Bethesda blocks resale of used game
polygon.com
polygon.com
I know multiple other sellers that also had this issue. It is my belief that Vorys is illegally paying Amazon insiders to get contact information for sellers, as there is no legitimate path to get that information that does not involve a subpoena to Amazon, which would involve an active lawsuit. Unfortunately, this is hard to prove.
People who buy used games don't want to pay the new price, and they won't. One way or another they'll get it for the discounted price. It's best if you don't alienate your customers for something that will bring no palpable benefit.
See https://markettrack.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Vorys-and..., which pitches brands on creating bogus "warranties" so they then have a flimsy legal basis to threaten sellers with. Most sellers, even businesses, will fold out of fear and want to avoid a lawsuit, so these claims aren't often tested in court.
Also, to be fair, this case was someone selling as new. The game was sealed, but it does cut down on their own sales.
I know people who'll go to e.g. bestbuy, buy games using launch discounts or clearance, etc, then sell on Amazon. Perfectly legitimate business model in my view.
They will once physical disks are abolished for digital stores. They have been pushing this for years and PC gaming is already there. No more used games.
And I don't see PC games being any different than console ones. Most games still have physical copies that can be resold, or am I missing what you meant? Physical copies still have plenty of life in them with games ballooning to triple digit GBs and most of the world being stuck on slow internet.
In recent years, there's a been few more cases of Origin/uplay/etc. keys in the box instead, but the same limitation applies.
The retail model was always space constrained. They have to take Oblivion off the shelves eventually to make room for Skyrim. That created a window where you had to buy now or you have no choice but used.
Digital shops have no such limit, so they can just keep all product on a gradual downward pricing spiral. And the buyers can just wait forever until their personal threshold is reached.
Now, the interesting side of it is what effect resale has on people's price thresholds: do buyers price the trade-in value of the game into their purchase decisions?
I could see someone saying "I'm willing to buy the $60 PlayStation disc I can trade back for $20 when done, but the corresponding PC version (with no resale option) has to be $40 to provide the same value for money" Maybe not consciously, though.
You can provide exactly what they are asking for, and the Amazon drone employees on the other end will simply deny you with no explanation and then resend you the same form email asking for the exact same thing.
In fact, sometimes sending valid invoices will get denied and then sending the exact same invoices again, it will sometimes be accepted.
Companies will also have employees go in and buy the products and then complain that they are counterfeit. And Amazon believes them 100% by default.
In general, the "cleaner" the invoice is, the higher the odds of being accepted. Although they recently tightened requirements, see https://www.webretailer.com/lean-commerce/amazon-invoice-ver... (in particular, notice the insistence that suppliers have a website).
I find it interesting that whenever the topic comes up on HN, everyone complains about Amazon being too easy to sell counterfeits on, while whenever I talk to sellers that sell legitimate product, they're getting hit with these issues and think the exact opposite.
On the other hand, maybe Vorys was able to get the information by threatening Amazon with a lawsuit?
I don't know for sure, just a strong suspicion. It's possible but very unlikely that Amazon would provide that info through official channels without even a complaint being filed through Amazon. I know others who've sued to get counterfeiters off their private label products and it's hard to get info out of Amazon even in a lawsuit, let alone without one.
I suppose that it would be stupid for car manufacturers to attempt to put restrictions on resale, since that would significantly reduce the value of a car. But the same thing could happen to games: if someone knows that they can't resell a game if they get tired of playing it, they'd be somewhat less likely to buy it in the first place (or not be willing to spend as much for it).
All of these numbers are plausible and demonstrate how skewed the decision to sue must be. I’ve been quoted 50k by an IP lawyer as the estimated cost to take something like this to trial, and they thought I might not win if the company is able to claim my sales aren’t covered by warranty.
This could be an attempt by Bethesda to rein-in what they see as "counterfeit" products, since Amazon is largely unwilling to police their own Marketplace. Though the article states "Bethesda is a notoriously litigious company", and have a heavy-handed history.
Bethesda’s letter claims that Hupp’s sale is not protected by the First Sale Doctrine, because he is not selling the game in its original form, which would include a warranty. The letter says this lack of warranty renders the game “materially different from genuine products” that are sold through official channels.
IANAL, but it seems to me that if this argument goes through, it would render first sale doctrine useless, as you could tack on a warranty to just about any old product.
I've received letters from lawyers about the re-sale of physical products being illegal because of the lack of the original warranty.
It didn't seem to have teeth at the time but it sure scared me.
So just warrant that what you are selling is what it claims to be and offer a refund or replacement if it isn't. That seems to be materially the same as what the original seller provides.
Here's somebody suing over similar claims from tp-link https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6846972/starke-v-tp-lin...
I've dealt with tp-link myself and they are extremely abusive, they ignored anything I sent them including a letter from a lawyer, and filed dozens of false complaints against me. I hope they lose that case and have to pay a large judgement.
I'm sure they'd accept help from the EFF if it was offered.
This sort of evil should be stamped on hard by government.
There's no mention of a warranty on the Evil Within 2 support page
https://bethesda.net/en/search?q=warranty
And no mention of a warranty on their main website either.
The amazon store page says that for warranty information, you can contact the seller (which would be amazon, and presumably amazon's warranty) or that more information may be available on the manufacturer's website (and the above links demonstrate that it isn't).
So yeah, my question is "Does anybody know about the warranty, and if not, how is a warranty that you don't know about materially different from not having one?"
Inb4 voiced main character, forcing smaller range of dialogue and story options and limiting roleplayability, and those five voice actors behind every NPC, etc. etc. :3 Cinematicness!
I get it, their games are good - perhaps even one-of-a-kind - but much like Uber and Riot, perhaps even with their great service they aren't worth supporting.
Just an observation.
"Vanilla" Bethesda games are pretty bad by reasonable standards, particularly on and shortly after launch.
Upon install, that required a Steam account, it would pull down 2x or more that of the content of the DVD to make the game playable.
And then i had to go mod hunting basically on day one, because they had implemented a non-optional head bopping on the first person camera...
Then the publisher could simply decide to disallow games from being activated on another account.
Or, bundle a CDKey inside the case, but I think this exposes significant fraud risk if a rogue employee cracks open hundreds of cases from a shipment, sells the keys online, then reseals them.
A particular criticism was that you would not be able to play any games without internet access, which would have made it useless for many people, including for example some military personnel deployed overseas.
I think those instances are being reduced yearly all around the world.
The next generation of consoles will have a low-end version that hosts some of the calculations locally, such as input and collision detection, but all of the detailed rendering etc. on the cloud. All games will be inherently 'online only', distribution of optical disks will become pointless and everything will be linked to an account - no resale.
This push to let every company both eat their cake and have it to, when it comes to selling their products but maintaining control over them, is just turning our society into a sort of serfdom again
Even games that were removed from Steam like Hatred could still be downloaded by people who had already bought it.
I think you overestimate how much people are interested in their old games. People just want to move on to the latest and greatest hit.
Because they're bankrupt. Which they will eventually be, the only question is when.
https://www.finnegan.com/en/insights/copyright-infringement-...
If I just buy a copy of a game from a physical store and I don't sign a licensing agreement, it's hard to see how that would pass the test here- he never even opened the jewel case.