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> Actual second-hand reselling of bought games No. This doesn’t make sense with digital goods. Everything is a copy. Nothing is being re-used. A second person
by forrestthewoods 7y ago
> Actual second-hand reselling of bought games
No. This doesn’t make sense with digital goods. Everything is a copy. Nothing is being re-used. A second person is merely making an additional copy of bits. That person may not even download/copy the same bits as the first person if the game was updated.
Taken to the extreme a middleman exchange with infinite resells and instant transfers of ownership could limit total sales to peak concurrent users. I mean why should an American and a European each buy a license? They could just share a license and instantly transfer it back and forth when they want to play!
Gamedevs participated in bundles because it generated extra cash. Steam keys were an obvious way to distribute. A harsh lesson was learned. Going forward the fix is easy, don’t distribute keys. Assign the key to an account at point-of-sale.
The other lesson is to stop selling games and go free-to-play. It solves this problem completely! I hate f2p. But there’s a reason the industry is moved in that direction. Le sigh.
Downvote all you want. But digital goods which are infinitely reproducible and instantly transferable do not and should not follow the same laws as manufactured widgets. They’re covered by copyright law. And someone buying a copy of a thing does not grant them the right to let someone else make a copy of some vaguely similar thing 5 years later.
- m45t3r 7y ago> Taken to the extreme a middleman exchange with infinite resells and instant transfers of ownership could limit total sales to peak concurrent users. I mean why should an American and a European each buy a license? They could just share a license and instantly transfer it back and forth when they want to play! This can be mitigated by limiting transfer licenses by some days, i.e. after transferring you need to wait one month to transfer ownership again. However, this wouldn't even be necessary. Just a process that is boring enough to do would avoid most non-malicious abuse. For example, to transfer the user that current has ownership of the key must went to a process of disowning the key first. There is already better ways if you want to share your library with some trusted people: i.e. Steam's family share.
- sprayk 7y agoOne isn't buying/selling the copy of the digital good, though, they are buying/selling a license to make copies for themselves from Steam's servers and to play said game.
- forrestthewoods 7y agoThey’re buying/selling a one-time redeemable coupon. Gamedevs have learned to stop distributing those coupons for a variety of reasons. I believe that coupons should not be transferable once redeemed. Selling an unredeemed coupon is, of course, acceptable.