EU Rules You Can Resell Downloaded Games - Page 2 - Video Games

**goofyballer** · 07-03-2012, 06:53 PM

Can you expand on that? Is it prohibitively expensive to hire enough accountants to count all the money they're making?

Bremen · 07-03-2012, 07:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZephyrSpy

What does this mean for other downloaded software such as MS office?

The actual case deals with Oracle, so I suspect M$ is watching this very carefully.

Bremen · 07-03-2012, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

Can you expand on that? Is it prohibitively expensive to hire enough accountants to count all the money they're making?

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/09/ac...on-in-net-rev/

Quote:

Activision Blizzard has released its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2012, posting total net revenue (pre-tax income) of $1.17 billion for the period ending on March 31, 2012. This is a 23 percent drop over the same period in 2011, where Activision Blizzard posted a net revenue of $1.44 billion. Net income (post-tax/expenses profit) was also down year over year, with the pub/dev reporting a remainder of $384 million for Q1 2012, as compared with $503 million in Q1 2011.

Blizzard will never escape this Q1 TER-ROR!

YouR_DooM · 07-03-2012, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karak

I had this exact same reaction when someone said this to me, but after doing some research and looking into it, this appears to be the case.

Yeah only 400$ million of net income pre-Diablo 3, those poor suckers

They gonna have to sell their teeth for some bread soon.

**Karak** · 07-03-2012, 07:34 PM

They also laid off like 10% of their employees. Perhaps struggling wasn't the best word, but a 23% reduction in overall profits is never going to be received well.

**goofyballer** · 07-03-2012, 09:04 PM

Blizzard the game developer, or Activision Blizzard one of the largest gaming holding companies in the world?

Saying "Blizzard isn't doing well" has a lot of shock value cause everyone's like "wait doesn't every game they make **** money?", but their holding company which owns a ****ton of other studios not doing well is totally different and not all that shocking (how many gaming megacorporations are crushing right now?)

surftheiop · 07-03-2012, 10:55 PM

Seems to me this would just lead to a model where the game is free, but you need internet like D3 and then you have to pay a yearly"fee" to access their servers or you buy a "lifetime pass" for 60$ or whatever it used to cost to download it.

**Karak** · 07-04-2012, 04:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

Blizzard the game developer, or Activision Blizzard one of the largest gaming holding companies in the world?

Saying "Blizzard isn't doing well" has a lot of shock value cause everyone's like "wait doesn't every game they make **** money?", but their holding company which owns a ****ton of other studios not doing well is totally different and not all that shocking (how many gaming megacorporations are crushing right now?)

obv talking about the PC development side of things/blizzard

activision is obviously heavily into console games, which are irrelevant to this discussion

**goofyballer** · 07-04-2012, 04:46 AM

I'm very curious how Blizzard isn't doing well, then.

Rooksx · 07-04-2012, 04:00 PM

I wonder what effect this ruling will have in practice. Just because it is now legal to sell a downloaded game, doesn't mean that Steam, Gamefly, etc are under an obligation to implement a resale facility. Digital resales will probably start to appear on eBay or some other third party marketplaces.

GTO2.0 · 07-04-2012, 04:10 PM

Possibly stupid question: If I download a game from Steam, and I can only access it through the Steam interface, how do I go about selling that copy to someone else?

Just transferring whatever files are on my system can't work right?
And what's to stop Steam or whatever from only supporting updates/patches/connectivity for officially licensed copies?

stabn · 07-04-2012, 04:18 PM

Goofy,

check out 7.

http://investing.businessweek.com/re...&formType=10-Q

The blizzard unit made 251 for Q1 vs 357 the year before. However, this number is pretty meaningless to me since Q2 should blow Q2 from last year out of the water.

A little further down it shows a major drop in online subscriptions which is probably where most of this is coming from. 256 vs 395. Again i suspect this ship will right itself after the next wow expansion.

Rooksx · 07-04-2012, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GTO2.0

Possibly stupid question: If I download a game from Steam, and I can only access it through the Steam interface, how do I go about selling that copy to someone else?

Just transferring whatever files are on my system can't work right?
And what's to stop Steam or whatever from only supporting updates/patches/connectivity for officially licensed copies?

I imagine you would transfer the licence i.e. the game key to someone else's steam account.

Rooksx · 07-04-2012, 04:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rooksx

I imagine you would transfer the licence i.e. the game key to someone else's steam account.

On second thought, it's more likely that you'll be able to sell your Steam account to someone without trouble. That should allow Steam to comply with the ruling without actually doing much.

Bremen · 07-04-2012, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rooksx

On second thought, it's more likely that you'll be able to sell your Steam account to someone without trouble. That should allow Steam to comply with the ruling without actually doing much.

What if you only want to sell one game and not the others?

I doubt they'll do anything until forced to.