A French court has ruled that Valve should allow people to re-sell their digital games

Quoting: ShmerlHowever I don't think it fixes their worries about total number of sales going down. Imagine someone playing a game, and then selling it to others, who are buying from such people instead of the store directly. The bottom line would be less sales for the store and developers.

The law just says that you should be able to resell, but it doesn't says where. So, I think that is quite probable that you will only be able to resell in a internal market of the store (and the store can get a fee from that resell).

By the way, I don't think that free games will disappear. If you give a game for free and a lot of people get it, the price will go near zero (supply and demand). The only thing that may changes is that games will be free when they reach their EOL.


Last edited by x_wing on 20 September 2019 at 12:21 am UTC

Quoting: x_wingThe law just says that you should be able to resell, but it doesn't says where. So, I think that is quite probable that you will only be able to resell in a internal market of the store (and the store can get a fee from that resell)

I don't think that would fit the idea of that law. I.e. it's not mandating a middleman. So it means you can sell it however you want, and the store and developers might get nothing from the secondary sales.


Last edited by Shmerl on 20 September 2019 at 12:24 am UTC

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: x_wingThe law just says that you should be able to resell, but it doesn't says where. So, I think that is quite probable that you will only be able to resell in a internal market of the store (and the store can get a fee from that resell)

I don't think that would fit the idea of that law. I.e. it's not mandating a middleman. So it means you can sell it however you want.

That's debatable. You have access to the game in their platform, so only allowing the reselling in their platform will have a lot of sense. Anyway, they can do this in the beginning a then fight the lawsuit that could come afterwards.

Being from Argentina made me think of another big problem for Steam: how to handle regional prices? I know that they already allows some restriction to keys (e.g. only allow the activation on Latam), but with countries as the one I live (with a currency that devaluates more than a 30% from one week to another) Steam will have a hard time trying to control reselling prices if it's not careful.

Honestly, I like that this is happening. We've become a culture where we're more than happy "buying" games knowing full well they can be stripped from us without warning at any time (this has happened to a few games on the Playstation store... ex. PT). Given the industry is also in some very hot water with lootboxes *cough* I mean "surprise mechanics" *cough*, as well as microtransactions in general, we ~~may~~ see a radical shift for the industry.

I'll admit, a digital distribution store allowing "resale" of their games is tricky. There is *no* inventory at all. There's no supply and demand because the supply is infinite and there's nothing lost buying a "used" copy of a game (like, the disc could be worn, or you may not get the nice box, or you might not get any of the "extras" [often included with games in the 80s and 90s]), so you don't miss out on anything from a used copy.

I don't know... I kinda like the idea of potentially forcing the industry into physical distribution once more, but I'm not so naive to think that would actually happen.

Why would you want to go back to physical distribution? It's surely step backwards.

Quoting: ObsidianBlkI don't know... I kinda like the idea of potentially forcing the industry into physical distribution once more, but I'm not so naive to think that would actually happen.

i dont think linux gaming would have come so far with DISCs
which store would sell linux games? it is physical storage the owner has to pay for. of course they would have more windows games

it is a very difficult topic. i understand both sides.
if valve goes down, all you games are gone..... but if you have a DVD, the DVD also is useless afers some years
and maybe you cant even install it anymore, because your newer OS doesnt support it
on steam they can change all files easily

i think as it is, it is good


Last edited by mylka on 20 September 2019 at 2:30 am UTC

Here is a true story:
On Amazon, I asked if I could resell a Ubisoft game after I was done with it or if it required tying the game key to some account. An actual Ubisoft rep answered the question on Amazon and said I could resell the game. Guess what. I bought it. The person that buys the used game from me wouldn't have bought it new at full price. They get to play it sooner than waiting for a price drop. The harm for Ubisoft is they don't get a sale when the game's retail price drops enough a year or two later.

So, it goes like this: $60 from me at launch or $20 from me and the other guy ($40 total) two years later.

My PS4 would lose some value if I could start selling my Steam games. But yeah, I can imagine more and more games requiring "3rd-party EULA," which would mean assigning the game license to an account outside of Steam and logging in via a launcher in order to play. That would be really annoying. But I think consumers could fight against that with their dollars and reviews.

Quoting: MalNedless to say that releasing an untested and badly optimized game would quickly become a suicidal move and nobody would do it.

Isn't that what killed Arkham Knight, which released right after the new Steam refund policy came into effect? We lost the Linux port due to that, sadly...

Interesting times ahead. Assuming this wiggles its way into EU laws (and then likely to other places too).
Software distribution might become more efficient. Take me as an example, some games/software is "kinda interesting", but there is no way in hell I'm paying full price for it, nor maybe even 50% so only chance for me to consider buying it is if we get "sick sale" with discount of say 80%. With used market I would assume prices could fall more in line with "remaining demand" and not just on publishers whims to do sales (which then end).

Now another thing, that I think might happen and I would personally like very much - it should really screw over AAA games. Use game market => less first/full price sales => less possible revenue => max expenses for production can not be as high => no more games costing multi millions to develop. I actually think this is much better for indies that do "cheaper work" (the production cost is not astronomical). Though for previous statement there is one other facet to consider. Kinds of games that will be made will likely change significantly, again for the better, for my personal tastes. As certain games, that games that are more of game, will become more common, while games that are less of a game will be less common. What I mean by games that are games - games that have qualities of "real games" like chess, go, hex = infinite replay value, and not some mildly interactive story. So that will be good for such games as I see them retaining value (if game is good) over whole market better than story based games as they have better replay value - so you have bigger chance to want to keep it. Also this gold for E-Sports, kinda, as such games are all about replay and honing skills => you do not want to sell your copy. Visual novels though... I see them in worst situation with this, with story based RPG's probably second on chopping block (the size of impact from this); while something like DOTA or StarCraft being least affected, though they will might need to work harder to keep world engaged with product.