Michael Pachter, an analyst that tries to gauge future trends in the video game industry, has basically built a career saying crazy things and hoping they come true (kind of like some games journalists, but I digress). While most of what he says can be brushed off as preposterous rumor, he sometimes produces a rare gem, like a diamond in a coal mine.
Take this recent interview he had with NowGamer where he postulated that Valve will begin offering a trade in service on Steam fairly soon. While we all love Steam, apparently there’s some demand to have Valve’s digital store offer the same sort of service provided by GameStop, i.e the ability to trade in titles for credit towards new ones. This is the explanation Pachter gave as to how he thinks it would go down:
“Steam is phenomenal, it’s a great service,” Pachter explained, “Steam gives gamers enough other stuff so that they don’t resent the fact they can’t trade in their games. And you know, name all the Steam games that you’ve purchased that you’ve traded back in to somebody else for credit. Steam’s about to let you do that supposedly, you know like trade and exchange, but they’re going to take a fee from it.”
While the “supposedly” does take this idea pretty firmly into guesswork territory, I think it’s a novel idea that Valve are possibly exploring, if only to further their dominance on PC gaming. What do you guys think? Any truth to Pachter’s statement? What kind of “fee” would Valve take, if any?
Source – NowGamer
Steam, I am proud.
On another interesting note of Valve:
They have confirmed today that they are making Dota 2. That’s right, the mod for Warcraft 3, DotA…. TWO.
The fee: For every trade-in you make, you must wait 10% longer for HL2:Ep3.
I love steam so much.
I defiantly think they will do it. It seems like a good idea. Especially since Gamestop has to resell old games as used, while Steam could simply recycle the Licensees and sell them as new games. Meaning better trade in values since they can make more off the games. It sounds like it could be awesome. In practice things aren’t always as good. I would postulate that the fee will be between 5-10% of the value of the trade-in.
Well it doesn’t really make sense to “trade-in” a non-physical thing. When you trade in a disc, they can resell it. It’s not like trading it in to steam gives them an ‘extra’ copy to sell to someone else. (Goes back to our talks about piracy vs shoplifting).
However, you should be allowed to sell games to other users, or trade them for free. You can “gift” a game when you purchase it, why can’t I “gift” it 2 years later, while my friend “gifts” me one of his.
I guess because then you’d have Clans who buy one copy of a game, and then just gift it amongst each other. There needs to be a fee that goes to Steam to prevent free sharing over and over.
Maybe they need to watch Seinfeld and shun re-gifting? lol. “You can give your game away once. A gifted game cannot be re-gifted, except to the same user, for the same content of the original deal.” Something along those lines.