Just a few comments, because I find this whole debate tedious and frankly, not worth my time.

Argument to tradition is a logical fallacy. If you think it is a valid argument, you are a fool. If you think there is reason behind the tradition, argue with that as your point, not some meaningless surrender to the ways of the past. Just because it has been done some way in the past doesn't mean that we should do it that way now.

You're being foolish. I'm a developer. I make games for a living. I am paid a salary to make games which are investments for the people who pay me to make them. If I am offered a percentage of the income from the game, of course I deserve it, but I'm not the one floating the money for the game. The person who makes the investment gets the returns. That's how business works.

The thing I find most amusing in this whole debacle is that all of you have drawn a line in the sand behind where you are currently. Project $10 is so horrible in your eyes, because it limits resale value. GOG, a site you frequent, completely eliminates all resale value. This, by my estimation, is far worse than putting a tax on used game sales. Yet you grin and bear it, because, for some reason, you cast a blind eye to the practices of GOG, and most other digital distribution services, even though they are acting far worse than those you decry.

Since there's no DRM I'm pretty sure I could resell my GOGs, it would be on my honor system to delete my copies but there's absolutely nothing stopping me from doing it. Now if you said Steam I'd agree with you, but GOG is not the example you're looking for.

GOG staff have condemned the sale of GOG accounts. If they caught wind of it, they'd deactivate your account (which they can, for any reason, under their terms of use). You wouldn't be doing it with their blessings.

Pretty much this.

You don't have to sell the account to give someone the executable, delete your own, and never redownload it again. I've never done it, I'm just saying the option is there. You could do it with your purchased MP3s too, if you really wanted.

You're trying to draw a parallel which is pretty weak. Steam would be a better example, though not apples to apples. Even so, you may see nothing wrong with project 10 dollar, but I'm a bit shocked you don't get why people perceive it as "dick-ish".

isn't it illegal to sell gog games?

You could also just pirate the content and it would be 100% as legal...

The key thing that you (and quite a few others, unfortunately) seem to be missing is that it's meaningless to compare one specific factor across product offerings without considering all the other factors in the product offerings- in other words, without considering the value proposition of each separate product. With digital distribution one does indeed lose the ability to resell games (as well as lend them), however in many cases the impact of this on the overall value proposition is offset by price, ease of use, etc (whatever factors people place value in). On the other hand, things like Project $10 don't offer anything in exchange for the decreased resale value, thus decreasing the overall value proposition compared to similar products sans the crippling of second-hand copies. Tell people you've decided to start offering them less value for their money and naturally they tend not to be particularly happy about it.

The messy fact that you buy a service in a box at retail does not escape me. At the end of the day though that is exactly what you are doing. You also do it when you buy airtime minutes for a pay as you go phone, or really the phone itself which is useless without service.

More to the point I am drawing a line of distinction between offline content and online content, which you seem to repeatedly ignore.

Umm, you have a funny definition of legal and I'm not sure reselling digital only content has been tested in court but "licensed" content has and the right of first sale almost always trumps the EULA (there's been a few wonky exceptions, Autodesk won a partial victory at one point).

I have and I would say that the price is too high and gamers are ripped off (some games are even cheaper new than the 10 bucks), but I would simply vote with my wallet. Having said that, Steam is even worse because it does not allow reselling. So it's too expensive and I would never use it, but still not worse than Steam. Simply not using any of these "services" sounds like the obvious solution.

Cool. Just out of interest, could you maybe provide some sources for this?

Ubiplay exists for a year or two already.

This new thing is an Ubiplay Pass, a Pass for online play. Ubi is the last one in this bandwagon, since EA and THQ and others started it first. I don't see why only now it turned to be evil just because Ubisoft is the one doing it...

Sorry, I only posted to illustrate the Ubisoft was great at copying bad ideas and warn folks about it. I hope I didn't imply they were the first or any more evil than EA (in this regard, overall they just might be). I've hated the idea from the beginning for reasons I've covered in some of my posts in this thread.

If you're okay with EA doing this then you should be okay with Ubisoft doing it.

Well, my beef is this is their fault. The community was doing this free of charge (running servers, in some cases leaderboards, doing the policing, etc.). They turned off LAN play, they forced players to only use official servers (so they could gain more control, not to the benefit of the player). I find it hard to feel sorry for their costs when they're doing it out of pure selfishness in the first place.