I honestly don't think they are dirty, I just don't think they try really hard to confirm what they are selling. They get some codes I think the extent of their check is "These legit? Okay."

I think this already exists. It's called virus.

I would love to sell some of my GOG collection, or even just give some of it away (to people who would actually play it :-P). I do wish there was a way to do so, but that's not gonna happen aaaannnnnnnyyyyyyytime soon.

Escape Velocity was shareware and if you didn't register after 10(?) days captain Hector would track yoy down and destroy you.

Who even barely right in their head would have anything to do with a game with self-destruct code implemented? So next step: Abuse that concept so it somehow is mandatory and not using that is illegal. Justify it with something about copyright. And now let it mess with the collection of the ppl who don't even sell their games. Add a link to rebuy at reduced price at the end of the lifecycle as accommendation after the first outrage and praise it as benevolent feature; a gesture of good will. Freak out why all the ppl are into this new gaming site called good really old games that lacks all that crap & blame pirates for all the ppl that just lost interest in gaming as a hobby and paint miniatures instead in their freetime now.

Not that we are talking revolutionary stuff here. The basic form of "stops working in 30 days please buy the full product" exists in shareware/demos since a long time ago and I would not be surprised if something closer to what you describe is already developed as some kind of virus.

I remember Captain Hector in his annoying little Rapier heavy fighter, lobbing heavy rockets and photon torpedoes at you. Not even the mightly Forklift could faze him.

Edit: I think the games that HereForTheBeer are thinking of was Arma II (graphics degradation) and Serious Sam 3 BFE (superfast invincible scorpion). And come to think of it, Captain Hector would only attack you if you hadn't registered the game for a *long* time (about 30 days).

Hahaha. Half-confusing OP with a counter-productive solution..This bodes well for an interesting thread.

I was thinking more along the lines of upping the dosage.

yap ^ and with Steam you can only sell you whole account which falles under there terms of use or put unused keys onto gray markets

Steam terms of use allow selling your account to someone else? I have a hard time believing that.

Selling your account (Steam or GOG or whatever) is transferring a service to someone else. The service agreement usually forbids that. Unrelated to that is selling licenses to software (like games) to someone else.

Not without some form of DRM

XD I just noticed what i wrote should have been a can't instead of can