Can we bring this topic back to the front page. Why is it such a problem for us to be able to share, and resell the games we buy?

If I'm on console and buy a physical copy of a game i still have to install it on my console but i can still let my friend borrow it, or resell the game/trade in the game if i want. Yet as a PC gamer I stuck with every game i purchase whether i like it or not, complete it and have no want to play it again, or want to give it to a friend.

this is a big issue in my opinion that we as a community need to take a stand on!

let me know your thoughts?

I think it's fine as long as you have some sort of system for ensuring that the same bought game can't be in possession of and played by two people at one time. Oh wait that's DRM.

So yeah I'm not worried. Physical property and digital property is different.

First off, you're buying a license to those games, you're not owning them, whatever GOG marketing tells you.

Your issue runs much deeper of course, and I understand your position.

I remember from like 15 years ago, when digital distribution of video games was still uncommon. The problem was, the digitally noobed law wasn't prepared for the situation. Legally, transferral of rights should have been possible. People were pissed off that they could no longer resell their games even though laws in their respective country explicitly said they could. It seemed like e.g. Valve simply refused to respect the law. I'm sure that I can find some posts of mine from way back when lambasting the industry for taking away my rights.

But this isn't a one sided issue, particularly not on gog.com.

Because the central technical requirement for you to legally transfer rights to another person is hardcore DRM.

But it does not even stop there, it gets worse. This can of worms is immense.

This new kind of hardcore DRM would have to be something the game industry would have to provide and maintain without reaping any financial reward. They would have to rake in the costs elsewhere. Maybe Valve would take a bigger cut, and more likely than not, we'd see a big fat price increase on games, literally a DRM tax. The consumer would finance the development of brutal copy protection.

So clamoring for transferral of rights – which in many countries still absolutely is your right – would have brought us stronger and more restrictive DRM measures AND a hefty price increase.

I've been on the fence about digital distribution for seven or eight years longer than the general public, but that price is too high to pay. I want DRM free games at a reasonable price, and I simply don't want the industry to take the necessary steps to make reselling possible again.

Sleeping dog, do not wake up.

I agree with the OP in principle.

However, even with that being so, I still don't support the idea of GOG trying to be the first store to allow the re-sale of their games, since if they did, then GOG would very quickly go out of business, because all notable publishers would abandon GOG immediately.

On the other hand, if someone filed and then won a lawsuit against Steam on the basis that Steam doesn't allow their customers to re-sell their Steam games even though they should legally be allowed to do so, and then Steam was (rightfully) legally forced to change their policies to allow for the re-sale of Steam games, then GOG would need to follow that and do the same on the GOG store.

If GOG was the market monopolizer, as Steam is in reality, then I would say GOG needs to go first. But since GOG is just a small fry in the PC games market, that is why GOG cannot afford to and must not go first in terms of allowing the re-sale of games.

1. That requires the ability to deactivate the game in the seller's account which requires... DRM... Given the choice between a DRM'd right to resell vs DRM-Free, many of us prefer the latter for longer-term game preservation. Of course, some older disc based games without DRM do have the best of both, however...

2. ... A far better question than "Why can't I resell my GOG games" is "why do you think that after 30 years of publishers trying and failing to kill off reselling CD's, DVD's, etc, legally vs "First-Sale Doctrine" laws, they are now weeping tears of joy over new platforms that prevent it technologically (by locking content to accounts)"? Publishers hate 2nd-hand resale markets. That's why even on platforms that do have DRM, they don't want to bring the right to resell back after doing everything they could to get rid of it. Also why they're now pushing disk-less consoles. "Convenience of not losing your discs" is more the excuse than the reason from the publishers point of view...

Because it is not allowed, and by agreeing to GOG's (or some other shop's) terms and conditions, you choose to follow those rules.
Obviously you could buy some games from some places which would allow that, but your choices would be limited to few random indie games. You can buy physical copies of PC games too, so you are not limited to digital distribution. Of course not every game is available as a disc, just like not every game is available as a download.

Anyway, you are not allowed to install a copy and then let your friend borrow it, you must choose one or the other, not both simultaneously.

You do have a point though that theoretically you should be able to let your friend borrow your digital copy as well. I'm not sure if that has ever been tried in any legal battles, but I would assume that in some places in the world that would be acceptable.

After all, you can let your friend borrow your physical copy, you can let your friend borrow your computer where digital copies are installed, so letting your friend borrow a digital game copy would be only logical.
EULAs don't allow that, but then again, EULAs don't override national laws, so it's a bit of untested area.

"You own a license, not a game" in a nutshell. Until this can be legally challenged (and companies will not let this go without a fight), don't expect stores to comply. A French consumer group won a lawsuit against Valve 3 years ago because they didn't allow userrs to resell their games on Steam, but Valve made an appeal and nothing seems to have come of it since then.

Ultimately, everything is headed toward platforms like Spotify. You pay a monthly fee and have access to everything and more (in time, I can imagine some bundled/package services). For collectors, there might come an option to pay a special price for an "enhanced" digital license allowing for access without an active subscription.

I have to say that I am getting more and more accustomed to such an arrangement. I've been playing games since the 80s (still trying to find a very specific game from the Commodore platform, I will mention it at the bottom), with my first PC from 93'. I used to play pirated games exclusively, but now I "own" around 1300 titles on various sites (mainly Steam and GoG), and I don't play pirated versions anymore. I suppose I grew accustomed to the "zero-hassle" approach, with everything readily available with a few clicks and a fast download. I guess the "achievements" system plays a role as well. Truth be told, I don't play games anymore, I collect them :) I've done my best to purchase all the games I've played and enjoyed in the past when I was younger and could not afford to buy them :)

As per the "ownership", at GoG you can backup everything; scripts described on the Forum allow you to do so. For Steam, there are similar methods if you wanna go that route. But the same things apply to movies and music. You can store everything digitally on the cloud, home servers, or external disks. Or you can get a few monthly subscriptions and have enough of everything. For example, I have HBO and Netflix, and if there is something that I want to access, I use radarr and sonarr on NAS Synology to get it, but this is quite rare. There is little time to spare I guess. The same thing applies to games nowadays.

Again, you can still get most of the items in a physical form (ie, DVD), and have a nice collection on your shelf. It is nice to have something like this, and I still keep some old PC game boxes around. But, with so much quality content out there, it is unlikely that most folks will go that route. Also, unless you are a hardcore collector, you will unlikely have the need, time, and space for that. Even when it comes to older titles that are not purchasable, some good folks are taking care of that too. You have an already-set-up launchbox library full of oldies wonders :) (I am pretty sure this is already covered on the Forum). This is the only "piracy" I am willing to accept because it is impossible to buy those items in a digital form anywhere.

As per "backups", I could back up my entire GoG and Steam collection, but the main question is why and how much time I would have to devote to this. I guess I "rely" on the service, and I don't think about what happens if the servers go down :) I remember one Google outage during working hours... practically everything stopped for an hour or so :)

As far as the re-selling is concerned, I am familiar with the French case, but already then a lot of folks were saying that very little would come out of it, and for now, that seems to be the case. I guess this problem will be "resolved" with the subscription model. How much replayability would you assign to each title you "own"? I sure did play a lot of civilization back in the day and games like this, but many games I have in my libraries are a one-time playthrough. Give me a subscription model where I can keep the data on my playthroughs and whatnot, and I am ok with that. If there is something, I want to be able to play whenever I will pay extra for that particular title. On-demand.

PC Game Pass is a good example. I can see several titles of interest, I would play them once and move on. This service is excellent for shooters. You play them until a new version comes along, then you play the new version. No more need for the old one. Like Warzone 2 :)

I understand why folks disagree with this concept and prefer full ownership. But the digital age is here, and there's no way around it :) Some Japanese car producers are envisaging autonomous taxi services free of charge, with taxi service providers getting revenues from in-drive commercials and purchases being made during transfers. Who knows, maybe one day there will come out a business model allowing gamers to enjoy all titles in exchange of allowing their gaming, browsing and other data be used by third parties :) :)

No and dear god no.

It would kill independent game developers. And thus kill 90% of the innovation in gaming of which there is not even enough at the moment.

Reselling of our digital games would kill the indie market, and it would introduce worse things in gaming to make up for the loss in sales.

I suggest reading this:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-real-cost-of-used-games

Its from 2012, and realize what he said is very much correct.

Used game sales is not good for the consumers because of how the industry will react to it, and the indie market would be hit even harder.

People forget the license will never be revoked or expire in our life time. If that does happen, no one is going to bust your door down to get back the games. Ha-ha. Most companies won't even care what you do with the games by that time.

You still own all your games until death.

I read it and my takeaway was this comment in the comments section (funnily enough): Ten years ago but still rings true today.

This is why DRM-free games work. If you make a quality game then people will appreciate it and buy it. Games can be cracked, pirated or shared illegally, but if you make a great game the majority of people will buy it and you will make money.

DRM increased at the same time as innovation and quality in games decreased, and it all coincided with the introduction of DVDs which had copy-protection whereas VHS tapes didn't.

The system can't be solved perfectly but DRM is not a solution. Neither is legally permitting the free sharing of digital files.

This has never been the case except for a select few rare games (Super Mario Kart DS, It takes two). In the past where games remained in the CD or cartridge; if you let a friend borrow a game you yourself cannot play that game until the game is returned to you. Even in the era of installing games to hard drives, the CD itself is a form of "DRM" in that you need the CD physically in your PS4 to launch and play the game (I think its worse for xbone in that you cant even lend games to friends).

The challenge of digital is how do you manage to prevent one copy from being played by multiple people at once when the game itself is no longer bound to a physical form. Because publishers see sales numbers based on new games sold because that is the only time they make money. If a game sells 100 new copies, the publisher has revenue total to selling 100 of that game. If a game only sold 1 copy but is passed around via borrowing and reselling so that 100 people played the game, the publisher still only sees the revenue of selling 1 copy of the game even though 100 people experienced it. By going digital (and preventing reselling), publishers can ensure they make money off every person that played their game.

Although we dont "own" games in the sense that we can easily trade or give away digital copies, we do have a greater sense of "ownership" over games from GOG than we do from other stores (Epic and Steam). Our library is not tied to the status of the company where if the company fails, so does our library.

This then becomes a debate of can steam actually go bankrupt and close shop which many arguing steam is "too big to fail" so this is a moot point. Personally Im not sure but I do think the era of steam dominance is ending although this discussion isnt really relevant to the point raised.

Try to compare it with the music industry.