European court: You are allowed to resell your steam games

To me this is just a nod to steam to charge people for the transaction of changing ownership of the licence. Its a win win for them. I just can't get my head round second hand digital media.
 
I would like to step it and say something quickly.

This will in no way effect mainstream gaming, i. those of you saying "developers/publishers will have to start making good games (good games in this case being games I like because I don't like CoD because it's mainstream)" are deluding yourselves. It will not make any differance what so ever, in the same way piracy has not stopped there being more than zero Fast and Furious movies, this ruling will not stop there always being a mainstream safe CoD/Fifa whatever game every year. People will always buy these kinds of games.

If anything is damaged by this it will be the opposite, it will be the market for new and unknown games that people aren't sure about that will end up going downhill.
 
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elmuzzy66. said:
To me this is just a nod to steam to charge people for the transaction of changing ownership of the licence. Its a win win for them. I just can't get my head round second hand digital media.
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Second hand doesn't "really" exist for "digital media" anyway, you're getting the exact same product. It's the same with physical media though, to buy a "used" copy means you'll get it for less but it's still exactly the same product as generally they like to claim you're buying a license to use the contents of the disk which has the exact same end result as digital copies of things. The main difference is that there are a lot of people who simply will not or cannot afford to buy games at release prices, so will wait for used ones.

Developers should (and now have been told they don't) have any right to money from secondhand sales, that their right to recompense has been exhausted at the first/original transaction. I wish people would stop with the "second hand sales takes money away from developers" but it doesn't. Games/licenses are distributed in batches and sold in shops, by the time they're in a shop they've already been paid for in some form or way, the developers will have already been paid a long time ago as well.

People just have to start accepting that not everyone wants to buy brand new, due to cost or what ever else and they never will. It's the same argument as piracy, if some one was never going to buy something at retail price, you can't bring "lost" sales in to it.
 
arknor said:
or maybe they are people that wouldnt be prepared to pay the retail price anyway? so its not a lost sale
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You think a second hand copy is going to be any cheaper than a firesale price?
I for one don't.

I rarely pay the full retail price, and instead usually buy at around 5-6 quid (Alan Wake etc), I'm not the most profitable of buyers, but I'm a gained sale as I wouldn't have bought it otherwise.
Second hand sales could be the initial drop in price that some people want, and they in turn buy the game second hand rather than a sale at the same or cheaper price, resulting in a lost sale.
 
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person buys game for full price
person sells game for 5-6quid
person uses that 5-6 quid towards another title.

the revenue still exists companies might not make as many deep discount sales anymore but they are likely to see more full price sales and get more off a games revenue upfront rathet than 6-12months down the line
 
arknor said:
person buys game for full price
person sells game for 5-6quid
person uses that 5-6 quid towards another title.
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Exactly!

Have read this post and i really don't understand why people r complaining about this, i think it is great! if i pay for a game that i worked hard for, who is anyone to tell me that i cannot sell it when i am done with it ? it is none else's business if i want to sell something i have paid for.

I do this all the time with MMO's that i buy and turn out to be ****, so i play it for the rest of the month and i generally recoup my money :D
 
This is and can only be a very good thing, anything that stimulates the market is good, not only that, but we as consumers are better off for this ruling.
 
spoffle said:
Based on the completely wrong assumption that they would have otherwise bought a brand new copy. What about lending? Is that bad too?
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If someone wasn't going to buy the game, lending it to them isn't a lost sale.
But if someone's wanting to borrow a game, they likely wouldn't have bought it retail, and likely second hand.

Could be argued they'd have never bought it, and not a lost sale, but if they were buying it brand new, borrowed the game instead, that's a lost sale.
 
Amnesia said:
But people will also purchase more games now knowing they can sell them on or give them away so that could help even it out.
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Depends on the initial price of the game.
I bet I'm not the only one who only buys deep discounted games. If they're less frequent, I'm buying a lot less games, so will people with the same mindset.

EDIT : Who knows, it could end up a positive thing, but I'm in the camp of negative about it.
 
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Martini1991 said:
Depends on the initial price of the game.
I bet I'm not the only one who only buys deep discounted games. If they're less frequent, I'm buying a lot less games, so will people with the same mindset.

EDIT : Who knows, it could end up a positive thing, but I'm in the camp of negative about it.
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Yeah we'll buy a lot fewer games, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for anyone.

The devs might make more money (fewer sales, but higher cost), and I won't have so many games I bought because they were cheap, that I've never played even once :p

Actually having said that, I suspect the devs won't make more money at all, since 2nd hand sales will pretty much kill new sales after the first month or so, I'd bet.
 
Martini1991 said:
If someone wasn't going to buy the game, lending it to them isn't a lost sale.
But if someone's wanting to borrow a game, they likely wouldn't have bought it retail, and likely second hand.

Could be argued they'd have never bought it, and not a lost sale, but if they were buying it brand new, borrowed the game instead, that's a lost sale.
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But it's simply a non-sale. The same way that people who have absolutely no interest in a game aren't going to buy it, but you're not going to call them lost sales. Why people feel the need to classify it as somehow detrimental to the games industry, I don't know. There isn't a divine right to maximal profit when it comes to developing games despite how developers and publishers act like there is. Some developers will release a **** game that isn't selling because it's ****, but will only accept that it's "greedy PC users who only pirate games anyway".
 
wab said:
but we as consumers are better off for this ruling.
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Normally I'd be inclined to agree with an expansion of consumer rights, but I'm not sure about this one. This feels a bit like the axe is poised over the neck of the goose that lays golden eggs.

I'm not sure Steam sales as we know them will be allowed (by developers and publishers) if a lot of sales are already lost to the second hand market. Essentially Steam sales (and their equivalent) *are* the second hand market, and I'd rather contribute to Steam/the game developers than hand over cash to a previous owner.

Ok, the previous owner might then buy another game with the money, but he might not. Whereas every purchase on Steam is contributing to the industry we presumably want to thrive.

Messy ruling this one, and I'm usually a big fan -- unfashionable though that might be -- of European Law.
 
If a game appears on sale in the second hand market it has already been sold once, so if no one buys the game at release it can't appear on the second hand market can it, so how do dev's/publishers lose a sale because of the second hand market? they don't! they have had the first bite of the cherry when the game was originally sold. If they want to stop people selling on games they are going to have to figure out a way to keep people interested in the game, so they don't want to sell it, perhaps by giving us decent DLC that actually is worth having and not the shallow cash grab DLC we get now.
 
Divinious said:
If a game appears on sale in the second hand market it has already been sold once, so if no one buys the game at release it can't appear on the second hand market can it, so how do dev's/publishers lose a sale because of the second hand market?
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I'm waiting for Skyrim to fall in price. Plenty of people have played that to death and might happily sell it on to me, having paid full price.

Once it gets under £20 I'll probably pick it up in a Steam sale, but if someone had already sold it to me for £15, the industry is £20 worse off. And I'd much rather my money went to the people who made the game than a random stranger who I may or may not trust to pass on the money, or use a kosher Paypal account.

And while it's easy to say Steam etc could set up a marketplace, who is accountable for problems? Steam. That adds costs and goes towards my golden goose comment. I have no doubt this is -- overall -- bad news for us.

And the DLC comment is daft. The reason publishers put out weak DLC is customers keep buying it. Can't blame the publishers if we (as a market) refuse to learn the lesson.
 
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