Have you ever bought a game and not play it? Or maybe you got a game as a gift but you never got around to it? This may have led you to think that you could resell it and at least make some money instead of just having the game lying around your house. Well, one gamer tried to resale an unused and unopen copy of The Evil Within 2 by Bethesda. He even put a listing on Amazon for it to get it sold. But when Bethesda saw this, they threatened legal action.
The gamer, Ryan Hupp, talked to Polygon about the incident, and noted that Bethesda did indeed threaten to take him to court over a single game:
“I understand the legal arguments Bethesda are relying on, and accept that they have some legitimate interest in determining how their products are sold at retail,” Hupp told Polygon, “but threatening individual customers with lawsuits for selling games they own is a massive overreach.”
For Bethesda’s Pete Hines though, it’s a bit more clearcut. Hupp posted the game as “new” on Amazon, and for Bethesda, that wasn’t accurate:
“He’s not trying to sell a secondhand game, he’s trying to sell a new game,” he told Eurogamer. “He was listing the product as if it was new. All we’re saying is if it’s a previously owned product, you have to sell it as a previously owned product – you cannot represent it’s new because we have no way to verify what you’re selling actually is new. You could have opened it up, played it for five hours, taken whatever inserts or stuff was in there, put it back in shrink wrap and said, ‘Hey this is new.’ It’s not new – you owned it, you bought it, so just list it as a used title. That’s it, that’s the end of the argument.”
The listing has since been updated, and legal action at present isn’t being taken.
