[staplor]

I think this is bad; not necessarily for the consumer, but for the industry as a whole. Reselling means that copies sold after the release benefit random consumers, not the developer. On the other hand unresellable licenses along with sales mean that everyone pays the same price, but the developer gets all of the revenue. Digital goods cannot be scarce; we shouldn't treat them as if they are.

[MereInterest]

I think this is good, not just for the consumer, but for the industry as a whole. Reselling means that copies sold at the release have a higher resale value, and therefore a higher price could be charged at release date. If a product has a healthy used market, then I will pay a higher price, knowing that some of it will be recouped later on. This shifts the game's income earlier after release, providing a faster ROI on game development.

This is also besides the fact that the developer has no moral right to prevent the public from reselling a product that has been sold. (First-sale doctrine)

[wruza]

Also that opens a possibility to sell the crap you accidentally bought but refund window closed before you realized that. Many games are promoted as a blockbuster revolution, while being the same old grinders with new textures, or worse. You wait for a plot/ideas that are not there and then oops, you played for three hours, no refund.

In this case, it is a solution stretched to a separate problem, but who cares.

[CWuestefeld]

I'm not sure if you're wrong, but it's not at all clear that you're right.

By having a real used market, there are two opposite effects on the new market:

1) Obviously, having more choices (viz purchase of a used copy) tends to pull prices down.

2) But less obviously, the knowledge that one can sell the game when complete means that a buyer would be willing to pay more up front. That is, today they pay $X new, and that represents the total investment. But with resale, they pay $X' up front, but later recover $Y later when they sell it.

The question is what is the equilibrium between these two countervailing forces?

[im3w1l]

You need to consider the following strategy. Buy game, play for 20h straight. Sell game. Physical media have transaction costs, but for digital copies it will be as easy as pushing a button.

Either doing this is dirt cheap (say less than $1). If it is not dirt cheap, then it means that the game must depreciate hundreds of dollars per year. Which means the starting price must be like $1000.

People wont pay $1000 for a game, so the second case is impossible. Hence, it means that it will be dirt cheap to buy-play-sell. This may be a big threat to the current model.

[FreeKill]

I also agree that #2 is greatly overlooked. I know, personally, I would have purchased many games in the past, if I had an option to resell it for even half the price I paid for it. Instead, I end up waiting 12+ months until that game comes down in price commensurate with the value I believe it to be worth.

This applies a lot to single player games that will take 10-20 hours to complete like the newest Tomb Raider series or Deus Ex series, where I'm sure I will enjoy them, but not enough to spend $70+ on them.

[deogeo]

You can apply the same argument to books. Every consumer/user/individual right you have is in some way "bad for the industry as a whole", and if they could take that right away from you, they could squeeze you for more money.

[nisse72]

You argument applies to any secondary market. The creator has already made money from the first sale. Why should they continue to get a piece of every subsequent sale?

[Barrin92]

> On the other hand unresellable licenses along with sales mean that everyone pays the same price

no, unsellable licenses result in price discrimination, because it gives the distributor a monopoly on the sale. That is why steam games have different prices in different regions. Through resales this is eliminated because people can trivially use the arbitrage opportunity to buy low and sell high.

This is a good thing because it maximises consumer surplus. I'm not really sure what a 'random consumer' is either. I don't really see why we should let platform owners or developers exercise market power to the disadvantage of consumers.

[throwaway34241]

> no, unsellable licenses result in price discrimination

> Through resales this is eliminated

> I don't really see why we should let platform owners or developers exercise market power to the disadvantage of consumers.

No price discrimination may result in the single sale price being the first world country price rather than the developing country price (it may make more financial sense to ignore developing countries than to cut the first world price by 3x). So it wouldn't necessarily be to the advantage of consumers.

Secondly this is ignoring what games are a viable financial enterprise to begin with. Without taking that into account, mandating all games be free would be to the advantage of consumers. If a low friction way to buy/sell digital copies single player games existed, I could imagine a single player game changing hands 10 times rapidly after it's released as people finish playing it and sell it to the next person. Unlike physical goods used digital goods would be basically perfect (and would require no time or money to ship).

But rather than consumers paying 10x less overall and developers finding a way to make the same games with 10x less money, I expect a different equilibrium would be reached. Probably developers mostly ignoring pay-once single player games altogether in favor of multiplayer games and/or in app purchases.

[boudin]

Games were not scarce before neither, you just had to move your ass to a store to get it, but that was it. Games were available there with no shortage (there might have been in rare occasions, but that's it). The only difference is that distributors killed the second hand market when the switch to digital distribution happen.

[glofish]

What you forget here is that most people buying used games would not buy them new.

Being able to sell a game may expand the market, it is possible that even more people would buy new games if they knew they can resell them later.