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

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.