Finally some good news! I’ve been waiting for quite a while for such a ruling.
Dumb news article copying info from a 2012 article posted on Reddit yesterday.
EU court rules people can resell digital games
Submitted 11 months ago by rikudou@lemmings.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
Madnessx9@lemmy.world 11 months ago
can@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
And we all played into it.
idiocracy@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
brain is easily fooled
hperrin@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What’s next!? Letting people return a game just because it’s trash?? What is this world coming to?
sweetdude@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Am I understanding that correctly? That if I buy a steam game, I can sell that to another person who can then download it from steam? That’s going to be very good for gamers and bad for all those corporations. It would, literally, be a dream come true if this happens.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I believe the idea is that you would no longer own the license to play the game yourself.
That_whisky_guy@lemmy.nz 11 months ago
Time to air gap a new computer.
infinitepcg@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I don’t know how this is good for gamers, it would be the end of perpetual licenses. Every company would move to subscription services immediately.
trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.com 11 months ago
EU coming in clutch for the consumers again.
Thanks EU
Norgur@kbin.social 11 months ago
Haven't we had some ruling of that sort on the past where Valve basically went "fuck it,you may be allowed to sell it, but we ain't implementing anything you could do that with"?
can@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
The article they reference is over a decade old so it may in fact be this you are remembering.
sweetdude@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, but if individuals enter into a contract where the license gets sold, Valve would have to abide by it and allow the 2nd party to download the game. If not, they’d probably be sued. At least, that’s how I understand it. Probably easier if they create a used digital game store and just tack on some sort of shitty “processing” fee to make it simple for everyone.
Katana314@lemmy.world 11 months ago
/s: By submitting an encoded JSON post request to Steam’s most overloaded server, users may acquire a sale ticket token, which must then be cryptographically delivered to another user, salted with their Steam user ID.
There are services that will do this for you, but…charge a 50% premium to provide that service, because no technology is free.
tomi000@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Didnt read the article. Does this mean steam will have to give the option to sell games or would you have to sell the whole account?
can@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
It’s unclear(PDF)
Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy - tangible or intangible - and at the same time concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a licence agreement granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right. Such a transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy. Therefore, even if the licence prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy.
WarmSoda@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Looks like it’s individual games.
sunbunman@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I see a massive downside to this ruling. This is talking about resale of a digital game. In reality what would happen is someone would download a game, copy the file to a harddrive, sell the “digital license” or whatever it’s called for a lesser amount and still own a copy of the game. It’s basically simplifying piracy.
This might actually necessitate game companies to have a hardline DRM approach to their games. Ironically the only games that are protected from this kind of resale are the those that heavily dipped in microtransactions since you can’t resell those and would push the market more in that direction.
IMHO this ruling is shortsighted and pushes for a future with increased monitisation that isn’t in the box value of the game and targets to hurt the Devs that make consumer friendly games while giving games with loot boxes and microtransactions an advantage in the market when talking in terms of overall sales for the devs.
Naz@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Steam has a sub 2-hour game time no questions asked refund period - what prevents someone from doing exactly what you said using the refund process instead of resale?
sunbunman@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Fair call, didn’t think of that.
Deceptichum@kbin.social 11 months ago
Why would anyone go to that effort when you can pirate them?
Seems like an absurd situation to worry about.
sunbunman@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Because pirating games is not something that the majority of the population is either aware of or wiling to do due to perceived difficulty. This can be done through steam which is the biggest host of PC games and significantly less risky than going to some site and figuring out which copy of a game is legit.
tryitout@infosec.pub 11 months ago
Any protections to consumers are a win. I think overall this will be a positive for gamers.
IMHO this ruling is shortsighted and pushes for a future with increased monitisation that isn’t in the box value of the game and targets to hurt the Devs that make consumer friendly games while giving games with loot boxes and microtransactions an advantage in the market when talking in terms of overall sales for the devs.
Your last paragraph could hold some truth if publishers think this will affect profits. I don’t know if this would significantly impact profits since we’re talking about a new secondary market that did not exist in the digital space before. There’s probably some historical data for how physical used game sales affect new game sales but it might be hard to quantify since that market has existed pretty much from the beginning.
I would anticipate another across the board price increase for games as a result, but I see this more as an excuse for greed on the publishers’ parts rather than a cost to offset any actual lost revenue.
sunbunman@lemm.ee 11 months ago
My problem is traditional consumer friendly sales model for digital games are already on the back foot. This ruling only works to dissuade any new or existing Devs from persuing that model over one with microtransaction.
If anything I want this method of purchasing digital content to be pushed further into any game with purchasable in game items to even the playing field.
Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As a gamer, that’s some ridiculous whataboutisms. What’s to stop me from buying a physical copy of a game, copying it, and reselling the game? Only time, experience and know how, and yet that isn’t seen as much of an issue. This isn’t any different, it’s just digital.
sunbunman@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Most people aren’t going through the effort of buying a physical game or any media these days, it’s why digital stores are so effective. But the other commenter did say that steam already has a 2hour refund window that basically has the same impact so I might have panicked for no reason.
Though my other point about micro transactions vs full box value still stands.
Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Maybe this is what those game companies can finally use NFTs for!
I’m kinda kidding but maybe blockchain can offer a solution.
sunbunman@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Lmao no were block chain gaming.
Eric_Pollock@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wish so badly that this would come to the US… I have so many games I never play that I wish I could sell off
krellor@kbin.social 11 months ago
Am I wrong or is this article simply re-reporting a Eurogamer article from 2012? Because the only source this article cited is a 2012 article from Eurogamer.
can@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Oh shit, good catch. I just followed the links down to the source and didn’t notice the date. Was the OP’s link spun up by AI or something?
krellor@kbin.social 11 months ago
No idea but it definitely feels like scraping the bottom of the barrel for clicks.
Shadow@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Actual report from 2012: curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/…/cp120094en.pdf