European Union court: Consumers have the right to re-sell their Digitally Distributed games

[NJ5]

Fayceless said:

if attempts are made to enforce it, it will likely cause developers, especially independent developers, to flee Europe.

Fleeing a market that is as big, or bigger (for PC games at least) than the U.S. market? That could only happen if those publishers wanted to go bankrupt or get sued by shareholders by "destroying shareholder value". The vast majority of companies are already making slim to none profits, they would get completely wiped out if they lost 20-30% of their sales.

 

Fayceless said:

Non-European companies won't go for it, at least until EU starts actively blocking their sites/services. (can they even do that? will they?)

 

They can do it and they would (they can even do worse like seizing any business assets that are located in the E.U.), altough it would be a drastic last ditch measure. It would not get that far because fines could be imposed if the courts want to, and the mere threat of losing out on an important market would drive the sites to comply with the measures the courts decide on.

Look at antitrust lawsuits, Intel paid a fine of more than $1 billion some time ago in the E.U. for using illegal anti-competition measures against AMD. Did they exit the European market? Of course not, they would be stupid to do that...

 

Fayceless said:

but what about tiny, one or two person developers that make very little money from their games, but make them because they love to do so? They could get hit with a lawsuit or fine because they are unable to comply with such a ruling.

To comply with this ruling, small developers that sell software directly to gamers (DRM-free or with serial keys) don't have to lift a finger. They just have to not interfere with people who resell their games (as long as the seller does not use the game after selling it).

Again, literally small developers do not have to do absolutely anything to comply.