Steam: Reselling your games Vs. Massive Sales
 

So here's an interesting thing. A German consumer organisation is planning to take Valve to court because, by European law, consumers should be able to resell their licenses for digital products. Steam currently doesn't offer this feature and is thus technically in violation of this law. However it is believed that because publishers know that games bought on Steam can't be resold second hand, they can afford to throw their games into the massive sales up to 90% off.

Total Biscuit talks about it for a bit in this video here:



So what would be your preference? Would you like the ability to resell your Steam games if that meant no more Steam sales and all games would be standard retail price? Discuss!

I ain't gonna give my games that I'll never play again to ANYBODY! Steam sales ftw

Yeah I was reading about that - I wonder what will come of it.

Steam sales make new or nearly new games a lot more affordable for a lot of people with a lot more convenience and security than the sale of used games can provide - Plus the money goes to the game developers and supports them. A lot of people who buy during a Steam sale wouldn't pay full price for the games they purchase...

Plus, how does the reselling of licences to use digitally distributed software make sense?

Steam works pretty damned well as it is both for the consumer and the game producer IMO, there's a reason for its popularity. And I hope this doesn't bugger it up.

Just look at the Community Market. With millions of competing users, if I wanted to sell a $10 game on I'd be lucky to get a couple of cents. I don't think sales and reselling are mutually exclusive, but from a purely financial standpoint, I'll make a greater saving on the latter by a significant margin.

There is the argument that I wouldn't buy so many games if they weren't so cheap, but that's for another thread.

Relevant.

It doesn’t, that’s the really stupid thing.

Used sales make sense for physical products, where an item is changing hands, suffers wear and tear, has a limited supply etc.

For a digital marketplace? You’re trading licenses, which can be infinitely produced. Whoever owns that license can download the digital assets associated without ever worrying about them being damaged.

A used marketplace can only make sense when there’s a limited, physical supply of the product.

Of course, there are downsides to a digital marketplace that physical media won’t have — what happens if the digital vendor shuts down? — but we’ll never fix those problems by emulating traditional marketplaces.

If I were Valve, I would enable reselling, but add an incredibly large markup so that second-hand games are more expensive than the new ones. It would allow them to no longer in breach of the law, whilst not actually affecting their bottom line or publisher relationships.

I don't think they'd get off that easily if a judge orders them to enable reselling.

I dunno. It's a lot more complicated than that. If you think about it, everything you ever bought could theoretically be resold. Be it your TV, a car, a lamp, a table. Aside from consumables, anything can be resold if you want even if its used and even if there still is a major first hand market for it.

So why doesn't the same rule apply to digital products? If I buy a license to use a piece of software why can't I sell that license to someone else? Even though the game itself is not mine, the license is. The license is as much mine as my table or my TV. How can a company even forbid me from selling it? People would cry out in anger if Samsung would forbid them to resell their TV.

In general I think it's a good thing that European law exists now, but in the case of Steam the non-reselling has an obvious advantage for the consumer.

Microsoft would have us believe that games for the Xbox One would go down because they tried to push the non-reselling thing. Everyone was pretty skeptical about that because no-one trusts big share holder companies to care about anything other than the bottom line. Valve has proven it can be done, but the sales only really took off in the last 4 or so years.

Ideally the law should include something that says companies can prohibit reselling of a license provided the price of the product does not exceed x (insert complicated math here). But you know, can of worms and such.

The difference is that physical products are physical and digital products aren’t.

When you buy a physical copy of a game, you’re paying for the license and the box, the disc, the manual etc. The license for the game is inextricably tied to the disc in this case – if the disc breaks, your license is toast.

The value for the physical copy of the game is tied directly into the physicality of the product:

• How many of those discs have been produced? Am I still able to buy a new copy?
• Is the disc scratched or worn? Does the console still read it properly?
• Is the manual included? Is it torn or damaged?
• Is the box broken or damaged? Is the boxart still in its sleeve?

All of the above can affect the retail price of a used game.

The issue is that none of those can be applied to a digital license for a game because there is no physical product, there is no potential for wear and tear, and there is no lack of availability.

When none of the factors that make buying a game used worthwhile exist, what’s the advantage in buying it used? And what’s the point in selling your license when there’s an infinite supply of brand new licenses that anyone can buy?

But you can't resell your TV license.

Goods are resold because when you no longer need them they're just clutter and dead weight, effectively costing you for their storage. When a licensed product is no longer required (like a rented car or an MMO subscription), people stop paying the license and stop being granted said product.

In the case of upfront licensing, the same rules apply, except the product is effectively granted to you until the company goes bust. When you no longer need it, the only things you're legally entitled to do are either to (fraudulently) claim for a refund, keep the product anyway, or opt to terminate the license and lose access to the game you bought; Just like being able to terminate your old EULAs by frying your game discs.

Note that digital distribution =/= licensing. Most indie games bought directly give you ownership of the files you paid for. Steam doesn't do that for various reasons including the ability to patch games on a whim, regulate piracy and stop free-to-play game bots. As well as it being cheaper, of course.

That's actually not true anymore for a large number of (PC) games. Buying PC games in the store is really nothing more than buying the serial which is then, more often than not, tied to an account (Origin, Steam, Ubisoft). As a result the physical product you bought in the store becomes a digital product once you install it.

The point of selling a license could be that many people want to sell a game once they are done with it so they have money to buy a new one. That's the main reason the second hand console game market is thriving.

Whether or not it's a smart thing to do isn't really the issue though, it's about not being able to sell something that you own. Maybe it's no major issue for a 60 dollar game. But expand it to a 300 dollar piece of software and it suddenly does become an issue.

If today I decide to get out of the website business I would like to be able to sell the various forum software licenses I have in my possession. That way I get some money back and someone else is able to get a license to a product they would never have bought for full price.

I can resell my TV though.

You'd think Havoc would really know better than to doublepost.

But you can't resell your TV license.

There's part of this you're not quite getting. You own your TV but you don't own the right to watch it, just like you don't own the right to play your games. You can't sell it on because you have nothing to sell. They are licensed. It is a contract between you and the license giver, one which gives no rights of transferral to you. Don't like it? You signed it.

Just because you've rented something for the rest of your life, it doesn't make it yours. We'd all like to make more money and pay less money. Multi-million dollar companies are not charities, however. Unless you're PETA.

But in that case, the physical medium is almost completely irrelevant. It exists merely as a ferry for the license between the store and your account – once you register the game, the disc is useless. It can’t be resold, and you don’t even need it to play the game.


Does that argument hold water when you take into account the much cheaper prices and frequent sales that the digital marketplace allows?


That’s an interesting comparison and it’s something I’m not sure how to approach.

In theory, it would be identical to consumer licenses, but the much higher price of a specialist license like professional software makes it a less cut-and-dry situation.

How do those licenses currently work, actually? I’m guessing you mean stuff like vBulletin – surely the software they provide you is digitally distributed, so do they allow you to transfer or resell your licenses?

I know vBulletin does allow to resell their license as you please, but the catch is that a specific license can only be transferred once. So once you buy it second hand you're not allowed to transfer it again. But part of such script licenses is that you become owner of the code they provide you. That's how you're allowed to modify it and such. The same doesn't hold true for game licenses since I don't think you become owner of the game assets and code. I guess it depends largely on the conditions stated in the license.

Er... when you buy a game you are buying exactly that. The right to use the software, thus the right to play the game. So why shouldn't you be able to sell YOUR right to play a game to someone else. You lose your right to play the game and someone else gains it.

I really don't know how you could resell a digital copy of a game? Some games use one use only codes which are locked to your account.

So what about if someone sells their Steam account to another person? Would that be reselling the licence to those games illegally or would it be simply giving another person access to your licences?

Within the confines of Steam it would be a simple matter of your game disappearing from your library and appearing in someone else's.

I like the Steam sales as they are though. Even though sometimes I wish I could get rid of the major disappointing games I bought over time.

The problem would go away if they redefined their licence as a service.

Can they just do that? Wouldn't the actual developers get a say in how the enduser gets to use their product from a legal point of view?

I imagine selling through Steam requires developers to agree to some form of terms and conditions.

Ah I love the TotalBiscuit videos. I'm in two minds because of this. On the one hand, I like the freedom of selling a game that I've finished... but then I'm also someone who will purchase carefully and I tend to get things that last me a long time, like Fallout, Skyrim etc.

I'm also drawn to multiplayer heavy titles like Call of Duty, Assassins Creed etc. So overall I do prefer to buy a game and keep it. Steam sales are nice, especially if it's something you were initially curious about.