French court rules country's Steam users can resell their games

Svensk Viking said:
And for there to be a big used market, all of the games on sale must have been bought new in the first place. And if the sellers see that there's little competition, they'll try to take even higher prices when reselling their games.
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A digital game could technically be resold many times. Each time shrinking the profits of that initial sale through the burden of bandwidth.
 
In which case Valve could have an activation fee or whatever they'd call it. There's usually a fee for selling second hand, whether it's on the Internet or a flea market.
 
Resale fee with a publisher tax so that a portion goes to the publisher of the game every time.
 
Davros said:
Why ?
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Because resale of digital games would probably kill any chance smaller developers could make a living? Why would anyone not sell their 8-hour story game they finished, again and again and again? You would just end up with a much smaller percentage of people buying the game at release whilst a vast majority simply wait for it to end up on some marketplace a couple of days later for half the price or less.

homerdog said:
RNG system where you pay a small amount for the chance to be permitted to sell your game.
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haha loot box resale rights! The big publishers will love it!
 
Davros said:
Then again If you know you can resell your game your more likely to buy it in the first place...
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Would more people be conditioned to simply wait a couple weeks for the "nth-hand sale price"? At least with Steam Sales, it's usually a ways out after launch in terms of waiting for a sizeable discount.

---
hmph...on a side note, I had to think along the lines of evolution of the gaming and the consequences of consumer behaviour. :p So unless we want indies/lower budget folks to go the way of the dodo, how do we erm... protect them. :V

*cough* anyways.............. uh..........
 
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One time use codes tied to the account that gives a license to Multiplayer or Singleplayer. Make the sale of the game be free.
 
That's what publishers may move to if they can't get a cut of the resale while forced to allow for digital reselling.

It's not what we'd want to happen, but it's possible to happen.
 
AlphaWolf said:
If they know you will resell your game they are more likely to charge you twice as much.
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At which point, who would buy an indie/small developer game? They already have to price it low to attract customers even if they offer as much content as a AAA game.

Now if you compound that with people reselling the game when they are done, the already small audience for many indie games shrinks even further. Most indies can't even afford to develop games without having a second job.

This would basically kill off most of the indie market. While the loss of some of the "trash" (one man's trash is another man's treasure, however) might not be much to be sad over, it also carries the consequence of destroying whatever chance there is to have the gems shines.

Then again, I guess if this all happened before PUBG was released, we might not even have a Fortnite BR. :p Which means no EGS. :p

Regards,
SB
 
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Indies would have to basically use UE and EGS exclusively to barely survive. Steam would just be too expensive.

Meanwhile all the big publishers move to subscription-only services for PC and console.
 
Lots of fear mongering but I'm not sure I'm hearing a lot of facts.

First and foremost this law is about consumer protection. The idea that consumers can resell digital goods is, in itself, not necessarily a bad thing. After all, if you don't use a certain product anymore, why shouldn't you be able to sell it just because it wasn't delivered to you on a physical format?

How this would affect the games industry I'm not sure but up until this generation games were mostly sold on disk. Despite this the gaming industry has only been growing so it is probably fair to say the second hand market isn't exactly killing the industry. The same can be said for other similar industries. The music and movies industry are still alive and kicking despite second hand markets being available for over half a century.

As somebody else said, it is also a case of supply and demand. If everybody is waiting for second hand sales, the prices won't drop significantly. If the prices do drop quickly either a lot of people bought it at full price. Good for the dev/pub. Or it's not a very good game and people are dumping it. Bad for the dev/pub but not something the consumer can be blamed for.

It's also not like people will sell every game they have just because they can. I'm sure a lot of people like to hang on to their games, especially the good ones.

Of course there is also no reason to think reselling has to be free. Just as with reselling physical goods, in many cases there will be a third party involved that takes part of the cut. The platform holder could take a cut and share (part of that) with the dev/pub. Theoretically the fees could even be set up in such a manner that would discourage reselling. Though that would likely cause consumer backlash and probably further regulation in the future.

As for Indies in particular, if your business model is so cut troat that you are barely making money in the best case then maybe it's time to reconsider your priorities.

A lot of people so things out of a passion and barely make a living. That is an unfortunate reality we live in. Not a lot of people can so what they love and do it exactly the way they like it and live comfortably off it.

Being able to resell games might even lead to more people trying out games, which might be a particularly large benefit for Indies.

If any I think gaming is under threat more from lootbox crap etc. and the people that keep spending ridiculous amounts of money on that than gamers potentially being able to resell their games.
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
How this would affect the games industry I'm not sure but up until this generation games were mostly sold on disk. Despite this the gaming industry has only been growing so it is probably fair to say the second hand market isn't exactly killing the industry. The same can be said for other similar industries. The music and movies industry are still alive and kicking despite second hand markets being available for over half a century.
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Simply not comparable. Physical resale is very different and requires either a local store to buy and sell those games and thus limiting the market for the consumers to those willing to travel and limiting the selection greatly, or buying used copies on stores like ebay where shipping costs and packaging make it less appealing. With digital it's just far simpler to click a few buttons and wait for someone to buy it. The market is not limited at all by geography, borders, anything.


tongue_of_colicab said:
It's also not like people will sell every game they have just because they can. I'm sure a lot of people like to hang on to their games, especially the good ones.
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Attachment to the game to keep it is far less prevalent with digital as there's no physical item to have in a collection. The only reason to keep it is if you want to play it again sometime in the future, at which the user would likely just figure they could buy it again much cheaper than they sold it for.

tongue_of_colicab said:
Being able to resell games might even lead to more people trying out games, which might be a particularly large benefit for Indies.
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Only if they happen to get a cut of that resale, otherwise they'd only make money for those willing to buy "full price" with the intention of helping the developer, which isn't exactly a prevalent consideration.
 
Perhaps now Valve will see themselves forced to finally make games to bring money.
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
How this would affect the games industry I'm not sure but up until this generation games were mostly sold on disk. Despite this the gaming industry has only been growing so it is probably fair to say the second hand market isn't exactly killing the industry. The same can be said for other similar industries. The music and movies industry are still alive and kicking despite second hand markets being available for over half a century.
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Games as a Service has become more prevalent, and there are certain game design choices that go along on there.

Even the DLC model itself has evolved to reflect the general purchasing behaviour of consumers so as to not split the userbase ( e.g. map packs -> cosmetics).
 
ToTTenTranz said:
Perhaps now Valve will see themselves forced to finally make games to bring money.
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Assuming this is applied to all digital goods then Steam may be the only online storefront that has a chance of surviving. EGS will die without heavy subsidizing due to the low percentage that Epic takes combined with the 20% per purchase that content creators with a creator's code gets whenever a title is purchased with their code. GoG will likely die as a user can buy a title there and then resell that title 100's of times if they wish.

Regards,
SB
 
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