• radix@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    Legally, it’s still a license, it’s just effectively impossible to revoke.

    Edit to expand on this: A truly offline forever-purchase of physical goods can be re-sold. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine (this is the US-specific version, other jurisdictions may have similar doctrines).

    American legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property.

    A digital “purchase” is usually non-transferable, even from GOG. It can’t be removed from your own HDD once you download the installer, but there are still restrictions attached on what you can do with it, even if those are limited and hard to enforce.

      • xapr@lemmy.sdf.org
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        25 days ago

        Technically, probably yes, but you can buy old, opened games on eBay. I doubt you can do the same with GOG games. Digital media is much harder if not impossible to resell.