[HalfPriceDigi]

Do you find the selling of used cars to be a moral grey zone? If you weren't able to sell your used car ever, would you be more or less likely to buy another car? Do you think that people who resell their used games buy more or less new games?

When you buy something you buy a license to use that item for as long as you own it. If you sell it you no longer have the right or ability to continue to use that item anymore. I think that the argument that you are making is that a game is an experience and that once you have played a game once you have reaped the full benefit of ownership from that game. However, I believe that you are mistaken. The full benefit of owning something is that you can reuse it as often as you like. You can read the same book as many times as you want for as long as you own that book. The same is true for a game. The benefit of owning a game or any software is that you can use it as much as you want for as long as you own it. When you sell it you are giving up your right to continue to experience that game until you buy it again.

[Metatron]

Of course there's a moral grey zone when selling a used car. We're talking about the people who craft something being snubbed for the profit of a private individual. When someone buys a used car that means a new car isn't sold. The car industry and any industry that has used sales, has to then push up the price of new products to counter the loss of sales from the used market, punishing customers. This is BAD, no matter what way you look at it.

Money is meant to be a mechanism that enables the trading of labour. I put in X effort, I am recompensed with Y money. I can then use Y money myself to by things that I want. To then resell something I've worked for and legitimately purchased is me making money out of nothing, or rather from the labour a game developer has put in. That right there is the moral greyzone. You have a gut feeling that you should have the right to resell any of your possessions, and perhaps you're right, but you have to accept the damage you do to an industry, and to the other purchasers of products and services like yourself, that is done when you perpetuate a second-hand market.

To say you have a right to resell, and the added inference that 'more money for myself is good' that comes along with that is a very narrow-minded and one-sided argument. If you think about the larger picture and the consequences of your actions then this all becomes a very different proposition. But as the owner of a used games marketplace I don't expect you to see the selfless side.

[HalfPriceDigi]

It seems that your argument then is that no one should ever be able to resell or give away anything that they buy ever. So when you buy something, anything at all, you would have to own it yourself until you throw it away. Obviously that would have a huge negative impact on the environment with items like cars, computers, clothes, etc. Also, the lack of a second-hand market would have a negative impact on low-income people who need to buy used goods for the lower prices. So it seems to me that your argument against the existence of any second-hand market would have disastrous effects and cannot exist in the real world.

You have avoided the issue of whether or not second-hand markets positively impact the primary market. For example, if people weren't able to sell their used cars, would they be more or less likely to buy new cars. I think that the answer is pretty obvious. If people couldn't resell their used cars ever, they would buy new cars less often. Mainly because people often partially pay for new cars by trading in or selling their old cars.

I agree with namlem's comment "Why does incurring the costs associated with resale on the industry in any way morally gray? It's the manufacture's right to price items accordingly. They can just raise it to compensate." The manufacture should simply price the existence of a resale market into their product. That's what ever merchant other than Steam already does.

Steam is breaking the law in the EU and their illegal business model (not allowing resales) is what allows them to undercut the prices of their competitors. Don't you find that to be a moral grey zone?

The problem with making the argument, as I suspect you are, that because games are intellectual property that they shouldn't be able to be resold when you are done with them, is that almost everything is intellectual property. Think of how many parts of your car are patented. Those patents are intellectual property. If you let Steam say that you don't own the games that you buy then you opening the floodgates to a world where you don't own anything that you buy - you are just "licensing" it. As I've stated above a world like that isn't practical and I don't believe it is morally correct either. It restricts the rights of consumers for no reason other than to further enrich the producers of goods, who many doing just fine as is. Valve is worth 2.5 Billion dollars. Aren't they doing well enough without having to step all over consumer's rights?

[namlem]

Why does incurring the costs associated with resale on the industry in any way morally gray? It's the manufacture's right to price items accordingly. They can just raise it to compensate.

[GotAnyMegadeth]

> Money is meant to be a mechanism that enables the trading of labour

And resources...