Why is not possible to sell digital games and movies that you own to others like physical media?
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Because the people who sell them decided not to give you that ability, so that people are forced to buy copies from them instead of buying them second hand,
They would stop you from selling and swapping physical media if there was a convenient way for them to do that. But that’s unlikely since it’s now so commonplace that anyone who tried that would piss off their customers.
You do not really own anything that you have bought a digital copy of. You are just paying a one time for for a license to play it, that’s it. If steam was to disappear one day then all the games you “own” would go with it.
You would need some kind of mechanism to transfer a digital purchase from one person to another. Most places that sell digital media haven’t built a such mechanism because they can make more money selling new copies to everyone.
Mostly are legality issues.
Physical media have wear and tear, therefore the value of 2nd hand physical media depends on the condition. When buying a physical media, the buyers bear the risk of getting something less than ideal, so there are still incentive for people to buy brand new. However digital media is technically always preserved in perfect condition. So if there is an open market for digital items, nobody is going to buy brand new from the publisher.
It is very hard to control the ownership of digital media. Like if you bought and own a digital copy, and you decide to sell your copy to someone else, how to make sure you transferred the ownership of YOUR digital copy to someone else and not just duplicating the item (aka. pirating)?
Imagine you buy a book, you know own and can do as you please with it, and even after reading it you can sell it or give it away. This is the same as a physical copy of a game, you own that copy.
Then instead imagine you get a drivers license, it gives you permission to drive cars, but you can not just transfer the license to someone else. You also do not own the license as it can be revoked if you break the law. This is what a digital copy of a game is, its a license to play their game.
The physical “why” has to do with Digital Rights Management that the content producers got put into copyright laws. I have a Kindle, my brother has a Kindle, but we cannot share books back and forth because they include software that prevents us from doing it.
Their ambition is to make you buy a separate copy for each device you want to use it on. With streaming services you get to pay each month for the opportunity to view their content. But you never actually own it.
When we bought physical media, all we owned was the physical part. The disc, the paper, the reel. We never owned the music, the story, the movie with our regular purchases. A lot of folks don’t know that.
It’s not possible to sell what you don’t own. You don’t own your digital copy of anything. It’s will always be the artist’s , or the distributor’s. It’s for them to decide how us “leasers” move /their/ good around. They call it “owning” so we feel better about the extra money we spent.
This is one idea that I’m supportive of with Nfts. There is speculation that gamestop may do something like this
Edit: https://nft.gamestop.com/
This is what I was talking about
Why can you not just sell your steam or Xbox login info?
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