EU court rules people can resell digital games
EU court rules people can resell digital games
Those who purchase digital games are free to resell them, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled.
Finally some good news! I've been waiting for quite a while for such a ruling.
Edit: Seems this cites an article from 2012, I didn't notice that (and it's still news to me). Though there's still hope that it'll happen, EU is slow, but usually eventually gets shit done.
as reported by Eurogamer
The source is from 2012. That's internet Explorer levels of recency reporting.
Well, at least I got to enjoy this news for a moment 🙁.
Investors in shambles. Please, lord, won't someone think of the stock price?
I can see this only ever being bad for devs of shitty games. If the world wasn't so fucked that I would never bring a new child into it, I would have had kids and they could inherit my backlog, and as a result I would keep all my good games. I would gladly sell a lot of shit games for pennies and other people could see how shit they are by buying used and the dev wouldn't get the sale. Good games people would have to either get lucky or buy new. Nobody would be able to scalp or jack up prices because there is no limit to supply as long as a storefront can host the downloads.
Corporate lobbyists will never let this happen in America or Canada though.
Being able to resell digital games would completely fuck single player games. I imagine a handful of licenses would get sold at launch and then redistributed between people endlessly, until sales just bottom out completely when you can get a second-hand key for pennies. There would probably be a big shift towards games with lots of replay value like multiplayer or roguelikes.
Tbf, that's not what happened with physical games. Idk why it would be any different for digital keys.
One is a physical collectable and the other is not. It's like comparing an NFT to a Funko pop, there is a reason the latter never took off. If you think digital goods have value as collectables, then surely you also think NFTs have value as collectables? (The current NFT market would state otherwise...)
That's just BS.
Why? What exactly would keep a second hand digital games market afloat? Physical games have collectability. You might pay a little extra to buy new, so you know the physical goods are in pristine condition. Digital goods have no inherent value. You can show them off on your Steam account and that's about it.
People would buy the keys at initial lauch, finish the game and then sell the keys. Next group buys those keys for cheap, finish the game and then sells for even less. This cycle continues in a race to the bottom. Unlike physical media where it could get lost, destroyed, etc. those keys NEVER go away. Prices will go down infinitely. There is absolutely no scarcity whatsoever.
Companies are only able to sell a certain amount of keys total before the third market economy kicks off and everyone just uses that. Companies then have to maintain price parity with the third market and sell their games at perpetually low prices because there is NO downside to buying used in a digital market. Aint no way in hell a company is sinking money into big-budget single-player games if they have to sell the game for $5 a month after release. They would need to shift towards making more replayable games to incentivise people to hang on to their copies.
Please, tell me where I am wrong.
I actually hope this ruling gets reversed. This has been a known factor in physical vs. digital games for a long time. With a physical game, the publisher only makes money during the initial sale. If that person decides that they want to sell their game later, the developer doesn't see any of the money from that sale.
I routinely buy games on Steam when they go on sale for 80%+ discounts. Even AAA titles that are less than a year old occasionally see discounts up to 50%. It's rare that we can say the same for physical games. I expect that part of this is that game publishers have factored resales into the value.
A digital copy immediately has a $0 resale value. It has no further value to anybody other than the person who bought it. But a physical copy still retains resale value, as it can be resold multiple times. Aside from a few exceptions, if a developer sells 100 digital copies, around 100 people get to enjoy the game. Versus selling 100 physical copies, which results in significantly more people getting to enjoy it. Also, physical games degrade, but digital games don't. Without any degradation, there's no compelling reason for someone to purchase a used game over a new one.
Overall, this lost revenue will have to come from somewhere. This will almost certainly hurt indie game studios, as well as the digital storefronts themselves. Epic Games is already far from being profitable as is. I can only assume that this will end in higher game prices, less sales, and lower discounts. Other possibilities could be limits on number of downloads, as that extra bandwidth comes at a cost, or subscription fees for storing your digital game library. Of course everybody has their own opinions, but I'd much rather just keep the games I've paid for, and acknowledge that I can't resell them.
You are aware, if that was significantly a problem, a dev can choose to sell a game digitally only. It already exists and some devs already do so.
I fail to see your point? Right now a dev can sell their game as digital-only, forego a bunch of distribution costs and other costs associated with a physical release, and prevent lost game sales from resales. If this was to actually happen, they could no longer prevent those lost sales.
As a gamer, there's no longer any reason to "pay" for games. You can just borrow them. Buy them used, and turn around and sell them when you're done.