None of this is new; EA's Battlefield 2 and then 2142 were there years ago. For Battlefield 2, the serial numbers get tied to accounts (I bought a BF2 complete pack used and only got to add Special Forces to my basic BF2 installation; the Euro and US invasion pack keys were used and thus not available anymore). For BF2142 the main game was again registered to somebody else when I bought a used copy off eBay - then I got lucky and found it cheap at Goodwill.

None of this bodes well for the relationship between gamers and companies; it's bad when I can feel a victory at having gotten their content at no profit to them. This is why I like the Steam model: When you buy something, theoretically you can keep playing that across different formats - true to form, Valve has invited everybody to get on a Mac to download play Portal there. The costs allow them to be just that generous compared to retail, where the expenses of making and moving discs and mostly empty boxes dictate everything.

I don't blame the retail companies for having to face off against used games the way they are trying to; it's been a simmering confrontation for what feels like nearly a decade.

The Valve system takes away the rationale for trading games, gives more profits to the developers, people aren't out there charging outrageous amounts to get copies of old games, and you can still wait them out for good price drops that wouldn't be possible at a brick and mortar store where they really need to charge $50 years after a release to justify having kept it on a shelf. I think that, viewed that way, this really is a story about the evils of physical media. (I know "data wants to be free" is a common argument, but somebody has to pay somewhere down the line).

We are going to have to get used to not having something physical to show for games. Really, people should be rejoicing that games are so easy to distribute that people can send games for free over the Internet, versus the old days where you'd have to go to a hobbyist swap meet to get copies of somebody's Apple // or DOS opus or whatever the hell.