It absolutely makes sense. All content licenses should be resaleable. But this will have serious ramifications for how we "buy" content.
If you can buy a game, play it for 100h and them hand it off to somebody else who can do exactly the same, with the publisher/developer/store are getting nothing from those transactions, they are quickly going to find another business model. There is no degeneration like there is with physical goods. There is no reason why anybody would prefer new.
And while publishers only lose a potential sale, vendors like Valve actually have to service a new customer (bandwidth, save storage, etc) without extra pay. They're not going to go quietly here.
And that will quickly turn into publishers and vendors both ceasing to sell software licenses. You'll still pay full price, but you'll get 100 days play, or a few years for a multiplayer. Or membership services like Origin Access. Or straight up gaming as a service (eg Stadia).
So while this is great for owners of existing software licenses in the EU, we shouldn't celebrate this ruling. We're about to own even less than we historically have.
Why cannot they go the old (boxed-CD era) model of selling games for marginally more and not tying a sale to their services? I've always viewed Steam as an app store that comes pre-loaded with malware (since I don't use any features other than buying and updating games, yet I've had games be unplayable many times due to various Steam issues or internet glitches that broke Steam). I'd be super happy (for the French if no-one else) if they go back to just being an app store and have an additional fee for their other pointless "services".
The reason people don't infinitely resell a physical copy is not degradation - I still have CDs from probably 1996 that work fine. It's because people generally want to buy new games.
If you can buy a game, play it for 100h and them hand it off to somebody else who can do exactly the same, with the publisher/developer/store are getting nothing from those transactions, they are quickly going to find another business model. There is no degeneration like there is with physical goods. There is no reason why anybody would prefer new.
And while publishers only lose a potential sale, vendors like Valve actually have to service a new customer (bandwidth, save storage, etc) without extra pay. They're not going to go quietly here.
And that will quickly turn into publishers and vendors both ceasing to sell software licenses. You'll still pay full price, but you'll get 100 days play, or a few years for a multiplayer. Or membership services like Origin Access. Or straight up gaming as a service (eg Stadia).
So while this is great for owners of existing software licenses in the EU, we shouldn't celebrate this ruling. We're about to own even less than we historically have.