You seem to be misunderstanding how modern offline installers are created. In order for any store to allow reselling games, it requires DRM to enforce the removal of the ability of the seller to play, ie, if you want to limit resale to Galaxy-only downloads, those Galaxy downloads will require an ownership check upon every game start (handled by Galaxy exactly like Steam DRM). Which is DRM. You claim we can pretend "it isn't DRM" if there's some "separation" between Galaxy vs offline installers but there really isn't any separation and hasn't been since 2014 where the only truly Galaxy-free offline installers we had were the pre-2015 ones with the older nameofgame_2.0.0.x.exe naming scheme. Since then, most offline installers are built from the Galaxy build (hence why they include galaxy.dll, etc, (and often refuse to start if you delete it) despite there already being zero functional need for any Galaxy code in offline installers). Unpack an installer using InnoExtract (GOG use InnoSetup to create them) and they aren't even stored as files, they are "Galaxy streams" that get rebuilt into files. This is the cause of incidents like Saints Row 3, Deus Ex:MD DLC not unlocking, etc, the offline installer build *is built from* the Galaxy build.

So it really isn't "technically possible" for offline installers to be "completely separate" from Galaxy given GOG have spent the last 5 years going through the whole catalogue and Galaxifying the offline installers as much possible thus removing the same "build from two sources instead of one" separation of builds that you would require for your idea to work. And they definitely aren't going to go back and redo the entire store's back-end to permit re-sales that actively leaves them financially worse off, and publishers won't agree to anyway (for the same reason existing DRM'd platforms like Steam could already technically allow it, simply don't want to).

There's a difference between bringing your console game to a local store (or putting it on ebay) to resell it and "used" digital goods.

Your local store is... local. It's probably just a hundred dudes "exchanging" their games there. The world wide web on the other hand... well, it's world wide ;) Someone in the US puts their game up for sale and Pai Chang-tien from China can buy it. No language barrier (game will automatically install in chinese, not in english), you don't have to wait for the package to arrive (just to see that the disc is scratched), you don't have to go from store to store to store, just to find where you can buy a used copy.

Buing a "used" digital copy would be just as easy as buying a "new" copy. Now tell me: why exactly would you want to buy the more expensive "new" copy, when the identical "service" (access to the game files) is cheaper on the not-so-used-market? And why exactly should you keep a "collection" of games? You don't play it right now? Just sell it! If you ever want to play that game again, you'll get it dirt cheap in a sale or on the used market.

Nah, seriously. A reseller market for digital goods doesn't work. Yes, theoretically we'd have the right to sell the games we bought online. But forcing the stores to give us that right would change digital stores AND the games themselves in a way we wouldn't want them to. There probably wouldn't be any sales anymore (because there's a used market) and games would take another HUGE step towards the "games as a service" model. Publishers and developers would have to plan a constant release of new (free) content for every single game they release. People who bought the game can't be allowed to sell their copy after a few days, or you'll really lose a lot of money with everyone waiting for the used copies to arrive. So there'd be a weekly crapload of "4 New Missions! 1 New Character! Free Bonus Outfit!" marketing-blah coming with every new game. One year minimum of "free updates", to prevent people from selling their games after being done with them.

Nah, thank you. I do love my rights, but some of them just don't work anymore. Insisting on my right to resell a product, would push my hobby into a direction I'd hate. I'd get one of my rights back, but I'd lose a hobby.

The issue is a bit different. Back in the 90s you would buy a game on a CD (or a floppy disk(s), ha!) and then have the ability to play it anywhere or share the disk with anyone. Here it appears you would have to share your Launcher (GoG Galaxy, Steam, etc) credentials first. Game pass, in an oddly way, reverts things back to basics.


To return to my previous point, I think in the future, we might see a game pass/lease model whereby you pay a monthly fee to access a huge library of games. When you are stuck with any particular title for a certain period (as you have grown to like it and want to play it more / longer), you are asked to pay a specific fee to continue having prolonged access to it or pay extra and get a "lifetime" access to it (like a cloud storage service). I would rather pay a smaller fee and have access to, for example, a yearly CoD game than pay 60 bucks each year for the same product (just using this as an example).

To that end, it will be interesting to see whether the EpicGames business model will come up with something new or continue the Uber path to complete shut-down. If latter, I am curious about what will happen with the hefty number of "free" titles I have acquired over the years.

Gotta say, I was around for this era but never heard of anything like this. Closest I knew of was that tab that stopped a tape from being recorded that could be covered with electrical tape. Learn something new every day.

Macrovsion was the most common form of analogue copy protection. It worked by shoving higher voltage pulses within the off-screen VBI lines of video that messed up automatic gain (the bit you don't see on old TV's due to overscan) and the result was any re-recorded video would constantly change brightness. It wasn't all it messed up though as simply passing equipment through a VCR could accidentally mess it up too simply watching on TV without any intent to re-record (commonly done for old TV's that had only 1x input). Of course, Macrovision removal dongles (that stripped it out again) were a thing so as with most DRM, it didn't stop much.

If they added a flag system to each account, it'd automatically mark whether or not a person has downloaded the game's offline installers. It wouldn't need a constant check because if they download the offline installers, they'd immediately be locked out (in my idea, that is). The only possible problem would be the fact that you can still play Galaxy games offline, in which case they'd need to modify the Galaxy versions to have DRM capability, which is precisely why I said the idea would never happen.

Again, I'm not saying I want this, it was just me giving a possible idea on what a trading system could look like on GOG. I'd never use such a feature either way, and I realize that it has flaws that would be questionable at best, I was merely brainstorming a possible starting point for the sake of this thread. Not gonna happen either way, though.

What I was referring to was the physical book market pre-digital.

That said, Google are not selling the digitized books without permission. Instead they are acting as a kind of very limited online library, and I am not sure if all the books they are digitizing for posterity, are made available to read online. There is certainly no ownership element in any case, except for those ebooks Google sells.

Regardless, if you are making copies of a book, you need to ask for permission, or it has to be regulated in another way (usually through a statute). Google made deals with several libraries and digitalized their stores. Books in those libraries are meant to be borrowed by readers, not digitalized by Google. There was no previous agreement on the side of publishers regarding this. Whereas some settlements have been made during the past few years, some cases (as far as I know) are ongoing.

This is not merely a matter of copyright or posterity. Google is creating the largest dataset for machine learning, and in doing so, Google is breaking various laws. It may seem as if they are doing this out of the goodness of their heart, but they are not. For example, the German association behind one of those suits is saying that Google failed to ask their permission to digitize and make previews publicly available. In doing so, they have caused damage to the claimant. And this claim is true. They are now asking for removal and compensation.

Regarding physical books, I can take any book I have at home and sell it to the antiquarians (if they are interested). They can, then, sell this book further. The sale and purchase contract concerns the copy of the author's work, not the work itself. Both are separate items, and both are separately protected by law.

You bought a non-exclusive, non-transferrable license. Copyright laws here show that this is a thing (in the US, at least) where in you can buy a license to a property to use it in specific manners, but are unable to resell that use license. This is exactly what happens here. In this case, the software is more like the ability to create a game or make a movie than it is to read a book. Physical media with no DRM restrictions was more akin to a library book. Only one person can have possession of that physical copy at one time, so the license is tied to the physical thing. In the case of digital games, the license has nothing to be tied to except your account with the seller, meaning that the license is tied to something you cannot physically sell because it has no physical presence. Like the right to create something with someone else's IP.

Or the right to view a movie on your own TV through the TV provider. You can't go to your neighbor's house with your HBO subscription and watch a movie, unless you actually log into a device there. They are then using YOUR license. But say you go to a neighbor's house without access to the internet, but they have cable; you can't just tune to HBO in their house unless they also own a license. In that case, your HBO content is tied to your account with HBO and your cable company, and your presence doesn't inherently allow the product to be used. Same thing here with digital games. Your license isn't tied to you but to your account. So you can't resell individual items from that account due to the licensing agreement. You can't sell the whole account because of the Terms of service you agreed to. Basically, the way copyright law works protects this as a feature. You can't resell it because what you purchased outlined that it wasn't resellable as part of the terms of the sale, and since it has no physical presence to be tied to, it can't be transferred by sale of the physical items.

This person has done a better write up about the topic than I could ever hope to do, so I'll just link to the post:

https://linustechtips.com/topic/953835-you-own-the-software-that-you-purchase-and-any-claims-otherwise-are-urban-myth-or-corporate-propaganda/#comments

It's worth a read.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's actually worth it to pursue your right to resell software and what consequences that might have for digital distribution.

Very interesting, thanks for posting that. Food for thought indeed.

Though it is as the old saying: "there is the law, and then there is what is done."

Hmmm, intrusive DRM measures that inadvertently ruin media even for legal consumers. I guess Denuvo isn't the trendsetter I had assumed.

While macrovision might be the granddaddy, surely you are aware of pre-Denuvo DRM causing problems in games? Doesn't Starforce ring a bell? What about SecuROM?

Well yeah, I suppose I sacrificed accuracy for the joke that came to mind. But I've been around for most digital drm mishaps, my personal favorite was Sony BMGs mid-00s fiasco with music cd DRM. My main point was just drawing the trend line of drm conistently hurting paying consumers more than pirates overall, of which there are many examples.