The biggest issue about that I see are the activation keys. Most games are limited to one activation, barring steams family sharing service. To resell a game that was once owned by another user, the developer would need to provide a new activation key/code and they would need to get paid for it. In which someone loses money be it the devs or steam.
Comment has been collapsed.
The idea is it is a sweetener for them to allow Valve to do it... There's no reason for Valve to give devs/pubs a cut of trading card sales, but they do to encourage them to participate. Tens of thousands of 1 penny/cent sales all add up...
Comment has been collapsed.
There's no reason for Valve to give devs/pubs a cut of trading card sales
I wouldn't be so sure. They use 3rd party assets to monetize steam cards/emoticons/backgrounds
Comment has been collapsed.
The key would need to be deactivated and a new one issued. Keys are not transferable even via the marketplace. Steam can not generate new keys without going through the devs. Why do you think games such as Fable 3 can't be bought anymore? No devs to generate new keys.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, but what about the legality of altering intellectual property? Wouldn't that fall under the same premises as piracy, in the technical term, as they would be making new keys for the games? Therefore being keygen providers? One of the things steam and devs are trying to fight against?
Comment has been collapsed.
But the original owner of the license would give up their right to said license when transferring it to someone else, even if a new key is generated the old one would expire at the same time.
Sure this won't work for pretty much any game with some sort of DRM other than Steam itself, if a DRM is present the copy would probably be rendered useless.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ok, but what if said game was purchased VIA HB or Fanatical or the like? Those keys can have other issues by transferring.
Comment has been collapsed.
Like the fact that the key could requested and checked. If the key was from one of those sites, they could ban the user claiming them to be a reseller. Steam has a way of knowing when a key has been distributed VIA external means.
Comment has been collapsed.
I think Steam would actually like that. When you buy steam keys on third-party sites steam doesn't get a cut from that.
So if someone were to buy game from HB and then later transform it into steam gift and sell it on steam marketplace steam would take a cut from that sale.
Comment has been collapsed.
The question is why the game can't be transferred. Because then it don't make a difference if it was bought directly via steam or activated via key. The only thing would change is the log for the game itself(steam bought vs. key activated) for the now new owner.
Comment has been collapsed.
Why do you want to give any money to dev/publisher for reselling used game? Do you pay any credit to the car manufacturer when you sell/buy used car or clothes?
Comment has been collapsed.
In Australia, when a visual artwork is commercially resold (e.g. a sale involving a dealer, gallery or auctioneer), there's a law requiring a 5% royalty to be paid to the artist (even if the copyright in the artwork is not held by the artist) - https://www.artslaw.com.au/information-sheet/resale-royalty-rights-for-visual-artists/
Something like that could technically work for software codes, although it is a little strange because the underlying product is not unique, cannot degrade and shouldn't appreciate in value since it can be replicated perfectly, but in practice I don't think it would work for Steam games. Transfer of game discs with an activation code could involve a (reduced) activation fee, prompted to be paid when the software is registered with the publisher before it unlocks. The difference with digital software is that the activation code is generated by and registered with Steam, not the publisher or developer. Local authorities would need to force Valve to administer an ownership transfer system, since it would cost money to do so (as well as reducing its commercial opportunity by removing a customer from the market for a new key for the same game on the Steam store). Valve would reasonably argue that it deserves to charge the same fee for this service as it does for selling a new game (typically 30% of sale price), since its administration costs are at least as high. If the publisher doesn't agree to a reduced payment for "secondhand" keys (and why would it when they can sell "new" keys?) the lowest the secondhand key would cost is the same as a new one, with the "seller" getting nothing for it. Nobody is going to be incentivised to sell something they don't make money from and buyers aren't going to pay a premium for "secondhand" keys while cheaper "new" keys are available, so the system wouldn't benefit anyone.
Comment has been collapsed.
Interesting Australian law, that's the idea.
But about this:
Local authorities would need to force Valve to administer an ownership transfer system, (...)
This is locking a game bought in a platform (Steam) forever. What about forcing all platforms to abide a fully separate ownership system ?
Since this ownership system wouldn't provide anything more than a license, it wouldn't cost that much... Those 30% are more about all other services related to effectively using a game license, like downloading the game, playing it and using cloud saves, multiplayer servers, etc. If you don't include this in the cost of owning the license, it could be economically viable, couldn't it ?
Comment has been collapsed.
The artwork royalty right is for unique works of art, not mass-manufactured items. It recognizes the unique quality of a singular piece of work, in which an artist has directly invested time and effort. It is, for example, limited to sales over $1,000. It has nothing to do with computer games.
The correct analogy would be a used book. Publishers tried for decades to stop people from selling books. The courts ruled, robustly, that they could not, and that the Doctrine of First Sale applies to works published to the population: once you buy the book, it is yours. You can do anything you like with it, apart from copying it. You can sell your copy - though you can't make more and sell those. You can burn it. You can give it away. You can read it aloud, though you can't record it (derivative work).
Comment has been collapsed.
It'd be nice to have the option, but I don't really see myself selling my games, the hoarder in me screeches at the idea of seeing my precious pile of stuff getting smaller :P
I have less of an issue of letting go of physical things but digital games don't take space so I feel like I must accrue them.
Comment has been collapsed.
that's a really good point. replayability would be king. i don't mind paying a few bucks for a short game i'll probably never play again. reselling would totally kill those games.
Comment has been collapsed.
How strict is steam DRM? How possible it install a game via steam and then play it without steam? If that's easy we may see stricter DRM in the future to ensure you account still owns that game.
I'm sure it would all be done over steam marketplace. So steam and the devs could get a percent of the cut.
Can steam have any control over how much the game is resold for? Soon as a sale hit I'm sure there will be scalpers. People can only buy one per account but then scalpers will start making duplicate accounts.
Comment has been collapsed.
Steam can be purely the delivery mechanism & launcher - you don't need to wrap the exe or hook the Steam .dlls, but obviously once people realise this, it'll be pirated quickly (but no quicker than releasing on GOG).
Comment has been collapsed.
It's "gimmick" that they use their 30% cut to do that.
Instead of doing like GMG and giving 25% discount on purchase, you buy game at full price, but they give you 25% back when you complete game and "sell" it.
(well, less if your copy sells when publisher has discounted the game, but that's basic how it works).
Publishers still get their 70%, so they are more or less happy.
Comment has been collapsed.
that would be awesome! like physical games on console i would sell games that just lay in my library and which i never intend playing again.
and i dont think this would hurt any game developers that much. people do it already on consoles and there is family sharing which is a bit more annoying due to 1 person being able to play at the same time but you can share it with others.
Comment has been collapsed.
It would hurt publisher alot .especially singleplayer publisher
everybody would only make multiplayer games and grab the best microtransactions to bind people into not selling it .
Than there would be the retailer people would abuse to get trading cards and than sell the game on steam for probably even more they paid on the retail site .
Selling games digital and get them instantly is way different than selling games in real ,because most people are to lazy online its just a click and most people wouldnt buy full priced games anymore ,so companies shit out more dlcs to get the players money .
Comment has been collapsed.
unless they receive a share of the sale (the people who would buy second-hand are the same who buy with discounts of 90%.. and a game for 10$ with 90% reduc cost 1$ with 30% for steam they receive only 70 cents (only if they haven't publisher if not it's more like 30 cents))
if you buy 10$ game and resell for 5$ and they have the same part of money with normal sale they receive 5 times more
Comment has been collapsed.
it could receive the share of steam (they were the ones who were condemned) and from the publisher there could be 75% for the seller that would always leave more to the dev
PS because I'm not good in english I wanted to simplify the reasoning as much as possible (suddenly I had to simplify it a little too much)
Comment has been collapsed.
I see it now, but I still don't like the idea. You can't really say that everyone who is going to buy it 2nd hand is the same person who would wait for a 90% discount or vice-versa.
Also, that whole new 2nd hand market would be a kick in the nuts for the sales, since the companies would probably want to keep their profit around what it is now. To do so, there probably would be sales less often.
Comment has been collapsed.
the developer and publisher say its for the console part and yet have never lost that much (they say more or less the same for the piracy XD )
and for to be honnest why you buy only when 90% sales come?
because :
you have a limited budget for the game
you are not very interested in the game
or you are a collector
and for to be honnest I see only the same reason for buy an occasion game XD
Comment has been collapsed.
This sounds very similar to bundles but aside from bundle if it is guaranteed to lose value 1 year later it would still hurts the developer. Most people will wait that year and want to pay less. Way too less copies will be sold especially on indie games. I think because of that some indie developers never want to be a part of bundles.
AAA games will be sold regardless imo. That would help them the most.
Comment has been collapsed.
i don't know how it would work, but in the end it will hurt consumers. devs will find a way to avoid reselling, like using subscription-based games, or finding workarounds like selling their games for $1 and later dlc for $59.
or they will end up banning whole countries from buying their products if they disagree with their policies.
Comment has been collapsed.
Banning the whole European Union would be a little bit expensive even for Valve.
Comment has been collapsed.
the problem is that people look at games the same way they look at any product and argue 'if i can sell my car, my couch, a book, etc, why should a game be any different'. the difference is that a game is a digital product. it is 100% identical to a new game, there is no difference. if you resell any physical product, it has had years of physical usage that can mean its condition is altered - there is still a strong incentive for people to purchase a new, unblemished version.
to try and force a change to allow second hand digital products to be sold in a market that would directly compete and be indistinguishable from full priced 'new' copies, would not only be unfair to publishers (playing devils advocate here.. im a consumer, i wouldnt mind it at all) AND storefronts selling the products, but could likely lead to a future where publishers create games and potentially look for legal ways to really mess with consumers... ie, heres a 2 hour long "game" for 10 bucks, now please pay a one-off fee of 50 dollars to upgrade your account to get access to 'additional content' providing 20 hours of gameplay...
basically for the sake of something that would be unfair to the companies that invest 10s of millions of dollars to product something we enjoy, we risk making shit worse for ourselves. Consumers do not come out on top if you want to travel down this route.
Comment has been collapsed.
The counter point against this would be CR-ROM games, DVD games, PS games, Xbox games, DVD movies and BlueRay movies.
All digital copies - all allowed to be resold.
You may say their digital carrier (the disk) may degrade over time.
Which is true, but not a valid point because:
Comment has been collapsed.
...wha-at? this topic again? 🤓
Last year, a French court ruled (...)
Two facts about France to know before proceeding because other countries are 100% not doing it that way:
(1) we're not allowed to sell more than 6 cars each year as individuals. Selling a 7th car requires us to be registered as a professional (which is required to provide at least 6-months warranty on the car, which in turn is needing more than only a technical expertise but also to pay for a professional insurance).
(2) after a movie is released in theaters, there's a law telling when it will be available outside theaters. Looking at the chart there, one can see that for example streaming platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video or Disney+ are all required to wait 36 months before streaming a movie on their platforms. This delay can be shortened to only 17 months if the streaming platform is helping to fund movie development (which is not the case of those 3, who are only selling what they sell).
TL;DR: French laws are taking great care of insuring commercial exploitation of cultural/entertaining contents lasts long enough.
I mean, as an example, buying movies on discs is more expensive than going to theaters for a long time after theaters stopped showing them, and that's not because of the value of the physical packaging itself. Usually, there's even some time one cannot see movies at all because they're no longer in theaters, and not yet allowed for sale outside...
As in my question at the top, how could it work without hurting the indie game scene?
What... What do you mean by hurting ?
A song from the early nineties : REM - Everybody Hurts
Historically speaking, artistical works were paid a lot once they found their audience. You surely already heard about this one painter or this other musician who died very poor, and years after his painting, his music seen an exponential increase in price. There's no law in right about this. One cannot write a law saying that indie game devs will earn a given amount of money for their work.
What can be done by law, is protecting their right to earn money initially ; but too much protection can also be counter productive : selling once a used indie game makes another person aware of its existence, and it may help this game to find its audience... One can't tell beforehand if the new buyer will tell about this game around him, insuring new sales and more money for the indie devs ; or if the new buyer will forget about it.
What if the publisher got a cut of the sale?
The publisher did published the original copies, and got paid for its work, and it's not really entitled to get paid again for a second-hand sale, unless it publish it!
(Captain Obvious: over!)
What if games could only be resold after one year ?
See back my points (1) & (2) above. I'd better go for a limit on the amount of games an individual may sell each year, because I think it's more fair than forbidding any sale during a year.
Easy example: one buys one game, its first one, and don't like it. There's nothing wrong in allowing him to resale it immediately! And most people don't buy hundreds of games...
And if that was ever possible, what games would you sell?
You forgot something important before asking this question : it's all the meta-gaming features offered by online platforms like Steam...
What should happen to those features, when they are strongly linked to game ownership like the acheivements ? or the access to an external account ?
This situation leads to an impossible decision : what means practically selling the game license ? Is it unlinking the meta-gaming features to keep them in the profile without game ownership ? Is it destroying one's meta-gaming history with no way to revive it even if one buys the game again at a later time ?
Comment has been collapsed.
(1) we're not allowed to sell more than 6 cars each year as individuals. Selling a 7th car requires us to be registered as a professional (which is required to provide at least 6-months warranty on the car, which in turn is needing more than only a technical expertise but also to pay for a professional insurance).
This happens in a few countries actually - I know personally we also have a restriction here in New Zealand that's very similar.
Comment has been collapsed.
My bad, it's not 100%. But even if such limit would be applied to games, the average value of ONE second-hand car was near 16 K€ in 2018 (link in FR) and around 5200€ for the cheapest market segment (city-dweller cars), so it's already so much above the average value of most Steam libraries...
Comment has been collapsed.
I always wanted to get my hands on what i have buyed. Why should two people in my family buy twice a singleplayer game- why? The option familysharing is not good - onyl one can play at the same time (why? what a .....?`).
The fault is not steam or apple or microsoft or .... - the fault is missing clear laws in many countries - the have sleept the hole digital world. What´s with the digital heir - i think > 90% dont even know what that means ans what to do. What with facebook and co when a beloved person dies. How to close accounts? How to prevent sites to post pictures ans so on ..
Comment has been collapsed.
I think many people are under the illusion that they actually own the games they purchase on Steam.
Comment has been collapsed.
I think you're under the impression that you own the license and that's not the case either. Purchasing a game on steam is basically renting the license to be able play it.
Comment has been collapsed.
purchasing a house is basically renting the house to live in it.
Absolutely /s
just answer the damn question
Sounds like you need to take a breather.
Comment has been collapsed.
After telling me to answer the damn question you're lucky I even replied. Just so I'm clear when I said you'll be waiting a while, that means you aren't going to get an answer. On that note, this interaction with you has come to an end. Have a good day.
Comment has been collapsed.
I wasn't trying to make an argument, I simply stated a fact that games you purchase on Steam you don't own it's pretty much a license rental to let you play the game. And by comments on multiple threads it appears most people aren't aware of that.
When you ask me "what's the difference between owning a game and owning a license of a game?" You don't own the game on Steam nor do you own the license, so there really isn't anything to answer here.
Then you leave this comment "i know the technical difference ,what im asking is the difference in the gaming experience...what makes drm-free is more superior than ,let's say steam games?".. In your first question you didn't ask what the difference of gaming experience was and once more you're implying that you own the license and you don't, you are renting it. And to answer the last part here is a great simplified explanation. Read the first response to the question.
Comment has been collapsed.
I wasn't trying to make an argument, I simply stated a fact that games you purchase on Steam you don't own it's pretty much a license rental to let you play the game. And by comments on multiple threads it appears most people aren't aware of that.
No, you're wrong, that's not a rental. :P
No court in France would tell it's legit to sell something you rented...!
/my 2 cents...
Comment has been collapsed.
a statement IS an argument. and somehow what im getting from you is that "renting" is somehow negative (if not,thenim sorry.i have smol brain) also what i'm asking is the difference between renting and buying.also im pretty satisfied of the answer in reddit.
Comment has been collapsed.
From the comment you just made I'm pretty sure there's a language barrier there or possibly something else, so I do feel it's best at this point to not continue with the discussion. I know I said that before and I probably should of stuck to that. I am glad that I was able to provide you the link to that reddit post though as it seems to have helped explained things to you a little better.
Comment has been collapsed.
But how else am I supposed to identify and prove my self worth if not by collecting as many things? /s
I agree with your points, not just with virtual collecting, but with physical collecting as well. However I believe this discussion is about the rights that customers have. Should they be allowed to resell? Is that right or wrong? Since the digital era is still fairly new, the laws are being rewritten on the go.
Comment has been collapsed.
Allowing reselling would mean opening the door to legalizing the backdoor deals that are already happening. Making a worldwide authority on the matter would mean heavy privacy intrusion. I haven't seen anyone wanting to accept that. As for Steam, we see that they don't have the authority on people transferring accounts, selling them or other things against their ToS.
The concepts are made clear on how people "own" things digitally, however there's no real authority to enforce those concepts.
We have seen the model of both having a game pass on the Microsoft Store and Origin and paying for games individually. They can clearly coexist. Steam doesn't need it because of the Steam Market, there are tons of transactions going on everyday there where Steam takes a percent.
Even if the current model is designed like that, who can really enforce it? You can pass your account to a family member and carry on with playing the games. There's no obligation to show a death certificate. As you say, if a legalization of this happens with an authority figure to enforce it, then we could see Steam charging continuous payments. But with people being against privacy intrusion, I don't see that happening.
Personally, I don't have a need to resell my games, so I'm indifferent towards this.
Comment has been collapsed.
These modern mentalities and cultures of "owning" things will do no good to people.
Yeah, it was better during the Dark Ages when people weren't owning the land they cultivated for generations, and were paying high taxes! Sorry if you find this comparison exaggerated, but History proves that owning things is essential to be free, and that being free is doing good to people.
(...) if Steam as a company closes at any point (...)
Your reasoning 100% relies on the idea that Steam is managing the game licenses you own. But what if it wasn't ? (like I wrote there)
Comment has been collapsed.
That premise was not a premise at all, only an oversimplified and burlesque comparison to give a feeling, an idea of my mood when I read your line : I see that glass half-full ; you'd prefer to describe it being half-empty. But the topic is the shape of the glass, not its content :-)
Those things bigger than us we abide to are the same things some companies do not want to abide to : the compromise is a broken one. An example about where it is broken is when a game lacks a translation... many volunteers to do it freely ; but rare official support for they work : some do, some don't. Gamers are sometimes left to download 3rd-party patches to translate the games... but rights owners do not allow this in most cases, they only condone it, looking elsewhere... This lets players enjoy the game in their language : carpe diem, as you were saying... but with no right to do so! This is a one-side-only compromise, a broken one.
Yes, I ask "what if it was done in a different way" because "how it works now" is the consequence of private agreements (between publishers/editors and distributors/platforms), not laws democratically chosen. And if we look today at the battle between Epic and Apple, depriving iOS players of Fortnite and other games, we can see here one real negative impact on the consumer. Asking "is this correctly abiding anti-trust and anti-cartel laws ?" is above what I'm able to talk about...
Comment has been collapsed.
You can still buy the games on real discs if you want so. This can open eyes on some aspects of why most people don't want to do that.
AAA games, yes. Most indie games aren't published physically. But I agree regarding the advantages and the change of the market since then.
when we own physical goods, we take all the continuous "costs" for storing these, taking care of their condition (goods can get destroyed / unusable), all costs and risks of transferring etc.
True, but on the other hand the savings for devs/publishers who don't have to pay for the physical distribution anymore, aren't forwarded to the customer. The retail prices for new games are the same for physical and digital distribution. Even if it's an online game, the expenses for physical distribution should be way higher than maintaining a few servers. Customer support is on top of that, but mostly covered by microtransactions or abonnements.
Prices go down faster for the vast majority of games than in the pre-digital era, but I'd reason that less with the way of the distribution itself, but with the sheer mass of products and the competition among those, because more people can afford to publish a game on their own.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't think it will apply in the way a person thinks.
They state that a person should be allowed to resel it, but it would cripple Steams income if that were to be applied so instead I think they will allow you to sell it back to steam at say 50% of the cost that you bought it for. Thus you are able to resell it, but not to another person, they would as such be complying to the French law and at the same time making sure that they don't get financially crippled as much as they would if game trading was to be implemented. If everyone can just trade their games then people with big ass libraries can make a shit ton of money off of this.
Comment has been collapsed.
The biggest problem with this sort of thing is account theft (steal account > sell all the games > profit!). If we ignore that problem though, I think re-selling of digital games would result in one or more of the following:
As for what games I'd sell, I've deleted about 100 games from my Steam library, so would un-delete and sell all of those.
Honestly, if digital purchases didn't constitute a permanent financial loss, I'd probably buy games far more often then I do currently.
Comment has been collapsed.
Selling your whole steam account should be perfectly legal and get no sneers for example playing gacha games your account is worth quite a lot and when you get fed up with the game you are just expected to abandon it... or go to a dubious account selling site if you want to profit from it even a little.
Comment has been collapsed.
This would only work for games Valve owns the rights as the publisher/developer and if forced they could do like resellers use to make people sell the game for at least 75%, or more, of the retail value.
Buying used games back in the 90's wasn't cheap unless the game was complete crap, many of the games got sold at only a 5 to 10 dollar discount even if it was only the cartridge being sold.
Comment has been collapsed.
What it would take, is steam first integrating the system to do so (deregistering keys from an account, and allowing them to be reactivated elsewhere), and then acquiring permission from every content owner on their platform before beginning to implement the system. The price of the digital goods reflects what digital goods you are receiving. If the keys have to be resellable and an agreement isn't reached on a fee that reaches steam and the content owner, then the prices will go up to reflect it.
We have been surfing on the edge of a golden age of gaming discounts, at least in the PC-related digital-only market. Both in discounts, and in bundles. If all purchases must be made resellable by the customer, the sellers (both those who create the product, and those who host and provide the point-of-sale) will reevaluate their pricing. The gray market wouldn't necessarily become obsolete, and in fact it may potentially thrive? I wonder how it may effect developers in terms of design expectations. Would they gear more for replayability and cheap addiction methods so that copies are retained by individuals for longer? Or would they focus more on padding to achieve a similar effect? I wonder how it would effect DLC and expansion packs, in terms of price and content amount. Hm.
Comment has been collapsed.
I think it's simple, this guy explains it best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw
So how would this work with Steam?
If someone doesn't want a good (that individual licence of a game YOU paid for), then Steam should have an option to add that game to your steam inventory, and resell (this could also be done through the steam market, but not necessary) or easier yet trade that game as a GIFT (paypal outside of steam, similar to here), permanently removing that license from your library (similarly to the option of permanently removing games from your library). There are multiple ways to make this system work if they wanted, and it would be totally FAIR and within your RIGHT to do so, it's only a matter of Valve GREED that prevents it, just like they prevented refunds for years before they finally implemented the system. Some may argue what about the developers? Welp they have no control over that individual good once it's sold (your individual game licence), as far they're concerned they received the money for that good, and that good can be resold as many times as necessary, that's out of their control. This is no different than what Gamestop has been doing for years, LEGALLY I may add.
Comment has been collapsed.
But what the developers do have a control over, is the selling price of their games, and the amount of content / effort they put into it. Those two things will change if the type of sales does. Moving one piece of the system (licenses that cannot be resold) will cause a ripple where other aspects of digital gaming shift to counterbalance. I'm pretty confident that the resulting changes will see a lot of incredibly angry consumers.
I've been around since the days of the ZX Spectrum, and honestly the current iteration of the digital gaming age is perhaps one of the best, at least regarding PC gaming. The pricepoints are typically a lot lower, and the bundle culture we have going is amazing. What we lack in resale capacity, we more than make up for other aspects. I can't speak to how the consoles are faring, and I have noticed their pricepoints are still pretty damn high. The nintendo switch still having big budget titles sell for £60 in digital-only format, and while their physical copies are resellable at a decent price, I still get flashbacks to the resale of PC and Amiga titles. We have the internet to help with this now, but I worry reselling licenses in a system where buying new games is more expensive may not turn out to be a singularly positive move. It's hard to predict really.
Comment has been collapsed.
Not really, it's still up to the consumer to decide what price to buy a game. A developer can list a game for sale for $100, I don't have to buy it, I don't have to buy it at $60 either, or 50% off, maybe I want to buy it at 75% off, all I have to do is wait and I'll buy it at my price point eventually, I choose, I decide. And lets assume it never goes on sale, Attack on Titan is a good example of this, then I can just as easily not buy the game, simple as that. Price gouging doesn't help the developer, if anything it hurts them more by losing sales. Honestly I don't think reselling will hurt the market at all, at worst it will even things out a bit more, right now they're profiting like crazy on the consumer behalf, some people may be buying extra copies by mistake and then they're stuck with extra key they can't refund. The market was doing just fine when every game was physical and people were using GameStop or Garage Sales to return and resell their games, and developers had to pay extra to print those discs, manuals, cases, etc.. they literally avoid all those extra costs by selling digital at the same price of a physical game, they're are making a killing off consumers. It's only fair that consumers have the right to trade or sell their purchased goods, and digital games are purchased goods even though they're intangible.
Comment has been collapsed.
It's interesting that you consider it 'price gouging' for developers to adjust their prices when their licenses are resellable. Of course the price will be balanced against the resale value of the license, but they will already be losing a great number of sales profits due to the resale element, and may lean heavier on the initial buying price to compensate. Selling at a high price will indeed make them sell less, but that also means less copies in circulation, which are also non-sales. There will probably be a fair bit of adjustment involved, but the pendulum will still swing against our favour as the developers try to preserve against projected losses, at least until things calm down.
Yeah the market was doing fine when every game was physical, but you also forget that the price of said games took way longer to decrease, and unless you were reselling to someone in person, you barely got a few pennies when turning it over to a store, and then unless you were buying from the used games stands (which rarely had high-interest titles at remotely good prices) those scant few pennies amounted to nothing when getting a new game. Back then, the internet was a far less widespread resource, and was generally slower. That had the effect of making the pursuit of optimal resale prices more difficult, whereas now broadband is kind of a standard and very widespread, making such shopping trivial. Competition works both ways, and availability plays a big role in pricepoint. It might not have been that long ago, but it may as well have been a totally different age. Expectations have changed, and so has the ease of resales. It makes the whole thing somewhat unstable, and where that pendulum ends up settling is anyones guess.
Like I said, I don't expect people will react well to a natural change in price, and when discounts stop regularly being the major impressive things they are now, and when bundles with any games of remote interest become a lot more rare, I imagine there will be a lot of gnashing of teeth. Perhaps even an outcry specifically to allow for non-resellable licenses so people can return to the previous price model. Calling it price gouging at the thought of any price increase kinda serves as a mild sample of what I expect to come, heh. I suppose the flipside of the initial instability of pricing, is that at least buyers remorse won't be quite as painful.
I hope my pessimism is proven wrong :p
Comment has been collapsed.
You're making way too many assumptions, but you're entitled to your opinion. Also I don't think we're on the same page, you keep calling it "their license" instead of "goods", you obviously haven't watched the video I posted. We have no control over their intellectual property or license and whatever they want to do with it, but once they sell us a good and we purchase it, that individual good becomes ours and they got their expected money for it. The only way it will hurt the developer is if you make illegal copies of it, but giving your copy away to lets say your friend who wasn't going to buy it anyway, you lose your copy and developer still got their money for it, so it doesn't hurt the developer at all. Stop being so pessimistic! :P
Comment has been collapsed.
it would hurt only those that overprice their games and make games that people dont like, it would probably put some developers out of business but it would force those that want to create games to make quality games that buyer will want to keep. developers will lose money (should be publishers will lose money since developers usually dont see that money anyways) is almost like no drm will make us lose money and look at CD Project and GOG
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, giving the game to someone who really wouldn't have bought it would be no loss to the developer, but we were talking resales.
My point was simply that allowing the resale of the licenses (yes, the goods you own) is going to be a factor in how they price things, and how readily developers will allow their products to be bundled, and at what prices. I'm confident there will be a price shift, as the primary thing that facilitated the modern wave of severe discounts was the digital-only non-transferrable license format.
Like I said, there are a lot of moving pieces so where the pendulum ends up stopping after things rebalance is anyones guess. Competition will be a major factor in that, so I guess maybe I am just too pessimistic, but that comes from memories of how it used to be before modern gaming. If there is enough competition and the price shift isn't uniform, then maybe the price bump really will resist being too severe.
Comment has been collapsed.
Again it doesn't matter what they price their games, you're beating on a dead horse at this point, all that matters is that customers get their given rights returned. If you watched the entire video, it shows that the developers purposely break games once they end their services, this and people who defend this mentality is the problem with our industry, games are meant to be preserved, and the only way for that to happen is to get control out of the developer/publisher hands. If I buy a hammer I don't like the idea of the company deciding how many times I can use it, same with games, I don't need a developer or publisher dictate what I do with my games, as long as I'm not doing anything illegal with them that's all that matters. The law and our rights is more important than how the market wants to change, change is inevitable anyway, to benefit them no doubt they want more control taken away from the consumer. So again you're entitled to your opinion, but in the end it doesn't make a difference.
Comment has been collapsed.
And respectfully, your opinion doesn't make a difference either. We're not trying to change an industry via conversation with random other SGift members, this is all speculative banter. I mean, we are indeed going around in circles now, but the 'beating of a dead horse' is me trying to reiterate what I don't feel you grasped (or that I just plain didn't articulate very well).
I just don't think that ignoring the difference between digital media and physical media does the subject any justice, nor that adaptions to licensing changes will be entirely mild or beneficial. My point was only that the current pricing allowances/trends in PC gaming are influenced by the format they take (and the associated usage rights), and while it would be great for the rights of resale to return, that change isn't likely to exist purely in a vacuum. Perhaps my speculation has created a false dilemma due to pessimism, but there is still the chance that this is a case of choosing between either having resale rights or great sales / higher quality of bundles. I suppose competition will determine how it pans out, but at least when it comes to big budget developers, they are notoriously clumsy and shortsighted when it comes to DRM, security measures, and executive meddling. I honestly just don't trust it will pan out so singularly favourable for the consumer. The GOG mentality is still a rarity. I mean, yeah, protecting consumer rights while the digital age seems to erode or juggle them is definitely a premise worth pursuing, I'm thinking more in terms of what the end outline of the situation will turn out to be.
I don't expect to change your opinion or anything, because regarding rights you're hardly wrong, but my concern is with what knock-on effects it will have. If you feel those effects will be inconsequential or that the devs / publishers / sellers will bend before the majority of the customer base does, then I mean, that's valid. I just can't shake my doubts.
Comment has been collapsed.
I get what you're trying to say, in layman terms you're saying in order for us to get our rights back we have to give up our precious sales and bundles, is that it? Well that's where I respectfully disagree, and that's why I'm saying your beating on a dead horse, because 1. You can't prove with 100% certainty that will happen, even though I agree with you there's a chance that could happen. 2. Even if that did happen, I'm telling you I don't care, because in my opinion, our rights >>>>>>> sales or bundles, by a long shot. I would gladly give up sales and bundles in a heartbeat, If that means I can resell my games and have a guarantee that my games will last forever. That's how I feel about it, and that's because I feel gaming was at it's best in the 80's and 90's, when gaming was the way it should be, full experiences, no microtransactions, everlasting and I can resell and profit! In my opinion that supersedes sales and bundles. You also fail to see the bigger picture yet, because you're defending this practice, you fail to see that publishers are getting greedier and taking more of your rights away whether you agree with it or not, when streaming gaming will start to kick off and replace your sales and bundles, that's the change you're supporting. And precious sales? Forget about it, next gen consoles and pc graphics cards are getting pricier, same with games, I believe they will start at $70 base, you're only deluding yourself if you think things will stay the way they are by giving more rights to the publishers or developers, and it won't affect the market and gaming industry negatively. So yeah I'll take my rights back now, thank you very much!
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm not defending the practice, only acknowledging that it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's directly because I acknowledge developer greed that I have my pessimistic outlook. A certain amount of price shift is normal, but you know that certain bigger players are going to use it as an opportunity to angle for gain at consumer expense. While I would personally be happier with the bundles and bigger sales than resale rights, that is down to personal preference, my lack of disposable income, and my lack of urgency to grab titles quickly after their release. I'm not pretending that's remotely the same for everyone else, but I still maintain that the potential price shifts will upset people if they expect only to gain from the change in the state of current digital licensing.
You're right that I can't prove it with "100% certainty" but that is not a requirement when you cannot back your claims to that degree either, and we do not need absolute precognitive forecasts to extrapolate possible or likely outcomes. Hardware prices are indeed pretty severe, but I thought consoles were always priced bizarrely at their launch (except for maybe some portable consoles?). The same with graphics cards, but perhaps it's again down to my lack of free money, but I've never had problems playing games at solid framerates and I never reached for the top end. I mean, sure, I'll also never max out all graphic settings and get a stable 60fps on a 4k monitor but I feel like a lot of people get sucked into a mental trap of seeing those sliders and feeling they're missing out, when their game/system is performing fine. The hardware thing is a different issue to software though, so I'm not really sure how that factors into this discussion.
Even being able to sell on your digital licenses doesn't mean your games are everlasting. The DRM-free or physical media thing may be sequentially related, but they're also seperate. Again, I'm not even disagreeing with you there. In the event of a service shutdown it should be a legal requirement to make some reasonable means of user/self-hosting available. I remember when the original iteration of All Points Bulletin didn't even last a single year before their servers shut down, and that was WITH physical copies (but non-transferrable licenses). Unless you bought it direct from EA, they refused refunds, and in my case, was told to seek recompense from Steam, who also refused, as they had no dealings with the game hosting, and there was no way to prompt the two entities to negotiate a suitable outcome. Digital-only licenses are far from danger free, after all. Ideally the market would allow for variety, but once we venture back into resellable physical media, we're undoubtedly going to stumble back into the minefield of clumsy local anti-piracy measures, which will be fun to watch them mess up again :P
Comment has been collapsed.
I agree with most of what's been said here, except the part on the first sentence, second paragraph. I am not claiming reselling is a possibility, on the contrary I do not think it will happen. I would like for it to happen, I think it morally should happen, but I don't believe it's going to happen, because lets face it, these multi-billion dollar companies will pay billions before allowing it to happen. That's the sad truth of our reality, we the little people can do very little, unless a very large group of people unite to fight for our rights back. I just don't see that happening, but I will still fight tooth and nail for our rights back in every feasible scenario.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well here's hoping something happens. Legal stuff was able to push Steam into finally implementing a refund system, so if places in the EU are considering action against Valve if they don't allow for resales when selling in their territory, they'll have to choose between losing a lot of customers or delving into the tricky subject and finding a way to make it work. If Steam gets some kind of legal challenge that holds up, it won't just hit Valve but it will set a precedent that will certainly ripple onto other providers in short order.
Comment has been collapsed.
46 Comments - Last post 17 minutes ago by UnbakedBacon
1,368 Comments - Last post 18 minutes ago by JohnRyder
38 Comments - Last post 33 minutes ago by pb1
382 Comments - Last post 37 minutes ago by RevCat
15,385 Comments - Last post 40 minutes ago by LuciferLove
1,161 Comments - Last post 2 hours ago by achilles335
2,060 Comments - Last post 5 hours ago by Wok
174 Comments - Last post 2 seconds ago by Fenchurch
2,693 Comments - Last post 22 seconds ago by sagan
40 Comments - Last post 19 minutes ago by MarvashMagalli
118 Comments - Last post 21 minutes ago by UnbakedBacon
86 Comments - Last post 27 minutes ago by Raggart
244 Comments - Last post 56 minutes ago by Lugum
703 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by quijote3000
... What would it take for it work?
Last year, a French court ruled that games bought on Steam are just like game discs you buy in stores and therefore, consumers should be allowed (and able) to resell their Steam games.
Almost a year has gone by. I don't know if Steam ever appealed (they said they would but I haven't read anything about the case being overturned) but nothing has changed.
As in my question at the top, how could it work without hurting the indie game scene? What if the publisher got a cut of the sale? What if games could only be resold after one year ? And if that was ever possible, what games would you sell?
And here's a little GA for you: https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Dg5On/dark-future-blood-red-states
Comment has been collapsed.