People should be allowed to resell things because they don't need some stuff anymore but other people need it and they don't have the money to buy it full price. So here is why I think this doesn't apply for software, and especially Steam.
I have about 40€ I can use to buy games per month. And I have about 200 games in my library. Steam sales and daily deals are making it incredibly easy to get a lot of good games for very little money.
Video games are a luxury thing, you don't need them to live, like say, clothing, or a car, or other stuff you can buy used. If you buy a game you pay for the entertainment. If you don't think the game is worth your money, then Don't Buy It!
The thing about buying used things for a lower price that makes sense, is that these products are most of the time inferior to brand new ones. Let it be a scratch on a used DVD, the creaking in an old chair, missing parts of an old board game. But software doesn't age. It stays the same, no matter where and how you buy it. Why would you buy a new copy of a 3 month old game, if you just could buy a really cheap used one, which is exactly the same? You wouldn't. Games would stop selling just a few month after release, this would be godawful for the industry. I don't even wanna imagine how many studios are going to close, how many people will loose their jobs.
If you're so desperate to get a game (or any software, really) but you don't have the money, and you just can't wait, then pirate it. Just buy it afterwards. The thing about games, and any other software, is, that there is always an infinite copy of everything. Producers don't loose a copy if you pirate one, they just won't sell one to you right now. Of course, this only works if you really buy the game afterwards. I'm downloading the Season 1 of Dr Who right now as I write. Do I feel bad about it? No. Because I'm going to buy the DVD in about 2 weeks, when I have the money for it. But I wanna watch it now. The only real piracy problem there is are people that have the money, but pirate the stuff anyways. And I can understand why they do it, they just don't think about the consequences.
If people are going to be allowed to sell they played games off their steam library, it's going to be anarchy in the industry, and Steam would die as a result of it. Who the hell would publish their games on Steam anymore? I wouldn't.
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Your points are all irrelevant. I don't need a chocolate bar and it's not that expensive. I am still entitled to resell that chocolate bar, though, because I own that object. And software does in fact change. Software gets updated and patched, and it devalues over time as demand lessens and it falls out of popularity. A brand-new copy of Borderlands today is not worth the same as when it was released; physical or Digital. Even the GOTY copy is worth less than the original was sold for at launch. Older games especially will have compatibility issues with new operating systems, so they are prone to not working. My favourite old game, Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri, does not work on anything following WinXP without patching.
Lastly, this is a legal matter and piracy is a crime. Whether or not you can pirate a game has no bearing on your legal right to resell.
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Exactly my thinking. Usually I don't post it, but here's my +1
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I'm too lazy to think about the bad things that could happen, but wouldn't it be a good think if you could trade a game that you don't want anymore?
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That'd just encourage more used sales and piracy.
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about time someone went after vale etc for not upholding the "First-sale doctrine"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/first-sale-under-siege-if-you-bought-it-you-should-own-it
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Terms of Service are often unenforcible by law. Even Steam's ToS change to prevent class-action lawsuits would cave under legal pressure if a severe-enough case was brought up.
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If something like that happens and Valve doesn't find a way to counter-strike against it, then we should probably say bye-bye to PC gaming industry!!
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No, because you didn't have a market to buy second hand digital games, with 1000000000000000 sellers and search ability for any game that you like before 2003, so new games sold well!
And I would recommend you to choose your restaurant very carefully, as you know some of them use donkey meat on their food.
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If I was a dev, I would be very interested in sold units too, because that's what gives them money.
The console gaming has been suffering from second hand games for a long time, and they have recently applied strategies to prevent it (online code for the first buyer only - etc ...), but PC gaming is already a smaller market and suffers enough from piracy! Maybe something like this in its biggest digital store will make the matters even worse...
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I will never understand normal people/consumers defending a company which is of course only interested in making as much money as poossible, if someone tries to improve the rights of the consumers. That's so amazingly stupid, I'll never understand that. It's going against your own interests as well. Valve is not your friend, its first purpose is to make as much money as possible. Yes even of you fanboys. So if someone is fighting for your rights as a consumer, trying to improve every consumers situation, why the hell would you be against that?
So a real honest question to all those fanboys: What is your real motivation behind that behaviour? Do you own parts of Valve? (not possible, since it's completely privately owned) Do they give you some part of the money they make? Are you a Valve employee?
I just don't get it at all.
Btw. Origin, Uplay, Battle.net etc are all not a single bit better than Steam (rather worse). But that's not the point.
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Imagine you have lots of games on Steam. You know you can only play those games on Steam. Settling for another distributor is meh, since you want as much of your games at one place and you won't change from Steam, if you have hundreds of games there. I think it's pretty natural to become defensive if your that bound that strongly to a single company. You don't want that company to do badly, because the access to all your games is on stake and you also want to assure yourself that your decision was a good one.
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And because of that (ridiculous) concern, pc game consumers should just eat whatever the companies force on them? PC gaming is going nowhere, at the moment it's stronger than it was in a long time. And again, just let the companies worry about their income, they have the paid experts for that. Just worry about your rights as a consumer.
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this is idiotic. you cant FORCE a company to impliment a system that allows reselling, all that IDIOTIC law (passed by a bunch of idiotic old codgers, btw, who probably wouldn't even know how to use a computer past playing solitaire or using ms word) means is that no company could STOP you from selling on your digital goods. it does NOT mean they have to impliment systems to ACCOMMODATE it. huge difference.
it really is a bloody stupid law. digital and physical goods are not the same and so should never be concidered in the same way. the people that passed that law didn't understand that, its just another example of people passing laws in an area they have no knowledge of...
im someone who is very much in favour of consumer rights, and i'd usually be the FIRST person to take valve to task over the poor shit they pull (especially in regional price gouging, etc), but this is one area where even i think its a total non-issue, and a stupid law that should never have been passed by a bunch of ignorant fools who have know knowledge, skills or foresight into the digital marketplace.
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I can't see the issue here. Why can't you force a company to abide by pre-existing regional laws?
It's up to an organisation whether they choose to operate in a geographic region, and if they decide to do so, they must comply with the legislation in effect there, in this case consumer protection law.
We will see whether the courts are prepared to make a special case for digital goods. I don't believe the law is any more stupid than allowing resale of a music CD, a physical console copy of a game or a set of garden chairs. Why should it be?
Perhaps I am stupid and idiotic, but why should there be a special case completely outside of accepted trading laws for computer games? A physical DVD is merely a transportation device for a game, just like a CD or LP is a transportation device for music. Nobody is going to have any success trying to ban resale of such items. At the end of the day, why should the physical forms of these be any different from the digital ones?
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because physical goods are not the same as digital.
It would be a long discussion to really get into the heart of that, but ill try to be brief.
for a start, there is no difference between a new digital purchase (an mp3, many games, a movie) and a resold one. But if you were to look at a physical object, a dvd, a game disc, or even to make the comparison more obvious, a CAR, things like wear and tear occur on objects which makes them less desirable to own, or can hamper their functionality, which is why people can often choose to pay more for a new physical item rather than a scratched dvd that comes with a cracked case covered in dog faeces :D That is how the market can survive - some people want to pay lower for a second hand good, while others prefer to own new, and thats fine, nothing wrong with it. But enter digital products, where there is ZERO difference. the file wont decay, wont be damaged (as we're selling RIGHTS here, not an actual file) and in MOST cases there is no difference between how it looks and operates compared to new.
NOW, im not arguing which scenario is better for the CONSUMER, all im trying to get across is that a physical object is not directly comparable to a digital usage right, and if you can see that, then i think you're half way there to understanding that whatever laws are made up, they would need to be carefully considered RATHER than doing what these lawmakers did, and just saying 'right, products are products and therefore all the same'. its just simply not the case.
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I don't see how a lack of wear & tear on something I own should affect my ability to resell it. Care to elaborate your position on that?
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With all due respect, and a token apology for the forthcoming wall of text, I'm familiar with the various arguments surrounding digital goods, and it's my opinion that the condition of an item is something of a side issue here. While there are definitely differences, as you eloquently illustrate, my opinion is that these are just too minor to be much of a concern for the majority of end users, and it's a relatively feeble excuse which digital retailers (and other players in the gaming industry) are desperate to upplay in an effort to avoid complying with a law accepted by the rest of the retail world operating in the region.
Of course, some of this comes down to interpretation and opinion, and I think that is where we differ. I don't dispute most of the differences you outline, per se. I just dispute their importance, and whether they should trump basic consumer rights as they exist today in many countries.
A game disc holds the game whether or not it has minor surface scratches, or the manual is a little dog-eared. It's still the game you're buying. The game installs from the disc onto your computer, you register with whatever protection system is required (Origin, Steam, Uplay, some other) and away you go. The disc may never get used again, and you are free to play your game until such a time as you become bored and wish to sell or uninstall it.
Most PC retail copies of games (certainly the big budget titles) require registration of one sort or another anyway, including Steam registration. The fact Steam does not currently allow these games be resold represents a basic and deliberate erosion of the customer's rights. It's a physical copy, artificially hobbled by third party software, rendering it impossible to sell onward. Assuming it's legal to sell second hand software in your country, there NEEDS to be a mechanism to transfer title on Steam, otherwise one might very reasonably argue that it's an obvious and cynical effort to circumvent the owner's rights.
In the case of of PC games, the delivery is arguably digital in one sense, whatever the medium by which it is transferred: Why should an always-available disc full of ones and zeros be treated so very differently to an always-available stream of bits and bytes, both of which are ultimately containers for the primary good on sale here? Only a fool or a rabid collector would purchase a disc box which contained no game, but conversely few seem to care (other than, perhaps, the odd gripe about how things were "back in the good old days" of doorstep sized manuals and boxes the size of Ikea flat-packs) if the only manual available is on a pdf (whether on-disc or Steam), which is increasingly the case even with boxed retail copies. I like to think I am clued-up enough to understand what makes a digital product different (although not by very much IMHO), but that doesn't prevent me from siding with the "idiotic old codgers" on this matter.
There just doesn't seem enough difference for me to merit an exemption from basic consumer protection law, special favourable treatment for digital sellers, or the labelling of those supporting the action described in this thread as idiots or simpletons...
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They should highlight the issue that valve will steal ur a copy games when u buy GOTY edition/a bundle and applied on it.
I lost 1 copy of Torchlight + 1 copy of Saint Row 3 + 1 copy of Metro 2033(I actually paid for this game for real) when I apply humble bundle 6 key + SaintRow 3 full pack + Humble bundle THQ key.
Valve should give me back my 3 games, Stealing is a crime. May be these consumer rights people should address this issue first.
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You bought a bundle key, knowing full well that you wouldn't get extra copies of games you already owned. They told you this before you purchased your bundle. Nothing was stolen from you.
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Actually, in the case of the Humble budles you didn't technically lose aything. You bought DRM-free copied of the games (which you got) plus, as a favor, they gave you a way to register those games on your Steam account too, not to give you extra copies. Their TOS even state that you are not allowed to give/trade your games away.
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Only allow to do with with steam store purchased games then. Not hard to do, even.
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Germany in my mind is a country that things there are precise such as machines, automobiles. And as a gamer, I know that many games/movies are cut before they can get permission to be introduced in Germany. Also, the rate system for games and movies is the most restricted I think. There are always some cases sounds really ridiculous.
But this time, I go with German Consumer Protection Centre. Valve should allow us to resell our games. When we buy something, we should have full control of it including rights like giving away, keeping, disposal, and of course reselling. For example, I buy a bottle of pure water. I can drink it, I can give it to my friend for free, I can pour the water on grassland which is no harm to environment. If I can do such things with a bottle of water, why I can't do these kinds of things with my video games?
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Why not remove older titles from store to stimulate users selling them? Reducing the supply would stimulate the demand for sure (at least of older, classic titles) and users would be able to sell the games at inflated price for bragging rights. Steam would take a cut, obviously. But this would handle legal issues while netting some nice extra cash for users and amazon. Everyone would win!
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lol
Also, as CrossCalibre mentions below, people will simply take their money and shop elsewhere.
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If players are unable to buy the game legally then they would justify themselves in pirating it. Besides which, Steam is not the only outlet for games, especially older ones, so just because Steam stops offering a game does not mean it's suddenly unavailable. Take War Z for example.
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No it doesn't. The SSA is not above the law. If the law says it's illegal to lose access to your games if you don't agree to the updated terms, then valve have to comply, no matter what terms they put in any agreement. Sure they can add terms that don't mean anything because the law supersedes them.. But it's just that, they mean nothing and aren't enforceable.
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I'm not sure if my English is so bad, but I try to explain it again:
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Well one should not forget that this is also a desicision about DRM. For a physical copy you might be allowed to sell the game,but if the key is already used the buyer might be screwed. The VZBV already filed a lawsuit against Steam DRM and they lost that one, BGH judgement said that it is indeed allowed to tie licenses to an account. That was 2010 however.
Also one should not overestimate the power of the VZBV. Compareable to the GEMA they are something official,but not the representative of the government/law/whatever. They have a mandate of the government,but they are not part of it. So what they claim might mean nothing after all.
not much left to do except waiting what will happen.
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So basically Germany is expecting Steam to change their whole DRM system (key bound to an account), which btw works wonders in comparison to other draconian DRMs (i'm looking at you StarForce), to the single extent of suiting a single country's demand.
Sounds reasonable.
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Again, the good old German Consumer Protection Centre ("Verbraucherschutzzentrale") sues Valve. Last time they got Valve to change their update system to a system, that makes you not longer lose your access to your Steam account, if you don't agree to the ToS-changes.
This time they sue Valve because we all are not allowed to resell our games/licences. The European Court of Justice decided a while ago, that it should be possible to resell your software.
So what will happen (in about 100 years, after countless revisions/appeals)?
source, German ofc.
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