Cars degrade over time. Games don't. If you were allowed to sell games you'd downloaded, then why would people  bother buying new when they could get exactly the same thing for a lower price? What would happen if you'd bought a game in a sale for 75% off, could you then mark it up and resell it to make a profit after the game goes back up to full price?

I'm not delighted about the situation, I'd prefer to have more control over stuff I've bought and I really wish there was more clear legislation and consumer protection in this area, but I can see the point of view of publishers and I'm willing to trade some of my 'rights' for the convenience and ease of use of Steam.

I don't think you understand me, and furthermore I didn't start the dumbass analogy of relating a physical object with an IP object, so I don't know who you are trying to arue with there.

The car's purpose is to get you places, end of story. When you sell your car can you still use it to go places? Can you hop in your sold car and go to work with it? Cause if you can then you are some amazing businessman and the guy you sold it to is an fucking idiot. You can't use the car anymore to get places and make new experiences, which is the entire value of the car itself.

Developers themselves only sell the few/several hours of enjoyment you get out of the game, their idea. You will have that vlue with you no matter what happens. In the case of the car you are transfering the value from yourself to the buyer. In the case with the game you are making a copy of the value since you don't forfeit ownership of your enjoyment/experience, or the value, unless you somehow lost your memory of the game when you sell it. Basically you are doing the exact same thing as piracy, you are making a copy of the value of the IP. Except you also profit from it.

Edit: You would be much much more successful in arguing your case if you used books instead of physical objects.

Edit2: You seem to think that a developer's idea is somehow YOUR property for you to resell. It is not. The developer's idea is his own only and you are only stealing it when you sell it for your own profit.

Didn't someone sell their account on e-bay a while back? Or is that when they introduced the rule?

You only get a license anyway, what do you think you agree to when you install it? Whether the license is enforcable or not is another matter, and yet another area that requires clarification and legislation.

I guess that is why they made the rule. Not sure about it.

Content creators do have a point though.

The laws were written when everything was a physical product, and everything degraded over time unless kept in pristine conditions. With digital download, nothing degrades and it is always in the same condition. A resale of a digital download could have major and adverse effects to the pricing of a product. Why pay full price when person X is selling for half the price for exactly the same game and quality?

With physical disks it's less of an issue, but content creators can still suffer (and boy do they complain) from low pricing of second-hand games. The problem would be heavily exacerbated in the digital download market.

Either way, its' an issue that needs to be sorted.

Ignore the dumb analogies We as consumers have the right to sell property we buy. It doesn't matter if it is IP or physical (like a car). If you want to argue otherwise, then you should be arguing that selling paintings after they leave the original authors hands should be outlawed as it is the same exact situation. Everyone would laugh at you forever if you tried, but this is what you are trying to do. However, no one would laugh at you if you said people shouldn't be able to scan & print said painting.

Publishers (& pirates who want to justify their actions) are just butt hurt that they can't control their content after they sell a copy of it. The benefit to the user is lost when the copy is sold. If you want to go back to the memory pitch, then I shouldn't be able to sell my car which is used purely for a pleasure cruise and returns me where I started from.

A person who buys used contributes to the economy (videogame in this instance) which allows the person who sold the game to buy a new game giving more profits to publishers. No copies of the "art" are produced without the authors consent (and profit). If you want to think about it this way, the first guy pays the retailer cut, the second guy pays the publishers cut, the 3rd guy pays the delivery guys cut, and the 4th guy pays the material costs all for the first guy who can actually afford the to buy the original copy. The cycle of buying new/used continues forever. We see similar ecosystems with cars and other products. Rich people buy new cars and sell them to poor people. The money taken from the poor people is used to buy another new car and the cycle continues. While it is easier for someone to drop out of the video game ecosystem than the car ecosystem there are more than enough people that it will continue.

The pirate, he pays nothing. Ever. He doesn't support anyone in buying new software. He doesn't support anyone in any way. The pirate makes a copy of the "art" and enjoys it for himself while contributing nothing.

So, if you want to continue to argue that the person who buys used is as bad as the pirate, then go right ahead, but you are out right wrong. Besides, why should we be arguing for anything besides consumer rights? That's right. it is a way to justify the actions of those who do pirate software. Next up, we argue that pirating software isn't immoral.

Agreed. But until this is enshrined in a 'digital rights' bill or similar, then we absolutely cannot sell digitally downloaded games tied to an account because there's simply no mechanism in place to do so, unless we go against the terms of service of the provider and in doing so lose the account itself. There really needs to be a test case to crack this open once and for all.

There's a PC section in videogame stores?!?! That's news to me!

smells like poisen to me?

these relailers are stupid cause by doing this they could force dev to say (well screw retailers trying to tell us how to run our business. lets go digital to consoles and drive retailers out of business) and you can say by by to gamestop.