Steam users free to resell their digital games, court rules
www.gamingbible.com
Those who purchase digital games are free to resell them, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled.

Finally some good news! I’ve been waiting for quite a while for such a ruling.

Edit: Seems this cites an article from 2012, I didn’t notice that (and it’s still news to me). Though there’s still hope that it’ll happen, EU is slow, but usually eventually gets shit done.

  • Azdalen@beehaw.orgEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    but in that case, aren’t they just basic crypto keys, but with more (unnecessary) steps?

    • ryannathans@aussie.zone
      3·
      1 year ago

      NFT is a non-fungible-token. That’s all that’s required for a game licence. What part of that is unnecessary? Are you looking at existing media based NFTs and applying those systems verbatim?

      • Sonori@beehaw.org
        14·
        1 year ago

        I imagine the unnecessary part is the whole being built on an unwieldy and expensive third party platform when it would be far easier to just use these platforms existing customer database. All major digital platforms keep track of customer accounts anyway so you can download the game more than once, so it’s not like it would be hard to implement a in house transfer system that doesn’t require an irrelevant middleman.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
          1·
          1 year ago

          a in house transfer system

          See and that’s the issue if you want to sell your game you shouldn’t need to do it on steam, it should be a system that continues to exist even if the producer (gamedev) and store go bankrupt, you want some kind of public ledger.

          • Sonori@beehaw.org
            1·
            1 year ago

            Um, if the store goes bankrupt then the game ceases to exist. You would at best have a contextless link that pointed to nowhere.

          • Sonori@beehaw.org
            1·
            1 year ago

            If the storefront goes bankrupt all that public ledger does is give you a dead link unless another storefront picks it up, but if they wanted to do that they could just as easily buy that database from the dying company anyway.

            Moreover why would anyone else have an incentive to pay the significant costs associated with hosting a game ownership was on a blockchain, and therefore could be sold independently without them receiving a cut?

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
              1·
              1 year ago

              The valuable thing about an NFT is not any text (as in: link) you embed in it but the fact that it has been minted by someone to mean something. A publisher minting a game NFT would be saying “this token is a proof of license”, same as companies (once upon a time) handed out slips of paper saying “this token is proof of ownership of a share in our company”.

              Moreover why would anyone else have an incentive to pay the significant costs associated with hosting a game ownership was on a blockchain, and therefore could be sold independently without them receiving a cut?

              You could charge for it. It’s essentially fancy cloud storage. Also, archive.org.

              • Sonori@beehaw.org
                1·
                1 year ago

                Archive.org is well, a non profit archive, not a storefront. If you used NFTs and wanted to charge for it, you would need to charge per download. Finally, while a NFT could provide a proof of license, so could any other database.

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  GOG might let you do it if you buy a game from them once in a while. Steam constantly subsidises downloads by allowing devs to mint and sell their own steam keys, I don’t think it’s going to be an issue.

                  And, yes, you could have a database somewhere – but then the proof of ownership might disappear with that database, e.g. when the publisher goes bankrupt. Also the publisher has incentives to make ownership transfers awkward, slow, etc, the blockchain doesn’t.

                  Another option would be the equivalent of a central bank, some public institution (as in public law) which keeps the database. But do you really want to register your ownership of a license of XXX Hentai Boobmania with the copyright office?

                  Don’t get me wrong I’m far from a cryptobro. It’s just that trading licenses independently of stores is about the one thing the tech is actually good for.

                  • Sonori@beehaw.org
                    1·
                    1 year ago

                    I mean i’d rather register my license of XXX Hentai Boobmania with a govement office than make it permanently and irreversiblly publicly available for everyone to see.

                    Again, if they can be bothered to host the game, I don’t see how a database that’s smaller than most modern AAA games is more likely to disappear. You could also forgo a central database in favor of each storefront hosting thier own, and just using a private API. More secure too, since it wouldn’t present an easily attack surface for hackers.

                    The blockchain doesn’t need incentives to be slow and unwieldy when it takes hours to confirm a transaction, and a gas war can randomly delay things even more.

    • Pxtl@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yes, but crypto keys recorded with an owner in a public ledger, so there’s a clear single owner.