EU Court Ruling Allows for Re-sale of Used Games by End-Users

[Shidoshi]

http://www.lo-ping.org/2012/07/03/eu...end-users-you/

Had a game gathering dust on your shelf or taking space on your hard drive? Living in fear of copyright rulings as of late that’s seemingly brought the hammer down on anyone and everyone? Well quiver in fear no longer…at least if you live in Europe.
A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union has officially stated that “an author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet”. In essence, it is now illegal in Europe for companies to try to stop you from selling your used digitally distributed software.

This is really awesome, I wonder how this will translate to Steam.

[Lozmaster]

Niceeee. I'm all for premptive cockblocking of the rumours that upcoming consoles would be digital only to prevent resales. Hooray Europe.

[Arrg]

I have a feeling that if steam embraces resale of games, it'll be a fixed price per game based on its current price, instead of a set-by-the-seller price.

[ChaosCorpse]

I have a feeling that if steam embraces resale of games, it'll be a fixed price per game based on its current price, instead of a set-by-the-seller price.

While I can see exceptions to this; how is this a bad thing really? They obviously won't want to make the prices too low or else it would compete too harshly with their own new purchases; and they can't make it too high either or buying games would ultimately become cheaper than "renting" them since you would get your investment returned in full. Knowing this balance and the fact that since there is a law in place within part of their consumer base means that they can't extort it too highly either.

What it means for me: better return on games than selling them to physical second hand sales sites. Something like buyer paying 75% of retail and seller getting 60% the remainder going to processing sounds like an ideal that is far better than what I can expect from current rates. And if it can be somewhat regulated (keeping exceptions in mind), it'd be more stable and reliable than what we have now.

Of course, this being the case, they'd also have to have a "cash out" system in place for all the variety of environments where you can load a digital wallet, so it can result in true "sales" of the used product. That would also likely have a percentage fee; but as things stand, I am amiable to that.


Of course, all of that is under what I would consider ideal; and I have my doubts based on what they seem to think of the TF2 market. And while this would be much better than what we currently have; I'm sure people will be quite loud about the exceptions as far as naming their own price goes too.

All else fails, they could add an option to deactivate a game and turn it into a gift copy.

[Untradeable]

Saw this on /v/ a few weeks ago, Wondering how Steam will react. Its an interesting concept, ruins big company's dreams of 1 game per person no ability to resell. Which i'm all for.

[Lozmaster]

I don't expect steam or any of the digital download services to do anything remotely like you guys are imagining, but this means that they can't pursue legal action if I choose to sell my steam account with all its games.

[Aircalibur]

Steam and Valve in general seem to handle things like this well; they tend to go the way the wind blows, unlike say, EA or something.