We used to have a retail market for decades. It's gone. People love convenience more than they love freedom.

A physical copy from GOG or Steam or Epic (or Ubisoft or EA or Rockstar or ...) would still be no good, when the game is registered to your account.

Everything one can suggest now should have been done 20 years ago.

It sounds like EU customers could sue major stores in a class action, but short of that...

... you have the right to resell your games...

... but (as I'm sure others have pointed out)...

... no marketplace for the transactions...

... and...

... no way to strip DRM or transfer registrations.

Not long ago I bought a physical resale copy of Oblivion. Worked great.

Then I bought a physical resale copy of Skyrim. It wouldn't work without Steam... and... it had already been registered to another user. The end.

So this legal issue is great... but... only if there is the will to implement it.

just a shortcake: isn`t a refund selling back an unwanted game? and isn't exchanging a game for a game within a thread a retail market? I would be even more happy to be able to delete a game from my account ...and buy it again ^

Nope on all counts.

yeah, you are just 11 years late to the dabate...

I'd say half the problem is the copyright laws, specifically the overwhelmingly long period where they never intend to release the sources or the game to the public domain.

Were copyright say 10 years, they might be obligated to do 2 builds when they release the game, so when it went public domain they could just swap the exe, possibly unzipping a special encrypted zip. (or a xor/diff to disable useless portions, which would compress far better)

I'd probably have tried to require source code to be included with released games; Though it could be encrypted so a released key to the public would give access.

I don't think Copyright applies in this case. Take for instance thrift stores or garage sales where DVD's or CD's are resold.

I was more referring to the DRM and other garbage. And if it's public domain, then everyone could share freely. No doubt though you'd still be paying for DVD's And Bluerays, not because you couldn't get the content for free, but people like having good quality media. That and re-scanning content in higher quality takes time and effort.

Yeah digital games/media would be reduced to basically the price to just host the space and internet speed to transfer it; but again people like physical goods. Also the internet doesn't always work. I like having my stuff offline.

I think i remember a story of a guy who wanted a button done, so he went to a manufacterer. They'd do it for like 10 cents per button, but minimum order of 10,000. So he was handing them out at airports and everywhere he traveled by the handfuls.

Well, this thread is about the possibility of reselling property, not about DRM or public domain.



My source code was 24 years in the making btw and it's still getting updated (and each licence being sold for a couple of thousands, it's one of our cheaper programs), major changes are coming. We'll definitly not gonna put it into public domain.

Valve were took to court over this in Germany by the consumer group VZBV in 2014

Valve weaselled their way out and had the court case dismissed. The did this by citing a current Nintendo vs ROM Card case in which Nintendo argued that games on cartridges "might not be software", which Valve's lawyers then framed as "games might not be software" and the Judge dismissed the case waiting on the Nintendo judgement.

The wiped out a multi-million case by VZBV which AFIAK they can't afford to fight again

I think circa 2018ish, a French group actually won against Valve regarding the resale of games. But since nothing happened, I assume Valve have either appealed and added huge red tape delay AND/OR simply ignoring the court ruling until the are taken to court again (costs and delays) to force them to act.



The biggest problem for consumer rights with software is it almost entirely exists in case law, and for every case that grants you a right - there will be another denying it.

Reselling digital copies of games would just open up a huge can of worms.

It might be nice for customers, but it would hugely impact the industry negatively, and so in the end impact customers that way too.

How many games are only played once and how many are never completed?
Even if you intend to play it more than once or complete it some day, you may not and then just decide after ten years or so, to sell the game. Reselling a game amounts to a loss for providers, even if a store had to do the selling and could claim a fee.

If a game were resold, the store would want a cut and so would the game provider (DEV/PUB). And that cut would want to be decent, so in a way the resell price would be dictated by that, and the selling customer would not get much.

And court cases would be ongoing if reselling was made legal and enforced, and thus the expenditure of money would impact the industry and its customers.

Agreed, but this was a can the industry stuffed with worms when they removed consumer rights, and spent the last 20 years filling with more worms. Hoping the laws will never catch up with them.

The law has been glacially slow to catch up with technology and our rights shouldn't be left up to a vague promise that the industry can alter at a whim.

Digital has allowed the "long tail" of post release (as in a year after a game has come out) to grow fatter and indefinitely long. With Physical almost all the sales of the game were made in the first 2 months, a second blip if it got re-released a year or 2 later as a budget title and that was it.

A digital 2nd hand market will absolutely chop off the long tail, and bring the market back to how it was with physical media.

And on the plus side it will add depreciation back into games.

Currently outside of sales, buying brand new with gaming looks like this
Day 1 release of Super new game X.... £50 on PC -- £60 on Consoles
Day 60 release of Super new game X.... £50 on PC -- £50 on Consoles
Day 180 release of Super new game X.... £50 on PC -- £40 on Consoles
Year 2 release of Super new game X.... £40 on PC -- £25 on Consoles

Shops selling Physical Console games are forced to reduce the cost of games, with digital there is no 2nd hand market, no shelf space, no stock issues, nothing to drive the price down.

YES there are deep sales, but they are only for 20ish days a year.. rest of the time Digital RRP is artificially high.


A firm called Robotcache tried that. Oddly they are the only ever company I've seen that uses a subscription contract like Valve does.

That method of dev/pub taking a second cut only works if you never own the licence in the first place and the software is leased.

Isn't this ancient news though? Didn't this get overturned?
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/french-court-rules-countrys-steam-users-can-resell-their-games?
"Update, September 23, 2019: The Interactive Software Federation of Europe has said the French court ruling last week contradicts EU law, and should be overturned on appeal.

"This French ruling flies in the face of established EU law which recognises the need to protect digital downloads from the ease of reproduction allowed by the Internet," said CEO Simon Little in a statement."

Not necessarily. Used physical games did not destroy the gaming industry and neither would this. If someone wanted to abuse this, they already can.

On the other hand, this would open up a way to legitimately acquire delisted games, so I'd be all for it. With physical media, delisting is the publisher's problem. With digital media, delisting is the consumer's problem, which is wrong. I want to buy Telltale's Game of Thrones, but I cannot. I could if it was physical from the pre-Steam era.

Here's the deal:
The industry stops delisting games and then we won't need such laws. License expired? Renew it, or be forced to suffer customer resales. Start signing perpetual licenses.

There are laods of delisted games that I wish to buy, but I cannot. I could if they were physical via a second hand market and from a pre-Steam era. Everyone always cries about corporations, but nobody ever cries how consumers are hurt by the practice of delisting. Never weep for corpos, because they will not weep for you. That is exactly why we have government regulation.

Second hand market is essential for game preservation, because the corpos are too lazy to sort out their paperwork. We can still legally buy No One Lives Forever second hand, but WB, Disney and Microsoft refuse to sell it first hand. Why should we weep for WB, Disney and Microsoft?

This will not affect digital stores, like GOG, because GOG is not selling said delisted games... they are delisted. In fact such a law may even encourage the corpos to sort out their paperwork, once they realise they cannot sue people for buying used goods. They will feel incentivised to relist everything that was delisted and to future-proof their contracts.

If you are worried about people never buying new games, then why are they buying them now, when piracy is so easy? Why am I buying games from GOG instead of going over to my friend's house with a USB stick?

Everyone arguing against this is paranoid the same way that DRM-loving publishers are paranoid. They assume the worst in people, when the truth is that most people are honest and support the work they enjoy. GOG said so themselves in their PC gamer interview. GOG do not feel abused, despite being so easy to abuse.

Most people never think ahead of the tip of their own nose.

They only see "the right to re-sell your downloaded pc games" and already see themselves "rolling in the dough".

What they don't see, is how that would affect a DRM-free store like GOG, or how low they would have to go with their resale prices, to even have a chance to sell on the swamped market.

And even if we leave the DRM-free part completely out - the only halfway realistic possibility to get a "worthwile" (= questionable term, since you'll ALWAYS sell at a loss) amount of money back?

You have to buy at full price, then play through the game immediately, to sell it as fast as you can again, hoping that thousands of others who do the same, aren't undercutting your "entirely sprung from wishful thinking" resale price.
So, you better be very quick and don't set your expectations too high.

And a game that's "10 years or so" old?
Worth Pennies. At best.
And it probably sits unused on a few hundred thousand accounts, that also want to get rid of it.
Lot of competition.
Ever sold one of these Steam collectibles?
And with common games, we're not talking about something "rare" and "highly seeked for".

And finally, your point:
"It might be nice for customers, but it would hugely impact the industry negatively, and so in the end impact customers that way too."
Bingo!
Because I can tell you already what the immediate effects of such a right would be: higher prices.

Every game that gets re-sold this way, is a potential sales loss for the companies.

And a "x-fold loss" one, since there's no limit to how often the same copy of a game can be re-sold.

So, customer A pays the dev/publisher once the price for "copy 1" of "game X", then re-sells it to customer B, who does not pay the dev/publisher, but re-sells it again to customer C, who does not pay the dev/publisher, but instead re-sells it to customer D, who does not pay...oh yeah...I can totally see, how much the devs/publishers would love that.

But hey...maybe I don't understand jack shit of business...maybe the devs/publishers will lower their prices, instead?
You know - to undercut any eventual re-sales.
To make the effort of re-selling "not worth it" anymore.

Could be...I know for sure, that that's the wet dream of some here.

Of course...such a right could also lead to the closure of many games companies...

Whatever...like I said: most people never think ahead of the tip of their own nose.