Can you give away games from your steam library?

Ugley_Matt

Ugley_Matt

Ugley_Matt

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8 Jul 2005
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1,575
As title really.

I've got a lot of games that i will either never play due to time or have no interest in playing. Can you give them to someone else or are they mine forever now:
 
no as you dont own them. Theres other ways - v easy - to transfer your games, but against steam subscriber agreement.

Theres a massive thread on here about it. Basically how the EU courts ruled that yes you can resell digital games.

Something like that anyway...check the big thread
 
It would be brilliant, and would put a smile on the gamers who get a chance to play games they would never of tried.

Seems like it won't happen, which is simply not Cricket.
 
Would be great but it'd kill revenue for steam

Or maybe being able to gift games which have never been installed for a small fee or something. That way steam have made their original sale for the use of one customer, as well as a small fee in their favour to transfer the non-used license to someone else.
 
Would be nice to see some sort of lend a friend system brought in. Work a bit like demo but rather than content limitation it has a time limit. A try before you buy almost. But with only people on your friends list for x amount of time.
 
Howitzer said:
You can't. It's a shame though. Gifting should be perfectly fine IMO, not sure about selling though.
Click to expand...

Lot of problems with gifting I think when it comes to single player games:

1) You could just complete a game, then gift it to a friend, he completes it, gifts it to another friend etc. So 100 people play the game from 1 purchase. You could say the same about movies maybe but it'd be much easier with gifting a game on steam, you wouldn't even need to get off your arse to post a disc or anything.
2) If you were going to buy a bundle that included games you already down, you'd first gift the games you own, maybe to some randommer on a geeky forum. This would then reduce their sales because the person you gift it to might have eventually bought said game.
3) Extending the above points a bit further, from a theoretical perspective you'd effectively be encouraging big 'gaming rings' where dozens or even hundreds of gamers club together, all buying different games and then just gifting them around. So instead of selling say 50 copies you sell only 1.
 
HangTime said:
Lot of problems with gifting I think when it comes to single player games:

1) You could just complete a game, then gift it to a friend, he completes it, gifts it to another friend etc. So 100 people play the game from 1 purchase.
Click to expand...

How is that any different to what people have done quite legitimately for years with physical media?

We should not use legislation to plug gaps in business models.
 
Take a step out of the virtual world and it's your right if you wan't to sell something that you own,yet you can't sell a digitally own game ;/ but you can sign your life away applying for a loan online...(i.e just typing your name) surely two people could do the same with a piece of software that Steam has sold?
 
I thought it is possible to transfer games in Steam, but you have to contact steam support and chances are it wont be transferred.

Another way is to do this, nothing illegal about it I dont think.


I register a new user and email for every game I have to activate via Steam.

Example:
username.gamename, [email protected]


This way you can let your friends play the games you don't and even sell them when you are done
Click to expand...

Personally I have loads of games that I dont play and would happily swap game x for game y (or give the account login away)
 
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