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

[Hjalmar Fryklund]

My money is on they will put a timer on your sale with unlimited free renewal effectively making it a lease and circumventing the entire thing by removing the question of "is it a product or a service". In the end we are slightly worse off because what we didn't need before because we didn't make use of has to be enforced by DRM to legally cover their asses.

That sounds like a reasonable bet to me. It would circumvent the exhaustion doctrine by making it a service, making you unable to resell.

This might very well herald the end for the type of digital distributors like Gamer´s Gate. Client-driven DDs will likely find a way cope with this though, likely in the way you mentioned above.

Those leases you mention could very well mean another price hike too.

Mulling it over, this ruling may well be a great boon to physical stores (not that it is bad news for me).

 

[Hjalmar Fryklund]

My money is on they will put a timer on your sale with unlimited free renewal effectively making it a lease and circumventing the entire thing by removing the question of "is it a product or a service". In the end we are slightly worse off because what we didn't need before because we didn't make use of has to be enforced by DRM to legally cover their asses.

That sounds like a reasonable bet to me. It would circumvent the exhaustion doctrine by making it a service, making you unable to resell.

This might very well herald the end for the type of digital distributors like Gamer´s Gate. Client-driven DDs will likely find a way cope with this though, likely in the way you mentioned above.

Those leases you mention could very well mean another price hike too.

Mulling it over, this ruling may well be a great boon to physical stores (not that it is bad news for me).

If they define it as a service though that brings them under many new regulations which steam have dodged with their current attitude of "we don't know what we are, as long as it benefits us". Currently they use the loopholes present in the EU laws for goods and the other laws for services to get out of many consumer complaints.

You mind elaborating a bit?

Also, do you see this ruling as closing a loophole?

 

[NortherWolf]

*donated my couch to Goodwill, got no money for it

How does it affect YOU if I'm buying new? If anything, I'm helping keep the gaming business from crashing down on itself.

It doesn't, I'm just pointing out that the idea that developers should get a cut off of second hand sales is ludicrous.

Which is why I'm not a fan of digital version second-hand sales in the first place.

It's good for the customer, it's absolutely tragic for the games industry. Don't you roll your eyes at me, games cost a massive amount of money to make, and anything that results in less money going back into the publishers and devs is bad in my eyes. We can hardly get them to do interesting risks as it is!

Aye, games cost a massive amount of money to make. Why? Because of insane expectations of how much money each title can make. I've never got the sheer mind boggling stupidity of game makers.
Movies cost around what, ten dollars to see in the cinema and the only prerequisite is that you have a cinema somewhere close.
Computergames/videogames require you to have a console or PC, require you to be interested in the title etc etc...Yet some games have budgets approaching Avatar-levels. How do they expect to regain that sort of money?

Furthermore, to the part of the Escapist that so vehemently argues that this is bad: Okay, I've seen on this site that places like Gamestop/Game are horrible for used games sales, Steam is pretty much the same etc etc...So question is: What do you want? For consumers to be forced to allow the Publishers to set prices?(someone mentioned 200 quid earlier in the thread, which I honestly think would be a price set if we had to rely on their good will)

Gaming needs to play by the same rules every other industry and market does. You buy a game, it's yours. It's not theirs, they're not renting it to you.
It's time we consumers took back our rights, lackeys be damned.

 

[Nikolaz72]

I am becoming more and more envious of Europe. America would never pass this not matter how much sense it makes. Though I do see a issue. If someone has the right to sell a license then they should also have the right to gift a pre-existing one.

So, how is Steam going to make any money if groups of friends just freely pass their games around and even receive their games back? For example, I borrow Max Payne 3 from a friend and then simply give it back to him when I am done.

Well, what about making it a core part of steam. And setting a minimum of, I dunno.. 5 bucks, then they take 20% of the sale because, Hey. They own the transfer service.

You know, now that I think of it, if they really wanted they could jack it all the way up to say 99% goes to the distributor, then when the EU goes on about it they could say "we put the system in place, its not our fault if the gamers dont feel they are making enough money off of our work."

I know Valve arent paragons of goodness. However, they have been known to often do what makes them popular, such a decision although possible, is not good PR. While the other choice is a sound business decision aswell as good PR.

I am becoming more and more envious of Europe. America would never pass this not matter how much sense it makes. Though I do see a issue. If someone has the right to sell a license then they should also have the right to gift a pre-existing one.

So, how is Steam going to make any money if groups of friends just freely pass their games around and even receive their games back? For example, I borrow Max Payne 3 from a friend and then simply give it back to him when I am done.

Well, what about making it a core part of steam. And setting a minimum of, I dunno.. 5 bucks, then they take 20% of the sale because, Hey. They own the transfer service.

It is a 'legal' part of the EULA that you cannot share your media beyond private use. So giving out free to your friends so they dont have to buy it is technically illegal (Like piracy though, a crime without punishment) So enforcing you to say, sell it for at least for *one* dollar (that goes to Steam) under the guise of the money it takes for the system to do its job. Wouldnt be illegal. (Paypal does it, with money) And aslong as steam can not only get profits from selling the game, but will keep making profits off of people selling the same game 'again' well.. Isnt it what the publishers have always dreamt of? Eliminating Gamestop and taking the resell profits. Being able to sell the same product more than once, with the costumers actually being happy about it. In my thoughts its always been a corporation wetdream.

But then it could be argued that such services have no right to profit off of it when you have the legal right to do it at will. Perhaps a good example is sidewalks.
You are legally responsible for maintaining your side walks in-front of your house but people have the legal right to use them at will. You cannot charge a toll to people who use it either. This would be the situation Steam would be in from the way I gather it.

Also when you buy games from Steam you don't just get the game's license you also are getting Steam's tacked on which is the service of providing the game to you through digital means. The game would automatically be binded to this other license and agreement with Steam.
This would be like seeing a homeless person outside a super market, going in and buying a sandwich and giving it to the homeless man only to have the store manager rush out and demand that you pay extra for giving it away. If we can claim ownership of license agreement and can sell/trade/give at will then Steam would be stuck honoring such just as if it was still you with it. Meaning they likely cannot legally add any fee or service charge beyond what is already in the pre-existing license agreement.

Except Digital Games is not a physical product, and you require a service for the transfer. Your example would only work if there was a law in place that requried a special middleman called a Sandwicher to be in place in order to hand your sandwich over to another person, and if the Supermarket owned that Sandwicher he would require a certain percentage of the Sandwich when you handed it over, youknow. To pay for his services.

Steam would need to transfer the files over and spend extra resources so that you could hand over digital files to a friend over the internet, and as with all internet services with money Paypal, Kickstarter and such dealing in money. It is fair that those who owns the service takes a percentage.

 

[KiKiweaky]

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.

I'm on your side btw do you think I'm a fan of this ridiculous always online DRM that alot of companies have become a fan of, or any other form of DRM for that matter?

I'm just not convinced that companies are going make this easy to implement, you called us consumers in your statement. Thats exactly what game publishers want us to be consumers of their product, not consumers of second hand products.

No gamestop store (or any other computer game store) in existence will take a second hand copy of a computer game and give you a full refund, you'd be lucky to get store credit if your able to convince them that the game wont work on your system. The games are too easily cracked and copied to a hard drive. They arent able to trust everyone that comes in claiming the game doesnt work, so they dont no matter who you are your treated the same because some people want to buy the game copy it and then return it.

How is an online distribution service going to know if you have disabled your copy of the game after selling it on to someone else?

 

[Hjalmar Fryklund]

#1 Steam and other DD services are really blurry when it comes to the law. You can either see them as services or as goods (the games). Services and goods have 2 different set of EU laws governing them each with a few loopholes. If you tried to get them to do say... a refund under one set of rules they would just say they weren't governed by them and ignore you.

I threw about 2-3 different laws at them which explicitly said I should get a refund for a service (for any reason) and they said they weren't governed by it. The same was said for laws governing goods. They just ignore people essentially.

2 I don't know. They will use every means at their disposal to ensure they do as little as possible for people. Steam itself is very good but when it comes down to the money side of it, they are massive assholes who do as little as possible to help you. Steam support is notoriously bad for a reason.

Okay then. I asked for elaboration because I couldn't really tell if you were arguing against me or merely problematising what I stated.

Thing is, if the idea that Draech that suggested (that you will be effectively renting a game for certain time that can be extended ad infinitum) becomes a reality, then it means that any DD that uses such a business model will be firmly planted in the camp of service provider. On the good and the bad.

Which isn't to say a DD like Valve wouldn't try to muddy the waters in spite of that, of course.

 

[NortherWolf]

Brains? The courts?
You are fine with a system that fucks the client, check. I'm not. I grew up with the NES, and I traded and bought and sold used games.
Matter of fact, the Swedish branch of Game comes from the supply chain of the earlier game store chain Nordic Games, founded by a guy in the town of my birth who I've talked to several times.
And you know what? That was more than fifteen years ago, so I don't think used sales in one way or the other will do much to the business.

 

[lacktheknack]

Which is why I'm not a fan of digital version second-hand sales in the first place.

It's good for the customer, it's absolutely tragic for the games industry. Don't you roll your eyes at me, games cost a massive amount of money to make, and anything that results in less money going back into the publishers and devs is bad in my eyes. We can hardly get them to do interesting risks as it is!

You're right. That's why you can't sell movies and books. God forbid, movie executives and writers might just stop taking risks!

Books and movies are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper to make. You never hear of a writer talking about "return on investment", maybe there's a goddamned reason for it.

And notice how publishers specifically label risk as a bad thing "because there isn't a good return on investment". The only solutions to this is expanding the amount of people playing games, making games more expensive, reducing costs to make games, or gamers swallowing their pride and buying some games that look interesting but got less than an 80%.

What will do ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD is digital re-sale.

 

[lacktheknack]

*donated my couch to Goodwill, got no money for it

How does it affect YOU if I'm buying new? If anything, I'm helping keep the gaming business from crashing down on itself.

It doesn't, I'm just pointing out that the idea that developers should get a cut off of second hand sales is ludicrous.

Which is why I'm not a fan of digital version second-hand sales in the first place.

It's good for the customer, it's absolutely tragic for the games industry. Don't you roll your eyes at me, games cost a massive amount of money to make, and anything that results in less money going back into the publishers and devs is bad in my eyes. We can hardly get them to do interesting risks as it is!

Aye, games cost a massive amount of money to make. Why? Because of insane expectations of how much money each title can make. I've never got the sheer mind boggling stupidity of game makers.
Movies cost around what, ten dollars to see in the cinema and the only prerequisite is that you have a cinema somewhere close.
Computergames/videogames require you to have a console or PC, require you to be interested in the title etc etc...Yet some games have budgets approaching Avatar-levels. How do they expect to regain that sort of money?

Furthermore, to the part of the Escapist that so vehemently argues that this is bad: Okay, I've seen on this site that places like Gamestop/Game are horrible for used games sales, Steam is pretty much the same etc etc...So question is: What do you want? For consumers to be forced to allow the Publishers to set prices?(someone mentioned 200 quid earlier in the thread, which I honestly think would be a price set if we had to rely on their good will)

Gaming needs to play by the same rules every other industry and market does. You buy a game, it's yours. It's not theirs, they're not renting it to you.
It's time we consumers took back our rights, lackeys be damned.

What I WANT is for them to slash their budgets. In half would be nice.

But until something drastic like that happens, what I DON'T want is anything that will exacerbate the current situation. You know just as well as I do that big publishers would sooner slit their throats than drop their marketing budgets. There's a few solutions to this - boycott over-marketed products, support only publishers that are responsible, or buy more games from games with no publisher at all, etc. - but what won't fix a damned thing is introducing digital resale.

Feel free to "take back your rights"... when doing so won't result in A. the cease of all AAA non-military-shooters, or B. a AAA video game collapse.

Alternatively, buy from gog.com.

 

[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?

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?

Not from the sellers perspective, but the buyer is a different case. A legal alternative to a DRM-ridden transfer: I have legal, digitally distributed games without any DRM.
Example TW2, which is both on Steam and GOG. To buy a TW2 license from a Steam owner rather than from me, suggests people will pay MORE for the added hassle and limitations of DRM.
Most gamers will see the big problem with my happy little alternative, while it still remains the better choice all the same.

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

Well, since the Escapist frowns on piracy, members here can on the outside fall into only 2 categories: nice guys and just plain fools. They are buying.

 

[uttaku]

What people dont seem to realise is that all this ruling means is that is is LEGAL to resell digital downloads NOT that the ability to do so has to be provided. So yes you can if you wanted to resell that drm free game you just bought off GOG, but nowhere does it say steam must provide a way for you to sell on games you have bought from them...