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[Matz05]

Any sale is a permanent movement of an agreed-upon good to a purchaser for agreed-upon compensation.
The purchaser MUST ALWAYS be allowed to sell the good, in turn, to another purchaser.

That's simply how the free market works.

I design a car, manufacture instances of that design, and sell you one(1). There are many like it. You have one(1) car. You sell one(1) car to your friend. It may have lost value in the intervening time, but it could also very well have gained value from rarity/etc. The result is that I profited from one(1) car, and one(1) entered circulation.

I write a videogame, make copies, and sell you one(1) copy. There are many like it. You have one(1) videogame. You sell one(1) videogame to your friend. Regardless of the value changes, this is a perfectly normal transaction. The result is that I profited from one(1) copy, and one(1) entered circulation.
 

The EU ruling just reaffirms this commonsense principle. In no way did the second scenario lead to some kind of magic "no-profit" field, or flood the market with any more copies than were sold by the manufacturer.


Also, one big thing in the "degradation" field: While proper maintainence of data is trivial, occasionally they are completely destroyed or rendered useless (physical media fails, operating systems become incompatible). The rights of copyright owners ARE DESIGNED SOLELY FOR the production of copies. This "right of copying" allows them to continue to profit from market expansion AND the replacement of destroyed copies.

If enough cars are produced so that everyone in the world has a car they are comfortable with, should I be able to order cars destroyed so I can sell more? Of course not. That would be both unfair and nonsensical, as well as very wasteful.
Should I be able to make cars "die with their owners" by making them unwillable and unsellable somehow so that cars are passively destroyed over time? No I shouldn't, but this is similar to what the videogame industry supports currently.


We ran into this problem after the world wars, when our industrial might, built up during the wars, snapped back to producing automobiles, televisions, and kitchen gadgets. People were actually too satisfied with their current possessions to inject their money into businesses. This is when our society started to deliberately move from the capitalist (fill your needs by filling the needs of others for a price) to the consumerist (fill your needs and desires by creating desires in others and subsequently filling them for a price) system.
The pains felt during the transition were simple problems of OVERABUNDANCE. For the first time, many industries simultainiously found that almost everyone who wanted the product already had it, or an alternative. They had to convince people that the new product was more desirable than the old or the alternatives, thus advertising became the art/science/business it is today. What I'm trying to say is that you don't have any right to sell more widgets than there are widget buyers if you can't convince them it is an improvement.

Vacuum cleaners: almost every household has one. Why do they still sell? Two reasons. One: vacuum cleaners occasionaly need replacing. Two, and most importantly: vacuum cleaners constantly change. People want the Super Cyclono-Suction 2000 with Pulsating Action (R) instead of what they already have. Why not hold videogame companies to this otherwise universal standard?

[Shadowlord]

It appears to me that a publisher would never do temporary sales again. It would be shooting themselves in the foot for a long period of time. If a game is selling for $20 and they drop it to $4.99 for a temporary sale. They would never sell that many games for $20 again. This is what happens a lot right now. This model will be gone.

How about instead of making stuff up and using it to predict the future, and then when you're called on it being unrealistic based on past trends, saying WE CAN"T PREDICT THE FUTURE THERE'S NO WAY, you use ACTUAL DATA:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_deep_discounts_really_affect_your_games.php

"The teams who've discounted their games during this or previous Steam sales have found that the promotions not only attract more sales, but also generate more revenue and breathe new life into aging products." (Read the rest, it's good to know)

Also, how much damage to sales would having secondhand consumers selling cause. I think it would be astronomical. But again, we can't prove it either way. It's purely futuristic speculation. I know I would wait ten days to get a game cheaper because I'm cheap and don't need the fancy baubles the day of their release.

If we were talking in person, I'd smack you on the back of the head.

Pay more attention to reality. Or read my previous posts on the matter instead of pretending the console game industry doesn't exist (which deals with this problem already and is doing just fine, aside from continuing to have amazingly high production costs).

[alexandertnt]

If publishers make less money, then they will make less games. It won't be the end of the industry. It will just result in less games being made. I view that as a negative.

This argument applies to virtually any industry. As I said earlier, you would not be able to play all the games that come out now. And if you want a specific game, then its better to let your desire to buy that game influence the chances of it (Your desire to spend creates a market) coming to frutation, rather than relying on the industry to churn out games en masse and "hope" that there is one you like.

To be honost, it may result in less games being made, but that is not a bad thing per se. This law should hopefully make publishers listen more to where people want to put their money.

[G-Flex]

We're never going to have a lack of games just because publishers aren't screwing the consumer out of quite as much money anymore. That's rubbish. If anything, as has been repeatedly stated here, consumer rights being protected gives more reason for publishers producing games that have lasting appeal. You know, the kinds of games people won't want to resell after four months. Screwing over your rights as a consumer is not the way to get the product you want, no matter what, and as has also been stated repeatedly here, being able to resell your games means you'll likely be able to afford more new ones in the first place. Also, quite frankly, there's so much shovelware bullshit these days that I wouldn't really mind if slightly fewer games came out, but the ones that did were higher quality on average. That would be fine by me.

[Shadowlord]

Indeed.