> Either way, I would much rather buy used games for $5 rather than rent them for any length of time.
That goes without saying. Renting Digital Goods is just nonsense, because you can create a perfect digital copy for such a marginal bandwidth cost in the first place. The "added value" of renting is an extra layer of DRMs. I'm very glad Steam did not introduce any of this renting nonsense in their store.
I own way too many games that even at £5 a pop haven't given me £1/hr value. Renting would let me play a wide variety of games without spending that much.
Other the other hand, the 500 hours clocked on cs:go would be terrible value at any rental price.
I've always found the lack of a secondary market for digital goods interesting. If done wrong it would certainly screw the publishers, but a system like steam that already does have a market for their trading cards and some other in game purchases could implement a publisher tax. 25% of resale goes to the publisher or something of that ilk.
I am sure if I actually read the EULA it would state something about single party license that is not assignable.
But yeah, what if you let market forces control the price entirely? Launch day only release X copies and then Y copies every day after. Have a market bid system. Most games don't have long term value so prices would naturally decline over time. An interesting thought experiment.
> I own way too many games that even at £5 a pop haven't given me £1/hr value. Renting would let me play a wide variety of games without spending that much.
Then don't buy them :) I mean we are all guilty of buying games when they are cheap and bundled these days, but restraint is sometimes the better choice.
Note that before, to try games, we did not "rent" them, we had free demos... too bad that age is over. But Steam still have some "try X for free for 24 hours" kind of campaigns which is close enough.
That goes without saying. Renting Digital Goods is just nonsense, because you can create a perfect digital copy for such a marginal bandwidth cost in the first place. The "added value" of renting is an extra layer of DRMs. I'm very glad Steam did not introduce any of this renting nonsense in their store.