Letting users re sell their video games

[Quake Nukem]

For example let's say you have a game in your library you bought off steam then you could put it up for sale so allows the user to get rid of games they don't play or want while letting other users get to scoop up used games at lower price and of course Valve gets their cut for transaction services and Steam. Of course not every game could be eligible I presume cause some keys work different but, a lot of keys could.

[Zarineth]

Game devs would run away faster, than cat you sprayed water at. If that was mandatory, no dev would ever upload their game on Steam. If that was optional, no one would opt in.

[d3str0y3r]

This is has been posted countless times and unless laws change it will never happen.

Game's are not sold, they are licensed. That's a personal non-transferable license to play the game and nothing more. You are not allowed to resell, trade or anything else with it.

No publisher would ever agree to it, and it would kill the platform if Valve tried to force it.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by MiScuzzi:

and of course Valve gets their cut for transaction services and Steam.

You're not going to like their cut.

[Yujah]

Also see https://www.osborneclarke.com/insights/game-over-second-hand-game-sales-france for the information that Steam has in fact just fought second-hand sales of their digital goods and won.

[Walach]

As time goes on and when most people have subscriptions to at least one thing, I believe this topic will get a lot of attention. I hope it will reach the same ownership as physical goods. One can hope!
I.e., Their cut of resale is 0%. >:D

[Yujah]

Originally posted by Walach:

I hope it will reach the same ownership as physical goods.

It can't, given that there's quite literally no difference between a first-hand and a second-hand digital copy of something.

[Walach]

Originally posted by Yujah:

Originally posted by Walach:

I hope it will reach the same ownership as physical goods.

It can't, given that there's quite literally no difference between a first-hand and a second-hand digital copy of something.

To me, that doesn't sound like a reason why it can't happen. I hope it isn't for more than just me as well. :P

[Pscht]

Ignoring facts won't make your wishful thinking come true.

[Yujah]

To me it definitely does sound like such, since I'd say it means that a second-hand market for games would in fact merely be a secondary first-hand market and cut into primary such markets such as Steam só deeply that it'd destroy them. I myself am for example someone who is not generally interested in "new" and who'd likely almost never again buy anything first-hand rather than second-hand. Because why?

Digital has many advantages over physical. Mentioned non-deterioration, convenience, and in fact especially with sales, price. The average amount I've spent on a game on Steam over the last 10 or so years is less than the price of a cup of coffee, and those are gone by now in a far more fundamental sense than just not being able to be resold.

There's no inherent reason digital needs to or should be treated the same as physical: it's after all not.

EDIT: Typo; I hate the word deteriora... iaro... ra... ri... tion

[nullable]

Originally posted by Yujah:

To me it definitely does sound like such, since I'd say it means that a second-hand market for games would in fact merely be a secondary first-hand market and cut into primary such markets such as Steam só deeply that it'd destroy them. I myself am for example someone who is not generally interested in "new" and who'd likely almost never again buy anything first-hand rather than second-hand. Because why?

Well a secondhand market won't destroy Steam or other stores. But most retail stores and publishers have never liked the secondary market, just in the past they couldn't do anything about it.

DRM + digital distribution changes that a lot and lets stores and publishers control their markets to a much greater degree. I mean, not absolutely, grey market sites are the defacto secondary market these days. IE since stores and publishers often get 0% cut of those sales too.

Originally posted by Yujah:

Digital has many advantages over physical. Mentioned non-detoriation, convenience, and in fact especially with sales, price. The average amount I've spent on a game on Steam over the last 10 or so years is less than the price of a cup of coffee, and those are gone by now in a far more fundamental sense than just not being able to be resold.

There's no inherent reason digital needs to or should be treated the same as physical: it's after all not.

Instead of advantages, let's say trade offs. You give up the ability to resell your physical media, but you never really have to worry about it being destroyed. And since digital media allows stores to not need to worry about shelf-space or inventory, it means a lot of games are available perpetually forever.

For me those are sufficient tradeoffs. Not to mention, in my experience, the secondary market for PC games was pretty lack-luster compared to consoles. Too easy to grab the key, clone the disc, and resell a coaster. Used PC games in the late 90's and early 2000's were always kinda worthless for those reasons. That's not going to go away in 2023.

[Yujah]

Admittedly the very reason I'd as mentioned be shopping near-exclusively second-hand is the same reason Steam doesn't make a lot of money from me now anyway so sure, I guess I may not be a norm -- but I do still think "me and mine" are significant enough to punch a deep hole in any primary video-game market as soon as a ("white") secondary one exists. I.e., not all that sure about the "won't destroy" part.

I also still own and (sometimes) use an Xbox 360. Have approximately 100 games or so and literally every last one has been bought second-hand. Doesn't even occur to me really that one would not. Because why? And in that case that's while accounting for used single-use digital codes and sometimes receiving scratched discs.

Anyways. I originally learned of Steam due to a child wanting to play Counter-Strike and me naively grabbing a second-hand disc-copy off of an internet marketplace. That which arrived was of course useless since with used code, and when I all pissy-consumery contacted Steam about it they ended up simply silently activating the thing on the child's account.

Eeeh. Okay. And when then additionally a bit later the Steam winter sale started I knew what I needed to know about those trade-offs...

[Start_Running]

Yeah Not gonna happen,. See Valve would make far more from sell brand new games. and in that scenario the developers allso get a cut.

Also if someone wants to buy a game fior less that the retail price...they can just wait for a sale.

[Haruspex]

There's also the issue of scarcity. Digital products are infinite, so in every digital game allowed to be resold, copies sold by the actual creator of the game will very rapidly drop to zero once enough copies are out there to bring the cost of any second hand copies even marginally below a brand new copy.

This is an idea that has been brought of countless times in these forums, and in every case the OP never considers it from the angle of the game developer.

[WolfEisberg]

There is Robot Cache. You get to keep 25% of the sale price, dev/pub gets 70%, and Robot Cache keeps 5%. You only get to sell the games you bought from Robot Cache.

[[N]ebsun]

Originally posted by Yujah:

Originally posted by Walach:

I hope it will reach the same ownership as physical goods.

It can't, given that there's quite literally no difference between a first-hand and a second-hand digital copy of something.

What if a difference WAS added - like, for example, a note attached to the game that it was owned before and the name / identity of the previous owners - resulting in new games coming with a "clean" record, and second hand games coming with a history of prior owners that cannot be removed. It would create a difference in value between factory new games and games that have been previously owned - some second hand games might even go up in value depending on the prior owner, but most would decrease in value (compared to factory new) due to having a non-removable history. Result would be that factory new games are more valued and more likely to sell at higher price.