I am not a lawyer
... but I find the recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union which states that Europeans have a right to resell their used software very interesting. Quote: “an author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet”. That has enormous consequences both for MMORPGs and for digital distribution platforms like Steam or Origin. If I wanted to sell my World of Warcraft account in the EU, Blizzard isn't allowed to stop me.
Of course the devil is in the details. If Blizzard can charge you for server transfers, they might charge you for "transfer of your license to a different owner" as well. The court only says Blizzard isn't allowed to oppose the sale, they aren't obliged to make that transfer easy or free. The same probably would be true for sales of Steam games. It isn't even clear whether Steam must allow you to sell individual games, as opposed to your whole account.
There was a recent case where Cryptic said that they would rather leave the Netherlands than to comply with their laws. That might be feasible for a single small country. But it would be hard to imagine all MMORPG companies and all digital distribution platforms leaving the whole of Europe only to prevent used game resales. On the other hand if reselling a license becomes possible, the companies are in big trouble. Unlike a "used car" a "used license" suffers from no wear or tear whatsoever. Except for the fact that you can't get one on release day, a used license only has advantages over a first user license.
The logical development for game companies is continuing to their business model of "games as a service" instead of selling either boxes or licenses. You can't sell used services. I paid for years of MMORPG subscriptions, but as these are "services" no court can order Blizzard to allow me to resell them. Thus we will see more and more business models in which players "rent" the game for a duration instead of acquiring a license that is resell-able. Interesting times ahead.
Of course the devil is in the details. If Blizzard can charge you for server transfers, they might charge you for "transfer of your license to a different owner" as well. The court only says Blizzard isn't allowed to oppose the sale, they aren't obliged to make that transfer easy or free. The same probably would be true for sales of Steam games. It isn't even clear whether Steam must allow you to sell individual games, as opposed to your whole account.
There was a recent case where Cryptic said that they would rather leave the Netherlands than to comply with their laws. That might be feasible for a single small country. But it would be hard to imagine all MMORPG companies and all digital distribution platforms leaving the whole of Europe only to prevent used game resales. On the other hand if reselling a license becomes possible, the companies are in big trouble. Unlike a "used car" a "used license" suffers from no wear or tear whatsoever. Except for the fact that you can't get one on release day, a used license only has advantages over a first user license.
The logical development for game companies is continuing to their business model of "games as a service" instead of selling either boxes or licenses. You can't sell used services. I paid for years of MMORPG subscriptions, but as these are "services" no court can order Blizzard to allow me to resell them. Thus we will see more and more business models in which players "rent" the game for a duration instead of acquiring a license that is resell-able. Interesting times ahead.
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