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by Metatron
4728 days ago
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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. |
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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?