If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the Legendary version is cheaper than just the 3 DLC, let alone the base game plus the 3 DLC? Why would anyone buy the DLC then? Just get Legendary! But it does make sense to be able to resell digital copies of games, does it not?

From the publishing perspective, by sliding down the price of the games you pretty much get the maximum value you can get. I never purchased a digital game at full price. It never made any sense to me. At most I wait for the cheap full collection. I'm an even more exaggerated version of this guy, with no regrets so far. It also spares me this sort of trouble (and dealing with patches). I just purchased Rome: Total War on disc for $3!

This is a very sad move by Bethesda, but everyone can just not buy the DLC (or Legendary). That (and only that) will send them the message. Also, from what I can see, Skyrim is already a very good looking game. I don't think this upgrade will make any difference. However, people can disagree.

Correct, that's exactly what I was saying. :)

Potentially because they're unaware that Legendary edition was always cheaper than the DLC, or perhaps they didn't want all of the DLC and just wanted one of them and that one was cheaper than Legendary, or even theoretically the DLC being on sale at a given moment but Legendary being regular price. Just 3 hypothetical scenarios I can think of, none intended to justify it.

Sure, why not. We can resell movies we buy on DVD, or games we buy in a box, so on that level I am in favour of being able to do the same with digital games also. On the other hand, our digital games are not physical copies that we give up and no longer retain a physical possession of if/when we sell them, and there is currently no way to enforce it where if you sell a digital copy of a game, it is transferred to the other person and you are no longer in possession of any trace of it. That is largely the reason why game companies do not allow the transfer of digital assets from one party to another for the most part (even if there might be a small percentage of cases existing where it is allowed, they are exceptions and not the rule).

The same is true on any store really, but take GOG for example. If GOG allowed reselling of purchased used games, and someone sold someone a copy of a game and transferred it to their account, what would stop the person from retaining an original copy of the game to play it later? Gentleman's honour is about the only thing, and lets face it - the majority of people probably do not have that, or at least a significant number that could impact business sales don't have it anyway.

Don't take that as an endorsement of not being able to sell used games though, but rather an understanding of why companies do not allow it in general.

Bethesda is a hugely successful company, and most gamers will probably cater to their policies even if a minority of us bitch about it in all honesty. We're unlikely to affect their bottom line. That doesn't mean we should too however, rather we should all individually do what we think matches our own values and what we'd like to see happen. For me that means voting with my wallet whether or not it has any immediately visible effects on change happening.

Yeah, Skyrim is a beautiful game without any changes, however using mods one can pump the graphics up 10 notches to the point where a $6000 computer grinds to push out the pixels. There are amazing mods out there to improve the graphics etc. for years now. I used only a few of them but didn't push it to the point the framerate tanked. No doubt Bethesda is upping the graphics to some degree in a balanced fashion that will actually run on the target audience's computers, whereas there's no guarantee that will be the case with mods without someone fiddling around a lot. So I see the new Skyrim as a convenience update for improved quality graphics for the most part. With over 1000 bugs and counting in Skyrim as it is, I'm not convinced they're likely to fix many (or any) of them though either. Of course, one can get by even with the bugs using Google, but it'd be nice to see some of them officially fixed rather than resorting to the unofficial community patch that fixes over 1000 issues.

I watched some E3 reviews/commentary about Bethesda and one guy suggested that he didn't think a special edition of Skyrim was the best or right thing for Bethesda to be doing right now, that not enough time had passed since Skyrim came out already and that even if they brought the special edition up to match current hardware capabilities that the differences in the game would be minor compared to say... doing a remaster of Morrowind or Oblivion, both of which could use the update much more than Skyrim did. He made a really solid point on that, and went on to say if they did that instead, then in several years they could remaster Skyrim and it could be much more significantly enhanced than what is possible today, because hardware would be much more capable then also.

Doesn't really matter to me much now though, as I wont get any of the games now it looks like unless there are freebie promos or I happen to win them in a giveaway, as I'm quite unpleased over the removal of Legendary Edition and them jacking up the price to squeeze money out of their fan base, who will most likely end up rewarding them en-masse for the disservice.

the physical copies were/are just digital games on a medium of transportation: floppyu/disc/stick etc
I can still lend a copy of one of my digital games on gog to a friend of mine and put it on a flash stick or a mobile hdd for example and lend it to a friend, and while it's lend I won't play it anymore. but it's easier to just send it digitally over the internet.

oh, that would be easy, the game just disappear from your gog/ssteam library and it's moved to the buyer account.

it's the same thing with buying as "new": One could easily get the games free, pirated versions. Why buy them from gog/ssteam? ;)

In general that is in violation of the EULA for most games. There's nothing stopping you other than yourself from playing your copy also though. With a DVD copy of a game that is more often not the case as whoever has physical possession of it at a given time is the only one who can play it unless of course it is completely DRM-free and also does not require the disk in the drive to play it. Even then though, EULAs generally prohibit having the software installed on more than one computer at a time, or being played on more than one at a time (varies game by game). The same is true for digital games of course, including those sold by GOG. Even if GOG were to have no problem with people lending games however, they are not the intellectual property owner of the games they sell, and only the EULA of each individual game grants the legal purchaser explicit rights.

That doesn't make it disappear from the person's hard disk. I have a complete 800GB backup archive of all of the games that I own on GOG.com, DRM-free games I've purchased/acquired from Shinyloot, GMG, Gamersgate, and various other sources over time, as well as a number of DRM-free games on Steam. All of these games can be installed and played DRM-free whether or not they are still owned in my account at GOG/Steam/etc.

So while it is technically possible for GOG/Steam etc. to remove a game from my library online, and add it to someone else's library online, it is technically impossible for either of them to remove the backup copies of the game from my, your or anyone else's hard disk permanently to know that the new owner of the game can now play it from their online library, but the previous owner (us) can no longer play the game.

This is one of the many reasons why online digital stores, publishers and developers generally do not entertain the idea of allowing people to sell used digital games, because unlike physical copies of games that come in a box on a DVD that there is only one copy of, digital games have an infinite number of copies and the original owner can certainly trivially keep a copy if they were to transfer ownership to someone else. The complete lack of DRM on the games ensures the games will still work for whoever possesses the files. Things are a bit more complicated for multiplayer games which use license keys, as they would additionally have to grant the new owner a brand new license key and invalidate the old key so it can no longer be used.

That's a lot of extra effort the publisher/distributor would have to go through to provide a feature that does not really provide the publisher/developer with anything they personally desire, actually provides something they greatly do not desire at all, and it's something easily abused by people who would want to abuse it. There is virtually zero incentive for a companies on a large scale to offer the ability to resell digital download games online as all of the benefits of that feature are purely in the hands of the customer and all of the disadvantages including the costs to implement a system that would allow this are in the hands of the distributor and publisher/developer.

In order to see something like this happen for real, one needs to come up with reasons why it is a good idea for the publisher and distributor to do it - but in terms that are actually important and valuable to the publisher/distributor, not wishy-washy reasons a user might come up with to try to pretend it is a good idea to them. One wins a negotiation by making the other side believe that the thing being negotiated is in their favour. Personally I would buy extra popcorn to sit and watch someone negotiate this successfully with any digital distributor including GOG as I really don't think any sane distributor would go from a position where they've virtually eradicated the problem of resold games, rental games, to entertaining bringing that concept back in the digital download age where the "goods" are trivially bit-copied.

I'm not the one you have to convince this is a good idea. The digital distributors, publishers and developers are the ones you'd have to convince it is a good idea. But you'd have to convince them it is a good idea on terms that are good for them and that they see as good for them and also show them how the risks are low to do so and why, and that the investment in resource commitments to develop the software etc. to handle it all would be well spent and see a return on investment to make it worthwhile. I'm extremely unconvinced that anyone out there can formulate an argument to these parties that would satisfy those requirements so I'd have to file this one into the category of "it's a good idea because I want it" rather than "it's a good idea because it will produce your business a higher ROI" which is what it'd have to be in order to actually leave fantasy-land and happen IMHO. :o)

I think you dind't understand what I was trying to say
a tdlr vesion would be: your arguments are the same as the arguments usually used against drm-free, gog.com But despite this GOG and drmfree are doing well so far, still growing.
maybe I'm wrong, who knows

To be clear, what I said is not my opinion on what is right or how things should be, it is a viewpoint on how things are right or wrong and what would need to actually happen in order for it to change. Talk is cheap, but if someone actually wanted to see this happen for real and not just be a wet dream fantasy idea, then they would have to communicate with someone that can actually make it happen somewhere for starters. That could be someone at GOG, Steam, Ubisoft, EA, Blizzard, pick your choices. They would have to present the arguments in favour of this idea to them in a way that the person hearing it thinks "Hey, that does sound like something worth looking into, I can see what they're saying and how that would be beneficial to our company and could increase profits in a way we had not previously considered."

I hate to break it to people but the idea will never go anywhere unless someone is passionate about the idea enough to break open the multiple communication channels to the right people and have the right words to say to not only be heard, but to open the possibility of getting a ball rolling on it. Personally I'd be in favour of such an idea - why not, it would not harm me and would open up a new possibility for me that otherwise wouldn't exist. I'm not passionate about it myself so I wouldn't be the one to open up that communication link or come up with the right arguments to negotiate with the powers that be who need convincing in order for it to happen however.

None of what I think or said above matters, the only thing that matters is what the decision makers at every major publisher, development studio and gaming retailer/distribution platform think about it, and they most likely aren't too likely to want to get into a heated public discussion on the Internet with people about it or even let their opinion's be known.

So while I'd pat someone on the back for succeeding to make this happen, I personally think it is a fantasy idea that will never happen on any large scale as I can't forsee anyone coming up with solid arguments to present to the decision makers at big companies who would ultimately need to be convinced in order to make that happen.

I'd be happy to turn out to be wrong about this but I feel rather confident that it is highly unlikely to happen as I do not personally see these companies finding any incentives to change the status-quo on their own when most of them seem to be heading in the exact opposite direction.

Well, I've got Disney on my do-not-buy list, so I understand your choice. I have Sony there too.

I believe there are some mod improvements for Morrowind too. But, given that I lag so behind in my games, I think that games already look good enough. Animation is getting quite good too. Physics is also quite nice most of the time, and sound is not something I can critique. I think that User Interfaces and AI is where games need to invest most.

In my mind, Bethesda's engine guys are taking some ideas from the modding community and experimenting with some ideas on how to tweak the engine for better results. Probably to use on their next game being developed. They may have some free time now, and redoing some older game, made with an older engine would not make financial sense.
But hey, Square Soft is redoing Final Fantasy VII.

Personally, I would prefer if Bethesda would take the good stuff from their older games and do better new ones. It would make little sense improving the graphics of Arena. The maps had only 90 degree angles, poor AI, poor UI, ... It would be almost the same as doing a new game from scratch, and sticking to the original would prevent them from exploring the advances of the technology. Doing a Morrowind 2, now that would be cool. Or Daggerfall 2. Or Arena 2.

Doesn't matter to me since GOG still doesn't want to sell Quake 3 or any Wolfenstein game to Germans.

That's completely fair. At least w/ the Wolf games you could argue that they actually are banned in Germany, (although I have heard others claim that they aren't banned and GOG is just being stupid) but with Quake 2/3... what excuse do you have?! I guess you could say the decision was... IDiotic.

heh heh...

Yes, it is! :-)