New Court Ruling Could Affect Used Game Business?

[khyrox]

http://kotaku.com/5663625/new-court-rul ... e-business

The Dallas Morning News reports that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that a software publisher can stop buyers from reselling software to others. This differs from previous rulings in which software programs could be resold under "first sale" doctrine due to the rationale that licensing agreements that prohibit resell take precedence.

Not sure if this was mentioned in a previous thread, but this is interesting news. If upheld, I wonder how that will affect marketplaces like eBay and the like - especially in our hobby!

[DerekG52]

More pro-corporate nonsense. Must be nice to be able to buy legislation and the court system.

[videogameexperiment]

Publishers would be biting the hands that feed them if they even tried to enforce games as a license.

[DerekG52]

Publishers would be biting the hands that feed them if they even tried to enforce games as a license.

True, but how often does a suit make an out of touch decision? All they see is, if we can force people to buy from us, more $$$. Fortunately, companies like eBay and Gamestop would be on the gamers side when this gets appealed.

[ZeroAX]

Publishers would be biting the hands that feed them if they even tried to enforce games as a license.

Not as long as there are idiot fanboys who say "It is their right" every time you complain about a company treating you like shit.

"It is in the ULA read it"

Damn I hate pricks like that. They only talk like that, cause nothing like this has ever happened to them.


My favorite example was when a user was banned from battle net cause he used a trainer on Starcraft 2, and while he didn't cheat in multiplayer, but only in single player, they banned him with the excuse that single player has achievements which carry on to online.


Soooooooooo a big soulless corporation deprives a user of his rights by taking away part of the product he payed for, because some people who will never have sex in their lives might be offended that he got achievements, digital imaginary tokens, for people who feel proud of their achievements in a game.

And people still defended Blizzard on its decision....

One I finished a game of Windows solitaire in less than 80 seconds. I should a medal to show for it.



Don't be amazed if people start saying "The developers deserve your money. You should be grateful to play CoD-clone number 2345. Pay full price you thief"



At least we got retro gaming.

[YoshiEgg25]

At least we got retro gaming.

I was reading through the manual of my copy of Mario's Early Years: Fun With Numbers when I got it a couple weeks ago. It came out in 1993, but it had an EULA too. I doubt that we'd be able to buy/sell/trade games made after the NES era, and even then, those games might have had them too.

[DerekG52]

I remember reading a little while back about EULA's not being admissible due to their length and lawyer speak. I don't have a link handy but hopefully someone else read the same thing. May have been on slashdot.

[AppleQueso]

I'd love if they saw sales of new games decline sharply because people can't use trade-in value towards a new game anymore

[flamepanther]

This would likely only affect the resale of used PC games, as I don't think most console games include a EULA that the owner has to agree to before using the software. Also, you should still be able to resell unopened PC software, since it is usually the act of opening the package or running the software that validates "agreement" to the EULA.

[AppleQueso]

The most likely scenario is that publishers will use this as weight to strike a deal with retailers to dig into those used game profits. Actually trying to stop used game sales would be pretty foolish.

Really though, I think it's kind of funny how publishers are whining about used game sales eating into their profits. The gaming industry now is bigger than it ever has been, and they act like they're hurting all the sudden.