Steam users free to resell their digital games, court rules
www.gamingbible.com
Those who purchase digital games are free to resell them, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled.

Finally some good news! I’ve been waiting for quite a while for such a ruling.

Edit: Seems this cites an article from 2012, I didn’t notice that (and it’s still news to me). Though there’s still hope that it’ll happen, EU is slow, but usually eventually gets shit done.

  • sunbunmanEnglish
    -5•7 months ago

    I see a massive downside to this ruling as a gamer. This is talking about resale of a digital game. In reality what would happen is someone would download a game, copy the file to a harddrive, sell the “digital license” or whatever it’s called for a lesser amount and still own a copy of the game. It’s basically simplifying piracy.

    This might actually necessitate game companies to have a hardline DRM approach to their games. Ironically the only games that are protected from this kind of resale are the those that heavily dipped in microtransactions since you can’t resell those and would push the market more in that direction.

    IMHO this ruling is shortsighted and pushes for a future with increased monitisation that isn’t in the box value of the game and targets to hurt the Devs that make consumer friendly games while giving games with loot boxes and microtransactions an advantage in the market when talking in terms of overall sales for the devs.

    Edit: My mind has changed from the piracy perspective. Still don’t like how this feels from the overall market perspective.

    • @[email protected]English
      16•7 months ago

      Steam has a sub 2-hour game time no questions asked refund period - what prevents someone from doing exactly what you said using the refund process instead of resale?

    • @[email protected]English
      2•7 months ago

      As a gamer, that’s some ridiculous whataboutisms. What’s to stop me from buying a physical copy of a game, copying it, and reselling the game? Only time, experience and know how, and yet that isn’t seen as much of an issue. This isn’t any different, it’s just digital.

      • sunbunmanEnglish
        1•7 months ago

        Most people aren’t going through the effort of buying a physical game or any media these days, it’s why digital stores are so effective. But the other commenter did say that steam already has a 2hour refund window that basically has the same impact so I might have panicked for no reason.

        Though my other point about micro transactions vs full box value still stands.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•7 months ago

      Any protections to consumers are a win. I think overall this will be a positive for gamers.

      IMHO this ruling is shortsighted and pushes for a future with increased monitisation that isn’t in the box value of the game and targets to hurt the Devs that make consumer friendly games while giving games with loot boxes and microtransactions an advantage in the market when talking in terms of overall sales for the devs.

      Your last paragraph could hold some truth if publishers think this will affect profits. I don’t know if this would significantly impact profits since we’re talking about a new secondary market that did not exist in the digital space before. There’s probably some historical data for how physical used game sales affect new game sales but it might be hard to quantify since that market has existed pretty much from the beginning.

      I would anticipate another across the board price increase for games as a result, but I see this more as an excuse for greed on the publishers’ parts rather than a cost to offset any actual lost revenue.

      • sunbunmanEnglish
        3•7 months ago

        My problem is traditional consumer friendly sales model for digital games are already on the back foot. This ruling only works to dissuade any new or existing Devs from persuing that model over one with microtransaction.

        If anything I want this method of purchasing digital content to be pushed further into any game with purchasable in game items to even the playing field.

        • @[email protected]English
          2•7 months ago

          I agree that microtransactions and loot boxes in gaming need regulation as well. Hopefully this is a step towards that.

        • @[email protected]English
          2•7 months ago

          This is an important observation; slowly, it becomes better for EA releasing their next singleplayer adventure to restructure: The base is “free”, and then you can buy passes to access the singleplayer world as microtransactions that are not easily transferred.

          A lot of RMT content is not easy for a court to define resellability of; think things like orbs that increase a weapon’s stats through a one-time forging process. We don’t want to make that a safer vending process for publishers than full games.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•7 months ago

      Maybe this is what those game companies can finally use NFTs for!

      I’m kinda kidding but maybe blockchain can offer a solution.