EU confirms right for digital games to be resold regardless of EULA

[Ronin Storm]

Just seen an article on Eurogamer that made me pause:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...nnot-stop-you-reselling-your-downloaded-games

"Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy - tangible or intangible - and at the same time concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a licence agreement granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right. Such a transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy. Therefore, even if the licence prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy."

There is one condition, however. If you resell a license to a game you have to make your copy "unusable at the time of resale". Now you will do that, won't you?

"If he continued to use it," the Court explained, "he would infringe the copyright holder's exclusive right of reproduction of his computer program. In contrast to the exclusive right of distribution, the exclusive right of reproduction is not exhausted by the first sale."

Sure. Fine. All very fancy words, except that license servers have been designed to assume one-customer-one-license and much of DRM revolves around that too. Exactly how can this be provided for and enforced around, though? So you sell your copy of HL2 to your mate... how exactly is your old license revoked, or duplicate usage tracked?

Is this also the final nail for the single player campaign? After all, if you and your mates can buy one copy of a game and each play it in turn, what money is there in making high quality single player titles in digital-only format? That said maybe that format was already dead (to major publishers)...

What sounds good from some angles I find I'm not sure about from others...

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Like!

So soon I can get rid of those games on steam which I do not like.

I cant help but wonder what effect this will have on console company's taking business away from the physical copy resellers, now that if they will move into digital titles, they will be lawfully forced (EU) to allow this trading of non physical licenses, in a way, i think this may make them think twice about switching to digital.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Microsoft are apparently still focusing on physical media for their next console so I suspect they saw this coming.

 

[Panda with issues...]

How successful do we really think the next console generation will be?

The PS3 has essentially seemed to be DOA.
New handhelds are failing to pique people's interest.

The new Wii and exactly how it is going to work seems to be confusing the hell out of everyone

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/nintendo-has-two-choices-fix-the-wii-u-marketing-or-get-screwed

Maybe the Nextbox will be fine, but in a recession that doesn't seem close to ending, it seems like convincing people to stump up more cash is going to be fairly difficult. The Nextbox will probably suffer from a similar effect to the PS2 - huge, quality games library, developers continuing to develop for it for a significant period.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

This also smashes the whole 'online pass' system, since the other person now owns the game license right?

 

[Ronin Storm]

This also smashes the whole 'online pass' system, since the other person now owns the game license right?

Well... maybe, though the trick here may be in what's actually being sold.

e.g.

I sell you two items:

1. a license to a game that you download
2. a license to access my online platform using your game

The former is the copyrighted work and you can, under these laws, resell that license as long as you have removed your ability to use that license as well.

The second, however, isn't a copyrighted work. It's a license to use a service, just the same as any subscription. I suspect this will survive this legislation intact and, perhaps, become a major part of the sale.

 

[Ronin Storm]

The PS3 has essentially seemed to be DOA.

While I'd certainly agree, I know a whole bunch of people who have only a PS3... mystifying as that is, these same people justified the PS3 on being a bluray player and a games machine.

Also, Sony do still have some worthwhile platform exclusives in the pipeline, but 2-3 games a year is much too few for me.

Maybe the Nextbox will be fine, but in a recession that doesn't seem close to ending, it seems like convincing people to stump up more cash is going to be fairly difficult.

I think you'd be surprised. I read an article back in 2009/10 that indicated that digital entertainment was booming despite or even as a result of the recession because it was cheaper than an overseas holiday. I'd dig it out if I could remember where I read that.

The Nextbox will probably suffer from a similar effect to the PS2 - huge, quality games library, developers continuing to develop for it for a significant period.

That occurred because the PS3 could not play PS2 games.

Many Xbox games could be played on the X360. I suspect (and expect) that Microsoft will make the Nextbox handle X360 games and end that line of hardware.

 

[Panda with issues...]

That occurred because the PS3 could not play PS2 games.

Pretty sure the first released PS3s had backwards compatibility. When they removed it for the second edition or whatever (seemed to happen fairly quickly IIRC) it killed any chance of me ever buying one. Moronic choice.

 

[Panda with issues...]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/03/crikey-eu-rules-you-can-resell-downloaded-games/#more-114473

 

[Ronin Storm]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/03/crikey-eu-rules-you-can-resell-downloaded-games/#more-114473

That article starts well but gets a bit entitled-gamer ranty towards the end. Also:

[...] which could even have legal implications for the current systems various console publishers have introduced, forcing pre-owned customers to pay a tithe before the game will work properly.

What determines "work properly"? An online pass doesn't prevent a game working "properly" necessarily, unless the game is defacto useless without the features that the pass would enable. Thus a game that has a single player mode could be resold without its pass and still be a valid resale. Fine, I'm not saying I like online passes particularly, but I don't see that this in any way restricts them.

Further impact: MMORPG license keys that are bound specifically to an online character account (to the point that the install discs are useless after first install). What happens here? Are they saying that the MMO industry needs to scrap its current license key model entirely?

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Further impact: MMORPG license keys that are bound specifically to an online character account (to the point that the install discs are useless after first install). What happens here? Are they saying that the MMO industry needs to scrap its current license key model entirely?

I suspect that the subscription games will be protected by the license not entitling you to a "game product". Though i think this could be trouble for guildwars and other games which use ingame microtransactions to a paid account, eg world of warcraft, this may further herald the rise of free to play. The ESRB does not rate online interactions in some games, and future patches, it will be interesting to see which services manage to argue successfully to remain in present form, I look forward to reselling my unwanted steam games though