Pachter: Valve Will Offer Trade-ins on Steam

[Unrulyhandbag]

Well how does gamestop pay you for your used games?

It would work like the retail used games market. Just in digital form. Thats how I see it working anyways.

Gamestop pay you with the projected income from selling that copy on. Steam doesn't use physical copies so they gain nothing from the trade in.

The only reason to do this would be to encourage more frequent spending on steam but that price has got to be bang on and to the consumers advantage, enough to encourage you to trade in and overspend and small enough not to be gouging valve.

Now a transfer of ownership fee, that I can see. Pure profit for them and maybe they can resell those DLC's

 

[SovietX]

This wont happen.

But I wish it would. So many games I have bought which failed hard, I would love to get something better with that money (Im looking at you MW2)

 

[Canid117]

Aww I was thinking it was actually announced.

 

[RelexCryo]

This has to be the dumbest prediction ever. It doesn't make sense, how do developers make money off of this?

And Valve has always been about developers.

This^. If people stop giving Valve money, and just use old games as currency, it will hurt Valve as well. If I buy one game for 10.00, and then trade that game in for seven dollars(or an equivalent game), and the first game developer was supposed to make at least seven dollars on the sale, how does the first developer make any money? The money they are supposed to be making is essentially being used to buy a second game.

Valve already sells things at a huge discount, stop being greedy, people.

And this is coming from someone who simply cannot play some of the games he bought from Valve, like Blacklight Tango Down and Quake 3 Arena.

 

[meowchef]

I have 170 games on Steam. That would be AWEEEEESSSSOOOOOOMMMMEEEE.

 

[Gregorius]

Well, this is an amazingly good idea. Especially since I caved and bought Street Fighter IV two days before there was any announcement of Super Street Fighter IV.

I kid you not - I bought the game, had some fun with the trials to try and perfect some of the characters' "combos", go on my computer not even 48 hours later and "Rumors of a Super Street Fighter IV Coming Our Way".
That day, I dropped an F-bomb so massive, I could have sworn it was the cause of a few accidents on the freeway near my house.

 

[fulano]

Either this or people will keep doing it behind the courtains. What's funny is that this works like some kind of transaction tax, unlike in wallstreet...

 

[Sn1P3r M98]

I see how this could work. Someone wants HL1 so they trade in HL2 for it. They think HL1 is awesome but they really want HL2 back to replay so they buy it and Valve profits. The system Sounds awesome anyways. Valve is great!

 

[ShadowsofHope]

That would be plainly fucking awesome.

I WANTZ IT!

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Awesome... can finally get rid of Dragon Age and Zombie Driver.

 

[joshthor]

in theory steam is the only way this system would work for pc games. however, it would be so hard for the developers to trust steam using this system. digital distribution means the games are all code. there is no way to be sure valve would not be just stealing copies to take the whole profit. also. patcher predictions are one of the only things i sincerely hate about this site. why do they keep being posted?

 

[XShrike]

Are they going to keep track on what you payed for the game against what its current value is? I could see instance of games going on one of those crazy sales and people buying it low in an attempt to trade it back in for a higher price later.

 

[=Paranoid=]

This has to be the dumbest prediction ever. It doesn't make sense, how do developers make money off of this?

And Valve has always been about developers.

If the game has already been sold by a retailer (Steam for example) then the developer has already made money. Lets talk about this with say a piece of furniture and you might understand.

Say you buy a bed from a retailer, the person who built the bed has already made money by selling his stock to a retailer. In 5 years time you might decide to sell the bed to someone else, and the person who made the bed wont receive anything extra from you selling his product that has been previously bought from a retailer. Your essentially saying that because that particular company built that bed every time it's sold they need to be paid a fee for it.

That's just crazy talk... What your essentially saying is the games publishers should be paid a fee every time a game is bought and resold through numerous vendors. Now i understand that its a digital license via steam, but you have already paid for it, all parties involved have already made a profit. Steam would only be extending a service to its customers for trade ins.

Anyways, if this proves to be true it will be a great addition to Steam.

 

[Togusa09]

It would be useful. Even if you could just trade in games for a limited time after purchase like console gamers get.

Most games I'd like to keep, though I'd be perfectly fine to trade in C&C4, and it could be a simple solution to the GOTY release dilemma.

And is the trade in value based on purchase price, or current price? Which would be further complicated by some of the more stupid publishers regionalising their prices. What's to stop someone buying a game for $50 in the US store and trading it in for $90 in the Australian?

 

[Exort]

And so Valve removes the last barrier between them and open-faced honesty. My two cents says that:
A. This is going to kill the "you license it, you don't own it" argument for download software, and help make a case for first-sale rights.

Nope, they can agure it is like terminating licenses. Anyways, Valve action have nothing to do with the how copy right works. People can be send money out for free it won't change anything.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

This, to my mind, is the "solution" to the used game debate/cle.

The consumer maintains his/her right to salvage partial equity from his/her purchases through discounted purchases.

The publishers don't have to deal with recycled inventory suppressing sales - because there is no inventory.

With no hard numbers or restrictions, it sounds dicey. Put a few limitations on things (no credit for/towards heavily discounted purchases, cap discount from credit on a per game basis, tightly control eligibility, no trade-ins for real money), and suddenly it starts to make a lot of sense.

Players can "sell" what are effectively their licenses to play specific games in exchange for capped discounts on new releases, driving sales.

Game makers "pay" for these exchanges with "money" that is only used to buy their products anyways - more like a non-specific, industry-wide loan, really.

Valve collects a small premium for providing the service (and, I imagine, shouldering some of the per-game liability).

 

[Exort]

If the game has already been sold by a retailer (Steam for example) then the developer has already made money. Lets talk about this with say a piece of furniture and you might understand.

Say you buy a bed from a retailer, the person who built the bed has already made money by selling his stock to a retailer. In 5 years time you might decide to sell the bed to someone else, and the person who made the bed wont receive anything extra from you selling his product that has been previously bought from a retailer. Your essentially saying that because that particular company built that bed every time it's sold they need to be paid a fee for it.

That's just crazy talk... What your essentially saying is the games publishers should be paid a fee every time a game is bought and resold through numerous vendors. Now i understand that its a digital license via steam, but you have already paid for it, all parties involved have already made a profit. Steam would only be extending a service to its customers for trade ins.

Anyways, if this proves to be true it will be a great addition to Steam.

You know Bed can be worn and broken. A license for software can't (well not in that sense). Therefore, there is always need for new bed but not software if both market are capped. If people is smart about how to buy games then the publish only gets the "small fee". Of course, in real life people forgot to trade in all the time, but with digtal it is much easier.

an example:

I bought half life 2 for 50
I trade it in for 45
and bought Team fortress for 50

in total publisher got 55 dollar for two games, with three game it would be 60 and so on.

you see it is impossble if people are smart about buy games. I admit people are dumb, but for their own sake I hope not this dumb.

If this is true, there I will end up limiting three game on steam for myself, and I basicly pay $5 for new titles. For the industry, it means not publish single player game again, Only games like Team fortress, Starcraft that can stood up the the test of time can be profitable (because player won't trade them in). Games like Mass effect, Dragon Age, uncharted where you play the game 3 times and never look back would be dead (I would trade these in as soon as I finsh them 3 times).

 

[SmugFrog]

Pachter has been wildly wrong with his predictions in the past . . . but sometimes he's spot on

If you make enough crazy predictions, at least one of them is bound to come true. I really don't believe anything this guy sits around and comes up with. He's so off the wall with his wild ideas - what is it exactly he does? Is that his job to sit and come up with wacky ideas, good or bad? How can I get a job doing that?

Oh DANG man, A-DING-DANG-DO! If I was smart enough to come up with some wacky ideas I probably wouldn't have to ask that question, I'd just predict that I'll get hired by some company that wants random predictions.

 

[Exort]

This has to be the dumbest prediction ever. It doesn't make sense, how do developers make money off of this?

And Valve has always been about developers.

That small fee he mentioned, thats most likely what the developers would get. And besides, they already got your money when you bought the game, or when a friend bought it and gifted it to you.

But now they are returning it to you (except a small fee)? who pay that? the internet god?

Well how does gamestop pay you for your used games?

It would work like the retail used games market. Just in digital form. Thats how I see it working anyways.

There is no such thing as "used" Digtal copy. It would make more sense if they just lower the price over time for titles.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

yesss, finally pc games will see the beauty of what consoles have had for yearssss, there are at least 10-20 games i got in deals ill be willing to part with on steam, thatll go towards pre orders/other games for sure.