Reusability of Game Disc Codes [PC/Consoles]

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quixand

quixand

Galvanizer
Creating this thread with a view to understand how Codes on Retail Discs work across all gaming platforms.

This is probably more of a Trade/Sell query more than anything else.

PC - Retail discs that are Steam/GFWL activated can be reused by another PC? Or is it tied to just my Steam id/GWFL id? Do i need to deactivate something for the other person to be able to use it?

PS3/Xbox - Discs that have exclusive Network Pass for Mulyiplayer are ok, but what about discs that have Codes on the inlet? Are they reuasble?
 
Don't own a console so no idea about how it works there.

For Steam (and possibly the same for GFWL), once "Activated", Retail Disc Keycodes are LOCKED to your Steam ID forever - you can't "de-authorize" them.

Activation is the process of binding your retail Steam game key with your Steam ID. This is done via the Steam Client app.

By "activating" a retail Steam game key you "bind" it to your Steam ID permanently and therefore you can't give the key to someone else to activate with their Steam ID.

You can however, play a Steam activated game on any number of PCs (though some games have 3rd party DRM that restrict this to a specific no. of installs/removals) provided the Steam Id stays the same.

Hope that answers your question...
 
I have never used Steam Trading personally, but I am 100% sure that if you can Trade Steam keys via the trading system, these would need to be keys that have never been "activated" before.

For example, I can buy a Steam retail DVD for Half Life 2, open the box, note the Steam serial key and email/gift it to you.

You in turn, can activate it with your Steam ID provided of course that I have not activated the Serial key myself. Once you activate the key and bind it to your Steam ID, I cant bind it to mine at a later date and vice-versa.

This is from the official Valve site FAQ on Trading -

Does Steam Trading mean I can sell my used games?
No, only games that have been bought as a gift, and thus have never been played, can be traded. Once the Steam Gift is opened and added to your game library, you won’t be able to trade it again.


The "Once the Steam Gift is opened and added to your game library" is what the "ACTIVATION" I referred to in my earlier post implies.

Full link in case you need more info -

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6748-ETSG-5417#usedgames
 
Steam Trader here. When buying a game in Steam you have three options. Buy for yourself, the game will be directly added to your Steam Library. Send it as a gift, where Steam will ask you to provide an email or select a friend from friend list to whom you want to send the gift. Or, you can store it in your inventory to be used later. The games stored in inventory can traded through Steam.

Sometimes you buy from other retailers like Amazon, and get Steam keys which you can activate in Steam. Non-activated keys can also be traded, but is generally not as safe as Steam trading.

In general, once you activate the game against any kind of online DRM, be it Steam, Origin or uPlay, you cant trade it, because it is already tied to your account, forever. You could trade accounts however, but that is long and cumbersome and unsafe as well.
 
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jc36lect3r said:
In general, once you activate the game against any kind of online DRM, be it Steam, Origin or uPlay, you cant trade it, because it is already tied to your account, forever. You could trade accounts however, but that is long and cumbersome and unsafe as well.
Click to expand...

One thing I like about GMG is that they allow you to "trade in" games once you have finished playing them - for a discounted price of course. This "trade in" option is not applicable to Steam/Uplay/Origin games (for obvious reasons) and is limited to GMG's "Capsule" (proprietary Securom implementation) protected games.

Play a game, finish it and then trade it in and buy another or trade in for cash credited back to your GMG account that stays there till you decide to buy another game. Nice system though the trade in values tend to be somewhat low...

As for trading Steam/Origin/Uplay accounts, I am 99.99% sure this would in direct violation of their TOS/EULA's, apart from being extremely risky for the buyer. There's nothing stopping the seller from filing a "hijacked" account claim 5 minutes after "selling" it and the buyer would be screwed as he would be left with absolutely nothing...
 
Never bought any Capsule game so never traded anything in, I guess that works well for people who are not hoarders :) Account trading is of course in violation of EULA, and so is playing games not released for a region, but we do it through trading anyway. But the risks for account trading are of course much more. I personally got AC3 super cheap by account trading, and the fellow was pretty decent so everything worked rather well.

Steam might introduce a borrowing feature according to some rumors, where you can lend a game from your library to a friend for a period of time. I hope something comes off it.
 
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