EU Ruling Says Downloaded Games Can Be Resold

[Shawn Zipay]

A huge blow came today against digital game retailers as the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that publishers cannot prevent you from reselling your downloaded games.

Specifically, it states that "an author of software cannot oppose the resale of his 'used' licenses allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet." The Court ruled that the right of "exclusive distribution" of a license copy is "exhausted on its first sale".

Essentially, this means that gamers in the European Union can now resell their digitally downloaded games to other gamers, even if they bought the game from Steam, Origin, or another digital distribution system. So let's say you just bought a friend's used digital copy of a game. Now what?

"Therefore, even if the licence agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy.

"Therefore the new acquirer of the user licence, such as a customer of UsedSoft, may, as a lawful acquirer of the corrected and updated copy of the computer program concerned, download that copy from the copyright holder's website."

The ruling does suggest that if you bought a used copy, the original publisher of the game cannot deny you access to downloading the game from the publisher's website or distribution platform.

Oh yes, there is a slight catch here. If you resell your copy to someone else, you must make your access to the game "unusable at the time of resale." That means you can't try to get it back once you sell it, unless you buy it again, nor will you be permitted to access the game once you sell it.

"If he continued to use it, he would infringe the copyright holder's exclusive right of reproduction of his computer program. In contrast to the exclusive right of distribution, the exclusive right of reproduction is not exhausted by the first sale."

It's going to be interesting to see how Valve, EA, and other companies handle this situation. As for the Court system in EU, I really have to wonder what they were thinking and if they know about how PC gaming even works what with product keys and all that. It's going to be a nightmare, to say the least.

(via)

[Anarchy1]

Re: EU Ruling Says Downloaded Games Can Be Resold

They have to allow you to download the game, but does it say anything about giving you access to the game? I am thinking they start to implement a system like EA has with online passes to off-set losses.

[Vreki]

Re: EU Ruling Says Downloaded Games Can Be Resold

It doesnt really adress the reselling of accounts, which is a requirement for reselling most digital downloads

To quote a poster on that site:

Just checked through the article and I think that it should be made clear that although this judgement clearly applies to games, it isn't a judgement that was made in relation to games - it was made in relation to general computer software consisting of an apparently freely-available download and a separate license purchase. In this case, the transfer of a license was relatively simple to achieve, unlike in the games industry.

[cikame]

I don't think the EU Courts quite understand how it works. I mean, this could be considered a fairer deal but with how digital distribution works it's a technical nightmare, incoming weird copyright software to keep track of when games are re-sold.