Except the product is still there after you've played it. You can't just arbitrarily impose a state of 'consumed' or 'non-consumed' onto a good simply because the state of affairs in its market doesn't please you.

"Hey, I've driven my car already so it's consumed 'cos I said it is!"

Not quite as counterintuitive as you may suspect. I have games in my gaming library that have devalued to absolutely nothing. I have some that devalued to a low point and then steadily rose in value beyond their original purchasing point.

I do believe we should treat disc-based games like books. It would add more cost up front on them, but then you could do as you please.

But digital games, I'm torn. Part of me wants them to be like books. But if they were like books, then what I'd be doing is buying the right to print a book from the author and the publisher. They print me a book, ship it to me [download] and then I read it. If I sold it to a buddy of mine, the publisher wouldn't need to reprint it [I already downloaded it], but I still seem to have a right to download it. I don't have a way to nullify that right (except on GreenManGaming).

Either way, I'm quite content with the way the system is now. I'm fairly old and remember saving up for months and months to get one single game. Now I can skip one lunch and play for months and months.
See my above post. But also, you still are the primary rights holder. And there's no way to get rid of that with this media. So, although you can share it, and maybe even charge someone to share it, it's still technically yours.

Hmmm. It gets muddy there, doesn't it?

If this is an avenue you really want to go down, I'd make a new GOG account for each purchase. Then sell someone your GOG account. That way, they can change the password and you can lose access to the rights.

So long as it's not breaking their TOS. I'll have to go read that thing.

that is why I said ti could be something like, hey gog guys, I dont want this game anymore, I have deleted it from my hard drive (dont have any copy at all), pls transfer it from my library to someone elses, and thats it. if they already trust me I wont pirate game as owner, they might as well trust me I deleted it.

or first I need to sue them, in order to sell game? hypoteticaly speaking

I could be wrong. But the massive decrease in prices came when people no longer shared their games -- they became account-bound.

Now, I'm still a fan of treating games like books (although they, by my country's laws, don't b/c they are software-use permissions, not ownership -- you could legally reverse engineer if you owned). But I really do believe prices would go up.

If a GOG account was sold 10 times, the publisher would get 1/10 of their game's value and GOG would incur 10 times that amount of bandwidth cost. Clearly, the money has to come from somewhere.

Either A) the prices go up, or B) sales go up b/c people get what they want. I suspect maybe a combo platter.

The truth is that most people probably won't sell their game. And if they do, it probably won't make a circuit 10 times.

On top of all of that, gamers are viewed incorrectly by the gaming industry. They see gamers as having endless money and endless time, they just need something worthwhile to fill that time. The truth is that gamers have X amount of dollars and they're looking for the most fun gaming they can get with those dollars. So if they pirate 30 games and buy 1, they're going to spend $X on that 1 game. If they buy 31 games, it's $X/31 for those games.

That's simplified a bit, but it's essentially true.

Nonetheless, GOG's costs would go up significantly (bandwidth) and they would need to recoup those losses. It may be less than a penny, it may be made up through increased popularity. But I doubt it.
In the U.S., they are legally ok to do what they are doing. I've heard in Europe, they may be breaking some laws that nobody is pushing (I'm no legal expert). So go for it if they're breaking laws.

Even if the cost does go up, I would far prefer that games work like books. It makes more sense to people and gives a real value to the information goods.

Another side note on jamyski's post: I still think that price is tied to the sellability of games. But I suppose it could be the other way, too. If a used game sale became popular, the market would determine the price. Perhaps it could even lower prices of games.

I think Humble Bundle has shown that gamers are more than willing to create a massive back-log as long as the prices are cheap. 10 games at a penny a piece to a million people who weren't going to buy the game anyway is a whole lot of money.

You're missing the point. It's not legal. It's against the TOS. You can't transfer your account, and nobody here will support you if you do. You can't absolutely promise the game is gone from your hard drive, from your records, or that you will still have a password access since it's linked to your email address. There's no promise, no incentive, and no guarantee that would make it safe, reasonable or in GOG's case, economically sound.

Nah, the massive decrease in prices came when supply became infinite, the price of replication fell to zero and the market was desperately trying to get people to buy digital. Market forces at work. The only reason the price of games isn't zero is (a) coercion through copyright law (b) buyer morality and (c) the common perception that you're 'buying a game'.

Indeed. The point is that for the most part, to sell these games would be just too much effort for the potential rewards.

Imagine if everyone were able to resell their copy of Aliens: Colonial Marines or Revelations 2012 on Steam days after release due to the poor quality. WIth the massive supply, how much would a used copy really have fetched?

That's very true. Industry reps are often quick to forget that they can rip off players all they want with DLC and non-resellable games, but at the end of the day, the money that is being spent on this is money that will not be spent on a game later on. This is the reason that the industry is in such a poor state at the moment - major publishers assume that where gamer X would have bought game A for $60 in January and game B for $60 in February, they can heap on DLC and simply extract more money from gamer X.

Unfortunately, there's a very poor awareness of purchasing power in the industry - gamer X may buy game A + DLC for $100 in January & February, but it means that the sale of game B will no longer happen.

I know that a lot of gamers compulsively buy games beyond their means, and this is a ticking timebomb waiting to explode.

I still think that is their unofficial stance, ie. their opinion. I'm not fully convinced if the actual IP rights holders, ie. the game publishers that work with GOG, have explicitly agreed with such a practice for their games that they are letting GOG to sell.

But since GOG (nor the publisher) is not putting any technical restrictions, everyone has to decide for themselves where exactly they draw the line. For example, I feel that since you are the one who bought the license, you should be the one who tries to keep control over it, that is your obligation towards both GOG and the IP rights holder.

Meaning that if you are "lending" a game to someone, you shouldn't hand over the installer to them, but to go install it on their computer yourself, even if it is someone in the same family. Just so that you don't make it too easy for them to further pass the installer to their friends, which pass it to their friends etc. etc. You are not controlling the license anymore at that point, you have given a clear opportunity for your friends to misuse the control over the license. A bit like giving your car keys to a friend of yours who is drunk, and then later saying "Hey, I did nothing wrong, I wasn't driving the car!".

Then of course if you go over certain line where it starts to become illegal (like sharing the game as a torrent to everyone), then the IP rights holders might come after you. Like CDPR went after the people pirating The Witcher 2.

Sure, as long as you make it feel like used, a bit like an used CD might be a bit scuffed.

So it might make sense to throw away a few bits and bytes here and there from the GOG game binaries, maybe remove some of the graphics and music files from the game installation, etc., before selling it to someone else. That way it feels used, and not 100% identical to the original one. :)

Or we could move away from this petty and arbitrary crippling and use a little more innovation in how we encourage new sales. Maybe limit the additional services provided (infinite downloads, achievements on Steam, multiplayer server access etc.) that actually cost the provider money?

This was already answered to you earlier. Read the replies that people write to you, otherwise this doesn't go anywhere.

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/selling_gog_games/post9

So in other words: why would GOG and the game publisher agree to your wish/demand? It would only be bad for their business. What's in it for them? Can they e.g. charge you $2 for every game they move from your GOG account to some other GOG account, would you be fine with that?

Otherwise, it would just be extra work and implementation for them, which would also hurt their business. Think it over a bit.

Well, he demanded that the game should be possible to move from an account to another, which would grant the new owner the same extra services.

Anyway, those are _extra_ services on top of the game license that GOG is offering, so they are not really related to the actual game (or in the case of multiplayer, no one is necessarily expecting it to be available forever). There is no obligation for GOG to provide those extra services forever. If e.g. GOG was shut down, I think the only thing the customers could demand is that either GOG or the game publishers would provide the same games in some other form, e.g. by sending the customers the DRM-free installers one more time, or free Steam keys for everyone.

And yet people would sell them. In fact, as I already mentioned above, I believe it would become the norm.

All it takes is a system that facilitates second hand sales. If that exists, then holding on to a game after you're 'done' with it is meaningless and will just mean you're wasting money in the long run.

Sure, there may be moments where it's particularly bad to sell, but in most cases holding on to it will be a loss for you.

Personally, I'd like it, if there were a possibility to trade a game from one account to the other for say half price. Meaning that the new owner got a 50% discount and the previous owner some percentage of that in store credit. Or maybe a certain percentage of the price of the original sale to prevent people actually making money from gifts or from reselling games they got with high discounts for more than they paid themselves.

Yes, it'll take some math wizardry in the beginning, but I believe it's possible. I think it would help their business. That would be another huge consumer advantage over every other digital distribution service out there. It would increase customer loyalty, it would increase spur-of-the-moment sales because people know that they can still recoup some of their losses if they happen to dislike the game.

Green Man Gaming let you trade back games (as long as it is not just a key), however, it requires the capsule thingy. So it is not as it do not already exist.

(but yes, it needs the layer of DRM to work)

You could say the same about the DRM-free ideal in general. What's keeping me from giving DVDs with GOG installers to friends or even flat out selling them in school/at work/wherever?

People who would sell a game and keep a copy of it would be giving/selling their games to others anyway. By offering a resale option, GOG wouldn't make those people delete their games, but the would still make money off of the transaction and via store credit encourage new purchases by the seller.

It's either people breaking the rules or it's people breaking rules with GOG still making some money off of them.

You sir should see my backlog. At the rate I play them, I may not be set for life, but I'm certainly set for the next 5 years at least, probably a decade even.

The problem is not that gamers get addicted to gaming in general, it's that gamers get obsessed with certain upcoming titles which gives whoever creates those select titles a lot of leverage.

...or because most games wouldn't get made if the price was zero?

That would have happened already. Digital gaming and credit cards have been around for a while now.

That's my opinion too. I love my friends, but they don't share my values concerning intellectual property and the right of authors to make a living off their work.

I would never hand them over an installer, though I have on occasion installed a game on their laptop when they came over to play LAN and uninstalled it before they left.

I draw the line even at leaving an installed version on their computer. If they really want to play the game, they can either purchase it themselves (Cmon, most are dirt cheap on promo) or wait for me to get it for them on their birthday.

Cheapness, on a personal level, is condonable only when you apply it to yourself.