Selling your steam games on market place or a steam user store

[Leo Major]

I know there was this new games library platform clone like Stream,GOG,EPIC, etc that game out called RobotCache but with a pretty cool twist..... which was the ability to sell your own games on the app/platform to other users.

This is a great idea... There are plenty of games I have that bought that I don't like like Marvel Midnight Suns (the first 2 hours were all cut scenes and by the time I realized the game wasn't for me It was too late to refund) and I would have no problem selling this game for 20$ to someone on steam. Ofc Steam would probably make it so they get a cut of that sale.... even if just 2% or high as 10% it would add yet another revenue stream to steam.

Of course it would cost money paying programmers to add this feature to the platform and make sure it's not abused in any way.... For example if someone bought a 80$ AAA title and turned around and tried to sell it for 1$ to a freind.... would that be acceptable or would there be a bare minimum. Perhaps you had to have owned the game for at least 30-90 days... or you couldn't sell a game below 5% of what it costs in the steam store etc etc.

But I believe it would be a great feature to add to steam.... and the fact they have a competitor doing it... (regardless of how small) it should certainly be on Steams Radar.


Is there anyone who likes this idea or am I going to get a lot of people gatekeeping the idea?

Thanks for reading.

[Brian9824]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Golden Unicorn:

its not piracy if you paid for a game and allow a friend to use your account when your not using it,

It quite literally is. It would be no different then buying a season pass to a park and then letting your friend use it when your not using it.

Stuff like that is personally licensed to you and you agreed to not share your steam login info when you made your account.

You don't need to profit for it to be piracy.

[Boblin the Goblin]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Golden Unicorn:

if your giving a game away for free its more likely to sell then the 10 or 20 dollar game steams selling right? i think there are other platforms already doing this? they give away things for free while steam trys to sell them.

Hmm makes me wonder how steam is coping with that kinda business model.

aren't you all giving away extra game keys already? isn't that technically the same thing, you bought the games, you paid the money now you are gifting the keys to others.

even if the games aren't ever played no additional currency is being exchanged to the developers. I find it somewhat hypocritical to suggest its not good to give away free games, or sell games to people that might want those games.

this is prob why the console systems do so well, games are often bought, traded or sold and recycled.

steam might want to consider making a market place that does just that, allows users to trade in games for less then they paid for them, without having to wait for someone to buy it and then resell those copies to its millions of users at a discount, as used content.

A platform giving away keys isn't the same as a user selling a redeemed key.

Customers understand this.

[Brian9824]

I mean if people can't grasp that user A buys a $60 game and then tells his buddy, hey give me $40 and i'll sell it to you for $1 on steam will lead to bad things for developers then there isn't much hope for them...

You just have to stop looking at just yourself and think of how this impacts other

[76561198407601200]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย A:

Well to be honest after I spent the money on the game and that money went to the Dev, it's of little concern to me what the dev thinks or cares about. You guys are heading down that slippery slope of "you will own nothing and be happy" consumer rights when it comes to ownership.

We are already aware that when we buy games and other things online we are not buying the "game in itself" anymore but we are buying the "digital rights to play the game"

I find it odd that so many of you care more about the devs then you care about your ownership and right to do with the game as you please. Which to me is almost like an odd gate keeping behavior. It would suggest that you have some stake into what the devs make, like you work for a gaming company or are devs in one. (Though I'm sure many of you are just customers like me)

For example if I go to the store and buy a physical copy of a game, beat it, don't like it, or just get tired of it I can then turn around and sell it to a friend or go on facebook marketplace and sell it there (like you see so many people doing)

So why should we not have the right to sell the digital copies of games we buy?

And if it really came down to it where the dev cared so deeply that they would fight tooth and nail to stop this... you could also give them a cut too. So for example you buy a 60/80$ AAA game. (USD/CAD) beat it and then turn around and sell it. You can try to sell it for 50$ because even though it's only 10$ off someone would rather spend 50$ then 60$..... and 45$ can go to you, 10$ could go to the dev and 5$ could go to steam. (For example, though I would like to see the split going towards the customers more as a customer of course... after all I'm the one who bought the game and should technically "own it")

I find it odd how it is acceptable behaviour to resell a physical game that you buy, but when you buy a digital game your rights are essentially taken away when it comes to reselling it.

What else in society can you buy that you are not allowed to resell if you really wanted to? For example if I bought a tv I could resell it to someone else, A vaccuum cleaner, heck I could even resell a toothbrush if I really wanted (and someone was sick/silly enough to buy it) but when it comes to the games that we buy digitally that we should own... our right to resell is completely taken away.

So like I said with the whole "own nothing and be happy" issue. Even Gamer Nexus brought it up on his video a week or two ago. Companies are getting greedier and greedier with their rights of ownership and licencing, to repeat myself... no where else in society do you buy goods/products physically from a store and are not allowed to re-sell it.

So why do we accept this for the games we buy online? That alone makes me want to physically own every single game I purchase...... so I physically own it and can resell it... and opposed to being denied the ability to Own and resell my digital copy of a game.

Thanks for reading.

Developers are wanting to receive money for their games, a user wanting to re-sell that same game for a cut of my profit doesn't fly well. This then results in high priced games which ironically affects the users in the end, so while you may feel developers are being defended, it is not without reason.

[Tito Shivan]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Crazy Tiger:

With physical dyscs there was an actual resell value due to limited producing.

Also physical products also have LOTS of friction for resale than digital copies don't.

[Leonardo Da Pinchi]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย brian9824:

Oh and if you bought a $60 game, and re-sold it while its MSRP was $40 you'd only get 25% of that $40 or $10 back.

Given Midnight Suns is currently in Humble Monthly, even less now.

That's the issue, people wanna try to resell keys they got for free/pennies, for near Steam's market value.

[Zefar]

Gamestop made about 2 billion in sales on used game sales back in the day. Game companies never saw a penny from those sales. Do remember that they already got very little per sale from game stores on fresh copies and Gamestop would actively promote their used games over the unsold ones.

Even going so far as using the $10 dollar pass that was introduced at some point to move them from the fresh copies and being put in used ones.
It was scummy behavior by Gamestop.


So Steam became popular because Developers learned that 1 copy = 1 sale.
If you remove this you will destroy Steam and PC gaming as it is.

[Gwarsbane]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย A:

I know there was this new games library platform clone like Stream,GOG,EPIC, etc that game out called RobotCache but with a pretty cool twist..... which was the ability to sell your own games on the app/platform to other users.

This is a great idea... There are plenty of games I have that bought that I don't like like Marvel Midnight Suns (the first 2 hours were all cut scenes and by the time I realized the game wasn't for me It was too late to refund) and I would have no problem selling this game for 20$ to someone on steam. Ofc Steam would probably make it so they get a cut of that sale.... even if just 2% or high as 10% it would add yet another revenue stream to steam.

Of course it would cost money paying programmers to add this feature to the platform and make sure it's not abused in any way.... For example if someone bought a 80$ AAA title and turned around and tried to sell it for 1$ to a freind.... would that be acceptable or would there be a bare minimum. Perhaps you had to have owned the game for at least 30-90 days... or you couldn't sell a game below 5% of what it costs in the steam store etc etc.

But I believe it would be a great feature to add to steam.... and the fact they have a competitor doing it... (regardless of how small) it should certainly be on Steams Radar.


Is there anyone who likes this idea or am I going to get a lot of people gatekeeping the idea?

Thanks for reading.

Would be nice if people used the search feature and READ all the other threads on the same topic as they are posting about and find out why their ideas are bad BEFORE making a post.

First off robocache is crypto crap which can and will crash taking any and all your money with it. Crap like that is not going to be allowed on Steam, they have banned crypto on Steam already.

Here is just some of what would more then likely happen....

Kiss sale prices good by, and all the prices would rise. No more bundle sites and super cheap games.

Game developers would leave Steam for some other platform that doesn't allow reselling of their games.

Game developers start make all their games subscription based so if you stop playing you can no longer access any of it.

Game developers make everything microtransaction based and everything in the game is consumable/destructible so you have to keep buying it over and over again to use it and can't actually resell it. But the base game would be either F2P or subscription based.

The reason why all this would happen is because developers and Valve would loose a HUGE amount of money with people buying games, beating them and then selling them off right away to others who would wait to buy them instead of buying for pull price.

Even if you "gave" developers and Steam a cut of what you get, anything they get would be far less then what they get by selling it on the store unless the price you sell the game for is far above what they are selling it for on Steam and at that point, why would people bother to buy it from you?

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย A:

I find it odd that so many of you care more about the devs then you care about your ownership and right to do with the game as you please. Which to me is almost like an odd gate keeping behavior. It would suggest that you have some stake into what the devs make, like you work for a gaming company or are devs in one. (Though I'm sure many of you are just customers like me)

For example if I go to the store and buy a physical copy of a game, beat it, don't like it, or just get tired of it I can then turn around and sell it to a friend or go on facebook marketplace and sell it there (like you see so many people doing)

So why should we not have the right to sell the digital copies of games we buy?

We care about the devs because if they are not making money, they have no reason to make games. They have no reason to put games on sale. They have no reason to not fill games with microtransactions and DRM and all sorts of other junk that is very anti-consumer.

They have no reason to stay on Steam or even go to any other platform and go make their own, and then we are back to where we were 20+ years ago with super expensive gives that you have to hunt around for to actually find and 1000+ different game launchers all possibility interacting with each other in bad ways. (this happened with certain DRM in the past and cause lots of issues)

As for the physical games.... you are buying a license to use the game, thats it. Most games today are not actually coming on the disc, they are digital downloads because of how expensive it is to fill the number of needed discs.

Also you are talking about consoles because today no PC comes with a blu-ray player. You have to go out of your way and buy one and install it yourself and thats IF your case can actually take a 5 1/4 drive which many can't. Getting an external bay which you hook up to USB is just as hard to find when you don't know to look for one.

Even consoles are doing away with blu-ray drives. And neither consoles or PCs are moving to USB sticks or cartridges or microSD cards for game installs.

The physical games you can get for PC, well some don't even include a disc, just some other stuff and a code from the game. The ones with disc is just a DVD with some junk on it, not even the game. And if you try to sell the disc... well who ever buys it won't be able to install it because the code is locked to what ever account put it in.

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย A:

And if it really came down to it where the dev cared so deeply that they would fight tooth and nail to stop this... you could also give them a cut too. So for example you buy a 60/80$ AAA game. (USD/CAD) beat it and then turn around and sell it. You can try to sell it for 50$ because even though it's only 10$ off someone would rather spend 50$ then 60$..... and 45$ can go to you, 10$ could go to the dev and 5$ could go to steam. (For example, though I would like to see the split going towards the customers more as a customer of course... after all I'm the one who bought the game and should technically "own it")

Hmmmmmm which do you think the dev and Valve would like more.....


70% of a 60 dollar game with 30% going to steam to you know keep the servers and stores going....

or...

10 dollars (or less because there are lots of games for much less then 60 bucks) 5 dollars going to Valve to do far less with (and Valve does a lot behind the scenes that you don't see, like paying banking fees for you) and the rest going to you.... (also remember that there are many games that sell for under 60 dollars)

Something tells me they wouldn't like your idea. They kind of like to be able to eat, keep a roof over their head and make games for people to buy oh and be able to keep their families fed too....

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย A:

I find it odd how it is acceptable behaviour to resell a physical game that you buy, but when you buy a digital game your rights are essentially taken away when it comes to reselling it.

Physical console games have limited life time (storage devices eventually break down or get destroyed or lost/stolen). Are expensive to make. Are only sold for so long. Can be hard to find in your area. Cost lots of money to ship. Cost lots of money to store them. Cost money to keep them on the shelf. Hardly make any money for the actual game developers.

Digital only games have an unlimited life time (they never break down), don't cost anything extra to make because you have already made it when you made the game. Are usually sold for ever or until a license for a licensed product in the game (like a car or music or something) runs out, but that doesn't happen often. Can be easily found as long as you can get online. Costs almost nothing in bandwidth to send to someone. Costs almost nothing to store it on a sever somewhere. Costs almost nothing to have a digital store shelf for as long as the store is around. Because there is no need for storage/shipping/printing/ costs most of the price of a game is actually making them money far more quickly.

In the past about 15% to 20% of the cost of a game went to the developers. Now its more like 70%. Why would they want to go back to that or worse?

[76561199540158642]

you are only trying to protect steams 30% profit share and not an actual developer profit share.

your missing the point, i am not saying that users should be allowed to set the prices for the games they want to trade in. I am saying steam should set the prices just as game stop set the prices.

steam could allow users to trade in a 40 dollar game for 10 dollars, thus resell that 10 dollar purchased key to someone else for 20 dollars, and even give the developer a 10 or 20% cut of the resale, meaning the developer would get 4 dollars, steam would get 6 dollars and the resale of the game would cost them nothing.

mean while the funds would all remain in steam wallet to use on other games. so steam would technically lose nothing , and would in fact be creating more profit for its developers while allowing its users to trade up games they no long want.

the concept is old doing it digitally also opens the door for some people who would rebuy the same game again because that what people do. why they do it , i don't know but many times people buy a game, trade it in, then rebuy it again later down the line when they wanted to play it again.


game stop making money on resold games isn't the same due to gamestops brick store costs and employee's they pay, 1000's of people unlike steam who has only a handful of questionable employee's.


its already speculated that steam receives a generous number of free keys for games that they sell, leading to what appears to be steam accounts full of 1000's of games which is simply not believable by a typical video game purchaser.

its more about users being given the option to resell the games rather then try and refund them. its just more options to the user, steam could profit off this greatly if they actually conceived the concept that carried game stop along for years.

[Χάρης]

You can create your own game or store and sell games.

[Leonardo Da Pinchi]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Golden Unicorn:

you are only trying to protect steams 30% profit share and not an actual developer profit share.

your missing the point, i am not saying that users should be allowed to set the prices for the games they want to trade in. I am saying steam should set the prices just as game stop set the prices.

steam could allow users to trade in a 40 dollar game for 10 dollars, thus resell that 10 dollar purchased key to someone else for 20 dollars, and even give the developer a 10 or 20% cut of the resale, meaning the developer would get 4 dollars, steam would get 6 dollars and the resale of the game would cost them nothing.

mean while the funds would all remain in steam wallet to use on other games. so steam would technically lose nothing , and would in fact be creating more profit for its developers while allowing its users to trade up games they no long want.

the concept is old doing it digitally also opens the door for some people who would rebuy the same game again because that what people do. why they do it , i don't know but many times people buy a game, trade it in, then rebuy it again later down the line when they wanted to play it again.


game stop making money on resold games isn't the same due to gamestops brick store costs and employee's they pay, 1000's of people unlike steam who has only a handful of questionable employee's.


its already speculated that steam receives a generous number of free keys for games that they sell, leading to what appears to be steam accounts full of 1000's of games which is simply not believable by a typical video game purchaser.

its more about users being given the option to resell the games rather then try and refund them. its just more options to the user, steam could profit off this greatly if they actually conceived the concept that carried game stop along for years.

The "they have over a thousand games, they don't purchase their games" fallacy has returned, folks.

Let the "I'm a real steam user and you're not" fallacy commence.

Good to see the troll farms are back from their holiday breaks.

[The End]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย brian9824:

I mean if people can't grasp that user A buys a $60 game and then tells his buddy, hey give me $40 and i'll sell it to you for $1 on steam will lead to bad things for developers then there isn't much hope for them...

You just have to stop looking at just yourself and think of how this impacts other

100% agreeing.

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Leonardo Da Pinchi:

The "they have over a thousand games, they don't purchase their games" fallacy has returned, folks.

Let the "I'm a real steam user and you're not" fallacy commence.

Good to see the troll farms are back from their holiday breaks.

The best we can do is stop feeding it. And hope Valve at some point will take action against it.

[76561199566220743]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย The End:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Leonardo Da Pinchi:

The "they have over a thousand games, they don't purchase their games" fallacy has returned, folks.

Let the "I'm a real steam user and you're not" fallacy commence.

Good to see the troll farms are back from their holiday breaks.

The best we can do is stop feeding it. And hope Valve at some point will take action against it.

Only reason why he went quiet is because he posted he had talked to Support, and support said they were sick of his BS, and people began laughing at him. Lol

[76561199540158642]

stop being so upset that simple logical thought says nobody is dumb enough to buy 1000's of games and leave it at that, if your taking offense over anything its obviously truthful declartion.

if i owned 1000's of games on steam i would surely want to sell them all and buy different ones, not keep the same 1000 games, thats why none of you even play the games you own.

Sell them and buy games you want to play with the funds. easy logic.

now make it happen.

[Brian9824]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Golden Unicorn:

its already speculated that steam receives a generous number of free keys for games that they sell, leading to what appears to be steam accounts full of 1000's of games which is simply not believable by a typical video game purchaser.

Citation needed for who aside from yourself is speculating this....