Recently, the 9th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that software companies have the right to restrict the selling of their software, making a distinction between licensing and ownership.
The case itself revolved around the program AutoCAD, which in it's user agreement stated that paying for it merely granted the purchaser the license to use the software, not ownership rights. The inclusion of of this in the user agreement makes the resale of the software, weather by individuals or retailers, a sort of copyright infringement, since they never truly owned the software, just he right to use it. For more in-depth reading on the subject, please read Gamasutra's
Court Of Appeals Ruling Threatens Sale Of Used Games?Where do games come into play? Basically, if game publishers decided to include a contract on purchase saying that you are just purchasing the rights to play the game, not the game itself, then used games will essentially be illegal.
This is a really big deal. Game publishers have been at war with used games sellers for basically ever, and now they have a legal weapon to use against them.
And to be fair, the reselling of used games is copyright infringement because % of the price goes tot he reseller. The publishers get nothing and the developers don' get paid.
Personally, games are just way to fucking expensive for me
not to get them used, or wait years for the price to depreciate.
The best solution to this is an agreement between reseller and publishers so that all parties get paid.