So the EU just ruled that it's legal to re-sell digital versions of games.

[veloper]

How does the buyer know I'm sending him the original and not just making a copy for him?

Is there even an original? I'm thinking no.

This is even dumber than regular used sales, where you may atleast sometimes get the manual and the case with the game.

Who here will pay for a "used" digital copy, that they can also torrent for free?

A good person who doesn't pirate games and would rather not spend a full $60 on a AAA game that isn't likely to go on sale would.

What's so GOOD about giving me some money for something that took me no effort for me to recreate?
The digital copy itself is worthless.

Developers may deserve support for their efforts but giving random X free money is nowhere on the good and honest scale.

Think you have completely and utterly missed the point. The ruling is intended to make digital goods the same as phyical goods.

Physical world: You buy something. They give it to you. You use it. You grow bored with it. You sell it. You no longer possess it.

Digital world at the moment. You buy something. The person who made it seems to think they in someway have a right to control what you do with it after thus overturning about 2000 years of various legal systems' understanding of possession.

EU ruling digital world: You buy something. They give it to you. You use it. You grow bored with it. You sell it. You forfeit your copy and no longer possess it.

Nothing to do with free money, you paid for it and you get a bit back for passing it on as per every other area of business in the world.

Well I'm not complaining because I cannot lose here, but digital goods will never be the same thing as physical goods.
Great for the resellers of "used" bytes; Idiocy on the part of the potential buyers.
But yeah, it's more consumer rights and freedoms basicly, so I'm not complaining, just wondering.

 

[Wintermoot]

so that means I can remove COD Black Ops from my steam list?!

 

[somonels]

Suck it, digital world. Heil German courts.

so that means I can remove COD Black Ops from my steam list?!

That stain of shame shall remain.

 

[Bad Jim]

How many armchair lawyers will pop up in this thread, whining about how EU courts have no idea what they're talking about and how we should just bend over because those poor publishers have to feed their children too?

I'll bite.

For physical items like books and CDs etc, the First Sale Doctrine means that money is not wasted on manufacturing those items. For digital items, manufacturing and distribution are virtually free anyway.

It doesn't really make things cheaper. People will pay more when there is an effective First Sale Doctrine because they can get most of the money back. You would like to buy a game for £35, play it, sell it on Ebay for £30 and pay auction fees of about £3.50. But publishers will realise this, then realise that since you were previously willing to pay £30 without trading in, you will now be willing to pay £200, play it, sell it for £190 and pay auction fees of around £20. The reason why this didn't happen to Gamestop is because they had huge margins and only slightly lowered the cost of gaming.

This is the end of Steam sales in the EU. If a game is 75% off one weekend, it is effectively 75% off forever, because there will be plenty of used licences. This type of sale relies on the fact that most of the people willing to pay the normal price won't be ready for it.

 

[Ruzinus]

I don't see how this ruling will stop publishers from sticking all sorts of crazy DRM in their digital sales. If anyone complains they can just claim that the DRM is there to stop people from reproducing it, and the fact that it stops the software from being re-distributed is just an "unfortunate side effect."

 

[Vkmies]

If Steam lets us sell games we have on our library.... That would be amazingly awesome....

 

[Hjalmar Fryklund]

I've known cops to pirate software. They don't care. Realisticly nothing can happen to you. The legal argument is an empty threat. It has even less effect than a moral appeal.

I was thinking more along the lines of committing actual larceny rather than software piracy. I also happen to think that piracy is mostly a non-issue. But I will concede that larceny is irrelevant if we talk about digital distribution.

However, if we are talking about piracy, then I would make the argument that by pirating you are committing an "economic crime" by making a copy of the product (or the service, if that is how you are seeing it) and devaluing it without compensating for it by paying, thus upsetting the product´s/service´s Natural Monopoly.

And what practical benefit does this offer in the case of videogames?

Thanks to this new court ruling, the exhaustion doctrine (the one that is part of the first sale doctrine, not the patent one) now applies to digitally distributed video games. This means that if a digital product has been sold to you for an unlimited amount of time, the software maker is unable to refuse you reselling the product/service.

You get no guarantees in any case. All you can do is stop giving companies your money if they displease you. That's the whole game.

We don't disagree here.

Pirates are always the smart players.

Nope, they are not always that. They might for example end up streaming some malware or a trojan into their system, damaging their computer, which in bad cases will cost them money as they will need to exchange parts for their computers (unless they steal the replacement parts, of course).

Which could be turned into another argument for buying as well: The DDs can offer you some security during product transfer, and more importantly, can potentially be held accountable if they fail to provide that security. Some anonymous uploader, not so much.

Contributers are useful.

I will admit ignorance here. What do you mean by "contributors?"

The people would buy my hypothetical "used" digital games are just dumb.

And why is this? I am sure you have gone over this before, but I would like you to take it from the top again in full swing this time.

 

[Vegosiux]

It doesn't really make things cheaper. People will pay more when there is an effective First Sale Doctrine because they can get most of the money back. You would like to buy a game for £35, play it, sell it on Ebay for £30 and pay auction fees of about £3.50. But publishers will realise this, then realise that since you were previously willing to pay £30 without trading in, you will now be willing to pay £200, play it, sell it for £190 and pay auction fees of around £20. The reason why this didn't happen to Gamestop is because they had huge margins and only slightly lowered the cost of gaming.

I predict the first publisher that starts selling their games at 200 quid a piece is going down in flames.

Just because people can sell their licenses doesn't mean they will sell them.

 

[Bad Jim]

It doesn't really make things cheaper. People will pay more when there is an effective First Sale Doctrine because they can get most of the money back. You would like to buy a game for £35, play it, sell it on Ebay for £30 and pay auction fees of about £3.50. But publishers will realise this, then realise that since you were previously willing to pay £30 without trading in, you will now be willing to pay £200, play it, sell it for £190 and pay auction fees of around £20. The reason why this didn't happen to Gamestop is because they had huge margins and only slightly lowered the cost of gaming.

I predict the first publisher that starts selling their games at 200 quid a piece is going down in flames.

Just because people can sell their licenses doesn't mean they will sell them.

I predict EA will try it, and people buy their games anyway. They're still around after all the other shit they've pulled. And people will sell their licenses because it's the only way they can justify that kind of outlay.

Captcha : foul play

 

[Wicky_42]

How does the buyer know I'm sending him the original and not just making a copy for him?

Is there even an original? I'm thinking no.

This is even dumber than regular used sales, where you may atleast sometimes get the manual and the case with the game.

Who here will pay for a "used" digital copy, that they can also torrent for free?

It's a transference of a license - like when you buy a game on Steam, say, the license is added to your account. This law means it's now legal to sell this license to someone else, ie delete the license from your account and add it to theirs. Is that really all that hard to understand?

Who here will pay for a "new" digital copy, that they can also torrent for free?

 

[Wicky_42]

This is the end of Steam sales in the EU. If a game is 75% off one weekend, it is effectively 75% off forever, because there will be plenty of used licences. This type of sale relies on the fact that most of the people willing to pay the normal price won't be ready for it.

The rest of your post might have been ridiculous, but this bit was interesting, and I was wondering along the same lines. If Steam were to allow account holders to re-sell their licenses, it would be catastrophic for their business model; with no entropy on the licenses in circulation and the ease of communication through the forums, the value of games would drop rapidly after launch as people complete them and want to move on. That's kinda how market forces work, really - supply and demand and all that. However, if Steam were to offer a buy-back scheme that would work - by remaining as the sole distributor of licenses, they remain in control of the market price of them.

If people trade in their unwanted game licenses to the Steam Store, does that harm Steam or benefit it? As with used game sales these days, many console gamers use old unwanted games to help fund new purchases, so could this scheme boost sales? Or would the sales of unwanted titles suck the money back out of the Steam system and weaken the distribution platform's position? Obviously the resell value would have to be linked to the price you purchased the license at (whatever the sale was!), and Steam would have flexibility to set the trade-in value at whatever percentage they felt would work.

It would be an interesting move, and could potentially revolutionise the market place... or destroy it...

 

[Nurb]

It's a transfer of license/ownership, similar to how car titles are transfered. Consumers have rights, they gotta deal with it.

It's not like they've lost money at all, they complain the millions in profit they make aren't enough every damn quarter even though their income climbs

A computer game isnt a car, you give the physical car and the right to use it to somebody else. With a computer game you give them the license to use the game not the game itself, the compnay will have to provide them with the game.

Of course the company has lost money 60 euros/dollars for a new game vs whatever portion of the sale the company is going to take from what you sold it for.

And this ruling said the license thing is BS and that you own products you purchase, digital or physical. It's basic property rights same as any other product. EULAs and TOSs mean nothing in courts and are almost always thrown out because they're too far reaching.

They have been screwing paying customers and treating us like criminals for a decade, it's time they accomodate consumers for a change.

 

[Korten12]

EA and Activision.

I can see EA but not Activsion, at least not as much. They actually don't have a DRM they use, well unless you count Steam, then they do. But they don't even have online passes either. So I don't know if they would make them as angry as EA would be.

 

[Dryk]

I'm not too sure on how laws like this work, but surely they would only apply to Steam or Origin if they were stationed in the EU?

No, because as soon as a company starts selling something in a country those sales are subject to local law.