News - EU rules that users can resell digital downloaded games

[HEXUS]

It doesn’t matter if you sold your soul by agreeing to the EULA.

Read more.

[Agent]

Makes you wonder if this will affect digital distribution services at all. Will they have to provide a way of transferring to someone else now?

[kalniel]

granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right. Such a transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy.

Wow. That's massive. I knew this was the case in German law already, didn't realise this was becoming an EU ruling as Hexus are saying.

[Ferral]

It kind of also makes me think that you actually own your games, not just a license to use them

[kalniel]

Makes you wonder if this will affect digital distribution services at all. Will they have to provide a way of transferring to someone else now?

I presume they'll just update the license revocation tools that exist for games that do allow resale - resale is conditional on making your own copy of the game unusable, which is what license revocation tools do anyway.

It kind of also makes me think that you actually own your games, not just a license to use them

In Germany that's the case. Same thing I was getting at with my quote

I don't know that this will automatically apply in the UK however.

[Whiternoise]

In this brief moment of sanity can they cast their gaze over the UK government and raise their banhammers again?

[BlackDwarf]

Green Man Gaming have a nifty little blog entry about the whole thing.

But [Green Man Gaming CEO Paul] Sulyok believes all it will take is for one consumer to enforce his right to the resale of a game – and thus be required to make his copy unusable – for the two heavyweight companies to be triggered into action.

C'mon... Who's gonna be the man, the legend, the freer of our unwanted games? Dare I say... The Messiah?

[aidanjt]

Well that's *seriously* going to put a crimp in publisher's ambitions to decimate the second hand market. And thank the EU for that (for a change).

Of course, now that we've had a prevalence of good sense, we're now in for a ****storm of stupid and federalisation to readdress the balance of cronyism.

[jimbouk]

This might have a negative affect and push game distributors towards a subscription model.

[Output]

As it applies to other software too rather than only games, does anyone think that this will prompt price cuts for high-end packages (such as Adobe's Creative Suite etc.), to dissuade those who will now be looking to buy second hand for much cheaper?

[Scribe]

hip hip, hooray!

[KeyboardDemon]

How soon till we see the option for trading used PC games, either physical or downloaded?

[Jimbo75]

Thank God for the EU, we'd be in an awful state without them keeping the worst capitalist offenders in check.

[mark22]

Thank God for the EU, we'd be in an awful state without them keeping the worst capitalist offenders in check.

I can only assume irony.

[Jimbo75]

I can only assume irony.

No irony. Who else is keeping the worst offenders in check? There is no other governing body bar the EU doing a thing to protect the common man against the increasing levels of corporate bullying.

[Malphas]

No irony. Who else is keeping the worst offenders in check? There is no other governing body bar the EU doing a thing to protect the common man against the increasing levels of corporate bullying.

It's true; I'm not exactly pro-EU or anything, but I'm not on the mindless bashing bandwagon either. It's pretty normal for governmental bodies to be heavily influenced by corporate lobbing and the EU is no exception, but they do also have an undeniable socialist/elitist slant to them, which of course isn't entirely a good thing by any means but it does mean to get rulings like this from time to time where the citizen is favoured over corporate interests.