New EU law to change Digital Distribution – Video Games Update
New European law gives gamers the right to resell their downloaded games. What does this mean for digital distribution services like Steam and Origin?
The main advantage of digital distribution to publishers was that there were no second hand sales but this will change now, if only in Europe after the new EU law which gives gamers the right to sell what they have purchased. Corporations like Electronic
Arts and Valve will have to comply if they want to continue trading in Europe.
This news comes right after Electronic Arts prediction that digital distribution is the ‘inevitable’ future. Maybe they are going to rethink that strategy now that digital distribution might not be as profitable for them as they thought it would be.
Currently there is no way available on Steam or Origin for gamers to resell their games. Some users are arguing that even though Steam is legally obligated to allow users to resell games, they are not obligated to facilitate the sale. Therefore gamers who
want to sell games might have to arrange the financial transactions amongst themselves and then request Steam or Origin support to transfer their game to the buyer.
Although this might get messy for steam and it will be better if they just facilitate the service to save themselves from future head-aches and lawsuits from disgruntled gamers.
Another way this ruling might turn out to be a mess is that some games are locked to a gamers’ master account. This means that publishers of the game will have to deal with removing the game from the seller’s account and then attaching it to another account.
Lots of additional work and headaches for developers lay ahead unless they develop a user friendly system to facilitate the used game sales.
There are already threads on Valve’s Steam and Electronic Art’s Origin forums demanding that the companies update their respective software to allow gamers to resell the games that they have bought. Many gamers are looking forward to getting rid of their
‘buyers’ remorse’ titles from their digital game libraries.
Currently there has been no response from either of the two companies but users can be sure that they are working hard to find a way out of this. One possible solution they can do to turn this around is charging users a small percentage of the selling price
as a fee for them facilitating the sale. Those gamers not interested in paying the distributor can arrange the financial transaction themselves.
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