The Resale of Downloaded Games?

This one is gonna have so foul language. Just a heads up.

Sweet mother of gawd, law makers are fucking stupid. So very fucking stupid.

Want to know what I'm talking about? Look here.

For those of us that are too lazy to click a link, then I'll sum it up for you.

In Europe, it's okay to resell used games. Used digital games. As in games you fuckin' downloaded.

What it really boils down to is the sale of your license for that game to someone else. But that doesn't really work in the heavy pirated world of computer games. The developer or publisher has to provide the new owner of the game with a new license and the sellers license is no longer valid.

Yeah, no one is gonna find a way around that, ha-yuk! 

This is going to be especially damning to smaller or indie studios that don't have strong or even any DRM practices in place and these are the teams that need the funding the most. To me it means greedy, nasty, fat fuckers living in their parents basements while trying to make enough money off reselling indie bundles they pirated to pay for their monthly consumption of porno subscriptions, Jergin's, and pizza-pockets.

All of my hate...

...That reminds me, I need a tablet...

Anyway, the resale of games doesn't necessarily mean the loss of sales or customers. Since Steam is essentially a DRM system and digital distributor, they can offer to "buy back" downloaded games that were only acquired and activated with their service and make sure that the user that sold it back doesn't use it again. Basically destroying their license and making any copy of that license popping up again becoming illegal. Though it will cut into their profit margin and make it far more difficult for Steam to offer such reduced prices to the consumers.

Oh but whats that? One of the largest digital distributors and advocate for fair practices in the game industry is getting threatened with at law suit for trying to protect itself? I bring this up since part of the suit is to make sure that Valve meets all the requirements put in place by the ruling. They cannot have any system in place that prevents European customers from selling their "old" games. Fucking brilliant Europe..

Steam is just trying to protect itself and the end user from class action suits. They aren't trying to lock the users out from filing individual claims, just from making a massive claim with others for something so minimal. It's like if you buy a game for $3.00 off Steam. It doesn't work and you ask for a refund. If you ask with a bunch of other people (100) and the lawyer takes his cut (50%), you get left with $1.50.

100 x 3.0 = 300

300 x .50 = 150

150 / 100 = $1.50

There you go. You have a tarnished and possibly banned account with Steam, no game, and less money than you started with. Now that's smurt. Why would your account be banned you might ask? Because Steam reserves the right to deny service to anyone. If you're coming on their service and you're a bad customer, you get kicked out. It's just the same as any place else.

So there is that; get ready Europe, you're games will get even more expensive and much heftier DRM since the game developers and publishers will be scrambling to get as much as they can from their product before some kid tries making a dime off of you too.

These law makers are the same people that tried to take over the internet, strip our freedoms away and the same idiots that ask you to email back attachments when you're done with them because it was their only copy.

And lets be honest. The resale of downloaded games is pretty fucking stupid.

Until next time,
-Dave