While the UK High Court is busy banning piracy sites, the French High Court has just finished up another battle within the gaming industry. The French High Court has just ruled that Valve must make some drastic changes to their digital games storefront, Steam, stating that all French users must be allowed to resell their digital games. The legal dispute was led by the French consumer rights association, the UFC Que Choisir, who initially filed the lawsuit against Valve back in 2015. As it stands currently, purchases made on Steam are tied to your account, and once redeemed, cannot be resold--only refunded under certain circumstances.

The court ruled that not allowing for consumers to resell their digital library goes against European law, and that Valve has 30 days to comply, or will risk a daily fine of 3,000 Euros for up to six months, until a change is made. Valve, not pleased with the ruling, has decided to appeal the decision, with a representative claiming, "We disagree with the decision of the Paris Court of First Instance, and will appeal it. The decision will have no effect on Steam while the case is on appeal".

Previously, Valve dealt with an Australian legal battle, in which the courts ruled that Valve must implement a refund policy, which it appealed, and then lost against. A year after, Steam added a refund policy for games purchased on the storefront. Should Valve's appeal be dismissed, it could also open the gates to other digital storefronts being investigated, fined, and forced to add a method of reselling their digital titles.

Source

 

[auntnadia]

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.

 

[Bladexdsl]

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

 

[Xzi]

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.

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.

 

[Dankstorm]

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.

 

[Foxi4]

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.

 

[TunaKetchup]

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?

 

[Foxi4]

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.

 

[TunaKetchup]

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

 

[Foxi4]

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.

 

[Xzi]

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.

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.

 

[ThoD]

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.

 

[Arras]

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.

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.

 

[Foxi4]

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.

 

[FAST6191]

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.

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.

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.

 

[Xzi]

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.

 

[Foxi4]

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.

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.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

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.

 

[Foxi4]

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.

 

[Ericthegreat]

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.

 

[Xzi]

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.

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.