Selling Digital Games 2nd hand.. Why not?

humanlaptop

humanlaptop

humanlaptop

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Im not asking to do it, just wondered why Steam dosent have this as a market... set a price for a 2nd hand game, user gets 50%, steam 25% and developer 25%

I bet games that have no interest in them would be picked up.. maybe you can only sell after 'x' years, but i have so much tat in my steam account its annoying. Maybe even recycle them in for Steam credit idk

Im assuming legally there is a block on this?
 
"Steam subscriber agreement"..

Says all you need to know.

Digital distribution is a different world to physical media.

The PC second hand market has never really been a "thing" other than waaay back in the day but because of DRM, key activations etc, was very niché.

The consoles are clinging onto physical media because of the second hand market.
 
You've paid for access to it on steam.

If steam wants more money they can just do a sale and get 100% of selling access to whatever game for cheap.
 
I'm not too bothered about not owning the games I buy digitally I paid £50 I got many hours of entertainment seems like a fait exchange
 
Tute said:
I know the storefronts claim we don't but isn't this one of those things that won't stand up in court?

IANAL so feel free to correct me.
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I Think it's more like a subscription and nothing holds up in court.
they don't have a way to give you the games if the service goes down, legally they probably can't anyway because of the contract they have with the devs likely prevents it.


some rich guy must have been banned on steam and tried to take them to court by now?
 
Greenman gaming when it first launched allowed people to trade back their digital games, I worked there for a short while when it first launched. Not sure if they still do that though.
 
I thought games (or some games) can be played without Steam being installed or running. I have a number of games in Steam these launch fine directly from \Games\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\gamename e.g. Quake II RTX
Othes do not e.g. Metro Exodus and probably require a steam_api.dll to run them without Steam.

Its rather annoying that we can pay for games, then if our internet is down not be able to play them
 
humanlaptop said:
Im not asking to do it, just wondered why Steam dosent have this as a market... set a price for a 2nd hand game, user gets 50%, steam 25% and developer 25%
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They don't do it because there's no upside and plenty of downside.

Game licenses are intangible; there's no discernible difference between a new one and a used one. Therefore there's no downside to buying a "used" key. So why would someone buy a key off the main store (where Steam and the developer/publisher split the full selling price between them) if they could save some money buying off the "used" marketplace (where revenue is split with a third party)?

Also, if they allowed people to set their own prices on this marketplace then competition would inevitably crash the value of games (especially those given away for free; there would be so much supply of those that they'd be effectively worthless).
 
McPhee said:
They don't do it because there's no upside and plenty of downside.

Game licenses are intangible; there's no discernible difference between a new one and a used one. Therefore there's no downside to buying a "used" key. So why would someone buy a key off the main store (where Steam and the developer/publisher split the full selling price between them) if they could save some money buying off the "used" marketplace (where revenue is split with a third party)?

Also, if they allowed people to set their own prices on this marketplace then competition would inevitably crash the value of games (especially those given away for free; there would be so much supply of those that they'd be effectively worthless).
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Why would 2nd hand sold keys be any different to the many websites that sell cd keys for cheap? I've picked up a number of games through cd key resellers for £1 - £3 where the game was originally £20 - £50. Why does it matter if they sold me it or "Fred" on Steam?
 
Guest2 said:
Why would 2nd hand sold keys be any different to the many websites that sell cd keys for cheap? I've picked up a number of games through cd key resellers for £1 - £3 where the game was originally £20 - £50. Why does it matter if they sold me it or "Fred" on Steam?
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Thats what im thinking, if anything it may remove those 'illegal' key sites.. idk.

For example say ive got Dayz.. Steam says (it has to be Steam controlled pricing so we dont get silly markets), this can be sold 2nd hand to another user for what £6, so me, Steam and Dayz get £2 each or something. And, my £2 has to be Steam credit which is then recycled back into the system anyway.

idk how it could all work, it just seems a shame that ive a library of games, that I wont touch and some people might want them.. and could get them from me for cheap, rather than not at all because they are too expensive for them.
 
humanlaptop said:
idk how it could all work, it just seems a shame that ive a library of games, that I wont touch and some people might want them.. and could get them from me for cheap, rather than not at all because they are too expensive for them.
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Same, I've got a library of over 100 games and play COD Modern Warfare / Warzone only :o:rolleyes:

If people were all trustworthy we could 'rent' our accounts to each other to login, play some games then hand back creds. Of course that would never work in practice because some dangleberry would change the password and keep it
 
All Steam/Devs have to do to stop the Key resellers is prevent activation of Keys Ie only keys bought on Steam or through the devs launcher. However that would cause loads of issues for devs and reduce choice, so I am sure that won't be a thing.

Also being able to sell used digital keys is a lose, lose for both steam and the devs. No revenue in it and open to abuse. Unless there was a way of matching a secondhand sale with someone who wanted to buy the game, then steam would be disadvantaged big time. Remember a lot of us have massive library's.
It's a minefield and I am positive if there was remotely anything in it for steam, the game devs or publishers they would have done it and monetised it in their favour.
 
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