Did Bethesda not honor the code in this case? Is fraud even relevant for this single case here?

Again the law probably already has everything in place to deal with fraud between private sellers and buyers. Sometimes it's a bit behind but not that much behind. If you bought something from someone and it's not functioning as expected when buying, you can undo the transaction. That should work reasonably well, especially when having someone like Amazon as middlemen with more power to persuade the seller to comply. Don't see where Bethesda comes into play except maybe when their service is not reliable enough or in any case that would be a problem between Bethesda and the seller not between Bethesda and the buyer.

In short it should go like this:

Seller buys X from Bethesda
Buyer buys X from Seller
Buyer tests X (if OK, then end here)
Buyer returns X to Seller, gets money back
Seller returns X to Bethesda, may get money back (I really don't care about that)

That's the flow that the law should support regardless of any other circumstances or whether the product is physical, digital or in any other form. If however, seller and buyer are in different jurisdictions then problems can arise in case of a dispute. I would recommend to simply not buy then.

Take home message: Check origin of any seller you buy from. Only buy from sellers within your jurisdiction that you trust.

We don't know, because the guy didn't sell the game. If he had, we still wouldn't know, because it wouldn't showed up in an entirely differently labeled story: "Bethesda doesn't replace DLC codes missing in original packaging." That is, if we assume he's a scumbag, which he might be, but we don't know. Frankly, we don't know all the details here, but Bethesda's the more reasonable one in this case. Right, but theory and practice are two different things. In reality, no one ever goes after gamestop for missing codes, right? Like, it's even been brought up in this topic that this is a known issue, but how many people have taken gamestop to task? Has anyone tried? I'm quite curious, actually. Meanwhile, when all those avenues fail, if you still want what you paid for, you have to go after the wrong guy, which might give in. In this case, Bethesda. Bethesda is getting a little sick of this, so they have a legal team out there trying to prevent this issue.

It's kind of like how the teacher always punishes the kid who "hits back" because the first kid is going to bully regardless of punishment, but the kid who hits back only hit back because they got punished for being, so you know they'll not hit back again if they get punished for hitting back (effectively, the teacher can "keep the peace" and not deal with the situation as long as the kid doesn't hit back when he hits). The only way to solve the problem is to have your kid hurt the bully enough that the bully moves on to another kid, but not in a way that gets the parents involved. See, the bully hurts someone, the teacher's trying to pass the buck, and the victim is supposed to quietly take it, so the victim would be smart to prevent the bully from acting in the first place: So Bethesda (the usual victim) is going after scam artists (and innocents who appear to be bullies) to prevent the customer (teacher) from dishing out the punishment (bad publicity). More than jurisdiction:
SellerA buys X from Bethesda
SellerB buys X from SellerA
SellerB holds onto it for a while, maybe messing with it, maybe not, we can't know because there's no real way of guaranteeing this without expensive stickers or something (which i think Nintendo did once)
Buyer buys it from SellerB
Buyer tries to get codes from SellerB
SellerB is either guilty and plays dumb, or is innocent, and we can't really know for sure, but passes the buck to SellerA or Bethesda
SellerA has policy where they're just the middle-man, whether they tampered or not (gamestop), and does what SellerB does and passes the buck
Bethesda curbs to prevent topics about not being able to hold up their end of the bargin and giving what they promised, not knowing whether it was SellerA, SellerB, or the Buyer who lied, and thus doesn't have a clue how to fix the problem to prevent it in the future, assuming they even get told about SellerB

EDIT: Essentially, Bethesda can't really get rid of SellerA, but they know they can go after SellerB to narrow the problem down, because they're sick of being held hostage by the Buyer

But single persons are easy targets and legal departments have to show activity to justify their size. That's all there is to it. Some company lawyer ensuring his own continued employment by suing whenever he can. Frankly I'm amazed that his topic is still ongoing. With lots of discussion, but no report what became of the case.

We need to establish a standard for how we hold such practices, basically.

I thought about your job security theory, though, but i think it misses that this has been going on for a while, and they(the media)'ve finally found someone with shrinkwrap on the case to push the narrative. Unless someone in the media buys it and proves it was unopened (not that we'd really believe it was the same case, anyway, 'cause that's how the media is), I'm not going to believe that it really was unopened.

The flip side is, i've gotten burned before. One time i was at a flea market out BFE, saw a guy there that i'm used to buying games cheap from (especially old games like gameboy or sega), and he had a copy of Final Fantasy XIV (PS3) there for cheap. I like final fantasy, but not enough to keep up on the news on it (to know this was another MMO), and bought it. Yeah, let's just say that to even register an account to play, you need to have an original code. That game was not one that could be resold. I got screwed, and I can't really blame squeenix for it: the price of the original disk factors in the cost of the risk someone would steal files off the disk, investment, and things like that. I basically have a disk and a box, which take up space, and a lesson that physical distributions don't always work out for you in the end.

Didn't the person just refrain from selling under the threat of being sued?

Having corporate lawyers sue anyone just because they can or just threaten to sue anyone because they can is still not a desirable outcome I would say. They shouldn't use their corporate weight as a way to threaten people into submission.

If and only if this is the case, it's still a bit weird to blame bethesda as a whole for this. However, bethesda is defending this, so i'm guessing they actually have legal ground, here. If i'm in the right, i'll go ahead and defend myself from a big bully. The payoff will be worth it.

EDIT: If this guy was smart, he'd basically pull a "come at me bro" and sell the game as new to a "complete stranger" (friend) and get it notarized, then wait for bethesda to sue, drop the notarized message in front of the judge from the "complete stranger" that says the game was unopened, used the serial code and it worked (bonus if he has video proof), and he can sit back and collect punitive damages and file a counter-suit for harassment and such. I really doubt a judge would side with Bethesda if he could prove it was new.

But, if he's selling a used product, he'd be in trouble.

Sites like Steam need a class action lawsuit over digital rights. They have deceived people for years and recently told everyone you will own nothing we sell you and be happy. This model is antithetical to private ownership, competition, and innovation—i.e., the principles of capitalism.

You do realize you just did a serious necro.
2018 was quite a few years back.

Pretty much any that involve shareholders.

EDIT:
Dagnabbit me too, damn these failing eyes! Good to see gog still doesn't seem to offer a way to delete posts.

I foolishly thought that after more than a decade they might have made some progress but nope! It seems the only thing they were capable of doing was remove the down vote button.

There is nothing reasonable about Bethesda's position; unless you feel private property rights should be abolished.

This site is so unfriendly on cell phone. Can't read the dates without zooming in a LOT. Stupid necro posts.

If you browse the forum from your phone very often, you might want to try the "experimental" forum color scheme (skin) under "Display options" in the forum settings (i.e., "My settings"). :)

Yep, try the Experimental forum color scheme as HunchBluntley said. I was surprised to see how it looks on the phone. The new post page is still same old, but man it'll hit different whenever we Forum Mafia players get around to playing a new game.
To be fair, I'm VERY THANKFUL they removed the down vote button. The fact they were able to do something about the forums at all was fantastic.

If you feel like it, you can try asking a blue to remove any posts you want gone, not that it'll undo the post-necro activity though.