haha - I actually laughed so hard when I read that I got coffee out of my nose when I read it. Thank you for that - it made my day!

is this not an argument against re-sell of digital games? it stagnates the marked.

And it still do not resolve implementation - REVOLUTION NOW. Without practical implementation it is just empty words.

There is no issue with resolution, the courts simply force all digital retailers to allow AND support trading/selling/transferring of cd keys at will, and the world goes on spinning. While we are at it, let's ban all DRM that requires third party program installation or online checks too.

without any form of control - you see no problem here at all? you do not see how a system like this will be abused to heck and back?

It is an ideal, maybe yes, but as the good quote says (slight paraphrasing): "the perfect system requires perfect people, and they do not exist" - The indie bundles have showed us that the customers can not be trusted on these matters.

Itunes has not seen any slowing of their growth post-DRM, I can't imagine videogames doing so either. If my alternatives are pirate a copy, or buy a cheap "used" key in an open market, I will take the latter every time, and so will the market.

Itunes don't resale music - do they? It has nothing to do with resale - still not answering the question about implementation and abuse.

Which is why Steam is doing so badly :)

Still not answering my question. A drm-free used digital sales marked will be abused to heck and back - and the it do not work the same way as physical due to all the points earlier in the thread

the reuslt of which can mean your quote could be fixed to something like this:
As I said - the various indie bundles have showed us that the customer can not be trusted... what about all the "legitimate" keys sold which comes from there? It is just to open for abuse.

And you seem confused by logic. Arguing with you is the same as teaching evolution to christians or preaching to an atheist: pointless.
No matter what I can come up with here you'll find some non-sense loophole while failing to provide some kind of solid proof. I'm still waiting for that sales figures that validates your point. I already showed to you mine. Where's yours? (wait, that didn't come out right...) All I'm seeing up until now is YOUR opinion: no hard data to back up your claims and that's the same as nothing. All your arguments are moot until you can provide something more than your opinion. Up until then I think I don't need to say the obvious to you again: You're wrong in every one of your points because you're basing yourself on your restricted view without any outside source to verify the truth behind it. (oops I just did. :P )

Also this:

"So, no, 24 hours or 3 hours doesn't really matter (not like a 24 hour period says much anyway), saying Omerta sold more than The Walking Dead is meaningless because there's 5 dozen low priced games (at the very least) for every full priced game. "

Basic math: 100 copies of a $1,00 product is less than 1 copy of a $1,000 product. Quantity of item is meaningless. You're US so you should know more than me about capitalism :P. Seems like Valve knows this.

"You do get that 1 purchaser for each of 100 different, discounted games is more sales than 10 purchasers of a full priced game, even though the latter will show up on the "most popular" list, right? "

Wrong! Very VERY wrong. See above.

"You also do get that people are migrating away from Steam's storefront, especially price conscious consumers, as Steam has worse sales than other outlets selling Steam keys, right?"

Proof? And most importantly: Relevance?

Anjol:

If you allow resale then you need control. You need drm as you need to be able to transfer something.
Otherwise I buy drm free game on used market and the resale it immediately.
And because of net and how easy is to transfer stuff befor the game finalizes installation the "single" copy will travel to hands of hundreds of players. No different to piracy yet legal and more troublesome.


You want no drm, can't allow resale
You want resale. Heavy drm, games tied not to steam but to your bank account.

you can't have both.

You realize my premise is that more people now buy discounted games than full priced games, right? That means the relative value of the game is meaningless for counting number of sales (i.e. who is buying games in each category). But the value of the game is precisely counted by the Steam top sales. So its merit to "capitalism" notwithstanding, it's a shit metric.

I will however point to the wild sales numbers of Steam's and Amazon's big sales events as evidence that supports (not proof, you seem confused between the two) my hypothesis. That's at least as good as a nearly meaningless metric you've provided.
You know what, I find this argument to be pure bunk. Books, DVDs, CDs, etc., except for books, are trivially copied and you can resell them. The honest people will be honest and the dishonest ones won't be, it's really no more complex than that. So far the dishonest ones have failed to crash the Books, Movie, or Music industries.

Because it is to easy and all the others will need a transfer of a physical object. If there are a DRM-free resale of digital goods what will stop me from:

1 - Buy Skyrim for $50
2 - Sell my DRM free license for $10 to a guy in china, for $10 to a guy in France, 2 copies to different people in the US for $10 each, 2 copies at $7.50 to two guys in Russia (since games are cheaper there) and a final copy to a guy in Brazil for $3.00.
3 - I am now bought the license for $50 - sold licenses for $57.50 - so have made a profit of $7.50 for 5 min work without moving out of my chair. nice deal. Everything is done over the net, and, as far as everyone knows (those suckers) - perfectly legal. and this also as good as not traceable - very low risk!
4 - Best part - I now play my own copy of Skyrim. Everybody is happy... except Bethesda maybe.

this is not really possible in any resale involving some sort of physical goods. If you do you still need to produce something to sell, even if it is a pirated copy, which makes in not practical and worth the risk for the common person.

1) Don't EVER put words in my mouth.

2h Yku certainly.can have both. Having a used market, with no DRM simply widens your WTP net. The same principles that gog and itunes operate under, people spending money for goods they could get for free, underline the likely success of a drm free used market. Gog does not have a huge bit torrent issue, and a used key market wouldn't either.

1 - sorry
2 - see above.

edit - torrents is a non issue - neither craks/pirating etc. I do not distribute the game, just email a license code (or whatever there is in a DRM free thingy). I do not need to upload/download share anything at all. Nor host anything, torrent anything... nothing at all is required from me - just pass on the license. The people I deal with thinks this is legitimate, as opposed to does searching for cracks, pirated torrents etc

1) Honesty
2) Digital goods markets that track seller history, it's fishy if the same guy keeps selling Skyrim for 10 bucks when it's still 50. It's even easier when the original merchant assists with the resale.

It's often assumed that all dishonesty has to be prevented, when in fact history shows simply most dishonesty has to be prevented.

1 - hmm.. seeing what is happening with the indie bundles... I do not any longer believe many of the general customer have it... and you only need a few to break the system. I do not see it practically happen - and do you see UBI/EA et.al do so?

2- does this not need some sort of control? how will you implement it without DRM? monitor my email and online browsing? or force all trade to go through a single specific sanctioned site... and do you believe that will be accepted?

I think buyers will simply be unwilling to buy from a non-reputable site with some sort of tracking to prevent egregious abuses, I mean if you wanted to buy used, and were unwilling to pirate (which is still an option), wouldn't you? Perhaps they might verify proof of purchase or some such. That should pretty much prevent most of it. Ubisoft and the rest won't get on board voluntarily, they're not really on board with Gamestop except they have to be (I mean, contrary to popular belief, they realize they need a used market for games, they'd just like it to belong to them, not a 3rd party).

Crypto tokens verifying ownership could always be passed around, those are not duplicatable, but don't trample on consumer rights like DRM.

but I will have the proof of purchases, it is something digital. Without DRM I can make as many copies of that little file as much I want. Each buyer will believe they buy a legitimate license, how can they not? and after there is no way to track it back?