I watched this argument yesterday,
Though his presentation is poorly visualised, he does make some bold opinions, however, people don't understand ownership, or rather digital ownership, and that is what is being ignored by the YouTuber, the commercials, and obviously that the Steam Markeplace already allows all this the exception being that 'game' licenses are account locked to a legal person though it can be shared. All that we own as a user is the right to use.
Valve has been locked in such a case made in France, though I am not going to discuss it in detail since it is being appealed and will be a lengthy proceeding there are good remarks made in this article,
https://gamedaily.biz/article/1227/steam-must-allow-users-to-resell-their-games-says-french-court
Drilling down into the ruling, Richard Hoeg, attorney at Hoeg Law, explained to GameDaily that the French court seems to have “adopted a kind of ‘first sale doctrine’ for digital products."
“Stated simply, that doctrine says that when a person buys a copyrighted work, they have the right to sell the instance of the right that they purchased (and do other things like display it). It’s why you can sell a book and not run afoul of copyright laws that give the right to sell solely to the copyright holder,” he explained. “Such a doctrine has not traditionally been applied to the digital space, because the conveyance of digital goods is all done by contract (i.e., that EULA or Terms of Service box users click through) and not solely as a function of copyright.
“Said another way, if you went to a book store and as part of purchasing a book from that store entered into a contract in which you agreed not to resell the book, that prohibition would generally be enforced regardless of First Sale Doctrine, because you individually have agreed to further prohibitions.”
Hoeg added that while he completely disagrees with the court ruling, “publishers and platforms are going to have to take it seriously.”
On the chance that a final verdict is in favor of UFC Que Choisir, it’s going to be very interesting to see how the rest of Europe and the global games industry reacts to the news.
…
Ownership is a key word in this case. Ironically, while UFC Que Choisir has positioned this a win for consumers, the industry’s reaction to the ruling may take away any semblance of ownership in digital gaming. As one commenter on the Reddit thread observed, a world where players have to stream and subscribe to all their games is “the ultimate form of DRM.”
There are some in the industry who would love to see consumers granted the right to resell their digital games, especially those in the
blockchain business. Blockchain has had a mixed reception from game companies thus far, but the fledgling decentralized ledger technology could be the answer for both consumers and game makers, the team at Robot Cache believes. InXile boss Brian Fargo
announced the blockchain-based storefront last year, stressing that it would only take a 5% cut of sales.
Yes, people may be in view that they have the right to own a product, but you don't own the properties. As a business or product owner, I am quite sure that want to retain your property. It is only that it is being better governed digitally. Unless you are a true socialist who believes that all property must be shared. Look, I am pro-consumer, but I wholly understand the right to ownership as it should be in my view. I have no issue with reselling digital goods, it is only that in the digital world that a sale will beat a second-hand price.
All-in-all, NFT is being punted with the idea that it will grant a person with ownership, ownership where they have governance or a vote, but that won't be true commercially. This is the problem I have with the community believes behind NFT, and it is incredibly complicated come to gaming. This is ignoring illicit activities.
To continue to quote the article,
In an email to GameDaily, Robot Cache CEO Lee Jacobson remarked, “We've always felt that gamers should be able to resale their games when they are done playing and we built Robot Cache for that exact thing. Our model allows developers to participate in that revenue making it a win-win. The ruling in France says it should be a consumer right, and we agree that gamers should be able to monetize their library, not just in France but everywhere. We’ve found a clever way to solve for this, and in fact it’s live and working in our closed beta... We are seeing gamers buying and reselling digital PC games from their library. There is no other platform that allows this to happen.
Oh, so the holier than thou developers want to participate in the revenue... that would mean that they want to skim on every transaction. Yes, this is already done in the Steam Marketplace, again, the exception being that 'games' can't be traded due to use rights, ever read the EULA when you purchase a use licence on Steam, Epic, GOG, etc, that is governance. All in all, developers and publishers will be enabled with a money cow, like the Steam Marketplace is to Valve what Ubi endeavoured to do with Quartz.
Blockchain aside, there’s another important facet to the second-hand digital game sales issue, and it’s one that’s proven highly controversial on its own:
loot boxes. Hoeg explained that a legal digital resale market would pose yet another hurdle for purveyors of loot boxes to overcome.
“It would significantly change the loot box/gambling mechanics discussion,” he said. “Right now, the industry is hanging on to the fact that loot boxes cannot be considered gambling because what pops out of them cannot have value (by EULA and by contract). If the First Sales Doctrine is applied to digital goods entirely, whatever comes out of a loot box would likely need to be transferable and the existence of a secondary market becomes all the harder to deny. With a known, public secondary market, it becomes very difficult to argue that purchasing and opening such ‘surprise mechanics’ does not have value for ‘money or money’s worth.’ I think if anything, that’s where I would focus my attention were I a big publisher or the ESA.”
Hoeg needs to go have a chat with GabeN to be enlightened on how all this works. Valve pioneered this, without the blockchain.
I do welcome the NFT ecosystem, but it won't change the commercials regarding ownership. It does, however, allow many smaller companies to compete with Steam with limited resources and I won't be surprised to see Epic adopt the blockchain in the time to come, and I am sure that Valve has long been dabbling therein though they don't need to adopt it since they already own their own contained ecosystem. Who knows, perhaps blockchain technology may save GOG, though in principle GOG would then become a DRM service.
My qualm with NFT, and with NFT in gaming, remain that scams will be rampant and that there will be scum, and illicit, behaviour as already observed in the Steam Marketplace. Time will tell. Just know that NFT in gaming will vehicle all games participating therein as a service.
Just to point out, the product owner can delist any item at any time, which would obliterate its value. Say Anthem was a NFT title, or its inventory ecosystem was NFT based, well... the outcry would have been worse.
I hope this post will serve to represent both positive and negative views.
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