Hi everyone,

I have a rather interesting question - though it might have been asked before. Is it possible to sell the games you purchase from GOG back to GOG or another user from GOG?

I ask this, since we are supposedly the ones that own the game according to GOG.com, once said game has been bought and downloaded...

Thanks for your help in advance.

No, that is not possible.

No. The games have no DRM whatsoever, which means that GOG has no means to check whether you keep your copies of the "re-sold" games, so GOG cannot allow or even support resales.

I can understand the desire for a trading option. The number one reason I was extremely reluctant to buy anything digitally was that once I had finished with it I could not then "Pass it on" so to speak.

In my case it was slightly different. I didn't necessarily want to trade or swap (although I have done both on occasion). I just appreciated the chance to pass on things I no longer had a use for. If I Had finished a game, and did not intent to play it again (at least not for a while) I could give it to family or friends who had not yet had the chance to do so.

This is sadly not an option with Digital Distribution. While I have become accustomed to this fact, I do still miss the change to "be nice" and pass the items I no longer need (or want) on.

In fact, the reason I have come to love GOG so much is the fact that it has allowed me, for amazingly small cost, to re-purchase these games I have previously given up to someone else.

In that respect, While I am not particularly going to push for the change to swap and or trade, I would be very glad if Digital Distributors (Not just GOG, but STEAM and all others) to at least use their influence to attempt to persuade Game developers to allow a system to Transfer ownership.

Surely the developers would rather SOMEONE be playing and experiencing their work, than it doing to waste once the original owner is done with it.

Unfortunately I believe this will never happen, and I think this is a shame.

For the purposes of resale you do own that copy of the game BY LAW, in the United States. I don't know the exact legal path they've taken in the UK, but I suspect even there his question is appropriate.

Are you kidding?

They hate 'used games' more than piracy. Cause piracy isn't lost sale, but "used game" is.

orcoshgamer - just as kavazovangel said - it's always a licence for a personal use.

Gog just give you freedom to do more with this licence (install on all your machines, back up one hundred times, etc.). But it's not transferable, also because as long as it stays on your account, you have the licence, but it's impossible for you to remove the game from your bookshelf.

Thus, if you would try to sell the licence, someone would be the owner (as a buyer), but it would be still tied to your account.

True, but this is a very debate-able topic, because he'd either have to sell his account info, or contact support to transfer his rights to download the game to somebody else, and at the same time convince them that he deleted every trace of the game from his machines.

Dammit ninja'd. I was going to ask if selling accounts was possible here. (Not that i'd do it but it'd be possibly more acceptable than trying to sell individual games off of one's account.)

While I see what you're saying (and I'm not suggesting transferring one's account is the right way to go about this) right of resale has trusted the seller to not keep some sort of copy for some time now (a taped copy of a CD or tape, photocopy of a book, ripped digital copy of a CD or DVD).

GOG may not have a contract that allows them to go into the second hand business (and even if there's nothing stopping them it very well might not make business sense to them) and GOG games are cheap. If you "sold" your copy of a game, transferred a copy of the files and never made use of the extra privilege to redownload GOG provides I don't see how it's any different than selling your used CD (from a legal standpoint).

Can people cheat? Sure they can, easily too. I firmly believe a thriving secondhand market will do more to combat piracy than any other tactic, aside from simply making everything have no cost whatsoever:)

The difference usually is that the law treats physical products different from digital licenses. Are you really sure that your description reflects the current status quo? I don't think it does, but I'll admit that I don't know enough about US law to make more than an educated guess there.

In German law, the matter is quite clear. The BBB (resp. our German variant of it) went to the highest court in Germany to declare prohibitions on resale of digital wares void, and they lost. The reason was exactly that the customer protection laws which assure you the right to resell any physical goods, do not apply for digital licenses. The judge literally said that the market would have to sort this out, and that customers to whom resale rights are important simply shouldn't buy digital licenses that remove them.

I think that the US law sees a similar difference between physical goods and digital licenses, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'm not aware of any legal challenges around this matter in the US (I'm not counting the Autodesk case as it was a case about a EULA and a professional, who was not treated as a normal consumer), which essentially means no changes. Companies are encouraged to try, though they'll happily fight to have some of the more insane provisions of their TOS enshrined in case law, this one would likely be a losing battle for them.

I've heard of people selling Steam accounts before....and while I think Steam frowns upon it i've heard of several people doing it successfully over the years with no real punishment from Valve.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/03/steam-user-violates-subscriber-agreement-loses-1800-in-games.ars?comments=1#comments-bar

This guy was perma-banned from a $1,800 Steam account for trying to sell his account. (His account was later reactivated after the story was picked up by the media.)

Well of course one shouldn't advertise it where Valve can see. ;)

And as I said SOME get away with it....obviously others will get on Valve's nasty side that week/month/day and they will feel it needs making example of.