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Edited by Spartan Ken 15: 2/1/2013 10:14:17 PM
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Valve sued by German consumer group because Steam users can’t resell games

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/02/01/valve-sued-by-german-consumer-group-because-steam-users-cant-resell-games/ Let me reiterate, I don't want game devs or publishers to be hurt but I also think consumers should have more rights and not risk losing content they buy licences to and lose all control as if they bought a CD.

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  • Edited by FoMan123: 2/1/2013 9:04:29 PM
    No! Bad Ken! The resale of used games is bad for the gaming industry. For you, a hard core Bungie fan, I would think you would be strenuously opposed to this. VZBV's case is based on a single recent case from the European Court of Justice that was heavily opposed by the European Commission (the watchdog agency in the EU) and literally every single company that makes software in the world. The case is an outlier, and was poorly argued by the lawyers and EXTREMELY poorly reasoned by the court. There is no way that software companies should be forced to enable the sale of so-called used digital bits. This is not the same as physical goods, which degrade over time and thus lose value. A "used" piece of digital software is identical in every way to a new piece of digital software. Unlike physical goods, where people who can afford them will generally purchase new because it is more attractive, used digital software is actually [i]more[/i] attractive than new software because it is ostensibly cheaper. The big difference is that when you sell a piece of used software, none of that money goes back to the company who developed it. Expanded out over time and a large economy, software developers lose massive amounts of money under a scheme like this, and therefore have less to spend on innovation and creating new awesome products. The big profiters under this scheme are middlemen like GameStop -- companies that create nothing, do not innovate, and serve primarily as a pawn shop. Even worse, a loss for Valve in this case (or other software companies in future cases) would force the entire industry to massively rework the way it develops and sells games, build a technologically complicated way to allow users to used digital software, and basically force the software development industry to spend a lot of money building a system that would make them lose even more money than they already do to software pirates and used game resellers. This would be unbelievably unhealthy for the entire industry, which isn't exactly rolling in cash as is. You would want to do this just so you can get $9 back on a game that you played for hundreds of hours and got well more than your money's worth? Seems pretty shortsighted -- and definitely not something that a true fan of any video game developer would ever want.

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