Second-hand downloadable games.

[aubergine]

I'm willing to bet there's some gobs being smacked and faces palmed furiously in golden boardrooms around the world that this ruling might actually smash their dream of downloads neatly raping the second-hand market out of existence.

http://m.computerandvideogames.com/3...e-owned-market

I've sold downloaded games numerous times - by selling the hardware it's installed on - but what could the implications here be? A diablo auction house where you can buy the actual game from disgruntled early adopters?

[TrinityJayOne]

I hope this doesn't take off, and I don't think it will.

As someone who owns a grand total of about 2 used games (and that's going right back to PSX), I think I'd prefer to keep my cheap Steam prices thanks very much.

[VanAce]

It would make the Steam sales redundant. At least with secondhand physical copies there is a scale of condition which would determine price. How would you determine the price? I assume there would be multiple parties taking a percentage.

[aubergine]

Well, instead of the publisher having an auction house where people sell parts of the game they already bought to each other and taking a cut, the publisher could have an auction house where people sell the WHOLE game to someone who hasn't played it and they take a cut.

What will really come out of this is the actual legal motive behind the push for free-to-play somehow being worked into experiences that are not traditionally in that format.

What's truly bad about the ruling though is that for publishers to be able to enforce the customer's right to sell on the right to play a game, they must then employ significant drm. The Diablo 3 model may become the norm for everything from Elder Scrolls to split-screen MarioKart and any other offline game you can imagine, because withholding compete game code is probably the only near-foolproof DRM ever conceived.

What's more likely I think is that the industry will lobby to have new laws introduced, as the courts are simply determining the interpretation of existing law as it applies to something that didn't exist when those laws were made.

I would expect any new laws or ammenents will have to be very carefully worded though, because even as it is, I think the "Download Only" future we keep hearing about will not benefit consumers.

[fishfishmonkeyhat]

As long as the more owners a game has the more bugs get into the code, thereby ageing it!