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[PATV] Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - Extra Credits Season 4, Ep. 24: Digital Resale
I don't understand why you said developers and publishers should get a cut of re-sold games. Sure it would be nice, but they aren't doing anything to help the process of re-selling the game, they aren't giving anything up in order to receive this money. But more importantly, no more games have been sold.
If the dev sold 10 games, and they are re-sold countless times, there is only ever a maximum number of 10 people owning the game at any point in time. Only 10 copies of the game exist in the wild. The dev and publisher haven't done any extra work, given any extra keys. It's steam/origin/whoever-else that is providing the service of buying the game back from the consumer at a lower price and also at a risk that they may not be able to sell it on.
I don't see any reason other than "It would be nice" to give the devs/publishers any money from this.
Steam could let people "sell" their games back, give them store credit, and have done with it. I'm not sure what player response would be; I have a few games that were either bundles with other stuff or which the shine has worn off of, but if I wound up, for example, with 15 bucks in my Steam wallet after selling them I would probably look at big games rather than 15 bucks worth of small ones. That $40 game that I find neat but not worth putting that much in is suddenly a $25 game, and I'm likely to buy it.
Of course, since the sold games aren't actually going anywhere there may be backlash. I wouldn't care, others might.
WoW - Baelgun server
Beohrn, 70 tauren druid
random alts.
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--Metroid Prime 3
I'm normally quite quick to agree with you guys but I have to disagree here. No where else that I can think of is it acceptable or expected for profits made from a used purchase to trickle back to the original seller. Used cars, used clothing, used books, used movies. The list goes on. So whenever I hear about the complaining over used games sales all I hear is them being greedy.
When you set the price of your product, that's what you get from the sale. That's it. You've decided 60 dollars is a fair price for your product, why are you asking for more?
Of course now the games changing. I have to say I'm quite oppose to the whole concept of "used digital". Technically it doesn't exist. I love the idea of selling old digital games back for credit towards new games, but since there is no actual deterioration of the product, there is no difference between the concept of new and used digitally. I think this will only serve to cause more problems that it's worth, devalue sales, devalue games in general.
Frankly while I never agree'd with the complaints of used sales I did see the advancement into a digital distribution dominated market as an end to the issue. "used digital" was / is a stupid concept that I hoped would never appear.
By all means, let me sell back my old games for credit.
Maybe, let me give (free) my old games to friends who might want a crack at them.
But let this whole used digital thing die before it becomes a problem.
DefaultPlayer raised an interesting point. If these "used digitals" are not "copied" but instead cut/paste into other PCs, then that means the developer will still earn a lot of money, since more than 10 people at the same time want to play the game. (counting if the game is good...)
I don't know about the whole concept of "used digital" actually... I think the mere consideration of data being a physical item is wrong since it can be easily copied. Meh, I don't know how to actually even consider this problem. This is too much "out of reach" right now.
As to the items in MMO games.... I'm not sure. I would rather consider this as "playing fee with a bonus". Technically you don't "buy an item" but pay for playing the game, and the extra item you get is more of a "thanks for supporting us, here - have a cool dress". You also agree in the terms of use that they can shut down any moment, anytime they please without giving you anything. So... I guess that issue is kind of covered mostly.
Pretty much the one and only reason that I retain copies of games is the ability to loan them to friends when I believe that the games in question are good and deserve to be shared. With the advent of digital software being essentially flawless forever... nobody would keep any single player games after their initial play-throughs are completed.
I think the idea of people being able to resell their copies makes sense in terms of property, but if they don't come up with payment systems designed to help the developer and publishers receive payment for the product, single-player games could become so unprofitable that we see a drought of games that don't have baked-in mechanics to drive permanent game retention.
So I spent quite a lot of time crafting an eloquent comment on why the resale of "used" digital games made no economic sense, and then had to delete it when I paused to actually go read the ruling.
I think the weightier issue here is how digital distributors will cope with the change from selling games to selling the right to own games. The ruling seems to have more to do with the sale of licenses; ie if you sell a digital game, you are selling your license to be able to own that game, and must immediately delete it from your computer or you are in violation of copyright law.
At this time the general concept of Steam is that once you own a game, you own it for life, or as long as Steam is alive as a service. If you delete it, you can re-download it. But if they are in the business of selling the right to own a game, their business model gets a lot more precarious. If Valve were to go bankrupt tomorrow, an EU citizen would still own "the right to own a game", but wouldn't actually be able to access the game they have a right to own. Who's legally responsible for that?
Let's go further. You own the right to own a game/program/digital song. How many? Can I put it on my PC and my laptop. If I burn a copy of a song I bought on iTunes to a CD and let my wife listen to it in her car, is she violating copyright law? Who owns the license? Is it me? Is it both of us? If it's me, do I legally have to remove that song from my hard drive until she's returned the CD and then copy it back on to the hard drive? If all I own is a license to own something, what happens if I want to lend it to a friend?
I think this ruling's scope is going to open up a Pandora's Box of new issues that haven't even previously been considered. Should be fun to watch.
This is a very muddy area, and could get weird fairly quickly. With the whole microtransaction/free to play model becoming more and more popular, it will even become more complex. One thing that many developers do, especially with digital distribution is make it so the EULA is a lease. They aren't selling you the software they are leasing you the right to use it. This of course doesn't mean much to the law now, as you can essentially sell the lease, but it was a loop hole software developers used for years to get around things like resale, and copy protection. This is why the idea of games as a service is very attractive to publishers. The software is free, but to play it you need to use their service. Things like OnLive, Premium Game Memberships, and so forth will become the norm in the future. There are so many angles that this could be played from and is currently being played from that its very hard for legislation to keep up with the lightning fast rate in which technology changes.
Seems like selling back to the provider directly is going to cause a whole slew of new legal issues centered around monopolistic control and price fixing. P2P is probably the only way this would work. Like you said, the provider is under no obligation to facilitate the sale, so they could only provide a "transfer to another player" function. Getting any compensation would be your responsibility and with eBay already prohibiting most digital-only sales, this could be a big hurdle for the average user to navigate safely.
I think you guys missed a very important fact about Steam games. They have never been your property. It is in the EULA. You licence the games from Steam. Reselling them would be like renting a movie from Redbox and then wanting them to let you sell it to your friend. It's not going to happen.
I've felt for a while digital stuff is in a void where the publishers try to get the best of both worlds: When it's advantageous to treat them as a service, they do so, and when it benefits them to consider them property, they do so. I think this question would need answered definitively, either legally or legislatively, before we can decide how these companies should be treating us.
The idea of digital property bought belonging to the person who bought it was sidestepped by digital distributors long ago, and it's such a well known issue at this point that I'm surprised it was even mentioned here.
Basically when you "buy a game" on Steam, Origin, GOG or other digital distributors, you're not actually buying the game. You're buying a service that allows you to play that specific game, for every game you buy, but not the game itself. You own exactly zero copies of the game. What you have is a contract with the distributor for access to that game. That is all.
This is why Steam can make your games unplayable by banning your Steam account. Because you don't own those games and you have to go through steam to play them.
I think the idea of publishers getting some money from used sales does make sense. It might not at first if you compare it to other used items, like say a car, games have several things unique to them that break these comparisons though. With cars, nobody buys a new car for $40,000 and then only a few weeks later sells it used for $5,000. Typically they keep the car for a long while or if they sell it soon, they demand a price pretty close to the original price. This makes a shopper choose between a really old car for cheap, or a slightly used car for a small discount off of the new price. Games wouldn't sell like that. A person would buy a $60 game on release day and might play it to death for a week. Then be done with it. That person won't demand $60 for their used game, they'll settle for $20. We see this all the time with movies on eBay. You can buy $40 movies for $1 all day long. So you would end up with a massive used market of pennies on the dollar very soon after initial releases. So the people who made the game would have a direct loss in new sales if this kind of used market existed. The same IDEA exists for things like cars, but the time frame there makes it workable. It takes 5-10 years for a used car price to come down so it doesn't really compete with the new version. But with games this used market would spring up days after initial release and we the people who buy $5 t-shirts over $10 t-shirts, would certainly buy $20 games over $60 games.
If 10 people bought new and then sold used, yes only only 10 copies would still exist (assuming that's how it would work). But that's the problem. Without used sales, at least some portion of those used buyers would have purchased new. So 10 sales would have turned into 15 for the game makers instead of staying at 10. Yes the exact impact is nearly impossible to predict, but I can't imagine the impact being small.
Personally, I don't long for a used market as much as the ability to transfer my license to a friend. Allowing a free option but not a money option is a subtle difference (and might result in some underground payment process) but I think that a lot of people might jump on the chance to sell their game for $20 while being more stingy about giving it away for free after they paid $60. That stinginess I think would limit used games passing around to those who are truly friends giving or loaning a game, and that happens now with physical games and everyone is fine with it. So perfecting the digital system to allow what we can do physically is something I want to see happen. It also can lead to lost sales, but not nearly as many as a sanctioned used market. The only thing that makes games different than other goods is the fact that a game doesn't degrade over time so the product that the new owner gets is exactly as good as the original. But if I keep my iPad in perfect shape with protectors and cases, this can be true of physical items as well, so it's not exactly a new problem, it's just the default with games.
Adding some kind of SMALL transfer fee to activate MIGHT be something I would entertain, paid directly to the distributor and split with the others, BUT it would have to be like $5 and kept under control. And maybe we couldn't trust it to stay under control, but as long as the seller doesn't get any money, then I think that would keep it from going so crazy as to impact the new sales.
What occurs to me reading all these arguments is that there is some assumption that the $60 you pay for a game now (when they are not resalable ) should translate to a $60 resalable game. Why would this be? If publishers grant you the right of resale, as many are asking for, then why would they do that for free?
The second hand car analogy works here too. When someone buys a new car for (say) 20K, then in 3 three years they expect to have had 3 years use and be left with a three year old car that they can sell. If manufacturers made cars that were worth nothing after 3 years use then you can bet they couldn't charge 20K for them. When you buy a digital game for (say) 60 bucks you get your x-hours worth of use out of it but have no expectation of having an asset to sell at the end.
Now, let's say that publishers make fully resalable licenses for games. How much would they have to charge for them? 300 bucks? A thousand? Would you rather buy a resalable game for 500 bucks with the expectation that you can later sell it a week later for 460, or pay 60 bucks up front for a non-transferable license? Publishers still need the income generated by the current system to run a business, so they can't afford to just sell copies on day one for 60 bucks, then live on that until the next release.
Now of course the better deal is the 500 dollar game, but there's risk involved. What if major bugs are discovered that devalue the game? What if you don't get around to finishing it this week, and have to hold on to it longer - you'll lose some of that money. What if they decide sales aren't high enough and drop the price of the game?
This opens up a whole bunch of problems that most people would rather not deal with, and publishers know that. They don't want to drive customers away from the market (into piracy or out of games altogether - same thing to them).
Such a model is ludicrous so no-one wants to go there. Publishers (I imagine) want to keep things as they are. They want a nice simple marketplace where people come along and pay for what they use.
Some of the commentors are missing a critical detail about the ruling - it doesn't matter if Steam says you don't own the game.
The court was ruling that an "indefinite licence" is equivalent to a sale, and gets the same rights. That the digital vendor must honour the resale, and must allow the buyer to download their new property from the digital vendor's servers.
If resale of digital goods does come to pass I suspect concideration for devs will be lost in the shuffle. And also, if service providers end up being required by law to allow users to resell any digital good than no project $10's will work either as those will be sold/transfered just the same.
For those of you defendinging Steam with their user agreement, if a law is passed to allow resale of digital goods I foresee one of two things happening. Either A) the law will make such an agreement void or new digital distribution system(s) will begin popping up that allow resale. I suspect if digital copies were allowed for resale Gamestop would be instantly all over creating a Steam-compeditive client.
Now keep in mind im not pro-Gamestop or anti-Steam, I'm quite the opposite and my partner even works for a game studio. I'm just speaking realistically rather than 'perfect world' situation. It would be nice to actually own the games I pay full retail price for and, while I probibly wouldnt sell them, the option to give a game I dont play any more to a friend is certianly an appealing prospect. Digital distribution has had a free pass for some time so it will be nice to see real world ownership return to the paying customers.
Just consider that once you have legal standing that you can get part of any cash from future resales going into the future that WILL be expanded to other items. You already have cases of art work where this is being pushed.
Yes, we all want to see the programmers and artists and others that put hard work and long hours get paid.
But at what point do rights shift so far to one side that you might as well rent the game?
Does anyone feel concern that a publisher would decide that they are making enough from the multiple re-sales of an existing run that they can hold back on current development so that the used marked could keep making them sweet easy cash with no additional effort beyond cashing the checks?
I would be very interested in knowing what the rest of you think on these points.
@magic175: The extreme point you are referring to is the old standard: the book model. Have you ever seen a book publisher get upset about used book sales? How about libraries? Are book publishers out of business because of all this sharing and reselling that goes on?
How about movie sales? Certainly movies cost a tremendous amount to make, and involve a ton of people, putting them in the same category as AAA games. They seem to sell pretty well for about $10-$20 each, despite a thriving used product/rental market.
Game publishers (and to a lesser extent, game developers) have been getting fat off of exorbitant prices for their goods in a market where the customers options are extremely limited. As the courts step in to guarantee purchasers the basic property rights they have been denied, this model will change.
Those cases you have sited were examples of other property holders abusing the ridiculous intellectual property laws we have been living with for the past twenty years. IP reform is coming, and this ruling is just the tip of the iceberg.
Games are going to get cheaper. The audience will get larger. Profits will get leaner. Consumers will benefit.
I love that lawmakers look at a problem like ownership of digital i.e. completely IMAGINARY "goods", and just go: Uhhh, stuff was cool before computers and internet, right? Well... then, they're the same now! Your digimal stuff is the same as the real things. PRBLEM SLVED
@magic175: I don't think that publishers would do too much riding on their own past game used sales simply because while I think that could happen at first, I think it'll be a quick lesson the first time one tries it. I could see a couple trying that and maybe surviving for a couple years, but then the sales would fall off and they'd have no new product to make new money on, so that would put an end to that theory. Or those few deadbeats would just go away and that would be their legacy.
But truly, the best situation that I can see is for us to gain the ability to transfer our license to a new person for free. I just think that model addresses so many of the problems and gives the freedoms that other things like books, movies, and cars have. It's not a perfect comparison, but that's because games, and especially digital games, are a vastly different animal both in how they get produced and how they are used.
The book analogy I think breaks down because many people who would call themselves book lovers keep vast libraries of books. People build entire rooms or sets of rooms - even multi-story rooms just to hold all the books they own. Of all the people who call themselves a gamer, I don't see us making rooms to hold all the games we ever bought. (yes there are a few exceptions, as with anything)
So where books have a pride attached and even a positive stigma attached for owning and storing as many as you can get - games don't. How many games we've PLAYED in our lives does give some of that cred, but not how many games we currently have in our possession.
My point with that, is that a typical book situation is this: Person A buys a book and adds it to their library. That person tells others about the book and gets someone else interested in the book. At that point they will either suggest that the other person buy the book, loan the book, or give the book away. If Person B buys the book, then there is a new sale. If Person A loans the book, then when Person B is done with the book they usually give it back, and then buy a copy for their own library. Thus, a new sale. If Person A gives the book away, then they might buy a copy to replace it, and that's a new sale.
In the book world, it is very common for one sale to turn into at least one more sale because of the way people share books. But games don't typically work that way. If a person buys a game they may promote it among their friends and online and that generates new sales. That part is similar. But months or years later, that person might get rid of the game (physical games sold to gamestop or given/sold to friends maybe) and they won't have any interest in replacing their copy for their library. MAYBE a person loans a game out and that new person buys their own copy, but most times I would bet that the loanee just finishes the game and then gives it back and is done with it.
I think that spreading interest in books generates more copies sold, but selling and loaning games generally doesn't. Which is why I was ok with a SMALL activation fee with game transfers - but no money for the old owner. I think that is the check/balance that will keep the secondary market from hurting the primary sales.
There are a great many variations and exceptions of course because we're all different. But if we simply started with allowing the free transfers we could start to see how this all might play out. And with free transfers you get loans basically because the other person could just give it back.
@Emberwake
Look at the closures of game studios even after putting out a financially successful game. Look at the extremely low number of games that ever make back the cost of producing them
Look at the constant new constraints put upon studios with fees and one sided agreements from platform companies that favor the console developers over the developers of the games for that console.
No one in the gaming industry is "getting fat" off of a 60 dollar price tag. Even big developers and publishers have to be constantly pushing out new games at faster rates just to be financially viable. All the things brought up about publishers constantly pushing developers on Extra Creditz is caused by the difficulty of actually producing a game that's financially viable.
Look at all the cookie cutter game mechanics that come out of popular franchises. Look at all the games that constantly rehash the same gameplay in ever increasing variations on the same game. It's all because it's incredibly difficult for a publisher and a developer to make their money back on a lot of new ideas. That scares off publishers and makes them try to pidgeon hole developers in the direction of other games. Every once in a while you get a Minecraft or Halo, and you've got the next big thing on your hands. But that's a massive gamble for publishers and investors.
How in god's name is something like Steam supposed to verify that a game has been uninstalled from my system? What happens if I copy the files, or move them elsewhere? Is Steam going to scour my entire computer every time it's booted up?
More importantly: What happens if Steam detects me playing a game it thinks I've uninstalled, and given me credit back for?
Perhaps every game will require a Steam-generated authentication code, to be input every time you boot the game up. And perhaps if they catch you playing, they send men in black round your house to beat you up. Maybe they stick it in their terms of service, and if they catch you doing it, they just shut down your entire game library. Sure sounds like a whole lot of no-problems waiting to not-happen there!
And how do developers factor into this? Gamestop can make resale work because it buys physical inventory -- they buy the games in bulk from the publishers, with an understanding that resale will take place, and the publishers sell them to Gamestop with an understanding that that's okay, because, yknow, Gamestop will keep buying them. But digital services don't work that way; they license a portion of the profits. I buy a game, download it from Steam, and part of my money goes to the publisher. The end.
But what happens when I use resale money? If I use $60 worth of Steam Funbux to buy a copy of the Witcher 2, WHAT HAPPENS? Does Steam just up and PAY CDProjeckt out of their own prockets? What happens if two hundred thousand people do that at once? Would Steam now be required to have an equal amount in liquidious assets as there are Steam Funbux floating around, or risk coming up empty-handed?
Or Would Steam have to make developers sign an agreement that they don't get any of the resale money? Would developers DO that, seeing as it would directly impact their sales? Do they sell developers licensing agreements with one-time payouts? Or scheduled payouts, based on projected sales? What happens if the game blows up and becomes unexpectedly popular? Do they build a NASA super-computer that renegotiates licensing agreements in realtime, based on the amount of money in Steam's bank, the amount of X game being sold, the future projections of X game? What happens if the super-computer runs out of the magical diamond energy matrices made from crystallized sunshine and bullshit that power it?
Reselling digital goods is completely and fundamentally illogical. It makes no goddamn sense, unless you really squint and go, "I know this doesn't make any sense, but gosh darn it, I bet if I just completely ignore that fact . . . "
If digital content or a digital file is something discrete (something that depends on encryption or whatever so only a pacticular user can initiate it's use), then it's no different than a table. I should be able to re-sell that table to whomever I wish, for whatever they'll pay for it, without giving a cent to the manufacturer. If I sell/donate it to an antique store, thrift, or comission (read Steam, GameStop, etc), the store obviously gets a cut because they need a way to re-sell my used product.
The analogy goes deeper. Used tables suffer physical wear-and-tear, digital content is always the same. However, the pace of tech improvement makes the original content depreciate significanly within years, if not months.
The analogy breaks down a little when talking about antique tables. There are many people who would spend a bit of chash to get some outdated software, um, I mean an antique table, who are also willing to spend more time restoring it (read as: developing an emulator or otherwise figuring out how to run it on modern OS's, or even running it on elederly harware and an outdated OS)
The analogy breaks down completely when talking about digital content that is non-discrete. I can give a copy of Scorched Earth to anyone who wants it (good luck figuring out how to run it). Older games are simply executables, easy to copy and distribute. You cannot do this with a table. Well, you can try, but it's not going to work.
That's where the Free-to-Play model comes in. Or, for any digital ANYTHING, free-for-free comes in. Fans of UNIX, LINUX, Kickstarter, and Cory Doctoro will tell you that the free-for-free model works pretty good. If you give it away, and what you give is good, people come back for more, and sometimes give you money.
I don't think this really grasps the concept of the right to resale should digital items be deemed property.
It isn't the right to have some method of resale (the original seller is not under an obligation to give you some means of reselling it), but rather a right to have unrestricted ability to resell something.
Steam offering a way to sell a game back or to another user via its own services does not preclude their violation of your right to resale. If anything, it's a -more- egregious violation by both preventing other resale and doing so in order to force you to use -their- resale service.
Imagine, for instance, that you bought a lawn mower. You have the legal right to resell it. If the manufacturer says "You're not allowed to sell that lawn mower to other people. If you want to get rid of it, you can sell it back to us for store credit, but not to anyone else.", that would be completely and totally illegal.
The only way digital sellers can comply with software-as-property laws would be by allowing a free means of transfer. They can -also- offer a marketplace to facilitate that transfer, but they crucially cannot limit transfers to that marketplace.
I am completely unconvinced that this is either feasible or good for gamers.
First, will Digital Distributors be required to invent an entire new system to allow reselling? That's rather intrusive, especially seeing as its an idea that will leech money away.
Secondly, since there is no physical ownership, no limit to the quantity, and resale would be so easy and widespread, the very distributor that put the system in place would be required to squash it if they follow any sort of market forces whatsoever (Which if they exist, they do). Every dollar that a consumer gets from resale is a dollar lost by the distributor, because there's no reason not to just sell a resold game at the same price as new. Even if you had horrible return rates, say, you get 5 dollars for turning in a $60 game, and it's sold for $59, unless you are expecting a company to completely ignore the fact that they could be making more money by selling that same game, "New" at exactly the same cost to the end buyer, the distributor is just going to sell their games for $59 instead. The problem with a trade in model is that with physical goods, the person being traded to gets something of value. Without the entity being traded to getting something of value, there is absolutely no incentive to offer that game back to the market at a cheaper price. It's the same cost to them, so both the supply AND demand remain identical. You just deal with a lot of attempts to game the system, and I am pretty confident that when you work it all out, the only people who will lose money will be the DD platform and maybe the developers, and most certainly NOT the big, monolithic publishers like EA.
Secondly, what would this do to games? If you allow private, between user purchases of digital games, then people are only going to buy JUST enough copies to amply fill the secondary market. Goodbye quality single player experiences. Goodbye financial feasibility for risk-taking games that take a while to find it's audience because they can just keep reselling those same initial purchases over and over again. Hello clones of popular games with lots of hype consisting of nothing but token single player and skinner-box multiplayer appealing only to those not savvy enough to bother reselling. Hello to creepy business practices as publishers learn to game the system. Hello shovelware. Goodbye up and coming indie games that don't have the ability to put a resale system in place.
Digital resale will provide economic incentives to do more of what hurts gaming, and do less of what helps it. It sounds nice but really, there are no incentives for the people making the games to do anything that will help us, and will do nothing but exacerbate relationships between publishers and consumers. Because all of a sudden, the loyal customer is also the most dangerous competition, and the companies that do the best will be those that do the best job of squashing the competition.
I personally think it's adorable that anyone believes they're not just going to deem your Steam account the piece of property. I'm sure it would require some legal re-finagling of things like EULAs, but that's how I would get around this issue as a businessperson.
In other words, your Steam account is what you own. The games you buy are 'lifetime subscriptions' to services that you have access to via your Steam account. So your only real property becomes your Steam account's unique identification code.
Then selling your Steam account and all the rich deliciousness it has access to is on you, and what the shit do they care how you do it or whether or not they get a cut. Same would go for your Xbox Live, PSN or whatever account. People already sell Xbox Live accounts for idiotic things like game rank.
I know a kid who bought an account because it was level 50 in Team Slayer in Halo 3. That's a real thing that really happens.
Hmmm whilst there are definate downsides to this equation, there are a few amazing upsides. Consider this: All those games you looked foward to, bought day 1 only to find that whilst they were a great game it was bugged, didn't work very well on your hardware setup, driver support was sketchy, and you made the decision "you know what I'll come back to this when they've fixed it". We now you could put up your game as day 2 sale, (for much closer to the original price), get something else instead and come back to it later. Net result game companies will HAVE to make great, engaging and more importantly functioning games. When there is a backlash you can sure as hell be guaranteed that the game will be in a polished state, as to do otherwise makes the disgruntled customer the competition. For every unsatisfied customer = one less pontential release week sale.
I have become sick and tired in the hobby of videogaming that games get rushed out the door broken, and it is at this time they are at their MOST expensive. People who hold off, wait for a steam sale or whatever get a polished and finished product for oftentime huge amounts off the rrp. People who show the faith and buy in the release week just get the shaft. Under this system the publishers just simply couldn't afford to let this happen, they want every purchaser to be playing and enjoying this title for as long as possible to gain the most maximum amount of revenue from it. Net result the publishers have a vested interest in keeping you happy after you have purchased, so you can expect things like customer support to improve, decent and regular communication to the player base about potential problems and very fast turn around on solutions.
In the end this situation is good for gamers, but bad for publishers. However ask yourself this for how long have we put up with the reverse?
I personally think we will all be dead by the time politicians figure out how to address this whole "i bought it but don't own it?" problem. Call me cynical...
I think eventually we won't technically be buying games digitally anymore.
We'll be purchasing indefinite, non transferable licenses to install an play games.
No ownership, no possession. Just permission.
Software is not property - software is license - a right to play the game.
Can a license be sold to other party is other and interesting law problem. And it affects not only games but all kind of software (can firm A sell their old windows licenses when they buy new version)? Technically i'm not sure physical used games are legal from law perspective, but guess they were not enough of a deal to fight them or US law doesn't leave much space to sue for dealing used games.
Its quite complex as used software is just as good as new, and license is granted by the owner of IPs on his terms. Definitely you need to prove you legally got the license, not just upload a file. Steam has this solved as it does check who runs what, if Steam says you don't have the game your files are quite useless. With humble bundle or other DRM free your proof is the account ID not game file.
Definitely you need some system to sell games between accounts if what is to be achieved is to be similar to property rights. The idea of getting some cash back by resigning from license, while nice, has nothing to do with the idea of selling your license to other party on terms you state. You gain right to resign with payback, not to resale.
We are already buying licenses to play the game, instead of the actual game. Look at several of the games out there and you will see that it says something alike:
Blizzard examples:
1)
he Game clients and the Service (including without limitation, any titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, documentation, in-game chat transcripts, character profile information, recordings or replays of Games, and the Game client and server software) are copyrighted works owned by Blizzard and its licensors. Blizzard reserves all rights in connection with the Games and the Service, including without limitation the exclusive right to create derivative works.
2)
NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY HEREIN, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU SHALL HAVE NO OWNERSHIP OR OTHER PROPERTY INTEREST IN THE ACCOUNT, AND YOU FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT ALL RIGHTS IN AND TO THE ACCOUNT ARE AND SHALL FOREVER BE OWNED BY AND INURE TO THE BENEFIT OF BLIZZARD.
3)
Blizzard owns, has licensed, or otherwise has rights to all of the content that appear in the Service or the Games. You agree that, except as set forth in a Game EULA, you have no right or title in or to any such content, including without limitation the virtual goods or currency appearing or originating in any Game, or any other attributes associated with the Account or stored on the Service.
Physical game copy is not really different from law point of view than digital one. (or at least what i know about law in my country, don't know much about US law)
Physical game copy is not really that important as what makes running a game legal is the fact that you have a license to do it, not the fact that you have the disc. If i lose my disc but keep key and license agreements etc I can legally download my games from for example battle net, selling the disc doesn't change the fact that only i have right to run the game, and the guy i sold disk to doesn't, even for older games like Star Craft I that do not technically require battle net connection to play.
The problem is physical used games its hard to say who got license etc, you can say you bought it, or you played at someones house, etc - really hard to prove anything. I guess that's the main reason no one really cared (and you don't want PR of suing random customers for doing not really bad illegal things, especially with all those pirates who are much better target)
Digital is quite different as you do have an account, so unless you sell your account its hard to give it to another person. And really easy to see account that first got the game.
@MikeIsNotHere: You're absolutely right and this is something people tend to forget when making the used car analogy. The price of a new car includes it's expected resale value, and this point is sometimes even advertised. So car manufacturers do get a cut of the resale revenue, they just get it up front when the car is first sold. And customers are willing to pay this markup, because they know that they can sell it later. So although they are paying $20K now, they're actual costs, in the end, may be only $10K.
However, it's also foolish to think that the $60 price tag you pay for a new game doesn't already include some resale value. Selling new games is nothing new, there has been plenty of time for the price of new games to adjust to compensate. One reason games on digital distribution sites like Steam are much cheaper is because the games sold there have no resale value, so the price tag can be lowered accordingly. If publisher expects a physical game in a box store to sell new for $60, then later resell used for $30 (while the publisher gets no cut), on a digital store the publisher is content to sell two copies for $30.
The recent push by publishers against used games (both directly and through online passes) doesn't reflect any changes in the used game market, but rather a need for new games prices to re-adjust (increase) again. Publishers are reluctant to sell new games for the $65 or $70 that the market probably demands because customers would naturally be angry, so instead they're looking to either reduce the resale value of games (thereby lowering the price they have to charge for new games) or get a cut of those later sales.
I think srboyceboat (see comments below) has hit upon something.
Digital "property" isn't really property in the sense that consumers are used to thinking about property. An easier, & probably more accurate, way to think about digital services is to think of them as services, rather than property.
For example, when you join gym, you gain almost exactly the same sorts of benefits when you buy WoW. You gain access to their infrastructure (weight machines vs. servers), their services (aerobics classes vs. raiding), & so on.
I'm not sure, but can a person resell their gym membership? I think the same laws that apply to service memberships would apply to software licensing.
Games & software that are sold on physical mediums, such as disks, should be able to be resold, because a disk is property & the contents on the disk, by virtue of being on the piece of property, become property themselves.
A note about buying Steam games, breaking the DRM, and trading them back: This is a really stupid way to go about it when you could just pirate the game without buying it in the first place. You'd have the same downsides (no Steam services) either way.
Also, Steam DRM is most certainly not unbreakable, the problem is that without the game listed in your library, you don't get the nice Steam services. It's actually fairly easy to break, but there's big downsides to running the game without Steam. Which is actually much more effective than traditional DRM because there's a service tied to it, and you can't pirate a service. So I don't see this affecting Steam negatively.
There is absolutely no way that a digital download service is going to give you money for you to release your licence to a game. There is simply no profit in it. The concept of a "used digital download market" is ridiculous. Steam does not have N copies of a game. They have as many copies as there are people willing to spend money on them. Their stock pile of games does not change by selling a game and it does not increase by "purchasing a used game". So here's the big problem if digitally downloaded video games end up being a transferable piece of property. That licence they sell you to play the game is going to become temporary. Instead of owning a game for my life, I will own it for a year before the licence runs out. They'll let you transfer it but the recipient will have less time to play it than if they bought it new. This is bad for the consumer. This means that games prices will remain high for longer periods of time and one will not own a permanent copy of the game. It will raise prices in the long term. This is such a bad idea and entirely unnecessary. Steam sales show that games drop in prices enough to penetrate all areas of the market, so that those with less to spend on games are not removed from the market, but merely required to wait before prices fall. That I bought Rage for $5 on a Steam sale is proof that there is absolutely no market need for a used game market in digital distribution and if some legal definition here gets in the way by making my games transferable, then my licences are going to suddenly become temporary and we'll all be losing out in the long term. Further, any legal mangling to stop this effect from happening will simply kill the game industry. This is a path towards inhibiting the indie market, reducing the willingness of publishers to take risks (already at an amazingly low level) and an outright refusal to bring triple-A titles to the PC. In short, it will destroy everything worthwhile about gaming with something other than bland Call of Duty clones on the 360 or the PS3.
@Xanadu84, I hadn't realized that you presented my rant in a much better form before I gave my rant. You're spot on with this. Forcing digital resell will be terrible for gaming and terrible for gamers.
The only way I can imagine this working (at least on Steam) is between friends. Sure, the whole thing could be circumvented fairly easily by creating an external page specifically for the sale of used Steam games, but that limits the number of people to who would look for such a site. Basically, Steam friends would either set a price with each other (with a minimum so that Steam still makes something off the transaction, and a maximum of perhaps 3/4 the game's new price?), and Steam would skim off the top of the transaction, perhaps 10-15%.
Legal arguments over this topic are where we may finally pin down whether "having a copy of the game" is you owning that copy of the game, or you owning a licence to play that game.
If we do indeed own that copy of the game as property, then all this reselling could come up, however legal arguments over video games, to my knowledge at least, have usually favored the view that having a copy of the game is simply a licence to play the game.
You can trade in the physical disk at Gamestop etc. because you own the physical disk, but when it's purely digital, the concept that all you have is a licence to play the game makes a lot more sense, and would allow digital distributors to sidestep the whole resale issue altogether.
A ruling that digital copies of games are indeed your own property would open up a huge can of worms. It would likely impact existing arguments over DRM (if a digital copy of the game is my property, what right does a developer have to do anything to restrict my ability to play it?), but also think of people who get their accounts banned from a service such as Steam or Origin, such bans would mean the service is withholding access to a customer's property indefinitely, and if the digital games are legally property it would likely invalidate any EULA claim that the user agreed to such circumstance.
Much as I do like the concept of legally owning a digital copy of a game, a big part of me hopes that courts will continue to rule on the "licence to play the game" side of things, just to avoid all of this.
Posts
If the dev sold 10 games, and they are re-sold countless times, there is only ever a maximum number of 10 people owning the game at any point in time. Only 10 copies of the game exist in the wild. The dev and publisher haven't done any extra work, given any extra keys. It's steam/origin/whoever-else that is providing the service of buying the game back from the consumer at a lower price and also at a risk that they may not be able to sell it on.
I don't see any reason other than "It would be nice" to give the devs/publishers any money from this.
Of course, since the sold games aren't actually going anywhere there may be backlash. I wouldn't care, others might.
Beohrn, 70 tauren druid
random alts.
Wii number -- 0277 0746 9561 0171
--Metroid Prime 3
When you set the price of your product, that's what you get from the sale. That's it. You've decided 60 dollars is a fair price for your product, why are you asking for more?
Of course now the games changing. I have to say I'm quite oppose to the whole concept of "used digital". Technically it doesn't exist. I love the idea of selling old digital games back for credit towards new games, but since there is no actual deterioration of the product, there is no difference between the concept of new and used digitally. I think this will only serve to cause more problems that it's worth, devalue sales, devalue games in general.
Frankly while I never agree'd with the complaints of used sales I did see the advancement into a digital distribution dominated market as an end to the issue. "used digital" was / is a stupid concept that I hoped would never appear.
By all means, let me sell back my old games for credit.
Maybe, let me give (free) my old games to friends who might want a crack at them.
But let this whole used digital thing die before it becomes a problem.
I don't know about the whole concept of "used digital" actually... I think the mere consideration of data being a physical item is wrong since it can be easily copied. Meh, I don't know how to actually even consider this problem. This is too much "out of reach" right now.
As to the items in MMO games.... I'm not sure. I would rather consider this as "playing fee with a bonus". Technically you don't "buy an item" but pay for playing the game, and the extra item you get is more of a "thanks for supporting us, here - have a cool dress". You also agree in the terms of use that they can shut down any moment, anytime they please without giving you anything. So... I guess that issue is kind of covered mostly.
I think the idea of people being able to resell their copies makes sense in terms of property, but if they don't come up with payment systems designed to help the developer and publishers receive payment for the product, single-player games could become so unprofitable that we see a drought of games that don't have baked-in mechanics to drive permanent game retention.
So I spent quite a lot of time crafting an eloquent comment on why the resale of "used" digital games made no economic sense, and then had to delete it when I paused to actually go read the ruling.
I think the weightier issue here is how digital distributors will cope with the change from selling games to selling the right to own games. The ruling seems to have more to do with the sale of licenses; ie if you sell a digital game, you are selling your license to be able to own that game, and must immediately delete it from your computer or you are in violation of copyright law.
At this time the general concept of Steam is that once you own a game, you own it for life, or as long as Steam is alive as a service. If you delete it, you can re-download it. But if they are in the business of selling the right to own a game, their business model gets a lot more precarious. If Valve were to go bankrupt tomorrow, an EU citizen would still own "the right to own a game", but wouldn't actually be able to access the game they have a right to own. Who's legally responsible for that?
Let's go further. You own the right to own a game/program/digital song. How many? Can I put it on my PC and my laptop. If I burn a copy of a song I bought on iTunes to a CD and let my wife listen to it in her car, is she violating copyright law? Who owns the license? Is it me? Is it both of us? If it's me, do I legally have to remove that song from my hard drive until she's returned the CD and then copy it back on to the hard drive? If all I own is a license to own something, what happens if I want to lend it to a friend?
I think this ruling's scope is going to open up a Pandora's Box of new issues that haven't even previously been considered. Should be fun to watch.
http://i.imgur.com/nGmFz.png
Basically when you "buy a game" on Steam, Origin, GOG or other digital distributors, you're not actually buying the game. You're buying a service that allows you to play that specific game, for every game you buy, but not the game itself. You own exactly zero copies of the game. What you have is a contract with the distributor for access to that game. That is all.
This is why Steam can make your games unplayable by banning your Steam account. Because you don't own those games and you have to go through steam to play them.
If 10 people bought new and then sold used, yes only only 10 copies would still exist (assuming that's how it would work). But that's the problem. Without used sales, at least some portion of those used buyers would have purchased new. So 10 sales would have turned into 15 for the game makers instead of staying at 10. Yes the exact impact is nearly impossible to predict, but I can't imagine the impact being small.
Personally, I don't long for a used market as much as the ability to transfer my license to a friend. Allowing a free option but not a money option is a subtle difference (and might result in some underground payment process) but I think that a lot of people might jump on the chance to sell their game for $20 while being more stingy about giving it away for free after they paid $60. That stinginess I think would limit used games passing around to those who are truly friends giving or loaning a game, and that happens now with physical games and everyone is fine with it. So perfecting the digital system to allow what we can do physically is something I want to see happen. It also can lead to lost sales, but not nearly as many as a sanctioned used market. The only thing that makes games different than other goods is the fact that a game doesn't degrade over time so the product that the new owner gets is exactly as good as the original. But if I keep my iPad in perfect shape with protectors and cases, this can be true of physical items as well, so it's not exactly a new problem, it's just the default with games.
Adding some kind of SMALL transfer fee to activate MIGHT be something I would entertain, paid directly to the distributor and split with the others, BUT it would have to be like $5 and kept under control. And maybe we couldn't trust it to stay under control, but as long as the seller doesn't get any money, then I think that would keep it from going so crazy as to impact the new sales.
The second hand car analogy works here too. When someone buys a new car for (say) 20K, then in 3 three years they expect to have had 3 years use and be left with a three year old car that they can sell. If manufacturers made cars that were worth nothing after 3 years use then you can bet they couldn't charge 20K for them. When you buy a digital game for (say) 60 bucks you get your x-hours worth of use out of it but have no expectation of having an asset to sell at the end.
Now, let's say that publishers make fully resalable licenses for games. How much would they have to charge for them? 300 bucks? A thousand? Would you rather buy a resalable game for 500 bucks with the expectation that you can later sell it a week later for 460, or pay 60 bucks up front for a non-transferable license? Publishers still need the income generated by the current system to run a business, so they can't afford to just sell copies on day one for 60 bucks, then live on that until the next release.
Now of course the better deal is the 500 dollar game, but there's risk involved. What if major bugs are discovered that devalue the game? What if you don't get around to finishing it this week, and have to hold on to it longer - you'll lose some of that money. What if they decide sales aren't high enough and drop the price of the game?
This opens up a whole bunch of problems that most people would rather not deal with, and publishers know that. They don't want to drive customers away from the market (into piracy or out of games altogether - same thing to them).
Such a model is ludicrous so no-one wants to go there. Publishers (I imagine) want to keep things as they are. They want a nice simple marketplace where people come along and pay for what they use.
The court was ruling that an "indefinite licence" is equivalent to a sale, and gets the same rights. That the digital vendor must honour the resale, and must allow the buyer to download their new property from the digital vendor's servers.
For those of you defendinging Steam with their user agreement, if a law is passed to allow resale of digital goods I foresee one of two things happening. Either A) the law will make such an agreement void or
Now keep in mind im not pro-Gamestop or anti-Steam, I'm quite the opposite and my partner even works for a game studio. I'm just speaking realistically rather than 'perfect world' situation. It would be nice to actually own the games I pay full retail price for and, while I probibly wouldnt sell them, the option to give a game I dont play any more to a friend is certianly an appealing prospect. Digital distribution has had a free pass for some time so it will be nice to see real world ownership return to the paying customers.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111227/02431517195/lawmakers-propose-resale-right-us-artwork-to-harm-young-artist-help-already-successful-ones.shtml
Or even your house
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100823/16432910745.shtml
Yes, we all want games to stay affordable.
Yes, we all want to see the programmers and artists and others that put hard work and long hours get paid.
But at what point do rights shift so far to one side that you might as well rent the game?
Does anyone feel concern that a publisher would decide that they are making enough from the multiple re-sales of an existing run that they can hold back on current development so that the used marked could keep making them sweet easy cash with no additional effort beyond cashing the checks?
I would be very interested in knowing what the rest of you think on these points.
Cheers
M
How about movie sales? Certainly movies cost a tremendous amount to make, and involve a ton of people, putting them in the same category as AAA games. They seem to sell pretty well for about $10-$20 each, despite a thriving used product/rental market.
Game publishers (and to a lesser extent, game developers) have been getting fat off of exorbitant prices for their goods in a market where the customers options are extremely limited. As the courts step in to guarantee purchasers the basic property rights they have been denied, this model will change.
Those cases you have sited were examples of other property holders abusing the ridiculous intellectual property laws we have been living with for the past twenty years. IP reform is coming, and this ruling is just the tip of the iceberg.
Games are going to get cheaper. The audience will get larger. Profits will get leaner. Consumers will benefit.
But truly, the best situation that I can see is for us to gain the ability to transfer our license to a new person for free. I just think that model addresses so many of the problems and gives the freedoms that other things like books, movies, and cars have. It's not a perfect comparison, but that's because games, and especially digital games, are a vastly different animal both in how they get produced and how they are used.
The book analogy I think breaks down because many people who would call themselves book lovers keep vast libraries of books. People build entire rooms or sets of rooms - even multi-story rooms just to hold all the books they own. Of all the people who call themselves a gamer, I don't see us making rooms to hold all the games we ever bought. (yes there are a few exceptions, as with anything)
So where books have a pride attached and even a positive stigma attached for owning and storing as many as you can get - games don't. How many games we've PLAYED in our lives does give some of that cred, but not how many games we currently have in our possession.
My point with that, is that a typical book situation is this: Person A buys a book and adds it to their library. That person tells others about the book and gets someone else interested in the book. At that point they will either suggest that the other person buy the book, loan the book, or give the book away. If Person B buys the book, then there is a new sale. If Person A loans the book, then when Person B is done with the book they usually give it back, and then buy a copy for their own library. Thus, a new sale. If Person A gives the book away, then they might buy a copy to replace it, and that's a new sale.
In the book world, it is very common for one sale to turn into at least one more sale because of the way people share books. But games don't typically work that way. If a person buys a game they may promote it among their friends and online and that generates new sales. That part is similar. But months or years later, that person might get rid of the game (physical games sold to gamestop or given/sold to friends maybe) and they won't have any interest in replacing their copy for their library. MAYBE a person loans a game out and that new person buys their own copy, but most times I would bet that the loanee just finishes the game and then gives it back and is done with it.
I think that spreading interest in books generates more copies sold, but selling and loaning games generally doesn't. Which is why I was ok with a SMALL activation fee with game transfers - but no money for the old owner. I think that is the check/balance that will keep the secondary market from hurting the primary sales.
There are a great many variations and exceptions of course because we're all different. But if we simply started with allowing the free transfers we could start to see how this all might play out. And with free transfers you get loans basically because the other person could just give it back.
Look at the closures of game studios even after putting out a financially successful game. Look at the extremely low number of games that ever make back the cost of producing them
Look at the constant new constraints put upon studios with fees and one sided agreements from platform companies that favor the console developers over the developers of the games for that console.
No one in the gaming industry is "getting fat" off of a 60 dollar price tag. Even big developers and publishers have to be constantly pushing out new games at faster rates just to be financially viable. All the things brought up about publishers constantly pushing developers on Extra Creditz is caused by the difficulty of actually producing a game that's financially viable.
Look at all the cookie cutter game mechanics that come out of popular franchises. Look at all the games that constantly rehash the same gameplay in ever increasing variations on the same game. It's all because it's incredibly difficult for a publisher and a developer to make their money back on a lot of new ideas. That scares off publishers and makes them try to pidgeon hole developers in the direction of other games. Every once in a while you get a Minecraft or Halo, and you've got the next big thing on your hands. But that's a massive gamble for publishers and investors.
More importantly: What happens if Steam detects me playing a game it thinks I've uninstalled, and given me credit back for?
Perhaps every game will require a Steam-generated authentication code, to be input every time you boot the game up. And perhaps if they catch you playing, they send men in black round your house to beat you up. Maybe they stick it in their terms of service, and if they catch you doing it, they just shut down your entire game library. Sure sounds like a whole lot of no-problems waiting to not-happen there!
And how do developers factor into this? Gamestop can make resale work because it buys physical inventory -- they buy the games in bulk from the publishers, with an understanding that resale will take place, and the publishers sell them to Gamestop with an understanding that that's okay, because, yknow, Gamestop will keep buying them. But digital services don't work that way; they license a portion of the profits. I buy a game, download it from Steam, and part of my money goes to the publisher. The end.
But what happens when I use resale money? If I use $60 worth of Steam Funbux to buy a copy of the Witcher 2, WHAT HAPPENS? Does Steam just up and PAY CDProjeckt out of their own prockets? What happens if two hundred thousand people do that at once? Would Steam now be required to have an equal amount in liquidious assets as there are Steam Funbux floating around, or risk coming up empty-handed?
Or Would Steam have to make developers sign an agreement that they don't get any of the resale money? Would developers DO that, seeing as it would directly impact their sales? Do they sell developers licensing agreements with one-time payouts? Or scheduled payouts, based on projected sales? What happens if the game blows up and becomes unexpectedly popular? Do they build a NASA super-computer that renegotiates licensing agreements in realtime, based on the amount of money in Steam's bank, the amount of X game being sold, the future projections of X game? What happens if the super-computer runs out of the magical diamond energy matrices made from crystallized sunshine and bullshit that power it?
Reselling digital goods is completely and fundamentally illogical. It makes no goddamn sense, unless you really squint and go, "I know this doesn't make any sense, but gosh darn it, I bet if I just completely ignore that fact . . . "
The analogy goes deeper. Used tables suffer physical wear-and-tear, digital content is always the same. However, the pace of tech improvement makes the original content depreciate significanly within years, if not months.
The analogy breaks down a little when talking about antique tables. There are many people who would spend a bit of chash to get some outdated software, um, I mean an antique table, who are also willing to spend more time restoring it (read as: developing an emulator or otherwise figuring out how to run it on modern OS's, or even running it on elederly harware and an outdated OS)
The analogy breaks down completely when talking about digital content that is non-discrete. I can give a copy of Scorched Earth to anyone who wants it (good luck figuring out how to run it). Older games are simply executables, easy to copy and distribute. You cannot do this with a table. Well, you can try, but it's not going to work.
That's where the Free-to-Play model comes in. Or, for any digital ANYTHING, free-for-free comes in. Fans of UNIX, LINUX, Kickstarter, and Cory Doctoro will tell you that the free-for-free model works pretty good. If you give it away, and what you give is good, people come back for more, and sometimes give you money.
It isn't the right to have some method of resale (the original seller is not under an obligation to give you some means of reselling it), but rather a right to have unrestricted ability to resell something.
Steam offering a way to sell a game back or to another user via its own services does not preclude their violation of your right to resale. If anything, it's a -more- egregious violation by both preventing other resale and doing so in order to force you to use -their- resale service.
Imagine, for instance, that you bought a lawn mower. You have the legal right to resell it. If the manufacturer says "You're not allowed to sell that lawn mower to other people. If you want to get rid of it, you can sell it back to us for store credit, but not to anyone else.", that would be completely and totally illegal.
The only way digital sellers can comply with software-as-property laws would be by allowing a free means of transfer. They can -also- offer a marketplace to facilitate that transfer, but they crucially cannot limit transfers to that marketplace.
First, will Digital Distributors be required to invent an entire new system to allow reselling? That's rather intrusive, especially seeing as its an idea that will leech money away.
Secondly, since there is no physical ownership, no limit to the quantity, and resale would be so easy and widespread, the very distributor that put the system in place would be required to squash it if they follow any sort of market forces whatsoever (Which if they exist, they do). Every dollar that a consumer gets from resale is a dollar lost by the distributor, because there's no reason not to just sell a resold game at the same price as new. Even if you had horrible return rates, say, you get 5 dollars for turning in a $60 game, and it's sold for $59, unless you are expecting a company to completely ignore the fact that they could be making more money by selling that same game, "New" at exactly the same cost to the end buyer, the distributor is just going to sell their games for $59 instead. The problem with a trade in model is that with physical goods, the person being traded to gets something of value. Without the entity being traded to getting something of value, there is absolutely no incentive to offer that game back to the market at a cheaper price. It's the same cost to them, so both the supply AND demand remain identical. You just deal with a lot of attempts to game the system, and I am pretty confident that when you work it all out, the only people who will lose money will be the DD platform and maybe the developers, and most certainly NOT the big, monolithic publishers like EA.
Secondly, what would this do to games? If you allow private, between user purchases of digital games, then people are only going to buy JUST enough copies to amply fill the secondary market. Goodbye quality single player experiences. Goodbye financial feasibility for risk-taking games that take a while to find it's audience because they can just keep reselling those same initial purchases over and over again. Hello clones of popular games with lots of hype consisting of nothing but token single player and skinner-box multiplayer appealing only to those not savvy enough to bother reselling. Hello to creepy business practices as publishers learn to game the system. Hello shovelware. Goodbye up and coming indie games that don't have the ability to put a resale system in place.
Digital resale will provide economic incentives to do more of what hurts gaming, and do less of what helps it. It sounds nice but really, there are no incentives for the people making the games to do anything that will help us, and will do nothing but exacerbate relationships between publishers and consumers. Because all of a sudden, the loyal customer is also the most dangerous competition, and the companies that do the best will be those that do the best job of squashing the competition.
In other words, your Steam account is what you own. The games you buy are 'lifetime subscriptions' to services that you have access to via your Steam account. So your only real property becomes your Steam account's unique identification code.
Then selling your Steam account and all the rich deliciousness it has access to is on you, and what the shit do they care how you do it or whether or not they get a cut. Same would go for your Xbox Live, PSN or whatever account. People already sell Xbox Live accounts for idiotic things like game rank.
I know a kid who bought an account because it was level 50 in Team Slayer in Halo 3. That's a real thing that really happens.
I have become sick and tired in the hobby of videogaming that games get rushed out the door broken, and it is at this time they are at their MOST expensive. People who hold off, wait for a steam sale or whatever get a polished and finished product for oftentime huge amounts off the rrp. People who show the faith and buy in the release week just get the shaft. Under this system the publishers just simply couldn't afford to let this happen, they want every purchaser to be playing and enjoying this title for as long as possible to gain the most maximum amount of revenue from it. Net result the publishers have a vested interest in keeping you happy after you have purchased, so you can expect things like customer support to improve, decent and regular communication to the player base about potential problems and very fast turn around on solutions.
In the end this situation is good for gamers, but bad for publishers. However ask yourself this for how long have we put up with the reverse?
We'll be purchasing indefinite, non transferable licenses to install an play games.
No ownership, no possession. Just permission.
Can a license be sold to other party is other and interesting law problem. And it affects not only games but all kind of software (can firm A sell their old windows licenses when they buy new version)? Technically i'm not sure physical used games are legal from law perspective, but guess they were not enough of a deal to fight them or US law doesn't leave much space to sue for dealing used games.
Its quite complex as used software is just as good as new, and license is granted by the owner of IPs on his terms. Definitely you need to prove you legally got the license, not just upload a file. Steam has this solved as it does check who runs what, if Steam says you don't have the game your files are quite useless. With humble bundle or other DRM free your proof is the account ID not game file.
Definitely you need some system to sell games between accounts if what is to be achieved is to be similar to property rights. The idea of getting some cash back by resigning from license, while nice, has nothing to do with the idea of selling your license to other party on terms you state. You gain right to resign with payback, not to resale.
Blizzard examples:
1)
he Game clients and the Service (including without limitation, any titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, documentation, in-game chat transcripts, character profile information, recordings or replays of Games, and the Game client and server software) are copyrighted works owned by Blizzard and its licensors. Blizzard reserves all rights in connection with the Games and the Service, including without limitation the exclusive right to create derivative works.
2)
NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY HEREIN, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU SHALL HAVE NO OWNERSHIP OR OTHER PROPERTY INTEREST IN THE ACCOUNT, AND YOU FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT ALL RIGHTS IN AND TO THE ACCOUNT ARE AND SHALL FOREVER BE OWNED BY AND INURE TO THE BENEFIT OF BLIZZARD.
3)
Blizzard owns, has licensed, or otherwise has rights to all of the content that appear in the Service or the Games. You agree that, except as set forth in a Game EULA, you have no right or title in or to any such content, including without limitation the virtual goods or currency appearing or originating in any Game, or any other attributes associated with the Account or stored on the Service.
Physical game copy is not really that important as what makes running a game legal is the fact that you have a license to do it, not the fact that you have the disc. If i lose my disc but keep key and license agreements etc I can legally download my games from for example battle net, selling the disc doesn't change the fact that only i have right to run the game, and the guy i sold disk to doesn't, even for older games like Star Craft I that do not technically require battle net connection to play.
The problem is physical used games its hard to say who got license etc, you can say you bought it, or you played at someones house, etc - really hard to prove anything. I guess that's the main reason no one really cared (and you don't want PR of suing random customers for doing not really bad illegal things, especially with all those pirates who are much better target)
Digital is quite different as you do have an account, so unless you sell your account its hard to give it to another person. And really easy to see account that first got the game.
However, it's also foolish to think that the $60 price tag you pay for a new game doesn't already include some resale value. Selling new games is nothing new, there has been plenty of time for the price of new games to adjust to compensate. One reason games on digital distribution sites like Steam are much cheaper is because the games sold there have no resale value, so the price tag can be lowered accordingly. If publisher expects a physical game in a box store to sell new for $60, then later resell used for $30 (while the publisher gets no cut), on a digital store the publisher is content to sell two copies for $30.
The recent push by publishers against used games (both directly and through online passes) doesn't reflect any changes in the used game market, but rather a need for new games prices to re-adjust (increase) again. Publishers are reluctant to sell new games for the $65 or $70 that the market probably demands because customers would naturally be angry, so instead they're looking to either reduce the resale value of games (thereby lowering the price they have to charge for new games) or get a cut of those later sales.
Digital "property" isn't really property in the sense that consumers are used to thinking about property. An easier, & probably more accurate, way to think about digital services is to think of them as services, rather than property.
For example, when you join gym, you gain almost exactly the same sorts of benefits when you buy WoW. You gain access to their infrastructure (weight machines vs. servers), their services (aerobics classes vs. raiding), & so on.
I'm not sure, but can a person resell their gym membership? I think the same laws that apply to service memberships would apply to software licensing.
Games & software that are sold on physical mediums, such as disks, should be able to be resold, because a disk is property & the contents on the disk, by virtue of being on the piece of property, become property themselves.
Also, Steam DRM is most certainly not unbreakable, the problem is that without the game listed in your library, you don't get the nice Steam services. It's actually fairly easy to break, but there's big downsides to running the game without Steam. Which is actually much more effective than traditional DRM because there's a service tied to it, and you can't pirate a service. So I don't see this affecting Steam negatively.
If we do indeed own that copy of the game as property, then all this reselling could come up, however legal arguments over video games, to my knowledge at least, have usually favored the view that having a copy of the game is simply a licence to play the game.
You can trade in the physical disk at Gamestop etc. because you own the physical disk, but when it's purely digital, the concept that all you have is a licence to play the game makes a lot more sense, and would allow digital distributors to sidestep the whole resale issue altogether.
A ruling that digital copies of games are indeed your own property would open up a huge can of worms. It would likely impact existing arguments over DRM (if a digital copy of the game is my property, what right does a developer have to do anything to restrict my ability to play it?), but also think of people who get their accounts banned from a service such as Steam or Origin, such bans would mean the service is withholding access to a customer's property indefinitely, and if the digital games are legally property it would likely invalidate any EULA claim that the user agreed to such circumstance.
Much as I do like the concept of legally owning a digital copy of a game, a big part of me hopes that courts will continue to rule on the "licence to play the game" side of things, just to avoid all of this.