A French court has ruled that Valve should allow people to re-sell their digital games

Why do some people think that returning to the old way will mean higher prices. We always used to trade in, sell or give away our disc (or even ROM cartridges if you remember them?) media. When most games went to downloadable the costs for the distribution plummeted but instead of seeing that cost saving the consumer is charged even higher prices for games. I for one have been asking for this ability for a long time. I want to give my game to a friend when I'm done. I bought the rights to use it, I should be able to sell those rights just like the lease on my apartment.

Maybe someone else has mentioned this (I'm not going to read 14 pages of comments here to find out) but this I can easily imagine this sort of precedent extending to other digital media like books, music, and videos.

Quoting: StoneDancerWhy do some people think that returning to the old way will mean higher prices. We always used to trade in, sell or give away our disc (or even ROM cartridges if you remember them?) media. When most games went to downloadable the costs for the distribution plummeted but instead of seeing that cost saving the consumer is charged even higher prices for games.

But you do realize that while the costs (media, box, manual) went south, you still have ongoing service?
You can still download your game on Steam (, etc...) that you purchased 15 years ago.
That's cost of infrastructure that has not been there in those old times.

QuoteI for one have been asking for this ability for a long time. I want to give my game to a friend when I'm done. I bought the rights to use it, I should be able to sell those rights just like the lease on my apartment.

I don't get that example.

Quoting: einherjarYes, so the reselling can not be treated the same. It is not a minor detail. If you can sell something millions of times, without it getting worn down, it is not a minor detail.
The developer must get the money for his job with a significantly lower amount of sales.

They can also create those copies at zero cost while the physical game has the biggest part of the money you pay in the actual distribution. And yet they still sell those AAA titles for 60 bucks like back then.

I'm not particularly concerned about a billion dollar industry so much that I think it ok for them to break the law and ignore consumer rights. We wouldn't accept that in any other industry either.

Quoting: einherjarBut regulating them in the same way as physical goods (that can only be sold a limited time) is also not the best idea.
Of course a lot of things can be made better - but in a smart way. And this seems not to be a smart way.
It leeds us to even more "software as a service" and monopolism.

The law already exists there is nothing really new here. You are allowed to resell a license even if you got it via digital download in the EU. Stores like Steam and all the others probably too just ignore it because they think they will get away with it. And sorry, but do you really think if we just look the other way and let them break the law they will stop pushing the other way and abandon their plans for even more control via streaming and "software as a service" they are already implementing anyway? They will do that anyway!

In the end people will not have more or less money to spend on games and if they can sell one and instead buy something else that money is right back in the system and benefits another game developer.

Quoting: ShmerlWhy would you want to go back to physical distribution? It's surely step backwards.

The ability to actually physically have in your hands the product you pay for? Sure, they take up physical space, but that could be mitagated by using smaller distribution media (SD cards, instead of CDs). Then again, even digital content has its own issues in that, if you want to track all of the games yourself, you use a lot of storage space.

Also... Maybe not a concern for the younger generation, or casual players, but I still have a lot of my games from a decade or more ago, and I still go back a play a large number of them. It's nice to know they're still accessible.

Someone else mentioned how DVDs may become obsolete (and it's possible), but then the distribution media will change. Regardless, enthusiasts will always keep games alive. I'm still able to load and play old 8bit games (nes, c64, etc, etc), so the games will always be around if they are in user hands.

Again, I highly doubt any of this will really happen... But, call me old if you'd like, but I do like physically owning my games.

Quoting: einherjar

Quoting: ArehandoroWhen one buys a 2nd hand book, film, album or game, does the content differ? Is the content less enjoyable because the medium it comes in isn't in mint condition? In my case, I know the answer to both questions (NO).

For me, the content of a book is less enjoyable, if the book is crumbled, stinks because the pre owner was smoker or has stains for example from dirty fingers. The binding of a book also breaks down through use.

But all this does not happen to a digital copy of a game. The pre users were smoking or played it a lot, or they had dirty fingers while playing... DOESN'T MATTER. The used copy is always as good as an unused one.

Those are "if" statements that you might, or might not, experience, depending on the quality of the book, that should be reflected in the 2nd hand price for the quality of the format and that might not affect equally to everyone.

The used copy isn't as good of an unused one for one very simple reason: TIME.

While I'm playing it, you can't play it. While the 2nd person I sell it too is playing, you can't play it and so on. By the time you, or other person, plays the game at a reasonable price (for that particular person) it might have passed a lot of time with community dying off, etc.

People should not take this like everyone is going to sell their games nor they are going to be able to sell the same copy to another 100 different people.


Last edited by Arehandoro on 20 September 2019 at 1:18 pm UTC

Quoting: constThis may well go up to European court level and then it might effect the whole European Union. And there is no reason this will only affect games. I'd assume this would hit digital movie distribution even harder then games. And I assume it would hit AAA much harder then indie games.
Still, I hope this will happen. There will surely be chaos at first, but it will be a much fairer market in the end.

It would hit AAA harder in measure of money, but it will still kill lots of indies, and it will make AAA evade the problem alltogether.

What if people could only resell their games once, and only games purchased on steam, so games you activated from a dvd, or you got from a giveaway wouldn't count. And you wouldn't be able to circulate the same copy of the game over half the world. Maybe also give both valve and devs a cut from these sales. I think that would solve most of the problems people here have with this.

Quoting: StoneDancerWhy do some people think that returning to the old way will mean higher prices. We always used to trade in, sell or give away our disc (or even ROM cartridges if you remember them?) media. When most games went to downloadable the costs for the distribution plummeted but instead of seeing that cost saving the consumer is charged even higher prices for games. I for one have been asking for this ability for a long time. I want to give my game to a friend when I'm done. I bought the rights to use it, I should be able to sell those rights just like the lease on my apartment.

Pricing of digital videogames follows different rules than pricing a piece of physical videogames. All the fixed costs are virtually just for producing the first copy. All the others are free. No box to print, no cd to burn, no transportation or stocking costs. For this reason publishers have all the interests to sell the highest amount of copies as possible (well, before Epic paid them to sell less but that's an edge case that can't last forever) at the highest price. Even if this price is crazy low. So you have day 1 price. First discount after a few months. Then another price reduction after a year. And so on. Publishers control prices with care. The idea is that when nobody else buys the game at a given price you can only maximize profits by reducing the price in order to match the expectation of a fair price of more people. And so on. Imho it's a good enough model for us. Maybe you won't get a game on day 1, but even if you're super poor eventually if you're patient enough you'll get the game you want at an affordable price. It's not perfect, but I'd say that it's more positive than negative. At least we can agree that it helped a lot to the success of PC gaming.

So being able to resell a copy changes the equation. Just hypothetically suppose you buy the game at 60$. Now you know that you can sell it for around 50$ after a month when you finish it. This has several implications. After a month the game for you effectively costed you 10$, plus the negligible interests on the 50$ you had invested in the transaction for a month to be precise. But let's ignore that since for a single copy it really is negligible. It also means that after a month because of you and other day 1 buyers there is a copy on sell for 50$. The publisher won't be able to sell new first hand copies for 60$ anymore. These are digital goods second hand markets sells copies that are exactly the same as first hand. The 10$ would become unreasonable. So having lost the control of the prices publisher will now have to at least match the 50$ price tag to sell additional first hand copies and make more profit. If you were the publisher how would you try to improve the situation? Well, for instance I could sell the game on day 1 at 120$. Ouch that's a lot of money. But hei! Whoever buys a copy knows that he can sell it later. Let's say 100$ a month later. The effective cost after you sell it would be around 20$, still much less than the 60$ people consider fair now. So why not? Now the publisher not only gets 120$ instead of 60$ on day one, but after a month it will be able to sell additional copies for 100$ instead of 50$. The benefits are clear: the sell copies slower, controlling how many licenses they print to not inflate the market. But as opposed to now where scarcity is just detrimental the scarcity actually help them maintain the value higher for longer, resulting in more profits in the long run.

Anyway these are just speculations. Who knows what will really happen. Maybe they will sell you copies that you can sell back for guaranteed 90% of the value a month layer if you want. That would control price fluctuations and empower grant them interest free month long loans. Maybe reasonably priced legit copy scarcity will just drive people en mass to piracy and everything will blow up. Maybe they will abandon the single license model entirely and do only streaming or subscription like other people suggested. And maybe we'll never find out because the rule implications are different than this like somebody pointed out already. :)

this judgment doesn't introduce new troubles. It just went back backward when all games were physically distributed (we, all olds, yet sold finished game on cd or disk)... did it avoid game developers and industry to develop? I don't think so.
Remember also that you will need markets to sell those used keys (and internet connexion to activate game and survey their uses but that's yet the case on steam, galaxy, epic launcher, etc.), meaning fees. With low cost games due to sales, buying used keys may remain anecdotal excepted for those who exploited their game as long-term annuities (ie keeping the price of their games high even after years).

Company that will keep alive their games, taking into account for users will have few impact from such decision. Those that will endure it will be bullshit companies or games: they will be immediately sanctioned by a massive resale and therefore a net stop of their sale. I think it will also clean the presale promises like linux announcement.

We do that with books, comics, bluray, ... so game market benefited from few years of a monopoly created with their owned developed tools (individual keys) which has guaranteed to many actors rents, even well after the true works were finished and profitable. It is simply getting this market back into the perimeter of the law.
Indeed, this unilaterally established monopoly allowed more incomes that created a niche from which also benefited some indies. Indies collateral damages can't serve as excuse for the rest of the industry.

Quoting: GuestValve could benefit from this if they're allowed to get a % of the resale (as Steam would likely still act as the market for these transactions). Even maybe a cut for the developers/publishers. I dunno, maybe like 5% or 10% each.

Whenever someone sells something on eBay, that marketplace gets a cut because they facilitate the whole framework and infrastructure for the sale, and Steam should be no different.

Yeah, you could sell the key to someone else manually, but a game purchased with Steam Key is still "delivered" through Valve's infrastructure (Steam) so they should get a cut, and the game's upkeep (patches, updates so they don't "wear out") are maintained by the developer/publisher so they should too.

Just an idea, I'm not saying this is the way to fix this situation for Valve or French Gamers. I just thought it's an interesting tangent to consider.

*shrugs*

They will have to think on what to do with games trading cards too. Is very fun to think all the consequences of this change for the business model of Steam (and probably every Store... imagine Origin allowing games reselling ROFL!)


Last edited by x_wing on 20 September 2019 at 3:01 pm UTC

IMO, two posibilities outcome for future game stores/clients:

1. Return to sort of new style ownership ala physical copies era. (kinda Great)
2. End of software copy and "game streaming" and every new bullshit-ness. (Seriously, I'll quit gaming, in legit way)

Indeed. Interesting times.

Quoting: sub

Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: pbThat's it, I'm telling my son right now to stop dreaming of developing games. This basically legalises keyshops and now even allowing you to sell the games you're already played and finished, if it wasn't bad enough before... Piracy killed Amiga gaming, socialism will kill PC gaming?

Can we maybe not be so dramatic? Some of us are old enough to remember that that’s how it was for the majority of video gaming’s existence. And books, DVDs, cars, etc. Sure it would be a disruptive change, but as long as it doesn’t open the door to duplication (piracy), the market can adapt. It might not be pretty for a while, but it won’t just die like that.

I'm not yet having a position on all this yet, tbh.

Being honest, this pure digital distribution is different to what
we had back then for games or even more for the book example.

If you sell a used book, it's used - no matter how hard you try.
Those old game boxed were usually plastic sealed and you had to open them.
From my experience the cardbox boxes suffered as did the jewel case plus the CD.

All I want to say is this: Usually a used product is not mint anymore.
It shows signs of use that is represented in the price when you resell it.

This is completely gone for digital products.
You sell something that's perfectly the same as you bought it first hand.
There is no price on the consumption of the game anymore, which is what the
developer actually wants to get paid for - and that's fair, isn't it?

It's a dilemma.

This is partly just one more sign that the whole "product" model for digital goods is pretty broken, that paying by the unit for infinitely replicatable things doesn't really work. It's the model we have, it's the model that (for better or worse) our economic system depends on, and it makes a certain sense for material, non-replicatable goods in situations of scarcity. So we naturally try to extend it to this new domain. But it's showing plenty of cracks; this is just one more.
(Subscription models are broken in a different way)

Quoting: subAlso, the argument that you can trivially copy a digital "good" and therefore must be cheaper sounds like complete non-sense to me.
As if a dev/publisher puts a price tag on the binary...
Ofc, they want to get paid for the experience (per person).

It's like arguing with the ticket man to let me into the cinema for free as there are still spare seats left and the show runs anyway.
I have never faced someone complaining to pay for the "experience".
Ofc, I came across plenty that complained about cinema prices here. Fair enough.

Still, it's not the only way to do things. In ancient Rome, the theatre was free. You're a Roman citizen in a decent-sized Roman town, the empire lays on an amphitheatre of some sort and it's your right to go and take in a show. Bread and circuses, man. Of course, there was a statue of the emperor and some stuff before the show about how awesome the emperor and the empire was. Pay for your entertainment by accepting a bit of propaganda. Sort of like the ad-supported model of the internet . . .
So obviously I'm not saying we should do it like the Romans. Just saying, there could be other approaches.

Quoting: Arehandoro

Quoting: sub

Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: pbThat's it, I'm telling my son right now to stop dreaming of developing games. This basically legalises keyshops and now even allowing you to sell the games you're already played and finished, if it wasn't bad enough before... Piracy killed Amiga gaming, socialism will kill PC gaming?

Can we maybe not be so dramatic? Some of us are old enough to remember that that’s how it was for the majority of video gaming’s existence. And books, DVDs, cars, etc. Sure it would be a disruptive change, but as long as it doesn’t open the door to duplication (piracy), the market can adapt. It might not be pretty for a while, but it won’t just die like that.

I'm not yet having a position on all this yet, tbh.

Being honest, this pure digital distribution is different to what
we had back then for games or even more for the book example.

If you sell a used book, it's used - no matter how hard you try.
Those old game boxed were usually plastic sealed and you had to open them.
From my experience the cardbox boxes suffered as did the jewel case plus the CD.

All I want to say is this: Usually a used product is not mint anymore.
It shows signs of use that is represented in the price when you resell it.

This is completely gone for digital products.
You sell something that's perfectly the same as you bought it first hand.
There is no price on the consumption of the game anymore, which is what the
developer actually wants to get paid for - and that's fair, isn't it?

It's a dilemma.

Not entirely true.

When one buys a 2nd hand book, film, album or game, does the content differ? Is the content less enjoyable because the medium it comes in isn't in mint condition? In my case, I know the answer to both questions (NO).

One might decide to pay less for the state of that format but ultimately the importance here is what you do with that content. Therefore, Valve's case isn't different to existing consumer rights and market laws. Besides, let's not forget that more often that not 2nd hand books are equally, if not more, expensive that new ones in many situations AND that 2nd hand market is completely out of companies revenues. In a platform like Steam, if 2nd hand were to be enabled, they could, and they will, still control how it works getting a chunk of every sale for them as platform and for the dev. Which I believe, it should create another topic in itself.

On Steam (and perhaps the devs) getting a chunk of resale, that's still probably less than the overhead for resales of physical goods. Consider used bookstores--people who actually have gone to used bookstores to sell them your old books* will realize that they pay diddly for them, and only partly because the thing itself is used. They pay diddly because they have to pay rent on a store and utilities and some money for themselves so they don't starve, out of the markup. Similar things are true for used clothes and other things; lots of used goods stores don't pay for the stuff at all, people just donate whatever to get it out of their way. So if Steam or whoever takes a cut of resale, that's hardly unprecedented; they're providing the infrastructure just like a used bookstore.

* I very rarely do this but I have occasionally ended up with duplicates of the same book. Of course where I live, there hardly are any used bookstores any more. Rent got too high, Amazon took over, they all died except a couple legendary ones.

Assuming the ruling holds and Valve is doing something about it,

a plausible scenario would be:
* People keep the same budget for buying video games.
* Depending on how the resell price is distributed, publishers and valve end up with the same split of that pie.
* In the end, people pay the same thing to end up with a smaller library of games.

An other possible scenario would be:
* People reduce their gaming budget.

Quoting: bird_or_cage

Quoting: AnanaceSomething to make "new" copies somehow different from "used" ones, to make sure that there's at least some reason for people to want to pay more for a "new" copy rather than a bit-perfect "used" one.

I like this idea. For example, disable achievements, leaderboard and cloud saves, because you did not pay the full price, which includes these "extra services".

Bad specific examples I think. Those are mostly services provided on Steam by Valve, services which they currently provide to people whose games were bought on sale and even to games which are available for free. The loss . . . well, sort of loss . . . is to the game producers. More relevant would be lack of continuing updates, support and such, not to mention no guarantee of new DLCs working (because the new DLCs might only work with current, patched versions of the game).

Quoting: ObsidianBlkAgain, I highly doubt any of this will really happen... But, call me old if you'd like, but I do like physically owning my games.

Hard drive is physical, and can hold a ton of your backed up games, without requiring any individual physical media. Buy the game on GOG, back it up, use it and you are set. No need to sell it on physical disks or cards. They don't offer anything useful if you can download it.


Last edited by Shmerl on 20 September 2019 at 4:33 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: bird_or_cage

Quoting: AnanaceSomething to make "new" copies somehow different from "used" ones, to make sure that there's at least some reason for people to want to pay more for a "new" copy rather than a bit-perfect "used" one.

I like this idea. For example, disable achievements, leaderboard and cloud saves, because you did not pay the full price, which includes these "extra services".

Bad specific examples I think. Those are mostly services provided on Steam by Valve, services which they currently provide to people whose games were bought on sale and even to games which are available for free. The loss . . . well, sort of loss . . . is to the game producers. More relevant would be lack of continuing updates, support and such, not to mention no guarantee of new DLCs working (because the new DLCs might only work with current, patched versions of the game).

Well, hosting previous versions of game costs money, especially if it is a 60 GB game.
Also non-updated game may cause negative reviews and negativity towards Steam in general, under-featured game is better than deliberately-broken game.

In the end, I hope the law will just force Steam to change EULA, nothing else. I can sell my fridge, but the shop where I bought it does not have to deliver it to new owner :D
Yes, not a good example since some may say Steam actively prevents reselling by refusing to move the game from one account to another, but they can make it as troublesome as possible to make people just forget about that.

I don't think this will change the market. Valve might be forced to allow the transfer of games between accounts but the court cant force them to add a "second hand market" system into steam. So people would still need to rely on ebay or other sites to sell their games. With all the insecurities included like when you sell a used game on DVD.