Thats the feature that would also keep publishers from releasing their games on that store.
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All these lawsuits are great, but lets discuss how we can't resell our digital games.
- Thread starter Nilaul
- Start date
Thats the feature that would also keep publishers from releasing their games on that store.
Resales? I feel like it's too easy to take the absolute hand with it.
A proper returns policy? On board with it. That eliminates the issue
A proper returns policy? On board with it. That eliminates the issue
There are two ways this could be implemented technically, neither of which makes any sense for the platform holder.
1) Allow users to sell their license direct to another user. The seller sets the price, they can even make it free. This enables one license to be passed around infinitely, while the product never degrades, thereby directly competing against the purchase of a new copy via the platform holder.
2) Sometimes people suggest that a platform holder allow you to "trade in" a digital purchase. The problem with this is that you giving up your license to play the game holds no monetary value for the platform holder, nor does them receiving your license, as they have an infinite supply of those licenses already. GameStop makes profit per unit physical game sold, so for them a used disc holds actual value. That's why they pay you for it. A platform holder on the other hand is not going to turn around and sell a "used" digital license to another consumer. The concept doesn't even make sense. It's an identical product to a new license and would only serve to undercut their profits for literally no reason.
There may some future where licenses become transferrable under some heavy restrictions, but there will never be a full on "second hand market" for digital games. It doesn't make sense economically or conceptually. All we can do is buy physical if we really care about it and hope that the inevitable slide towards digital only (or physical games being account locked upon install) happens slowly rather than suddenly.
1) Allow users to sell their license direct to another user. The seller sets the price, they can even make it free. This enables one license to be passed around infinitely, while the product never degrades, thereby directly competing against the purchase of a new copy via the platform holder.
2) Sometimes people suggest that a platform holder allow you to "trade in" a digital purchase. The problem with this is that you giving up your license to play the game holds no monetary value for the platform holder, nor does them receiving your license, as they have an infinite supply of those licenses already. GameStop makes profit per unit physical game sold, so for them a used disc holds actual value. That's why they pay you for it. A platform holder on the other hand is not going to turn around and sell a "used" digital license to another consumer. The concept doesn't even make sense. It's an identical product to a new license and would only serve to undercut their profits for literally no reason.
There may some future where licenses become transferrable under some heavy restrictions, but there will never be a full on "second hand market" for digital games. It doesn't make sense economically or conceptually. All we can do is buy physical if we really care about it and hope that the inevitable slide towards digital only (or physical games being account locked upon install) happens slowly rather than suddenly.
They offer different power outputs and battery ranges via software
Tesla launches $2,000 'Acceleration Boost' for 3.9s 0-60 mph in Model 3 Dual Motor
Tesla has officially launched “Acceleration Boost,” a $2,000 over-the-air software upgrade that makes the 0 to 60 mph acceleration of...
electrek.co
Other companies have started doing the same thing - not just for the stereo systems either
I was only saying the tv tv tv stuff was questionable (though I do really miss the snap feature). I have always been more digital inclined, and I'm one that loves getting a lot of games. If I could digitally share my collection out to friends for a week at a time or something I'd love that convenience.
I'd rather no video games than digital only with no ownership so I'm fine with that
I was gonna say the same thing.
There's a reason I buy physical. Never underestimate the advantages conferred by having a physical product. Unlike digital, under current U.S. law a physical console game, music CD/record/tape, VHS tape/DVD/Blu-ray, or print book is your property when you buy it. You own it, and as your property you have essentially free reign on how and when to transfer ownership or possession of the copy (you just can't legally make and distribute new copies without authorization). The First-sale Doctrine is a wonderful thing. I've benefited greatly from the right to sell, lend, or gift physical games. I still buy retro games that have been out of print for decades (good luck legally downloading a delisted digital game if you missed out on it). I've lent and borrowed games with friends. And a decent number of my old games were hand-me-downs from family or friends. Additionally, physical tends to decline in price faster than digital.
I just really don't see how the supposed convenience of digital outweighs the benefits of physical. It amazes me that not having to get off of one's ass is such a big deal for most people that they're willing to give up ownership to satisfy their laziness. I have a disability, but I'm not above physically swapping out discs.
There was a lot of good stuff in the original plan that got kneecapped due to piracy concerns and effort needed that would go towards money not being made.
Since it happened though everyone has got comfortable with the current situ and we are not going back. It could be done, but people rather point to things like gamepass and how much of a success that is.
If I'm a first-party publisher and my game has sold 100,000 digital copies for $60 each, I've made $6 mil.
In this scenario, if my game has sold 1 mil digital copies but even just one copy out of every 10 (which is a super low estimate considering there is zero downside to buying a used digital game vs a new one) is sold secondhand, I'm losing out on 600,000.
There is literally zero incentive to do this from a publisher standpoint.
In this scenario, if my game has sold 1 mil digital copies but even just one copy out of every 10 (which is a super low estimate considering there is zero downside to buying a used digital game vs a new one) is sold secondhand, I'm losing out on 600,000.
There is literally zero incentive to do this from a publisher standpoint.
I'm not saying that physical and digital are the same. I'm saying that if people are charged the same for 2 versions, IMO, it is fair to have similar rights.
I talked about the fact that if the problem is not having degradation, the store can put restrictions on selling. for example a license can only be sold 2 or 3 times.
I think this would be worse for AAA companies that indies. I think people that buy indies are much more likely to keep the game (they are cheaper and usually have a niche) while for AAA games there is always something shinier on the horizon. Alongside this AAA suffers heavily from sequelitis. Is there any point on owning [insert yearly franchise] X when [insert yearly franchise] X+1 is usually better?
I'm not an expert so i could be wrong, that is just my opinion.
Again the key would be finding not only a middle ground between how much the user receives from selling and how much the dev/pub receives but a way to make reselling different from buy a new version.
IMO if any store wishes to compete with steam, solving this challenge would push them against steam.
they would yes. But i'm a costumer hence my opinion should be seen on that perspective. I still think that having devs get a cut of each re-sale + adding some restrictions on when and how many times a game could be sold I think there could be a deal struck that could be heavily benefiting costumers while still giving some fair income to devs.
I wonder if it is. If it is solved, IMO, it will be the store that has the chance to push steam out of its market leader.
All this talk about unable to sell digital games seems to have some odd reasons.
When you sell a physical medium, you also sell the license which is used to check/operate that said game which is physically present on the disc.
Why cannot you transfer your digital license the same way, don't stuff like money transfers in banks and how bitcoin exchanges money already work securely?..why cannot you transfer the ownership of digital license the same way?
When you sell a physical medium, you also sell the license which is used to check/operate that said game which is physically present on the disc.
Why cannot you transfer your digital license the same way, don't stuff like money transfers in banks and how bitcoin exchanges money already work securely?..why cannot you transfer the ownership of digital license the same way?
GattsuSama just mentioned that there's something like this already but I think the ideal is:
- Form some sort of limited liability entity in a country that has like no IP protection laws
- Build it
- Embrace the chaos
The other solution is remotely "renting" out your hardware/library to others. Rather than paying Google, MS, etc to use their cloud streaming, you have an app that lets you pay a little less to remotely play a game on somebody else's computer while they're not using it. That's pretty much impossible to track and recovers the value of both the hardware and software.
You're rather naively assuming everyone that will buy and sell games for the second-hand market will just decide to go to buying full price when most buy and sell second-hand games either cannot afford to buy or do not see games as being worth $60.
In reality, you will find that both sides just sits back and wait for the game to drop in price.
Permanent licenses should be transferable, there's no 2 ways about this. The legality of it has been debated before (I vaguely remember a EU court case about this) but to me it seems like software companies, not just in gaming, are sidestepping the topic but moving to a subscription/support model for everything so the point will eventually be moot.
Digital games have no real world value outside of the platforms they exist on. There's no tangible commodity there to trade. Technically, your physical games are also 'licenses being leased to you' but unlike digital games, once a physical game ends up in a consumer's hands the publishers have no further control over what happens to it. One of the major perks of digital games is the companies have all the leverage now, it's clearly spelled out in those sprawling EULA's that nobody bothers to read. It's why I don't spend more than $20 on a digital game and frankly I don't recall the last time I spent over $10 on one. In essence I consider it expendable money being thrown into a hole, for all practical purposes, and there's a limit on how much I'm willing to do that for each digital game I 'buy'.
No, you'll find that every single person who was buying digitally before is now buying the digital "second hand" copies that are inevitably abundant in nature almost immediately, accessible to everyone, and cheaper than the versions that cost more as "new" despite being identical. From a consumer standpoint you'd have to be an idiot otherwise.
Think it was said here already, but why would anyone buy "new" digital games if there are "used" ones for less available"
Even if your 79.99€ Returnal game had a unique key that allowed you to resell it at some platform, you couldn't tell the difference between old/new game.
Therefore a fair price imo would be 79.98€. The 1 cent should be inventive enough to buy from me. Heck, let's make it 78.99€ and save you a whole Euro.
Unlike physical games that come with some downsides (damaged disc, long shipping time, patch installation ), there is 0 reason for me to give a rebate on my digital PSN Token, because it works just as well as the original one.
In the end the prices would settle where 100€ gift cards from 3rd party vendors are priced.
Even if your 79.99€ Returnal game had a unique key that allowed you to resell it at some platform, you couldn't tell the difference between old/new game.
Therefore a fair price imo would be 79.98€. The 1 cent should be inventive enough to buy from me. Heck, let's make it 78.99€ and save you a whole Euro.
Unlike physical games that come with some downsides (damaged disc, long shipping time, patch installation ), there is 0 reason for me to give a rebate on my digital PSN Token, because it works just as well as the original one.
In the end the prices would settle where 100€ gift cards from 3rd party vendors are priced.
Thread reminded me of this old survey
www.gamesindustry.biz
Xbox Survey asks users if they want to sell back digital content
A survey sent out by Microsoft to Xbox customers has asked gamers if they'd be interested in selling digital content ba…
www.gamesindustry.biz
I'd like to see Steam offer like 10-20% (based on time owned) of purchase price back as store credit. This would be a good way to get something back for games you will never touch again. It might also be beneficial to Valve as a way to promote sales with people having less to play in their library when they start pawning everything off so they can afford that full msrp title that just released. And of course there will always be fools like me sure to buy back sold games few years later when they begin to be missed.
I am responding to why people who buy and sell physical second-hand games will not suddenly start paying full price if they can only buy digital.
As for your point about if we did digital second-hand games I agree.
I would love to be able to re-sell my license to play digital games.
that's just account sharing, no?
I mean that if i'm never gonna play halo mcc again, I should be able to "gift" it to a friend that doesn't own it. It will never happen in the current state of things, but would be really useful
There's a huge amount of friction involved in reselling physical games. The seller has to find a buyer, they have to transport the game to the buyer, the buyer has to worry about whether the game is legit and in good condition.
None of that friction would exist in reselling a digital game. That means that as soon as people start reselling a digital game, the game will never be sold as new again and the creator/publisher of that game will no longer make any money from it. Also, because everyone reselling is competing against everyone else who is reselling the game, the price will rapidly drop to 0 as people undercut each other to try to resell their game faster.
If reselling of digital games is enforced, then publishers will stop making games that you can buy licenses for entirely and you'll be stuck with every game being a service game.
None of that friction would exist in reselling a digital game. That means that as soon as people start reselling a digital game, the game will never be sold as new again and the creator/publisher of that game will no longer make any money from it. Also, because everyone reselling is competing against everyone else who is reselling the game, the price will rapidly drop to 0 as people undercut each other to try to resell their game faster.
If reselling of digital games is enforced, then publishers will stop making games that you can buy licenses for entirely and you'll be stuck with every game being a service game.
I don't know if it has been mentioned but you could technically legally resell software in the EU.
en.wikipedia.org
UsedSoft - Wikipedia
Ah you meant gifting it instead of just sharing, yeah that isn't possible. Still sharing is an alternative for that but yeah it would be nice if you friend didn't need to have your account on his console and you can just flat out gift the game.
Let me just grab a copy of After Burner Climax, because digital games are infinite and never go out of sale.
When a game stops being sold through official channels, the secondhand market becomes the only way to get it. Which means if a digital-only game gets delisted, it becomes legally unobtainable. Something should be done about that.
If NFTs are a thing then there is 0 reason why digital games cannot be handled in a similar way and transferred for a price.
Zero reason, zero excuse other than holding on to outdated practices on digital assets. This is what ownership should look like. Not sure why anyone would defend the companies or be against a change like this.
I am not talking about the product key to download it, that is just a public ID for an asset. We have to demand the companies give us a digital key as proof of ownership just like we get a disc as proof of physical ownership.
Any excuse against this change is anti consumer.
To me there are two options here:
Zero reason, zero excuse other than holding on to outdated practices on digital assets. This is what ownership should look like. Not sure why anyone would defend the companies or be against a change like this.
If when you buy a digital asset you get a digital key that is the ID for that item that you and only you own then something could be done about that.
I am not talking about the product key to download it, that is just a public ID for an asset. We have to demand the companies give us a digital key as proof of ownership just like we get a disc as proof of physical ownership.
Any excuse against this change is anti consumer.
To me there are two options here:
- Digital Streaming services where you pay a sub and gain access, not ownership, to a big library of games.
- Digital ownership by the way of the blockchain. When I buy the game in your digital storefront you let me download the game but also give me a key as proof of ownership. A key I can pass/sell/trade whatever.
Robot Cache is non-sensensical scam though, getting 25% of whatever you sell for is ridiculous.
Since you need to wait 3 months to sell, games likely 50% discounted then, so basically that's a $7.5 discount.
I'm sure you can get such preorder discount, even without giving up any game.
I'm really confused by what you're saying in your post.
As others have said, if digital games can be sold secondhand and work and function exactly as brand new games, why would anyone ever pay MSRP or directly to a publisher even again, aside from the launch-day buyers? There is no economic advantage for publishers here. And it would irreparably harm game development, as developers see even less return on investment. We'd be living in a world full of GaaS and microtransactions unlocking crucial pieces of gameplay. Game devs say -now- that it's incredibly expensive to develop, why would they still take that risk if their bottom line is cut into?
It'll be really interesting if it winds up being like NFTs where that cut is only in play if it's resold via a supported marketplace.
In your example, you're assuming that all the people who buy and sell second-hand games will suddenly change and pay full MSRP now we have gone fully digital.
People who buy and sell second-hand games are the kind of people looking for a bargain. As we go all-digital they will just look for other bargains, be it wait few months or more for a sale or appear in a bundle, go to key sellers, hunt for vouchers, use friends log in, and so on. They are not going to convert into the kind of people that are going to pay full MSRP as you assumed in your example.
Becuse you can't resell them all the more reason they should offer free upgrades and keep the games alive through backwards compatability.
In my example, I'm saying people like me who are nearly 100% digital will be fine to wait a couple of days to a week to get the same digital copy for cheaper (even if it'd only be by 5-10 bucks). Publishers would lose out on most of my purchases and I'm a pretty big spender. I can't be the only one.
My argument is not that people who already buy secondhand games would suddenly buy them firsthand. My argument is that more people would buy secondhand since there is zero inherent downside to buying a digital copy secondhand, it is literally equal to a brand new copy.
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I did not know about the 25% thing which is bad, but another concern I have is that if you are paid in a specific crypto currency and its value is volatile then it is more risky.
It's not about looking at Robot Cache and saying "See this doesn't work so let's not even try". It's about using this kind of technology that has proven value and use cases for thing like sharing gaming licenses and making digital ownership real.
Sure, I am not saying it HAS to be Robot Cache but something similar that works better.
I did not know about the 25% thing which is bad, but another concern I have is that if you are paid in a specific crypto currency and its value is volatile then it is more risky.
It's not about looking at Robot Cache and saying "See this doesn't work so let's not even try". It's about using this kind of technology that has proven value and use cases for thing like sharing gaming licenses and making digital ownership real.