Should we be able to resell digital games?

[Zeus]

EU seems to think so, even if the ruling isn't very solid

http://www.edge-online.com/news/what-do ... uling-mean

What do you think, should you be able to sell your digital games?

[kali o.]

EU seems to think so, even if the ruling isn't very solid

http://www.edge-online.com/news/what-do ... uling-mean

What do you think, should you be able to sell your digital games?

Nothing separates games, music, movies, etc from any other product sold to a consumer. It is understood that "owning" a product does not bestow rights to reproduce or otherwise violate copyright/ip. A digital copy is a product. It is tangible and delivered to the consumer. The only way I could see this being otherwise is for services such as OnLive or Netflix, where, ultimately no product is delivered - it is streamed media (at the end of the day, I have no issue with this -- it's basically content on demand, I don't expect ownership).

The premise that digital content is simply "leased" to consumers with EULAs actually containing some measure of legality is bullshit and it's the industries hope that years of conditioning will make it acceptable to the next generation of consumers. Probably my biggest issue though is legality of "locks" and making circumvention illegal. As more and more products contain "software", it takes control, maintenance and repair of the product away from the consumer and puts them at the mercy of dealer/manufacturer. Even if we only see rare extremes now (vehicle software restricting mechanic options, printer warranty void if software caps reset), it's setting the stage legally for a full on ass raping of consumers. Want your fridge repaired? Call the authorized dealers choice in your area or fuck off.

I've done my part in protest at least. I haven't bought a music CD (besides one, small independant) or physical movie in years. My CD collection was in the hundreds and my DVD collection in the 1000's.

[Zeus]

But that's the point, most people now simple view digital copies as consumables. There's no tangible product so they don't view it as having tangible rights. As someone if they should be able to sell their Blu Ray to someone else and they'll say "fuck yeah!". Ask Steam users if they should be able to sell off their copy of Left 4 Dead that they no longer play and I'm willing to bet there'd be far less enthusiasm or even negativity. The lack of a physical product is a huge part of that.

Forget digital copies from ever having the rights of physical copies, it ain't gonna happen. Even if the ability to sell second-hand or "trade" comes in, it'll be highly controlled and the only one making any real money will be the platform holders. Unless, like in Europe, the people demand it. I really don't see that happening here in North America, people are too much consumer whores.

[Shrinweck]

There's little point to reselling most things on Steam, considering the sales they have. L4D would be worth, like, a penny if we were allowed to resell it. I like the idea of being able to go back to a game whenever I want by just clicking a few times. I like the idea of this more than I like the ability to resell a game. I definitely like this idea more than having to take care of a physical product.

In store credit might be something I'd be interested in on Steam, but even then, it would have to be a shit game that I shouldn't have bought in the first place.

[Zeus]

There's little point to reselling most things on Steam, considering the sales they have. L4D would be worth, like, a penny if we were allowed to resell it. I like the idea of being able to go back to a game whenever I want by just clicking a few times. I like the idea of this more than I like the ability to resell a game. I definitely like this idea more than having to take care of a physical product.

In store credit might be something I'd be interested in on Steam, but even then, it would have to be a shit game that I shouldn't have bought in the first place.

Look, Kali, I didn't even have to say anything. The youngin's are doin' it for me

[Shrinweck]

Yeah us sheeple should just shut up and listen to you grown ups cause clearly you know what's best. There's a damned difference between thinking of digital purchases as "consumables" and wanting them around to play later. As a collector you know this.

[Don]

I'm inclined to agree with Kali that the notion you don't own something just because it's digital is pretty ridiculous. Assuming there is a system to transfer ownership reliably there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do so. Even the argument against piracy or whatever is stupid because the original distributer can easily undercut any competition via resale since the good itself costs them nothing to generate. If I want to sell my copy of (some ancient game) for $1 there's nothing stopping the original maker from selling the same thing for 50 cents after they're pretty sure nobody would buy it brand new. The fact that they continue to sell ancient games for an unreasonable amount of price isn't a reason I shouldn't be allowed to sell the same thing for something reasonable.

And honestly it'd probably take less effort to just pirate whatever you need than trying to find a way to exploit a system where you can resell digital games.

[Shrinweck]

What stops physically trading/selling games from really fucking with the industry is that it's limited to the idea that you have to find and transport the physical product. If you could resell digital games at will then full price games would lose all value. People would pay $50-60 on day one to play it and then rush through the game and immediately resell it. People already do this with physical stuff, but the problems crop up if we have full reselling power (i.e. to each other rather than store credit). Only so many units would be sold before the game would essentially become worthless since the market would reach its saturation point even quicker. This would make basically every developer create even more annoying ways to attempt to dissuade us from reselling.

[Don]

If people bought a game at $60 and then immediately sold it for $5 that probably suggested the game was overpriced to begin with.

In theory there's supposed to be value in continuing to be able to play a game. If there isn't, then that game probably isn't very good. You're still taking a pretty hefty loss if you bought something $60 and sold it for $20 a week later.

[Zeus]

Yeah us sheeple should just shut up and listen to you grown ups cause clearly you know what's best. There's a damned difference between thinking of digital purchases as "consumables" and wanting them around to play later. As a collector you know this.

Of course I want my shit to play it later. I have fun pulling out 20 year-old games now and then.

But that don't mean I don't think that the value of digital games is greatly dimished by the lack of ability to transfer ownership to someone else, either temporarily or permanently. Don't mean that I don't still believe that when you buy something, it's yours. You own it and as the owner, you can do whatever you want with it. This conditioning the publishers (and, by extension, the movie and music industries) have been instilling in the population for the last 15 years into making you believe you are simply "leasing" the right" to that particular song/movie/game is extreme bullshit. That's what Kali basically said up above and what I've been arguing for years. You pay for that copy, it's yours to do with whatever you please.....period.

This whole notion of restricted use - and Diablo 3 is maybe the worst example of that and I likely won't buy another Blizzard game because of it - should not be acceptable in any way. Yet, we have a whole generation or two of consumers who just accept it without question and even argue for it. It's not like you're paying less for these digital versions; in fact, in the case of games, you may actually be paying more in a lot of cases. And don't bother with the "I got it on sale for 75% off" argument. I get stuff on sale on physical media all the time at that kind of discount. Sales digitally are no different than sales physically, they're done to boost sales short term for x reason. 99 cents for a single song when full albums cost $10 and there's usually 13 songs or so on an album ain't a deal. You seen the prices for "renting" movies on PSN/XBLA?

Simple fact is the companies have been working on you for over a decade, trying to change your habits and providing false "value" for digital downloads ("Man, now I don't have to have these huge number of games cluttering up my household") while eliminating a large portion of the real value (trading, resale) provided by physical media while not lowering the price at all. And let's not forget just how much money they're saving by not manufacturing, warehousing, and distributing physical media, it's not like they can't offer you some discount for moving on to digital. But do they do that? Nope, even though, as Valve has proven, consumers react with their wallets very favourably when the price is adjusted to account for the decreased value proposition offered to consumers. Why do you think Sony and Microshaft are so stubborn about that? They're rather eat the lost revenue now to establish the market for 10 years from now. That's before you even take into account the fact there's so much incentive for one of them to say "fuck it, there's so much money to be made, let's lower the price". That, of course, assumes actual competition exists in the marketplace. But in an oligopoloy situtation, implied collusion rears its ugly head far too much.

What do you think is gonna happen in the inevitable situtation where games become ONLY digitally available? Don't believe it's gonna happen any time soon? Then why did Sony buy Genkai? In 10 years, I'd be surprised if more than 1/3rd of games are available to buy on physical media. And what about next generation when they're gonna start offering real a la carte gaming? Do you think they're gonna take a $60 Call of Duty game and divide it so that multi-only is $25, Spec Ops is $15, and Campaign is $20 and the sum of the parts is only the original price? No chance. It's gonna be more like $40/$25/$35 and they're gonna try to suck more out of each "copy". And the excuse will be "not everyone's gonna buy everything so we have to charge more" whereas in reality, you're gonna have 3 separate developers (already happening) developing each "part" and they will be budgeted according to expected sales, just like any other game development.

What I meant by the "youngin's" remark is a lot of younger people don't get is the long-term impact of what's really going on and has been for the last 15 years. People should be pissed that they're forced to pay more for much less but they're not and that's because of the PR bullshit that's been ongoing for a while. Then again, people just happily pay more to play a portion of a game they already bought so I guess it's not really a surprise....

[Zeus]

What stops physically trading/selling games from really fucking with the industry is that it's limited to the idea that you have to find and transport the physical product. If you could resell digital games at will then full price games would lose all value. People would pay $50-60 on day one to play it and then rush through the game and immediately resell it. People already do this with physical stuff, but the problems crop up if we have full reselling power (i.e. to each other rather than store credit). Only so many units would be sold before the game would essentially become worthless since the market would reach its saturation point even quicker. This would make basically every developer create even more annoying ways to attempt to dissuade us from reselling.

OK, let me ask you a question: why do you think all games are priced at $60 at release aside from some very rare ones? Are they all worth that? Do the developers have a greater budget for a game that's gonna be priced at $60 instead of $40?

And the "worth" of a game has MANY more factors. If a game is "worth" it, why would you sell it? And does it automatically mean that the supply of said 'used' products equals or exceeds the demand? All you would be doing is transferring the same market that currently exists for used physical media to the digital world.

And that is the point, consumers affecting the marketplace allows for a proper, competitive marketplace in an oligopoly situation which forces an artificially-inflate price point for the vast majority of the products offered. So is competition a bad thing now?

[Zeus]

In theory there's supposed to be value in continuing to be able to play a game. If there isn't, then that game probably isn't very good. You're still taking a pretty hefty loss if you bought something $60 and sold it for $20 a week later.

Sports games fans know this all too well :-)

[Zeus]

Interesting take on this ruling. A European cloud gaming service CEO says how cloud-gaming is being ignored and how this ruling will hurt those kinds of services since you don't actually "own" anything, you just stream:

http://www.edge-online.com/news/green-m ... attractive

I agree to a point but if it's Onlive (Netflix-like $7 a month service), I think that model won't be affected at all. However, if you wanna charge someone $60 for "unlimited access for life" to a game like CoD over a cloud-gaming service, yeah, it'll be severely affected

[Don]

I think the 'ownership' clause is problematic because you technically don't 'own' money either. You only have possession of money but it sure is good for buying everything you can possibly want unless your government flops.

So the game makers can talk all they want about how you don't own any of this stuff and it might even true but it's not even relevent because when I buy a game I have possession of a license or whatever you want to call it, and assuming you've a fairly reliable way to ensure the transfer of license is secure, I should be able to transfer it.

This is actually somewhat similar to the whole RM thing. For far too long game companies have gotten away with the generic 'we own everything you can't do jack' clause, even though the economy of virtual goods is said to be comparable to the GNP of some nations (latest one I saw was SWTOR's economy is comparable to that of Germany's). So apparently you're part of a world that has a output comparable to a major developed nation but you don't actually own anything. That simply doesn't sound right.