EU court rules people can resell digital games
EU court rules people can resell digital games
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.
This article is based on an article from Eurogamer in 2012 [1].
There're more recent similar rulings like in France in 2019 [2], but Valve already appealed. It will take many years until there's a final decision.
[1] https://www.eurogamer.net/eu-rules-publishers-cannot-stop-you-reselling-your-downloaded-games
[2] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/valve-steam-resell-games-ban-france-eu,40438.html
94This is an 11 year old article, so hardly "news"
67Published 10:20, 04 December 2023 GMT
???
7Click through to the real article, not the reblog
News by Wesley Yin-Poole Contributor
Updated on 3 Jul 2012
55
Interesting! I wonder how/if platforms will implement this, maybe my backlog will finally make me some money 😆
33Right??? There's lots of games I own that I played through once or twice and will probably never play again. I was hoping something like this would come along someday.
9
Please Valve, be the first to implement a market for the players on Steam, and once again you’ll be the pioneer that everyone tries to copy.
29They literally just need to add a way to "repackage" a game from your library into an inventory item and then they could use the Marketplace they already have
7It would be cool but they probably wouldn't pay money directly to your bank on sale. It would still be locked to Steam. Wish valve let you transfer money out.
4Greenmangaming was doing this a decade ago. Steam wouldn't be the first,but it might be the one to get it to stick.
(Ironically, it was predominantly steam games at first that couldn't be traded on GMG)
3
WELL, good thing for Steam and others they sell "perpetual limited licenses" of games instead of "digital copies".
27The EU doesn’t mess around, their definition of digital purchase is what matters, not the wording in steam EULA
40Yeah consumer retail has implied contracts that override anything you write in a TOS or EULA. You can add certain things with those but there's still a basic commercial transaction happening that is bound to the rule of law.
7I'm mentioning this because I remember EU going after Valve sometime in 00' or early 10' because of this, and remember Valve basically saying "well, we will no longer sell digital goods then, enjoy your licenses". I know I remember this but I cannot find a source on google...
2
Need someone who knows more about EU law to chime in here: does this mean valve et al will be forced to implement a way for users to resell/transfer games to other users?
21As others have pointed out, the original article is from 2012, and even with similar rulings in EU countries more recently, it will take years before we see any result of this.
But I think the ultimate answer to your question here is: yes, that would become a thing.
But there is so much to this that makes it hard to predict how good it would be. Who decides the price? What rules will there be on when and how you can resell?
25
Wouldn't surprise me if, assuming this actually comes to fruition, certain game stores such as epic or any of the non-Steam/GoG stores end up implementing the selling of your digital games in the most absolute abhorrent ways imaginable. Things like making the service to sell your games on their shops run at a snails pace, being forced into a profit cut because you use their service, or just flat out editing your account to make you break ToS and then deleting your account.
13A) Article isn't available
B) Before the garbage article was taken down, all it did was source an eurogamer article from 2012 when the law changes first where made
C) y'all wasting your time
13I'm not sure how to feel about this, to be honest.
I don't have any serious plans or anything, but I do want to dabble in a bit of gamedev. Nothing major, just like an RPG or something that I put on Steam for like $5. I imagine there's a lot of people who take bets on their future by releasing games that cost $10 or $20.
Why would anyone pay full price for games if you could get them from a trading platform for like 75%? I bet there's a lot of people that would buy my game, play through it once and then sell it for maybe $4. And others who thinks anytime that pays full price for a game is an idiot.
Indie Devs would have to rise prices, perhaps drastically, to cover the lost revenue here. This would also put an end to Steam sales, because the instant you put your game on sale it sets the price for it in third party markets.
What about bigger games like BG3? What's stopping me from buying it full price, copying the files somewhere and then instantly reselling it? It would probably force them to implement strict DRM restrictions, and probably the nasty rootkit kind.
I'm personally against DRM and don't want to release a game with it, but the fact that this lowers the bar to piracy so much may force my hand.
I honestly believe this could spell the end of the indie gaming scene.
10What about bigger games like BG3? What’s stopping me from buying it full price, copying the files somewhere and then instantly reselling it? It would probably force them to implement strict DRM restrictions, and probably the nasty rootkit kind.
The same thing that's stopping you from downloading the files now. A combination of ethics and the value legitimately owning the game adds to your purchase.
17Yeah, you could already pirate it today. You could even buy it, copy files and refund it, but you probably don't.
11The ethics get muddier for your average person, though. Piracy is (to a good chunk of people) clearly wrong: there is something someone made that most people had to pay for and you're getting it for free. That's not how things are supposed to work.
With this, you are still paying money for the game, it's just cheaper, but games are cheaper when they're on sale, too. I think a much larger group of people will make use of "used" digital games without giving a ton of thought to the fact that the game creator is getting less than those who are fine with pirating games. On top of that, ethics aside, one of those activities is illegal and the other potentially legal, which does affect how people make decisions as well.
4
same reason why people buy games even though they can pirate them to get them for free
14For this to become a serious issue a couple of conditions need to be met:
- there has to be enough second hand supply to meet demand and keep prices low.
- ...which means lots of people need to circulate their games.
- ...which means they didn't like your game enough to want to keep it in their collection for replayability
- ...which means you made an unremarkable game
Now, given the fact that I have full confidence in your ability to create something worthwhile (because you would do so from passion), this cycle will likely be broken at some point.
There's also the other option where people will circulate their second hand games with the knowledge they'll be able to buy back another copy somewhere down the road.
But yes, you're right that this will bring a new factor to the gaming industry that everyone has to take into account. Keep in mind that your financial security in the indie gaming sector is fully dependant on wether you develop something worthwhile. You are in no way entitled to be able to make a living from publishing games regardless of their quality. Which is the beauty of the indie games segment: the more love and care you put into your game, the bigger the chances are that it'll be a success.
9Movies were resellable for decades and b movies still existed.
5What about bigger games like BG3? What's stopping me from buying it full price, copying the files somewhere and then instantly reselling it? It would probably force them to implement strict DRM restrictions, and probably the nasty rootkit kind.
GOG literally exists and yet gamers still buy it on Steam.
If steam implements it, it may be more accessible and thus make it more relevant but as of now, nothing would really change.5I've no doubt that Steam, PSN, etc can avoid complying with the spirit of the law on this, but the writing is on the wall as far as subscription services go.
Since I got my PS5 just over a year ago, I own 2 games for it. GoW Ragnarok that came with it, and BG3 that was only available digitally. PS+ has provided all the rest. I've spent the last week playing Teardown which is great. If this law actually happens, then all devs, not just indie ones, will be relying on game subscription service revenue.
4SteamDB gives a value of 2500€, 9500€ if I bought everything with today's prices, for my library, most of which are from Humble Bundle, and I have probably 150 unredeemed keys as well. I could easily sell 95% of them as I've played through them or don't like them, and net a sizeable profit in the process. And I'm definitely not alone.
They would have to implement some sort of revenue sharing for sure that guaranteed some of the resell value went back to the developer, or this would indeed be the result. Also all bundle/discount sites would die overnight anyway.
1
Locked credits to steam and they take a big cut.
6Better than nothing I suppose..
6Fine by me.
2
Please enforce this for console games as well. Digical games and DLCs are typically more expensive than both new and used physical games. Physical games prices usually decrease few months after release, digital one rarely do.
It's obvious that vendors rely on digital restriction (aka DRMs) to kill the used market and sell older games at higher price. I'm avoiding digital games and DLC because of this, and I'm reluctant to buy a new console given the hard push toward digital games and attempts to kill the used market.
4If this really happens I'd get to "clean" my steam library
3Permanently Deleted
2
This is pretty stupid considering digital Goods have no physical presence, no scarcity,
0