Reselling Digital Content

[jfrost]

Yeah, Ivo, I don't know if I agree they should be forced to provide license transfering.

I'm pretty sure these Steam sales we all know and love would be gone if things worked like that.

[Ivo]

Yeah, Ivo, I don't know if I agree they should be forced to provide license transfering.

I'm pretty sure these Steam sales we all know and love would be gone if things worked like that.

I understand that. Maybe the law should allow them to provide a non-transferable version as long as they also provide a transferable version one that has a reasonable price (i.e. not just have one to fit the prerequisite but make it cost too high so that it is effectively a non-option or something), and only do low value Steam sales on the non-transferable ones. I would agree with something like that.

But I really think there has to be legislation on transfer of digital "licenses", because that stuff is very very likely the future and I don't want them to be all "we can take it away from you when we want to because it is still ours". I think there has to be a balance with consumer rights.

Ivo.

[isiolia]

But Steam does buy a license from the publisher for each copy they sell. So for in-house games there would be no business value, but for games by third party publishers they could cut costs by doing this.

Does it work like that? My guess was they just sold the games with a contract that stipulated a cut for each copy sold for each part.

It's profit-sharing, yes, which is why I don't really see a way to do "used" sales via Steam that'd be at all attractive on the business end. Unlike used sales of physical copies, where the same or more profit can be made by cutting out the developers/publishers, digital sales are somewhat direct. There's nobody to really cut out.

Steam and similar services are also likely considered services moreso than digital products. You have an account. You pay for your account to have access to more content. You can't "resell" that any more than you can resell cable channels you receive or charge to watch DVDs you buy (well, legally anyway). At least, to my understanding of it.