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Let me ask you, why do you think they don't? It's not like the secondary market is something game publishers are oblivious to. If they don't support it, kinda seem like that's intentional.
Valve is not going to create a secondary market to cannibalize their primary store. And publishers aren't going to accept pennies on the dollar for licenses being shuffled around repeatedly. So it's a non-starter.
Valve makes a lot of money off their primary market as is. They would make less money splitting a smaller amount of revenue per unit three ways. And I'm not sure what you imagine the revenue split would be. How would you feel about re-selling a $20 game for $10 and you get $1 and Steam gets $2 and the publisher gets $7 dollars. Does that seem desirable to you now? I'm sure you're imaging something like a 90/10 split in your favor, but you're dreaming.
How about you get $0.001 per game sold back while the person who purchases it pays the going rate at the time if purchase...?
good deal
To be fair, it would be better then 0.
And just what do they get out of buying back a key for a game that they can literally make unlimited numbers of at the request of the games developers/publishers/IP owner?
Valve only gets 30% of what the game is sold for. So if you bought a game for $20, Valve got $6 dollars. That 30% has to go into paying for a lot of stuff in the background that you don't see, including stuff like banking fees, servers, and lots of other things.
You claim they would make a lot of money.... but they would actually lose a lot of money because they would just be "buying back" what they sold you... How does that make them money? It doesn't.
Yes you are missing a crucial part... the part with how Valve AND the developers of the games makes money from this.
The only thing this suggestion does lets you play a game a bit cheaper. You can just wait for a sale to do that. I just bought a bunch of games at 90+ percent off. All you have to do is wait.
You add this in and suddenly games are going to have a second purpose where they are also currency. Even if you make it extremely advantageous to the devs and Steam, you have created an exception and thus killed a satisfying collection aspect and now made every game serve a dual purpose. People now collect games to sell them and every time you beat one you have to make a decision as to if its good enough to actually play in ten years time or not. (You should decide that anyway, most modern games aren't, but adding money to that changes the scales.) Then you'll have guides of how to properly use this system and the added complexity will befuddle our VALUED USERS OF SPECIFIC ABILITIES.
Even discounting the complicated legal issues of it, I don't think this makes the user happier. It will add many layers of stress and complexity he has to worry about.
For physical games, the actual physical object you are buying is a very small portion of the total cost of creating it, and the same is true for any other creative work you might buy. You're not paying for the paper a book is printed on or the ink on that paper, you're paying for the time the author spent putting the right words in the right order.
A traditional brick and mortar games store buys some amount of copies of a game from a supplier. Then they sell those copies of the game to consumers. You can trade in a game at a traditional physical game store because the copy of the game you're giving to the game store is something they can sell again to someone else.
On Steam, you're buying the game directly from the developer. There's no shipment of copies of games that Steam purchases beforehand. You pay money and you receive access to the game directly. The copy of the game you purchased was generated by the act of you purchasing it.
Since there's no cost to actually creating that copy of the game, Valve doesn't have any reason to buy it back from you. (Not talking about refunds, that's a different can of worms.) If someone else wants to buy the game after you decide you don't want it, Steam can just generate another copy of the game from thin air, with the money again going directly to the developer.
In short, the reason you can't sell your game license back to Steam is that your game license has no value. The thing you paid for was not the miniscule amount of processing power it took to add a record to a database.
1) selling 2nd hand goods to others.
i do remember that there is a thread similar to OP's thread lying around somewhere on the Steam Forums X days to Y Weeks back.
Does your local supermarket allow you set up a stall in their store and re-sell goods back to them? The answer is no.
More importantly Valve does not own those 3rd party games to re-sell them, the 3rd party developer, publisher owns them, you only have a licence.
The reality is:
Ubisoft: Assassin's Creed Valhalla:
1. GRANT OF LICENSE.
1.1 UBISOFT (or its licensors) grants You a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensed, non-commercial and personal license to install and/or use the Product (in whole or in part) and any Product (the “License”), for such time until either You or UBISOFT terminates this EULA. You must in no event use, nor allow others to use,the Product or this License for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from UBISOFT. Updates, upgrades, patches and modifications may be necessary in order to be able to continue to use the Product on certain hardware. THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED TO YOU, NOT SOLD.
CDPR: The Witcher 3:
2. WHAT YOU GET WITH THE GAME
We (meaning CD PROJEKT RED) give you the personal right (called a 'licence' legally) to download, install and play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on your personal computer as long as you follow these Rules. This licence is for your personal use only (so you can't give a sublicense to someone else) and DOESN'T GIVE YOU OWNERSHIP RIGHTS.
Epic: Fornite:
1. License Grant
Epic grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable limited right and license to install and use the Software on compatible devices you own or control for your personal entertainment use (the “License”). The rights that Epic grants you under the License are subject to the terms of this Agreement, and you may only make use of the License if you comply with all applicable terms.
The License becomes effective on the date you accept this Agreement. The Software is licensed, NOT SOLD, to you under the License. The License does not grant you any title or ownership in the Software.
Back in the early gaming days, Stores do the exchange of games you dont like or want for another game.
GameStop does this. If the game you want costs more than what your trading in, then you pay the difference with credit card.
Gamestop sells console products.
PC physical games were not returnable once the cellophane was opened as it was deemed used and you could have made a copy.
NOTE: Exceptions would be made IF and only IF it had a defect such as having crack on the disc caused by the manufacturing process and you went back to the shop on the same day. You were given a new copy of that game, not a refund nor could you trade it in for another game.
For other systems such as the Amiga 500 you could also not return the floppy disc/s as they could be copied with the correct software.