer advocacy groups in other countries.  If enough of it happens, something is likely to change; either FAANG buys the governments, or EUP starts to actively enforce and pile more fines.


----------



## SonicRings (Sep 21, 2019)

AbyssalMonkey said:


> It's still pennies.


Yeah honestly the fact that it's only for 6 months makes it better for them to just absorb the fine.


----------



## Xzi (Sep 21, 2019)

sonicrings said:


> Don't you mean €540,000?


Yeah, missed a zero.


----------



## Uiaad (Sep 21, 2019)

sonicrings said:


> Yeah honestly the fact that it's only for 6 months makes it better for them to just absorb the fine.



Not a lawyer, but this would be up to 6 months before other sanctions are acted upon them. Which in theory could mean the banning of Steam operating within the EU.


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## SonicRings (Sep 21, 2019)

Uiaad said:


> Not a lawyer, but this would be up to 6 months before other sanctions are acted upon them. Which in theory could mean the banning of Steam operating within the EU.


Ah, fair enough.


----------



## dude1 (Sep 21, 2019)

AbyssalMonkey said:


> It's still pennies.


no its not the EU has a one-cent piece not a penny


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## xdarkx (Sep 21, 2019)

Confused as to how one would be able to resell digital goods, but good I guess?


----------



## mike4001 (Sep 21, 2019)

sonicrings said:


> Wouldn't that discourage people from buying from them and encourage them to buy from resellers?
> 
> Don't you mean €540,000?



Even if the ruling says: Pay € 3000 for 6 Months I don't think that the ruling vanishes after these 6 months.

It´s more likely that then there is another court date where they set an even higher per day fee.


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## scottydog27 (Sep 21, 2019)

Easy fix do what game stop does for hard copies  make a trade in program that way the digital keys are controlled and not just passed around like a hard copy your friend just beat and is now letting you use


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 21, 2019)

Uiaad said:


> Which in theory could mean the banning of Steam operating within the EU.


Fairly sure they'll just crank up the fines until either Steam stops operating in the EU themselves or complies rather than outright banning them.


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## Uiaad (Sep 21, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> Fairly sure they'll just crank up the fines until either Steam stops operating in the EU themselves or complies rather than outright banning them.



Cranking up the fines to a point where they couldn't effectively pay would be tantamount to banning them no ? so what I said was correct.


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## Jiehfeng (Sep 21, 2019)

> Everybody here is wrong and doesn't understand what the court decided.
> 
> The decision said valve cannot PREVENT you from selling your games, it DID NOT say valve needs to facilitate it. This specifically was about their TOS, which says your ownership of games is non transferable to others. This is illegal according to EU law.
> 
> ...


----------



## Ev1l0rd (Sep 21, 2019)

Uiaad said:


> Cranking up the fines to a point where they couldn't effectively pay would be tantamount to banning them no ?


No. A ban would mean they would full stop say "we forbid you from selling stuff until you comply".

In that situation it would still be Steams own choice to deny EU members to buy from their storefront because they choose not to pay the fines.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 21, 2019)

the_randomizer said:


> This won't be abused at all, I'm sure


Everything gets abused. It is the nature of at least a small percentage of the population. The question is would any such abuse outweigh the perks or it or be worth surrendering rights for?


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## Uiaad (Sep 21, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> No. A ban would mean they would full stop say "we forbid you from selling stuff until you comply".
> 
> In that situation it would still be Steams own choice to deny EU members to buy from their storefront because they choose not to pay the fines.



There are ways of effectively banning or removing something without calling it a ban. For instance, let's say your a company and you have a wonderful product that very one loves, manufacturing is cheap and everything is good with the world. Now the people who have a contract with getting the raw product says ' hang on we could be making more money here" and sets up a rival company offering a very similar product, but still has to continue supplying the raw mats for your company. 

So the rival decided to jack up the price of the materials at the end of your contract to a place where it's no longer profitable to sell it any more. Would you continue selling at a considerable loss ?

It's not quite what's happening here but it's close enough to demonstrate the point by levying fines against Valve there has to come a point where it's either cheaper to comply or withdraw. complying would mean a major investment as well it's not like they could add a line or two of code and jobs a gooden this would completely change the ecosystem for not only valve but every other online store.


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## Shadicluigi (Sep 21, 2019)

I've got a lot of games I don't want.


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## Ryccardo (Sep 21, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> In that situation it would still be Steams own choice to deny EU members to buy from their storefront because they choose not to pay the fines.


Of course, if they don't have any legal residence in the EU (strongly doubt but I don't know), it's not like the fines will be enforceable...


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## Uiaad (Sep 21, 2019)

Ryccardo said:


> Of course, if they don't have any legal residence in the EU (strongly doubt but I don't know), it's not like the fines will be enforceable...



they have an office in Luxembourg


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## bodefuceta (Sep 21, 2019)

If developers lose a lot of income from digital resales, it would greatly benefit subscription platforms like Stadia. Is the timing just a coincidence?


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 21, 2019)

Ryccardo said:


> Of course, if they don't have any legal residence in the EU (strongly doubt but I don't know), it's not like the fines will be enforceable...


They technically are, aside from the fact they have an office in luxembourg, they do business in the EU, which means they're under the jurisdiction of the EU.


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## Ryccardo (Sep 21, 2019)

Ev1l0rd said:


> they do business in the EU, which means they're under the jurisdiction of the EU.


(ignoring the fact they have an office which makes this a generic thought exercise) that doesn't mean much - if as an Italian citizen I manage to violate the law in Switzerland or the USA and make it out of the country (for example by speeding in front of a radar, which takes at the very least a few days to get processed) I may be fined and later wanted for arrest for failure to pay the fine, but unless I stepped on their territory again they would be unenforceable - and this being a digital service makes "entering the border" much easier to conceal or outright avoid


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## GamerzHell9137 (Sep 21, 2019)

If it goes trough i really hope the same happens to microtransactions where devs are gonna be forced to give dupes to people so they can trade it or sell them.
Microtransactions are so fucked up and should be banned in my opinion. (Off topic sorry lol)


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## HarveyHouston (Sep 21, 2019)

Huh. So I could sell my games? Is that what this means? So if I got Steam, _I can get rid of game titles in my store and make moolah?_ Why is Steam against this?!? 

Actually, I understand why. Valve wants to make money, too. If someone is selling it, they don't get part of it. So, in order to make everyone happy, how about Steam does what they already do to inventory items in their community market - add interest? See, the seller could set any price they want, and they get that amount - and then Steam adds an interest of some small percentage, say, %5. Thus, if you sell a game that is normally $20 for $10, then the buyer actually pays $10.50. The fifty cents goes to Valve.

Of course, 5% may actually be too large. If you sell something for $100, you end up adding $5 to it. Also, the price may vary from game to game, and Steam may set other limitations such as minimum/maximum prices, which games _can_ be sold, whether DLC is sold with it or separately, among other factors that one should consider Valve would be using. However, it's not a bad idea, the reselling business. I like it!


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## the_randomizer (Sep 21, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> Everything gets abused. It is the nature of at least a small percentage of the population. The question is would any such abuse outweigh the perks or it or be worth surrendering rights for?



Unless the EU government tries to block Steam in EU if Valve refuses to comply, then no, don't want them pulling any douche moves.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 21, 2019)

the_randomizer said:


> Unless the EU government tries to block Steam in EU if Valve refuses to comply, then no, don't want them pulling any douche moves.


What does that have to do with the quoted or your post?


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## the_randomizer (Sep 21, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> What does that have to do with the quoted or your post?



I don't frickin' know. It's been a hellish week, I'm gonna have to take a break for a few hours


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## Voyambar (Sep 21, 2019)

Hells Malice said:


> Well this won't be endlessly abused and lead to significant problems, especially with a huge rise in steam account compromising leading to a ton of innocent people becoming victims of stolen games.



If you use the family PIN then all your games will be safe. I use it today as an extra security measure.


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## Uiaad (Sep 21, 2019)

Voyambar said:


> If you use the family PIN then all your games will be safe. I use it today as an extra security measure.



2FA is not foolproof nor hacker proof - an phishing attack could easily rob someone of the games on their account


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## Voyambar (Sep 21, 2019)

Uiaad said:


> 2FA is not foolproof nor hacker proof - an phishing attack could easily rob someone of the games on their account



True true however I don't think you could steal a family PIN nor know that they have one on their account so it does make it harder to get in. Its also not an official 2FA method...but it does help so I would consider it one. If you mean reselling their games to them in a scam then yeah I could easily see that working out for the scammer. Not all people are dumb but the people who are are the one's who get victimized.


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## Uiaad (Sep 21, 2019)

Voyambar said:


> True true however I don't think you could steal a family PIN nor know that they have one on their account so it does make it harder to get in. Its also not an official 2FA method...but it does help so I would consider it one. If you mean reselling their games to them in a scam then yeah I could easily see that working out for the scammer. Not all people are dumb but the people who are are the one's who get victimized.



You underestimate the level sophistication of some of these scams.And of course you could steal a family PIN it's no different than stealing any predefined number. It's yes not everyone is going to fall for a scam like this but there would be people that would fall for it. The fact is that merely having the opportunity there means it will breed these sorts of scams. The second there is a hint of 'easy money' Scammers will be all over it like flies on shit. Just because you wouldn't fall for it, doesn't mean that there aren't people out there that would and it doesn't make them dumb at all.  2FA is more secure than the family PIN in every way and is already integrated with Steam but it doesn't stop it from being vulnerable to social engineering attacks, which by their very nature play on the idea of authority. If Joe Bloggs on the street got a call from 'valve' saying there is a problem with their account, they're not gonna think twice about it.


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## SomeKindOfUsername (Sep 21, 2019)

Terrible idea. Would pretty much be the end of places like GOG too.
But sure, let it happen in the name of consumer rights. Just don't be surprised or complain when the positives that "oppressive" systems like we have now are gone or that they've been replaced with a system that's even worse.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 21, 2019)

SomeKindOfUsername said:


> Just don't be surprised or complain when the positives that "oppressive" systems like we have now are gone or that they've been replaced with a system that's even worse.


So like things were for the decades before Valve et al decided to artificially close off the second hand market?
What a horror.


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## Kioku_Dreams (Sep 21, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> So like things were for the decades before Valve et al decided to artificially close off the second hand market?
> What a horror.


Yes, because Valve introduced DRM to prevent people from selling their games as a working product. Makes perfect sense. I still don't understand your seething bias against Steam.


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## Uiaad (Sep 21, 2019)

Memoir said:


> Yes, because Valve introduced DRM to prevent people from selling their games as a working product. Makes perfect sense. I still don't understand your seething bias against Steam.



HAHA - It is merely  the ecosystem of valve there have been attempts to stop people selling media for years before Steam, if you go back to the small print on some older VHS and Betamax tape there was small print on them saying that they couldn't resell them blah blah blah, do you think that this was taken any notice of ? No, the only reason it has been this far successful for steam is that there hasn't been the facility there to do it.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 21, 2019)

Memoir said:


> Yes, because Valve introduced DRM to prevent people from selling their games as a working product. Makes perfect sense. I still don't understand your seething bias against Steam.


My immense dislike for Steam is them being a monopoly (though that is a measure of right place, right time), this stuff with the artificially hobbling the second hand market (which also means delisting is a thing we get to take note of), them acting as gatekeepers for things other than malware (they claim they are not any more but I have not seen anything push the boat out yet).
The second hand thing though is what has always got my goat


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## Viri (Sep 21, 2019)

Hey guys, wanna trade some Steam games with me?


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## Ev1l0rd (Sep 21, 2019)

Ryccardo said:


> if as an Italian citizen I manage to violate the law in Switzerland or the USA and make it out of the country (for example by speeding in front of a radar, which takes at the very least a few days to get processed) I may be fined and later wanted for arrest for failure to pay the fine, but unless I stepped on their territory again they would be unenforceable - and this being a digital service makes "entering the border" much easier to conceal or outright avoid


I mean, bad example since you're an individual and we have extradition treaties through the EU with the USA and Switzerland iirc. The reason I didn't bring those up is because I'm not sure if they apply to fining businesses.


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## crabycowman123 (Sep 22, 2019)

Something I haven't seen people bring up in this thread: the ability to resell games/accounts means even games that have been taken of the store can still be legally obtained by people who never bought the game when it was in the store. For example, if this was applied to the Nintendo eShop, I could buy a third and fourth copy of Four Swords Anniversary Edition and play with four players instead of two.
That said, I don't think companies should be forced to add new systems (i.e. a resale system) to allow users to sell their games, but rather they should be restricted from banning or otherwise harming consumers because of attempted resale of games (e.g. by selling one's account).
I'm not sure about the specifics of the ruling, but my understanding is that they just can't prevent sales, not that they have to permit them via a store of some kind, which I think it fine.


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## UltraSUPRA (Sep 22, 2019)

If this goes through and spreads across the pond, I might end up giving up my ways of piracy.




Who am I kidding. Physical copies of Earthbound and MegaMan X3 are ludicrously expensive, and repros are piss-easy to make.


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## RedBlueGreen (Sep 22, 2019)

ThoD said:


> The license you pay for is basically a permission to use something, it's non-transferable for many reasons. It's like saying that because you bought an album on iTunes you are allowed to resell it to someone else, basically a roundabout way of paid piracy if you think about it, since the creator of the item in question doesn't make anything from said resale. Physical products are different because you pay for the product directly, not a license, so people need to stop confusing the two.
> 
> As for the "it's on Valve to regulate" BS, no it's not, you can't expect them to regulate every single transaction among the largest playerbase in the world just because you say so, it's not their responsibility. Also, if this actually becomes a thing, you can kiss discounts goodbye forever, almost all games will be full priced at 60€ and there won't be ANY free giveaways anymore, which will pretty much kill anything relating to selling media licenses online, be it for games, movies, music, anime, books, etc. and will affect EVEN storefronts like GOG despite it selling games directly instead of just a license. If you think selling the stuff in your library is worth never having any discounts again and all storefronts eventually shutting down because people will stop paying for games and just pirate everything (which means less money goes to devs and less games are made on top of that), then go ahead and support this nonsense.


Have to disagree here. If you sell the game, the license will probably be revoked. Theres nothing wrong with being able to resell digital products if the license you hold is voided after. It will have no effect on piracy and it's not analogous to paid piracy, unless you're allowed to keep the license, which probably wouldn't happen. Even if the seller then downloads a cracked version it's still very different because them playing a cracked version has nothing to do with selling the game, other than it not being in their possession anymore.


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## Voyambar (Sep 22, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> My immense dislike for Steam is them being a monopoly



Better than EGS iirc


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## OperationNT (Sep 22, 2019)

I hope this French law will be finally applied: there is no reason that digital copies doesn't follow the same ruled as physical market; when you buy something, you should always truely own it...
Unfortunatly, 3000 euros/day is nothing for Steam so they will probably pay the fee and the law will never be applied...


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## huma_dawii (Sep 22, 2019)

MythicalData said:


> I'm not really sure if I think this is silly or not.
> I would like to know why they think it violates their laws though.
> Being able to transfer your license to someone else would be nice though, but what's stopping everyone from endlessly swapping games out



Same for physical media... is up to the USERS.


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## Mythical (Sep 22, 2019)

It's not the same though, you can give that to anybody around the world willy nilly, compared to a physical game where you need to physically make a transaction or send it in the mail.
I don't think it's a bad idea necessarily. I just feel like if it goes through it won't be handled well by storefronts.
Also you're essentially buying the license on their terms (tos, eula, and such)


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## FAST6191 (Sep 22, 2019)

MythicalData said:


> It's not the same though, you can give that to anybody around the world willy nilly, compared to a physical game where you need to physically make a transaction or send it in the mail.
> I don't think it's a bad idea necessarily. I just feel like if it goes through it won't be handled well by storefronts.
> Also you're essentially buying the license on their terms (tos, eula, and such)


And the advent/rise to popularity of of ebay et al meant I was no longer restricted to adverts in the local paper, yard sales, car boot sales, church rummage sales, school, work, or selling it/trading it to the local game shop (who themselves maybe only had slightly bigger reach -- national redistribution or stock awareness took a while to spin up) for a pittance. Instead I can sit here stark bollock naked on a mobile phone and have the package company deliver me an addressed envelope, get me to chuck the game in and seal it before taking it away with them if I so desired.

Similarly there are terms in agreements that are voided by courts if they are encountered in otherwise legal contracts -- you can't agree to be my slave if I fix your porch for instance, even if we get the agreement formally drawn up, notarised and filed with a good place to file contracts with. Most courts thus far anywhere people would likely care to live have agreed that you can't forgo resale rights (Foxi4 already referenced several cases here from various places), and even then the items in question might not be subject to recovery (there was a nice US supreme court case a while back for printer toner cartridges I think it was) and the people selling it would be the ones that they get to go after if they even can.


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## pcwizard7 (Sep 22, 2019)

value and the other platforms don't want people to be able to resell their games because it would cause sales to drop. since atm people must buy their games new at full price. 

also, imagine if this went though for everywhere since with digital games condition isn't a factor what would this do for the price of games excluding new releases of course?


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## FAST6191 (Sep 22, 2019)

pcwizard7 said:


> also, imagine if this went though for everywhere since with digital games condition isn't a factor what would this do for the price of games excluding new releases of course?



Is condition much of a factor in time periods the game companies likely care about? I dare say I would put a decent chunk of change on the "loss" of games to the available sales pool is significantly less for condition related things than it is people just chucking them in a box in the attic or literally throwing them out (spurned lovers and bored mothers, even more so if they are theoretically rich*, chuck out just as much as they sell to me for next to nothing/far less than "normal" sources charge)

*having seen what goes in university towns as well with stuff essentially being left then there is also that.

That said I would like some kind of equation for what goes here. Condition a non factor, supply essentially worldwide and trivially so, delisting being the only thing to really lower potential supply and most times we only see that for licensed works (though this can rise to include the likes of car games**), not sure what form delivery would take or how hard transfer would be, the "I'm supporting the devs" factor in all this, possibly said devs reacting by making newer bundles (or bundles of old game + new one) more attractive in some manner***, possibly some devs messing with the market (sale because my dice came up 4 today, oh look the price is less than the second hand price), the usual split between maximum return and time waited for this (someone having to make rent/loan payment/whatever vs someone waiting for a nostalgic guy in a year or so), time also being a thing****, and back to the worldwide thing then ease of picking it up tomorrow (many games I like are somewhat rarer to come across in the real world so if I see a game I want in real life then there is a decision of whether it is there and then as I might not be able to come back, though at the same time the places I go to are usually cheaper than anywhere else by virtue of it not being gamers that are doing it).

**wonder if we will see licensed gun models trouble something at some point.

***for most they would likely think so much DLC like we have seen in gold editions for decades on the PC, however you know it will include some borderline economy breaking amount of microtransaction in game currency.

****there is always something new to play and while games are ageing better than they once did, I can't play N64 games now for instance even if I can play the same game when it got remade for a later console, they are not as ageless as music, films, books and maybe TV (the TV golden age this last however many years, also indy films having what was once high end gear to do things that only studios could consider years before and studios not being able to compete on spectacle.


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## Deleted User (Sep 23, 2019)

I'm sorry, but this thread is essentially yet another case of the peasants defending the feudal lord, lol. This is great news, I hope this law goes through (and maybe it could incite other countris to go in this direction as well)


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## MasterZoilus (Sep 23, 2019)

tranceology3 said:


> Go ahead, enforce these laws. It will be obsolete in 5-10 years when all games are streamed from servers and you never "own" the games Think of it like, can you resell your Netflix movies?



Yepp you're 100% spot on!  Streaming games WILL be how it will be. There's waaaaay to many benefits for Sony, MS, Nintendo, game studios...etc NOT to adopt the stadia model. Not only will it just pretty much ending piracy but ending the used games sales market which companies can't make a dime off of and since the 1970's have lost TRILLIONS in potential profits when ALL is added up.... yeah this is gonna be a short lived subject. But I doubt 5yrs.  I'm guessing 10-15yrs.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 23, 2019)

MasterZoilus said:


> but ending the used games sales market which companies can't make a dime off of and since the 1970's have lost TRILLIONS in potential profits when ALL is added up


Is that like the trillions I "lost" by not playing the lottery and not working 100 hour weeks in a finance firm? Or perhaps that nobody gave me for no real reason other than I am a sort of likeable person.

If we can imagine money/profit as we dance through the land of faeries then why am I not god king of mankind as I am that rich?

Long before software left the hardware* it was on we had rulings that intellectual property rights did not trump resale rights, every ruling since up to this very day has affirmed the right to resell on a wide variety of things and nobody seems to be able to make a case why software in this instance should be an exception.

*I would say long before we had software but Babbage and Ada Lovelace arguably did something there, and at the more philosophical level there is a lot of maths that broaches the area even if it is run on wetware.


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## Captain_N (Sep 26, 2019)

tranceology3 said:


> Go ahead, enforce these laws. It will be obsolete in 5-10 years when all games are streamed from servers and you never "own" the games Think of it like, can you resell your Netflix movies?



This guy knows whats up. the goal is to have the consumer own nothing. They they can keep selling the same thing over and over. The smart ones will pirate the shit and store it on their own streaming servers lol.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 26, 2019)

Captain_N said:


> The smart ones will pirate the shit and store it on their own streaming servers lol.



That would likely take some serious skills, serious effort in recreation, or breaking into a server to grab a copy there and hoping your local PC is powerful enough for it.

Though if you want real fun


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## GurenTonic (Sep 29, 2019)

It's about damn time. Not being able to refund or resell digital games has always been one of the biggest downsides to them for me.


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## MasterZoilus (Oct 1, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> Is that like the trillions I "lost" by not playing the lottery and not working 100 hour weeks in a finance firm? Or perhaps that nobody gave me for no real reason other than I am a sort of likeable person.
> 
> If we can imagine money/profit as we dance through the land of faeries then why am I not god king of mankind as I am that rich?
> 
> ...




Likeable? hmmmm would you like a lubed banana to assist with your ceremony of self endulgence?

Working 100 hour work week nor playing lottery are not correct comparisons/examples or whatever,  as you would be ASSUMING that you either would WIN the lottery....either EVERY time you played or at the very least multiple times since there is no trillion dollar prize and its possible and way more likely that  in 40+ yrs you would have not won much of anything.  Working a billion hours doesn't guarantee you would make anything...ask all the businesses throughout history that have gone belly up despite massive amounts of hours put in by all employees/management/ownership because they either started in the red and never got out  or after being in the black for X amount of time.... things just didn't quite pan out to sustain it, for whatever reason/s 

When I wrote that since the 70's companies have lost trillions in  potential profits, every single time a game was traded or sold use ever, in the history of the world, they lost $$$. Every single time. Its not like playing the lottery because you will NOT make money every time you play. Nor does working an 100 hours today guarantee income from that job a year from now. The gaming industry lost money on every transaction. I wrote that line because while we can't change the past, the point I was making (which a 3rd grader could have easily comprehended) is that the past loss of all that money, serves as a motivation to end physical games. They can look back and with basic 6th grade math skills and the interwebs.....they (the industry) can say that after 40-50yrs  of losing so much money (enter amount here which yes its in the trillions) in used game sales and trades,  they don't have to loose out on a dime of off any transactions of current new and future releases once they move to a stadia type model or something similar. My statement serves as part the motivation that they would have to go to a non-physical games platform. They know that they HAVE lost money of used sales and trades....lots of it and of course it was beyond their control, BUT they wouldn't have to any more, they can forecast based on the past and THAT was my point. Maybe next time stop dorking out, control your nerdgasm and read things through pointdexter.


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## FAST6191 (Oct 1, 2019)

MasterZoilus said:


> Likeable? hmmmm would you like a lubed banana to assist with your ceremony of self endulgence?
> 
> Working 100 hour work week nor playing lottery are not correct comparisons/examples or whatever,  as you would be ASSUMING that you either would WIN the lottery....either EVERY time you played or at the very least multiple times since there is no trillion dollar prize and its possible and way more likely that  in 40+ yrs you would have not won much of anything.  Working a billion hours doesn't guarantee you would make anything...ask all the businesses throughout history that have gone belly up despite massive amounts of hours put in by all employees/management/ownership because they either started in the red and never got out  or after being in the black for X amount of time.... things just didn't quite pan out to sustain it, for whatever reason/s
> 
> When I wrote that since the 70's companies have lost trillions in  potential profits, every single time a game was traded or sold use ever, in the history of the world, they lost $$$. Every single time. Its not like playing the lottery because you will NOT make money every time you play. Nor does working an 100 hours today guarantee income from that job a year from now. The gaming industry lost money on every transaction. I wrote that line because while we can't change the past, the point I was making (which a 3rd grader could have easily comprehended) is that the past loss of all that money, serves as a motivation to end physical games. They can look back and with basic 6th grade math skills and the interwebs.....they (the industry) can say that after 40-50yrs  of losing so much money (enter amount here which yes its in the trillions) in used game sales and trades,  they don't have to loose out on a dime of off any transactions of current new and future releases once they move to a stadia type model or something similar. My statement serves as part the motivation that they would have to go to a non-physical games platform. They know that they HAVE lost money of used sales and trades....lots of it and of course it was beyond their control, BUT they wouldn't have to any more, they can forecast based on the past and THAT was my point. Maybe next time stop dorking out, control your nerdgasm and read things through pointdexter.



They were examples of faulty logic (might want to check your humorous sarcasm and exaggeration detectors) wherein money would have appeared in my wallet, or not appeared as the case may be, or some kind of opportunity cost (the game industry seems keenly aware of this if the push to multiplayer has been anything to watch). Just as faulty as the logic that the game industry deserves a taste from, has lost or continues to lose money on second hand sales. It would take going into a radically different universe for that to make sense. As we are stuck in this one then complaining about "lost" profits to second hand sales makes about as much sense as "lost" income due to the money printers not sending a truck round, which is to say none at all but imagination and dreaming you are dancing through the land of faeries is fun so play it that way if you want.

There has never been a scenario wherein it was disallowed or disallowable. Top courts in most regions (I have not checked all at this point) have routinely ruled for well over a hundred years (so longer than such games) that right to resale is a bloody strong one and I don't see how games represent a special new case (nor has anybody argued that from what I can see). If you want to do some kind of number of trades * retail price/profit then sure that is easily trillions (though I would be curious to see how it changes word of mouth setups as restricted markets with high cost of entry are interesting things) but it is a meaningless number -- no accountant would have it on a balance sheet, no tax man would allow you to write off the "loss", no investor would care about it, no court would allow you to sue someone for the loss... at very best some marketer/producer/whatever somewhere would do some kind of play time calculation vs expected profit schedule and tell the devs to make it long enough (multiplayer being the "easy" option here for most) that the second hand supply is limited until the main profit window has passed.
I don't doubt some will aim for a workaround like streaming and thus render it (games as) a service or something but that is a different matter, though I will say "part the motivation that they would have to go to a non-physical games platform" is not the same as the as a service model, and courts seem to have ruled and are continuing to rule that non physical but still "owned" titles do get to be resold (philosophically speaking you then always having the right but the services stepping on that during their operation).


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