Is it legal to sell second hand digital games?

Nic Murfett of Harbottle and Lewis looks at two recent legal cases and questions the current laws on digital video game content

Restrictions which prevent consumers from freely selling on digital games have for some time been a source of frustration for consumers, particularly given the well-established second hand market that exists for boxed product games.

[daggertoes83]

Man if I could just hop on psn or xbox live live to sell my games that would be amazing. Beats having to go to gamestop and I might make more money as well.

[s8anicslayer]

Yes it does if you don't like to go out, but digital takes away from that oh so special brand spankin new smell..imo

[rdgneoz3]

That, and it'll be quicker to walk to a store than trying to download a 50 gb game in some countries.

[greatcrusader44]

@rdgneoz3
Yeah I live out in the country and the best download speed I can get is around 100kb/s. Took a whole day to download littleBIGplanet 2 of PS+. I just can't download next Gen games.

[awi5951]

Greenman gaming lets you do it on select games.

[Kryptonite42O]

would be nice... ive got loads of digital stuff i would sell if i could.
only way i can think to do it would be by selling your entire xbl account (for xbox owners) however if you're caught, your account will get a 9999 year ban.
i dont agree with it.. its my money, i should be able to sell it if i choose to do so.

[Bigpappy]

It is not a legal issue. It is that the digital copy is tied either to your account or in some cases to the box it is installed on. So we need M$, Sony, Steam... to facilitate this.

[grassyknoll]

No.

[mydyingparadiselost]

It should be legal, this is one of the big points for me not going digital.

[RoseSapphire]

The supreme court has already ruled on the legality of selling the items we own - digital is no exception, though there is no simple way of doing so currently.

[Anon1974]

Europe ruled on this as well last year and said that companies can't block the sale of digital content. They just didn't go so far as to say they had to facilitate the sale, meaning currently there's no way of easily transferring digital content over to another user. It sounds like Microsoft was going to allow this on the Xbox One, which would have been a good thing, but then they went all crazy with their restrictions at the same time and now they've shelved the entire thing. Ridiculous really, because they don't need all their other restrictions for creating a market for digital games. They could still do this if they wanted to. It'll be interesting to see if Sony has any plans for a digital marketplace for digital only content. I haven't really heard anything.

[Mikelarry]

i think once there is a easy and better way of doing this most companies will start allowing this type of sale

[TheEnigma313]

Being able to resell digital games would make people more comfortable about going digital. I still like physical, but for pc digital is so much better. It's a pain in the ass with physical media for pc.

[KrimsonKody]

I do believe that you should be able to sell your digital content simply because you purchased it & it's yours. But again, remember, part of the reason digital came along is to prevent resells that the companies can't profit off of. So there's a little fine line there.
For me, digital doesn't really excite me unless A; it's only available via digital & I want it, or B; they offer games through digital weeks before it's release date.Like if GTAV was offered in early August via digital, I would've been highly tempted to purchase it. But then again, I truly love my physical copies; I like the boxart, I like looking at the back, & I appreciate the disc art. Nowadays I don't really care for the black & white booklets, Lol.