Are we all fogrgetting vavles rather heavy handed change in T+C's recently that meant you couldn't play your games you had bought previously unless you agreed to the NEW T+C's.
Also after this Valve shortly implemented the Valve market, I thought it would be great to use it kinda like eBay and sell on my old games....
Oh hang on, the market appears only to be for absolutely useless in game junk for only 2 games!
I personally hope they win and valve are forced to allow end users to dis-associate games from their accounts and give away/sell/trade/feed to the dog their old serials.
As for EULA's majority of which you only get to see once the disc has been inserted and the installation started, never have I seen and item with a full EULA printer on the outer packaging.
EDIT: as for omaeka's point about demo's very valid, I think a lot of people treat pirate software as their demo's and then decide wether or not to buy.
Thing is though, look how loosely supported our platform is, sure we get ports but they are either A) unoptimized to hell and play like a bag of spanners or B) have awful support, i.e Street Fighter x Tekken just getting the 7 month old 1.06 patch while the consoles are one the 7 day old 1.08 complete content overhaul patch. We wont see the .08 patch for another half year. There are tons of factors that play into this kind of practice; piracy, low sales figures etc.
Now, give us demos and piracy will plummet, but give us trade ins and so will the sales figures. From the looks of it, these kind of people are only trying to enforce trade ins which means that piracy won't change but sales figures will still plummet, which means even less support for our platform.
I understand that PC gaming is a very expensive hobby hardware wise and what have you, and that IMO should carry on into the software side for the simple reason that it is the
only thing that keeps the developers giving us any kind of support.
I understand the viewpoint of some people, how they think that trade ins will force developers to make better games that people don't trade in but that's a fantasy. What will happen, is tons of developers walk away from the market completely, as most are dangling by a string as it is.
I honestly don't mind not being able to trade games in because as above, it's really the only thing that's keeping developers in our market. Quite frankly it isn't fair either, as for example; I've put 250+ hours into Civilization V, is it fair that I can now demand for a chunk of my money back?
Bring in preownership and lose your sales too. Trust me if this comes around and happens, all of the people on the opposite side who want trade ins will regret it within a year, probably sooner. Fact.
Demos + small initial window for refunds = win.
They will encourage developers to up their quality, not bloody trade ins. Most people will still trade a game in even if they loved it and got hours and hours of enjoyment.
Infact, let Steam tracking decided. Trade in value should be based on the hours you've played, that might work. Put in 5 hours or less? 40% trade in. 10-20 hours? 20%. 20-40 hours? 10%. 40-50 hours? 5%. 50+ hours? Ability to gift it to somebody, but no money back.
That
might work. Any other outcome will destroy PC Gaming, end of.
Please open your eyes people.
EDIT: Oh, and preowned keys shouldn't then be sold on at a discount, it should just be thrown into the pile of brand new keys for full price.