Green Man Gaming CEO speaks out on EU digital sales ruling

Yesterday the European Court of Justice ruled that consumers had the right to sell digital their digital games . This is something that could potentially change digital distribution forever, but how exactly? Eurogamer have been speaking to Paul Sulyok, CEO of Green Man Gaming, about what all this could mean.

The ruling states that you can sell your digital games onward, but that you must disable your own copy to do so. Currently most digital retailers have no way to do this beyond selling your entire account. Sulyok believes that companies will be forced to provide this, but only after a test case has gone to court. "There will be a first case against one of the platform holders." He says. "The result of that is a foregone conclusion. So they will have to facilitate that."

There's a few potential impacts this could have on the market. With Sulyok pointing out that the current trend for short term, high discount sales is vulnerable to the emergence of a used market. A third party could buy keys in bulk during a sale, and then sell them on at a mark up once the sale has ended, undercutting the original distributor. "The classic technique of deep discount, short time limited discounts, all of that will be slightly skewed now." he says "Because you don't want to have a deep discounted game that can then be sold on elsewhere."

Green Man Gaming currently allows gamers to trade in their downloaded games to get discounts on future purposes. But Sulyok points out that if Steam or Origin were to enact the same practice it would have a serious impact on his business. Again this allows third parties to game the system by taking advantage of a short term sales, then trading them in.

Gamers have grown accustomed to big Steam sales and Humble Bundles giving them cheap games in a short term window, but this ruling could threaten that practice. If putting your game in the Humble Bundle just once will grant third party distributors an infinite number of one penny copies, people might not be willing to take the risk.

Latest in Game Development
princeton review best game design programs 2025
The best game design schools, ranked by the Princeton Review 2025
Sharon Tal Yguado speaking at the 2025 D.I.C.E. Summit.
'These kids do not care about romance': Game devs want to know what today's teens want, and surveys say sex and romance isn't it
Palworld early access
Palworld studio's first move as a publisher is to save a struggling indie dev: 'This is the energy I want to see driving games in 2025'
Yakuza/Like a Dragon creator Toshihiro Nagoshi says his studio's new game won't be that big after all: 'it's not modern to have similar experiences repeated over and over again'
A man with a sausage-shaped head
'Calm down!' says Facepunch Studios: Garry's Mod successor s&box is getting a fan-requested sandbox mode and an alternative to 'Sausage Men'
Hellboy Web of Wyrd
Devolver has a new label dedicated to making games based on comics, films, TV shows and 'cult heroes'
Latest in News
Two brightly colored stormtroopers dressed like Run-DMC stand in front of PAX Australia's WELCOME HOME banner.
Tickets for PAX Australia 2025 are on sale now
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again