Be Excellent To Each Other

Achievement unlocked: Opened can of worms.

Oh boy!

They'll just stop selling games in Europe.

Business plan - ten pence traders - match the downloaded game you've no need for with someone willing to pay a flat rate of 10 p for it. Site takes 2p from the 10 as comission.


££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££

Could the games companies not just redefine their T&Cs to sell all future games under a restricted license, which forbids resale?

They could even sell you a 'one time' download game for a fiver and a resellable one for a tenner, or similar.

Presumably this will be the same for all media? If so, I imagine itunes will have to go down a subscription route similar to spotify.

Resale is a statutory right which can't be signed away by a contract, never mind an EULA. The publishing industry spent an awful lot of time and money trying, and failing, to prove otherwise. All the "you may not lend or sell" blurb in the front of books has had no legal basis for a long time.

I don't know how "non-transferable" ticket sales get away with it.

Hmm. Anyone want to buy a 30 million skill point -9.8 Space pirate with two trading alts?

Offers around £3,000 due to reputation, awesomeness and stuff.

You can already do that, Mali! People have been selling MMO accounts on eBay since day one!

They don't. Nothing stopping you selling a ticket. But they might not let you into the event on the door if your name isn't on it.

So, if we assume that physical games currently have an uplift in their RRP to take account of the fact that a given copy might be resold 20 times, with nothing from the latter 19 sales going to the publishers, will we now see the same sort of pricing uplift on Steam? On the various mobile App Stores?

Can we assume that? It's not an argument I've ever heard, though I'm happy to be proved wrong as always.

I always thought that was the given reason for an RRP on console games that was £15 or so higher than the same game on Steam.

I thought it was to cover the cost of a licence to produce games for that console.

You're comparing apples and oranges there though, PC games are already cheaper than console games even if bought from actual shops so trying to compare console RRPs to Steam prices isn't that meaningful. Um, if you see what I mean, I realise I'm not explaining that very well.

That aside, isn't RRP pretty much meaningless anyway? Some places might actually charge it but most don't so it's not at all difficult to sidestep.

Maybe I should be stating de-facto retail price, rather than RRP. RRP for a 360 game is £50, de-facto standard price is £40, I'd have said.

I can't believe that pricing doesn't take into account resale. Release a game on steam, every person that buys it means money in your pocket. Release a game on disk, perhaps one in 3 sales are money in your pocket. That has to have a major impact on pricing strategies.

If you want to know what impact digital distribution has on pricing strategies then the best thing to do is look at big PC games (like Arkham City or something) on release day; is the Steam price generally lower than the shop bought disc price? If the two prices are, on average, the same then publishers aren't looking at that when deciding a price. If however there's a marked difference then there's a case to be made. I genuinely don't know the answer myself.

Just as a quick check on that theory, recently released Spec Ops: The Line is £29.99 on Steam and £24.99 on Amazon and Game's websites. Lego Batman 2 follows a similar pattern; £19.99 on Steam and £17.00 on Amazon/Game.

Do you mean the shop bought disc price on PC? I thought that DRM and piracy concerns had meant that you basically haven't been able to resell PC games for years. Comparing the two doesn't really work, because effectively the PC disc doesn't have a second hand market, just the same as Steam.

Yeah, that's what I was talking about. I don't think you can make a straight comparison between shop-bought console games and electronically distributed PC games as there's a price difference between even PC and console games even when the distribution method is the same (i.e. physical media) so if you throw a different distribution method in as well then your comparison becomes even more skewed and, arguably, meaningless.



You can sell PC games on but a lot of people don't, and there's certainly nothing like the same second hand market as there is for console games. Which perhaps does make my comparison meaningless as well! Although it's interesting that the Steam prices are higher on those two random examples I plucked from the Steam website.

All that aside, the other way to try and prove/disprove your point is look at electronically distributed console games vs their physical equivalent; but when it comes to 'full' games MS and Sony have traditionally charged massively inflated prices for older games on their digital distribution services which again doesn't support an argument that games are priced up the way when there's a risk of them entering the second hand market. However that could well be the platform owners sticking their oar in rather than the publishers directly deciding a price point which again muddies the waters somewhat.

I love the ECJ. 9 times out of 10 they're infinitely reasonable in their judgements. Being out of the EU would be a very bad thing just because wouldn't have these ace judgements.

In my experience, unless its in a steam sale, retail has always been cheaper than the equivalent steam version, despite a lot of retail games coming with a steam key which you can just put into steam and download it as if you had bought it from steam.

What am I allowed to resell? My CD key? What happens if a game doesn't have a CD key, or indeed any form of DRM, like, say, an indie game? Can I just resell my 'copy'? Can I legally set up a store that sell thousands of digital copies of my original copy of their game?

The thing is you can only resell a single book once. I can create an infinite amount of copies of my games, assuming I had infinite disk space. What I can't create more of is DRM licences.

So it looks like such a ruling would infact increase DRM, as even indie folk get in on the act?

This seems strange to me.
I don't really care, as I haven't sold a game since I sold Colony Wars for the PS1 and then got sad I didn't have it any more.

And games are insanely cheap anyway.

Of course you can't sell thousands of copies of your copy. You can sell your copy. Singular. The judgement is quite clear on that (albeit in a flowery legal way). "Your copy" is the software and licence, so that includes any measures taken to prevent copying. If that's a CD key, that CD key (or replacement) must continue to work.

Just like you're allowed to sell your copy of a book you buy. And not thousands of photocopies (or scans) you make of it.

Why? You've bought <consumer item> so you should be allowed to sell <consumer item> to someone else when you no longer want it. This is already true of everything from mobile phones to cars so why not games? The distribution method shouldn't impact that.

Obviously I know there are issues about how that should be managed due to peculiarities of the medium, and I'm not saying I necessarily agree with it, but as a concept it's not that strange surely?

I’ve recently seen copyright notices on plants! Saying that you can’t take cuttings, from something you buy then plant in the ground, which could grow and thrive depending on how its treated and the environment its in.

Because everything else you buy second-hand is going to be lower-quality that if you bought it brand new (the amount varies, of course). Digitally-distributed media will be indistinguishable from the original, no matter how many owners it has had. Add to this the fact that there's zero effort in actually shipping/receiving it and you've suddenly got zero reason to buy a brand new copy.

I think what could potentially work is being able to sell back to the original supplier at a lower cost.

What is the incentive to buy it back?

If Steam allowed you to trade in your games for Steam Bucks, that might work.

The longer you leave it after the release date the less bucks you get? so renting then?

What about stuff like GOG?

I bought Dungeon Keeper 2 for £1.79 (or something like that), and for that I got a completely DRM free installer supplied as a single executable.

Can I resell that? What's to stop me reselling it a million times and becoming a millionaire?

Some people just don't get this, and/or won't accept it though, it really is bizarre.

Not reading one post? viewtopic.php?p=680627#p680627

That doesn't necessarily mean there's anything to stop him. The only way to really stop it would be to make all the DRM-free download services like GOG switch to DRM.

Yes I did read that post (I've read the entire thread in fact, which is more than you sometimes bother to do). My question is slightly different.

Exactly, so it'd be a retrograde step IMO.

Bye bye Steam sales and the like, too.

Of course, you've been extremely able to buy media, copy it and sell it, in both digital and non-digital forms for some time. That remains illegal, all this case says is that a market can now facilitate selling 'second hand' digital media if rules are met. Given recent and upcoming games like Diablo 3 (and, I understand SimCity) require login and constant internet access to play, the protection measures won't really need to move on that much further, will they?

The problem with digital media is that the person selling it on can very easily make a copy of it before they do so.

When you sell a book or a car on, you lose the ability to read the book again or drive the car again.

Now whilst it's possible that there could be some kind of transfer of the 'electronic license' to play the game included in the sale, this immediately knackers services like GOG, or games consoles that aren't connected to the internet, and is clearly borderline fucking impossible when it comes to mobile devices/tablets etc.

It's a stupid fucking idea and I hope it never comes to pass. People just need to stop moaning and be prepared to spend a bit of cash on their games.

I broadly agree, but I think that even without this, the industry was going that way anyway.

If they really want to stop second hand sales, they should delete players' Cheevos but keep the game showing as played to fuck over their completion percentage.

With something like Steam, it would be incredibly easy. You just adapt the system in place to allow you to 'gift' the license you hold to someone else, in exchange for cash. Your system would stop running the game, the person you sell it to would then be able to. With mobile devices, too, it would be pretty simple to have DRM that ties your apps to your Apple ID (or whatever) until such time as you sell it to someone else, at which point you lose access to it and they gain access. The device would need to be online at the point of transfer, but I don't think that's an unreasonable requirement.

The problem is that a large amount of peer-to-peer sales would be directly lost sales for the publishers and the middlemen like Apple. Either they'd have to cream a fee off as part of the transfer (which I'm not sure this ruling would permit) or they'd put prices up significantly to account for the lost revenue.

But that's clearly a ridiculous proposal as far as the publishers/developers are concerned. For a story-driven game like Max Payne 3, I buy it once, play it through in two weeks, and just resell it to a chum, who does the same, and resells it to a chum, and so on.

The easier you make it via digital distribution, the less sense it makes, Steam would literally be providing the platform via which they'd put themselves and their 'suppliers' (the game developers) out of business.

It's not even like games are expensive, you can log into Steam any day of the year and choose from a whole raft of fantastic games for less than a fucking fiver!

It's the exact same proposal that exists with boxed console games today. Yes, the publishers hate it, because it deprives them of any revenue. But according to the law, as the ruling states, you have the right to resell something you've bought and no longer want. Buy a DVD, watch it, sell it to one of your mates. Second hand DVD sales haven't exactly brought Hollywood crashing to its knees.

Again though, a second-hand DVD is demonstrably 'used', although if the disc plays perfectly I accept it's effectively the same thing as a new copy in that regard.

However, with digital copies (as has already been noted) the resold item is identical in every single regard to the original item that was sold, which makes the idea of services like Steam/iTunes/etc facilitating this process utterly nonsensical in my eyes.

I can't see this happening, I really can't. (And to be honest, I hope it doesn't, because the folks who are currently happy to pay reasonable prices for their games rather than pick on the carrion of the second-hand market, are the ones who will suffer.)

The one definite reason for buying new that would remain even with this idea in place is availability. To buy something second hand someone else has to be selling it. If you want to play a game within a week or so of it's release, which many people do, then second hand isn't really an option. Even after that first wave of purchases is over second hand copies are still only going to trickle out into the market at a relatively random rate so you'd be waiting an unknown amount of time to pick up a copy which would presumably put as many people off waiting for a second hand copy as it does now with physical media.

I'm also not convinced by this argument of 'second hand electronic media is an exact copy thus worth so much more than the same thing on physical media that it would actually make a difference'. If you pick up a second hand game on disc and stick it in your Xbox it's not like the graphics are all worn round the edges. Once you've stuck the disc in your machine there's literally no difference between the experience you get and the experience the original owner had so why would it make much of a difference? It might to some weirdos who're worried about getting a pristine instruction manual they can never bother reading but I doubt the average person give a shit.

Game and the like often have pre-used copies of games on their release day.
Christ knows who these people are, though.

If this moves games to a subscription / rental payment system I'm going to be angry

Could be staff, as they can get them early.. I think

Probably people who've picked the game up and hated it sufficiently to want to get shot of it while it's at it's most valuable. Although you wouldn't think that would happen very often.

Or those who complete it in one day.