Not at all.
Any purchase on Steam always have been a subscription, it states so clearly on your invoice.
Valve sued (in Germany) for not allowing Steam users to resell games
- Thread starter chaparral
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Not at all.
Any purchase on Steam always have been a subscription, it states so clearly on your invoice.
The fact is, you COULD do it with those things and it was very difficult for people to stop you.
Do you think book publishers want a second hand book trade, of course not. They are the epitome of capitalism.
Would they have stopped it if they could, YES.
Are doing just that with ebooks, to a certain degree, YES.
Do digitally distributed games allow to prevent this, YES.
Of all those items you mention, which are worth the same price second hand as when brand new?
Your comparison is flawed as none of them do, unlike the game. So, what other item is relatively comparable?
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Maybe worth even more second hand?
Depends on when you sell it and the market at the time, its supply and demand.
In fact, I can think of a fair amount of console games I've sold for vastly more than i paid for new
Even a loada DVD's too
I'm gonna see if I can find any of my old steam receipts prior to the T+C changes when i get home.
Really can't remember ;p
Depends on when you sell it and the market at the time, its supply and demand.
In fact, I can think of a fair amount of console games I've sold for vastly more than i paid for new
Even a loada DVD's too
I'm gonna see if I can find any of my old steam receipts prior to the T+C changes when i get home.
Really can't remember ;p
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Maybe worth even more second hand?
Depends on when you sell it and the market at the time, its supply and demand.
In fact, I can think of a fair amount of console games I've sold for vastly more than i paid for new
Even a loada DVD's too
I'm gonna see if I can find any of my old steam receipts prior to the T+C changes when i get home.
Really can't remember ;p
That is because items are "out of print", this will not happen with digital distribution for the most part.
Let us know what your invoices say
Would and should are very different things. This is why we have laws and trading standards.
Of all those items I mentioned, none of them are worth the same 2nd hand as brand new. But then neither are games. Don't know where you are shopping if you think they are? Heck just look in the MM here.
I have all the Harry Potter books, chances of me selling these are very slim, I have read them many times and will do so again. Because JK Rowling produced something worth using over and over.
Why should games developers be protected from this facet of the market? A protection no other industry benefits from.
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I'm thinking you're right but I'm trying to remember what the implication to ownership, resale and stuff was in the new T+C's.
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
Because you sell something once. Just like anything else.
No, but the money is made when the game is sold new. You don't get a continual cut every time somebody decides to sell something they bought to somebody else.
Second hand games didn't kill the industry before Valve found a way to wipe them out, they won't kill the industry after the EU rules they can't block it, either.
It's very easy to 'beat' used games sales - produce quality products with longevity. I quite agree that second hand games are quite a damaging thing if your business model is:
a) Make yet another sequel
b) Spend as little time as possible on it so it's only about 6 hours long
c) Physically prevent anyone from selling it to a friend once they've had a pittiful 6 hours entertainment for the £40 you sell it for on Steam
But frankly forgive me if I don't cry over that.
Game that people WANT TO KEEP will not be sold, because... poeple want to keep them. It will incentivise developers to focus on quality and longevity not quick cash, how is that a bad thing for gamers?
But this will fundamentally just drive developers to the safety of online games paid by subscription. The financial risks involved in making offline games for single players will be such that they just don't get made anymore.
I support Steam’s move here. My Steam collection is sizable and I’ve purchased all my games under the understanding that they were disposable goods, not commodities. If a game is decent, once I’m finished with it I don’t begrudge having spent the money as long as the ‘Time to Wonga’ ratio has been what I would class to be sufficient. Even if it isn’t I would take it on the chin as a poorly informed purchasing decision. Why should I then be able to resell this time as a commodity?
Because thats what it is?
Why should you be able to resell your CD's? Why should you be able to resell your fridge? Why should you be able to resell your watch? Your books? Your car? Your house? Anything?
The product you are getting is the same you'd always have got, they just changed the delivery mechanism to one that suits them better.
If this was true then:
a) Why is the PC market still going, after all, it had perhaps 25 years of physical games being bought and sold second hand before they were able to trap everyone with digital distribution
b) Why is the console market still going? You can buy or sell used console games without issues. This doesn't seem to have sent EA bust yet.
This argument just makes no sense. The PC Games market is the only market where you can currently develop products and bar your customers from selling them when they dont want them anymore. Every other industry in the world has the possibility of people selling things after they've bought them. The PC games publishers have just managed to hit the jackpot by finding a way of barring people from selling things they dont want anymore, which suits the current business model of less game for more money absolutely perfectly.
Imagine the outcry if Ford developed a way to prevent you ever selling your car, because used cars reduce new car sales volumes and harm the new car manufacturers (Or Dyson a way to stop you Ebaying your vacuum cleaner if you are going to bring up the irrelvent of aftermarket support as a revenue stream). Yet when Valve do it everyone laps it up, because oh isn't Steam so wonderful? Isn't it great that we can now pay more money for games than ever before and receive less actual product in return?
This very forum has an entire section dedicated to people buying and selling computer hardware, for example. NVIDIA don't get a penny when somebody flogs a graphics card. ASUS go without when a Z77 motherboard changes hand. Dell lose a sale when somebody buys a U2713HM. Thats business, folks!
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If big publishers move to online only games then the gap will be filled by smaller developers. It's the way markets work.
Exactly, and building systems which have the effect of barring consumers from the market is not how markets work, which is why the EU isn't happy with it.
Most people probably wouldn't sell games anyway? Look at your game collection now, how much stuff would you sell if you could? All the games I would probably not care if I got rid of are worthless now anyway. All the games that are not ancient are still well worth keeping. I wouldn't sell anything. Neither would most people.
To a market where one sale equals infinite re-sales with no additional return?
Yes, I see people queuing up for that.
a) Why do you think things like Steam etc sprang up, the move was driven by the publishers desire to remove physical tradeable medium out of the picture because of 2nd hand game sales and piracy.[TW]Fox;23676955 said:
b) Because the trade of physical games still requires you to go into a shop and pay relatively high prices for the game which might come in a tatty box compared to a brand new product, a purely digital tradeable license is extremely easy to trade and when coupled with an online market there will be no reason to go to the original seller online, people will go to the market site. This is the free market economics at it's best. With a 2nd hand game disc would you go to the bother of going into a shop in town to trade it for a couple of quid? What about if it was automatically dealt with in an online market system? It will drives price right down to to the point that developers will just look at it and think why take the risk of spending millions to develop a game at all?
The idea of being able to buy a game in 10 years time will be relatively unheard of. You will only be able to get a subscription to a publisher's catalogue in effect.
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Also, on the second hand car thing, in its lifetime it's likely to be repaired many times, so there's additional profit made from the sale of parts surely?
What, you mean like every other market on the planet? The concept of being able to buy something and sell it to somebody else isn't exactly some sort of extraordinary new threat affecting only the precious PC developers, you know. It's how markets have worked for thousands of years.
Yes, but markets where the items wear out and need replaced. A game never wears out. Second sales will always be able to undercut the original developer as they don't have the same costs in their operation.[TW]Fox;23677084 said:
No, it was driven by desire to increase margin and hence profitability. It's cheaper to provide games this way and brings with it added benefits like the ability to restrict the trade in used products. Many of the publishers didn't and don't like Steam hence the initial reluctance.
It is absolutely correct for a business to attempt to operate in this way - after all, Valve exist not for you and me but to maximise shareholder value.
But they must do this within the laws of the markets in which they chose to operate, and it would appear the EU are less than impressed with this way of doing business.
You don't need to go into a shop and pay a relatively high price at all. You can buy a used game anywhere. From your friend next door. From an internet forum. From an auction site. From the highstreet. Wherever.
Or perhaps it'll make developers think 'We need to develop products that have longevity - we need to make products of sufficient quality that this isn't a problem for us because by the time people begin to trade in used versions in any meaningful quantity, the product has reached the end of its lifecycle anyway'?
This is the way the industry is dearly wishing it could go already!
If it helps people to stop making this point lets just swap cars for books or keyboards or monitors or any of the literally billions of other products you can buy and sell second hand which DONT have servicing requirements like a car does.
Not that Ford get any money when you service your Focus at your local garage who purchases pattern parts from Eurocarparts, anyway.
There are numerous markets where the items either don't wear out or wear out so rarely and so slowly that this is simply isn't an issue. Perhaps we should ban the sale of second hand houses? Poor Bovis, they build a brand new house and when it gets sold on, they never get any extra money from it. And it doesnt wear out for hundreds of years.
It loses appeal - which is the gaming equivilent of wearing out. Who cares about Battlefield 1942 anymore? Who gives a stuff about Quake 2? Not many people. In gaming terms, its worn out. Second hand games are not generally brand new fresh off the shelves hot releases - not in any meaningful quantity.
This currently happens in the console market without a big problem. I appreciate that CD keys are easier to 'sell' but frankly whose fault is that? Who pushed the market towards entirely non-physical media so they could reap massively huge margins at the expense of everyone else in the industry? Forgive me if I don't cry a river for Valve - they didn't cry a river for the high street retailers (Not that the trade in games people have finished with would ever have the same sort of effect on them, anyway)
I don't blame Valve for the way they operate. They operate in entirely the correct way for a business. But a business must also operate in a way that is compatible with government legislation which is usually designed to protect consumers from monopoly power.
As I keep saying - the way around the problem is simply. Build products that people want to keep. Then you need not worry about the trade in second hand games. If your product is so good people feel they get such great value from it they don't want to part with it, you've nothing to worry about.
I appreciate people like EA with the 7 hour long SP junk they trot out on a regular basis might have something to worry about, but hey, something has to force them to up the quality because as things stand they are quite happy making money out of the vast swathes of people seemingly happy to spend vast quantities of cash on sub standard, short, microtransaction infested tedium.
I'm quite careful with which games I buy. I only buy games I think will last me. As a result, if it became possible to sell Steam games tommorrow there are few if any I'd want to sell. Because the ones I've bought are decent and I'd probably play them again...
Just like second hand examples of ANY product in the world then?
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