Topic: Do you think we will ever get the ability to sell digital games to another person?

....This isn’t how magnets work at all! 🙄

If Nintendo go digital only, then sales will drop significantly, unless the price drops as well.

It would be interesting to know what percent of a game like Zelda botw or Smash Bros are downloaded.

But those that buy digital copies of a game when there is a cheaper physical version available, are not bothered about cost, so why would they be bothered about selling their digital copy.

@zool Unfortunately I don't think so. Many people, more and more, don't mind or even prefer digital, and pay more than they would pay if they compared prices on retail stores.

It's a sad reality, but they're getting what they wanted: a digital-only future, with prices like retail but without distribution and manufacturing costs. And they control the sales, when and how much the games are discounted.

@Link-Hero
I never said coding was easy. The emulator could be sold for each system but the roms you already have purchased shouldn't be again, isn't that the whole point of an account based system?

If digital is the future then the consumer needs to have more rights and forms of ownership. Otherwise you just keep renting the same thing over and over. Think about this in five years time at the current pricing you'd spend $100 just to play Super Mario Bros on the switch and that's conditional on having weekly access to the Internet so there's that bill on top of that (you may argue you get access to more than just one game but you still have to pay the same price of admission to access just one) Wouldn't you be better of to pay the VC price and have unconditional access to the product you want?

@HobbitGamer That wasn't digital rights. They were just helping you correct your poor judgement. It was an intervention. "Zune" and "Jimmy Buffet". We need to help this guy's decision making....

@GameOtaku Digital rights DO need to be addressed, I do 100% agree. I'm just not sure it's actually going to happen, and the (stupid) young people will get a rude wake up call when one of heir big digtal providers goes belly up or shuts them down (or like the Playstation people that can't access their content if Sony locks your account...) OTOH people are stupid and the young for some reason believe corporations are benevolent and forever, and embrace everything digital/tech/corporate.

All that said the bigger problem isn't the rights of digital ownership. We're heading into the idea, not about digital vs physical ownership but the idea that ownership of any kind won't exist at all - it'll all be subscriptions, with limitatiosn on what can be accessed from each sub. That's the even uglier future. (Though Phil Spencer (XBox) has said that Game Pass members buy more games, counterintuatively.)

I've been waiting for a serious legislative level digital rights push for 15 years....I've stopped holding my breath. The up side is it worked for music. We went from DRM music like Hobbit's Zune issue to totally DRM-less music, and the music industry hasn't imploded...though..that's being replaced by subscription streaming as well.

@NEStalgia Hey now. I liked my Zune. And my Windows phone. I like poorly executed plans, what can I say?

Your right @NEStalgia the young or unwise gamers don't seem to realize how terrible digital only is. I don't know about you but digital video games are the only thing i've ever owned that i can't sell or trade. I have been collecting video games and selling/trading video games for 30 years now. Now my hobby and job are about to be no more.

@HobbitGamer When you you start playing Stadia on Google Cardboard? Maybe you can read your strategy guides on a Sony Reader.

I do notice a lack of defending the Jimmy Buffet purchase though. See, the intervention helped!

@BacklogBlues Yeah, there absolutely needs to be real legislation on property rights of digital. Digital on its own isn't a bad thing inherently, but the fact that everything is treated in a way that ignores any sense of property rights, from a US perspective, is almost entirely unconstitutional. It's a country founded mostly around the very ideas of property rights (for better or worse in some cases.) Of course in the modern world corporations really own the government(s), so everything really exists to serve corporate interests first and foremost, and we've become a society (the west in general) where the population exists to serve the needs of business like a sideways Feudalism. I wonder if digital property rights even can become an issue under such a system?

The EU makes noises about being better with regard to consumer interests, but if you read between the lines of what they actually do, it's still the same corporate republic...they're just better at making a show of it.

Like many others and i said in post #14 on this forum nothing will change until some sues the video game and wins and then wins the 10 years of appeals. But i'm not holding my breath. I miss the days when i could sell my beaten games to fund buying my new ones. This has been the way i've done it for over 20 years.

@NEStalgia I'm curious as to how you would define "digital property".
If I buy a DVD now, I have something tangible in my hands. It is now my property (but the contents of it are not). If I give that DVD to you, it is now yours.
How does this work in a digital world? If I download something digital, I have the compiled code (something I did not even own when I had it physical) and that's it. What exactly do I own?
If I transfer it to you, and lets assume the transfer deletes my copy, you do not possess the same compiled code I had. Rather, you have a perfect copy of it.
This is where the term "used" is thrown out when it comes to digital. There is no such thing as used, it simply doesn't exist.

I'm not taking a side here, but genuinely curious as to how one would define owning digital media. We don't own the content of physical media now, digital just strips the physical portion away and we're left with what we never owned to begin with.
People argue that servers may go down and then you can't reobtain them, but the same thing happens to physical - they go out of print. You can buy physical second hand later, but digital second hand doesn't exist.
Even with a statute that let's you resell digital media after so long has passed doesn't work seeing as how a company can choose to sell digital for as long as they want with no manufacturing costs. We're still seeing 30 year old games and even older movies and music getting sold today.

There's lots of people for digital property rights where the consumer owns what they have purchased, and I'd be on board for it too, but I've yet to see anyone suggest just how it could work, given that we've never owned the rights to the content of discs and carts.

@Cotillion
You buy the original license, you decide to sell your license, the buyer pays you a license transfer fee, you as the seller accept payment to complete your contract that your license has been transferred to the buyer.

If this wasn't the case then couldn't we all be open to legal cases for selling used games, movies and books?

@Cotillion Ironically the industry gives you the answer as they try to lock you out of your own property. They did not sell you the content of the disc when they sold you a disc, they sold you the disc, as you said. You could trade that disc. What they officially gave you was a license to access content, and local storage of said content, in the case of the DVD on a lacquer disc. If you give me that disc, you are giving me your license's physical lock (the disc), and the permanent storage of the content. You could have copied the data on that disc before giving it to me, but by giving me the disc you gave me the legal license to access it.

Now when we talk about digital...what is different, at all, about digital? Not how they present it but how it actually works in relation to property rights? If you buy a digital game you bought a license to access that content. Instead of a physical disc, it comes with credentials for a master authentication server (that part alone should be up for debate....perhaps instead of each company maintaining their own credentials a more open credentialing system should be publically available, etc.) - but in either case, whether you download the content, or I donwload the content - the license to access it was purchased and owned by you. Currently they simply don't offer you any way at all to transfer that license to me. The only difference in this case would be the rights to transfer a license to whomever you wish, the terms of the transaction to be defined by you. You give it to me, you sell it to me, you barter for it in bottle caps, doesn't matter, when you decide to transfer the license to me, there should be nothing preventing you from doing so.

Similarly with how motor vehicles are transferred. They are registered to an individual. The registration is then transferred to the new owner with the appropriate paperwork (and fee, because government.) They don't care how much you sold it for or whether it's a gift from a game of checkers, you're just transferring whom is registered to use it.

The transfer wouldn't even need to delete your copy. But you would then become unauthorized to access it. Same as with a DVD, if you copy the contents before selling it it's illegal (albeit unenforceable) for you to access that content (this is where the industry wants to eat their cake and have it to as currently they'd treat possession of the copy as a violation...but that's getting into the details too much, and ignores the online DRM aspect of software and licensing servers.)

"Used" applies depreciation from prior use, though arguably a BluRay disc has no real depreciation either. The content is simply less in demand than it was. But again this is why it needs to be a legislative level discussion. Does the value of property no longer work by the same rules in the digital age? If not, our economy and legal framework is still entirely based in the old rules, and needs a complete overhaul if those rules no longer apply. This remains the industry itself trying to manage and control the usage of the products they sell. And if they only issue licenses as non-transferrable, can they even legally sell those licenses as property as they currently do? And would consumers pay the current asking prices for it if they understood that?

Ironically XBox/Windows Store purchaes have a "download now" button on many games for Game Pass subscribers, or free Games with Gold games, but then have a "Buy to Own" button next to it. Buy to own....they're directly stating ownership.....curious....

"Used" no longer constitutes diminishing value due to wear as it does for material goods. But then we get back to the same problem. Our entire system is designed around the buying and selling of property. From the founding of the US to present, that was established (Different in the UK and Europe where, at the same time, most countries were feudalism still and peasants effectively had no property and no rights. The UK was experimenting with such ideas (the experiments that spawned the US ideas to begin with.) Since then of course most of EU/Europe adopted the US/UK conceptualized systems.) But if the rights to buy and sell property only apply if the property devalues through use and time, and are centrally managed as to what property you may buy and sell based on it's value....do you actually have any property rights at all? That's why it must be debate at the legal level....the implications are deeper that selling video games. The implications affect the underpinnings of the basis of law and economics in western society and the US especially. Either a ruling would have to treat digital property the same as all other property, or effectively the entire system by which modern society has operated needs to be halted and rewritten from scratch to accomodate the changes.

But going back to your original thoughts, what you definitely do own is the license, if nothing else. Be it on disc, or download, what you buy is a license. And there should be no reason to prevent you from buying, selling, trading, or destroying your license like any other possession, beyond a backward system of serving business above the citizenry. Currently it simply lets companies determine when all licenses are destroyed and access halted. Imagine if you were to buy a coffee maker, and one day Samsung declares that all their coffee makers will stop working today, you should go buy a new one, albeit one that's a combi-cooker because that's what they make now. Actually you can get a coffee maker for less money than a video game..... so that's not even as bad as this.

There's always the argument that if people are reselling who would buy new? But on the other hand, music has been doing this longer than any other digital industry. Even with easy piracy of drm-free downloads, iTunes isn't exactly hurting in sales. Streaming subscriptions keep growing, and buying used physical to rip is still the cheaper way to do it. If they have to hamstring sales by restrictions and access control, they're offering too little value, too little convenience, or both, to begin with. Even with used sales, notice the PSN store and such will discount their own first party games almost half price within the first few months on sales? Selling used, I couldn't compete with that....I'd still be losing money if I bought new, I'd be better off holding onto my license. Interesting how proper pricing fixes the whole used equation? Restricting resale is a method of price fixing and maintaining an obsolete business model, ironically enough, by denying customers their half of the "obsolete" model .

Of course that debate does have to happen, but, there's the other problem, as games ever more become continuous services, the license is worthless without paying for ongoing subscriptions to services. Apparently even digital, revocable rights is just too generous.

That's the fun of the industry though, they want it both ways. When they sell you a disc, they tell you you didn't really buy what's on the disc, you just bought a license to access it. But when you buy digital they tell you you didn't buy anything transferrable because there's no disc. They conveniently forget that they've been telling you for 20 years you're buying licenses.....therefore...you're still buying licenses because that's the same thing you were buying before, as well. Which means you can still sell your licenses. And it's even more secure for them now because they are their own license server, so they knw you're not copying it. (ALL digital content except music is authenticated against a license server. On your Primary Switch it authenticates on initial download but not on execution. On any other Switch it authenticates every time you access it.) Same for PS/XB/Steam/Vudu/Google Movies & TV, etc.

Edit: Conversely we can flip the argument around as well. If they have sold you ownership of nothing to dole as property.....then what exactly did you exchange money for? Can they legally charge at all? Even to go to an event/venue, you purchase a ticket - access to the venue - as property, and you may transfer it. Digital media is the only industry where you can exchange money for absolutely nothing in return except the good faith of the seller to provide you viewership of their product at their discretion, revocable at any time. If the new rules are that if you didn't create it, you don't own it....then can any contract with the studio's employees be valid that the company owns the artwork/code? Or does that under the new rules really belong to the artists, actors etc that actually produced it? Does any company have ownership over the product of it's employees? Or is it a new system of laws that mostly says "all property belongs to corporations unless otherwise stated?" And if so, is that not a feudalism, replacing a lord with a corporation?

And this is why the politicians won't touch the hot potato If you draw attention to these facets it shows what the real thinking of the digital age is.... a return to serfdom.

@NEStalgia
I'm impressed, I agree 100%. A tip of the hat to you good sir (or ma'am as the case could be).

@NEStalgia The biggest difference I find between comparisons to real world property and digital media, is the supply and creation of a new product upon transfer.
Discs, theater/concert tickets, cars, everything has a finite supply. The company can only sell so many, but with digital they can sell indefinitely. Things like tickets, it benefits the venue to have them being transferable. If the original purchaser can't attend, it's better to have someone else in that seat who will be buying food, drinks, and whatever else depending on the the event. They directly benefit from a transferable license.
If I sell you a DVD, you get that license on a disc that has a finite supply. It could also have scratches, been run at high RPM in a player, and so on with normal wear and tear.
If I sell you my digital license, you are then getting a brand new product since digital cannot be "used". I can't think of any real world situation that's comparable to that, where you sell someone something that you actually used and they are actually getting a brand new unused version of it. It's like buying brand new games, leaving them sealed and then reselling them cheaper. Except you wouldn't do this because it makes no sense.
Reselling digital licenses isn't worth it, as you say, because the providers themselves severely mark them down within a year in many cases (Nintendo being the exception). The secondary market has no value in this case. Why do I buy from you for half off VS buying direct from the store for half off where I'm directly supporting the developer?
I'm not sure this would be as much an issue with a lot of people if the license wasn't restricting to specific devices. If I'm paying for Spotify or Netflix, I can get those apps on pretty well every device I own (except Switch lol) and any new device I get. PC games transfer forward to any new PC I get. Hell, even TV subscriptions do this now. I can login to my providers app and watch live TV anywhere. This still isn't actually owning it, but the illusion of at least having a bit of control over what you paid for and being able to use it how you want.
Most console games are stuck in this weird place where they sell you a license that isn't transferable to anyone or anything at any time, not even their own other devices (with a few exceptions). It's the only digital marketplace, that I'm aware of, that is this restrictive.
Music used to be and that didn't go well and now we're at where we're at with music.

I think this will be a factor in streaming games that people don't realize. I don't think Stadia is going to be the console killer Google hopes it will be, but it offers that same illusion of control. Buy Doom on PS4 and you gotta play it on your PS4 and that's it. Buy Doom on Stadia and you can play it on whatever device you want.
Can they legally charge you for nothing? Well....they aren't charging you for nothing. You're paying for access to the game which I imagine could be interpreted as a one time rental fee.

Trying to alter the laws and rules of existing physical ownership is fruitless, I think. I think, unfortunately, it'd have to be done from scratch as it is a different beast. Perhaps altering the terms of agreements. Things like if said provider chooses to not supply the digital product anymore or the license to distribute is lost, the product that has been purchased already is unlocked to allow back ups of it (that could still require an account tie-in to verify it's not being copied/distributed), so that they may continue to use it and access it if they lose their copy. And the distributor is required to give x amount of notice beforehand. Just as an off-hand example.
There's a whole host of issues with digital that just aren't covered by current property laws and should be addressed.
Sadly, we seem to have laws made decades ago that don't get updated as advances like this are made.

@Cotillion
Bandai can't get money from a game it made twenty years ago because it lost the license to certain characters like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Fighting Edition on SNES I picked up recently. Of course it's a physical cartridge, but let's say for arguments sake the Power Rangers Battle for the Grid was digital only. You don't buy the game now but say in 20 years there's a retro revival of the switch. You hear about this game and want to own the game for yourself. With it being digital only though you can't since although the switchron plays physical carts access to the eshop will more than likely be closed. So what can you do? You could always emulate the game I guess but then tge devs wouldn't get any money.

The whole sticking point to your arguments is that you are buying new even if you buy it secondhand from someone else. If it is second hand it is used (of course there are conditions we give things, sealed, good, poor but it's still considered used. It may be as new or like new but it will never truly be new)

@GameOtaku I'm not arguing for it to be the way it is or against what you want, so please stop acting like I'm taking a side against it. Digital property doesn't fit well within existing physical property laws and I'm just pointing out the problems with it and why it isn't the way you think it should be now without an overhaul to those laws and the definitions of 'property' and 'used'.
A second hand digital game simply does not exist. By your own definition it doesn't exist, that if it is 'used' it is second hand. You don't give someone a digital game, you give them your license to download a new copy. Even if you transfer directly from your system to mine, it is still a brand new perfect copy and not the same copy you used. The terms of conditions never applies for value as the recipient always receives a brand new copy. It doesn't matter that you played it, the sent copy of that code had never been played. That's how digital transfer works, you don't transfer the used portion of your harddrive, you make a new copy of it on someone elses.
There's a host of problems preventing it from being the way you think it should be and unless someone makes a big enough deal about it to start having this stuff redefined, it will just never happen.

@Cotillion
First off we are having a discussion. Discussions can have opposing viewpoints. No need to get bent out of shape simply because I don't agree with your points (I admit I may be better off to shut up sometimes bit I do want my point to be heard).

Digital simply doesn't exist. It can't be "new". It only exists when trapped in a physical medium. It's on a server somewhere right? That is composed of physical parts, hard drives, disc drives, ICs, a physical she'll etc. Even with old nes and snes games the data, the game and save files, only exist within the cart. The cart ages and wears, tears. But without it you would have nothing. I would even go so far to say my vc games are different from yours because of the data contained therein. My save state, score and other conditions existing within that frozen state are all entirely mine and would be different from yours.

@GameOtaku I'm not bent out of shape. These also aren't my points. These are the facts as to how and why things are the way they are, whether you agree with them or not. I don't agree with the way digital is handled on consoles, but that doesn't make it any less the way it is.
Digital does exist. You pay for a license to access and use code on a machine. The code and assets compiled to make the game are what exists and it belongs to the creator. This is why they specify it as buying a license and not the game code. If they sell you the game code, you are free to whatever you want with it. Its akin to saying art doesn't exist. Artwork is just colours arranged a specific way, without the canvas, paper or whatever medium it's displayed on it doesn't exist. So, if I buy an Avengers DVD, do I suddenly have the rights to the logos and artwork on it because it's on a medium I bought? This is what it's comparable to. I can sell the medium, but not the artwork. Digital exists without the medium. We never had the rights to the content to begin with. Nothings changed, except they took away the medium.
The difference caused by high scores, saves and whatnot is irrelevant as the game code is exactly the same and even then, when you transfer it you are still transferring brand new and unused copies of that save data. Not to mention that data and save system is still part of the game code, a frozen state or not, and is still owned by the creator.
Reselling games is a means for cheaper access to them for some people. Either the person buying it and recouping the cost by reselling or the person buying by paying less. I'd almost bet this will be answered by the industry the same way video has - digital rentals. You pay them significantly less for timed access. You keep the save files for if you rent or buy it again later.

Currently, your only way around it is to stick to physical. Physical purchases come with slightly more rights as you are entitled to sell the medium the content has come on, but still do not have the rights to the content.
The illusion of ownership and control is more prominent on PC, so I tend to lean that way when given the choice between buying a game on console or PC. I can buy an entirely new PC tomorrow and access all my purchases simply by logging in to Steam. I can login on a different PC and access them. Purchases I made years ago. I simply can't do this on console, everything I bought on Wii, Wii U and 3DS are stuck on those respective systems, when Steam has conditioned me to thinking I should at the very least be able to transfer those purchases forward to Switch if they are able to run.
Much of the gaming population may be conditioned to the way it is, though. Console gamers have always expected that a new console means new architecture and backward compatibility was merely an option that may or may not happen. PC games, even when physical, wasn't usually hindered by this (only after a much longer period of time would a game stop working, and even then there are workarounds in many cases to get them to run). So, the expectations of this has been different between the two. PC gamers expect games to run on their next system because that's how its always been, while console gamers have been conditioned to expect them to not. PC gaming just couldnt get away with what console gaming does. If a new PC meant having to rebuy the library or keep the old PC around, the outcry would be unbelievable, but it's common practice on consoles.
I don't have an Xbox or PS, but I hear they handle this better than Nintendo does (need confirmation).

@Link-Hero
Aren't y'all the same way?

If digital truly has no age then time stamps have no relevance either. A picture taken today is the same age as a photo taken 5 years ago in that case even though the time stamp says otherwise. Digital can only exist in physical mediums and they age. Heck with the way you two talk a game from 20 years ago is still new as a game created today. By y'alls own assertion some data can't be ran using today's computers so that would imply age. Age! If it can age then it should be considered new or used!