As I understand it, they will have no choice if they wish to continue trading via dd in the EU? Are you suggesting steam et al will close to the EU as the market is not big enough?
I'm happy with the current model, if game can be resold then the initial price will rocket and there will be no Steam sales.
I would love to be able to at least give my un-used or old games away games away, might even help sales Mate of mine was dontated Portal 1, he bought Portal 2 on release then!
It won't help sales. It will just mean that I won't take a chance on games I will wait for a friend to finish it and then have their free copy.
In the first instance you get your original money back and typically the later offers diminishing returns.
Interesting development this really. Not all that complicated to comply with the ruling either. Simply means that we should not be limited when it comes to the transfer of the license to a game. Same goes for PSN or XBOX Live, they can't hide from EU rulings! Also opens up the debate about DRM which is another limiting factor to the end user when we're talking about transferring ownership.
My brain cannot comprehend how this would actually work. A downloadable game is no different whether it's second-hand or new, what will justify any price difference between the two? Also, this could be the downfall of Steams Bundle Pack sales e.g. you buy a bundle because it has one game you like in it, you sell back the ones you don't want to recoup the cost. I guess if Steam implements some sort of MS point style system, which can be traded, then maybe it could work out somehow.
Who talks about selling the games back ? And what price difference ? Human number one buys a game. Human number one plays the game. (optional) Human number one doesn't want the game anymore. Human number one finds human number two, who wants that game. Human number two pays human number one in some form (money through Paypal, bank transfer; game exchange etc). Human number one requests from Steam/Origin/whatever to transfer the game from him to human number two. Simple enough ?
And that is exactly this ruling and topic is about - Steam/Origin/whatever will have to enable to transfer (including the serial number and all assorted stuff) to human number two free of charge.
Can you see apple letting me transfer all my applications and music to somebody else free of charge, as not sure i can personally.
And ? That is what this ruling says. The fact that there is no such implementation yet is a different thing. But the court said they have to allow that.
I would see it working a bit like Ebay, but tied to your Steam/Origin/D2D/whatever account. You have a game you want to sell on Steam (for the sake of argument), so you click the 'sell this game' button and it (or you license) appears for sale on the steam store. Ideally as part of a queue rather than every listing being individual. Once it's sold, you lose the game from your account, the buyer gets it on theirs, Valve takes a cut of the money. The biggest problem as I see it is is that it cuts developers/publishers out of the revenue stream again. Second hand sales have damaged retail for gamers as publishers put in ever increasing DRM to 'encourage' you towards a new copy. If they don't get some kind of cut from a digital second hand market they'll just go and dream even more ways of getting between us and our games. Or worse, they'll move quickly into F2P land...
