News: European court rules second-hand sales of digital goods legal

Some people are just ahead of the game
Some people are just ahead of the game

Sometimes the most incredible news is hidden away in the most boring and dry of locations, today that was in a European court case about database software.

What the case related too was licence keys for digitally downloaded copies of Oracle. The company UsedSoft made its money by buying unused licence keys from companies that had bought them from Oracle in batch to save money and then selling them on.

This was great for the companies selling them, it was great for the companies buying them and in the middle UsedSoft made a profit. Oracle were not happy about this and took them to court.

The outcome of the case, the European court of Justice has ruled that software companies have to make it possible for you to be able to resell all software purchased, both physical and digital.

What that means for us gamers is that in theory, we now own full rights to be able to sell our whole software collections. Steam, Origin, XBLA or PSN, it no longer matters and these services may have to find a way to make this possible or face court-cases of their own.

Now there is already a service out there that does allow this kinda thing called Green Man Gaming, where you can trade in titles for credits that you can then use to buy other games. I expect Steam to offer a similar deal very soon, even if they only offer the lowest price they have sold the game for and leave the credit locked in steam its still better than the dead money it currently is.

As I seem to be saying a lot recently its an interesting time to be a gamer.

 

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