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07-25-2013, 03:03 AM
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Havoc
Cheesecake Apocalypse
 
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I don't think they'd get off that easily if a judge orders them to enable reselling.

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