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

[NJ5]

mantlepiecek said:

The difference between a used digital copy and a used physical copy is that the physical copy gets damaged with time, the digital copy remains the same, therefore there would be a true competition to the manufacturer himself. For someone like steam which has so many deals I can see it being unfair.

There are other things in this world that don't really get damaged with time, and the makers of those things still manage to stay in business even if those things are sold and resold. To give one example, most artistic paintings don't get damaged with time (quite the contrary, they tend to increase in value over time, even when they need restoration).

The games industry thinks they're special in this regard, but hopefully this idea starts going down with court decisions like this one...

As for unfairness, I think the REALLY unfair thing is that gamers own stuff that they don't need anymore and they're not allowed to sell it.