EA Makes (some of) its Digital Games Returnable

To the great surprise of just about everyone in the gaming industry, Electronic Arts (EA) announced something it's calling the "Great Game Guarantee". If you buy a digitally downloaded game through EA's online store "Origin" then you may be able to return that game after a limited amount of use. At present that appears to be 24 hours after you open the game or up to seven days if you never played it.

This is on the one hand a small step - we still need a true marketplace for honestly resellable used games. EA's program is so far only available on a limited number of titles in certain countries, though the country list appears to be growing. And the time period is really oriented around returns rather than resale - if you bought something by mistake, or you opened up the game and said "Hey, this isn't the kind of game I thought it was" then you can potentially return it. There's no way (unless you're some kind of sleepless fanatic) to play through an entire game in 24 hours just so you can return it.

The most surprising thing is that this move is being made first by EA, who are currently not very popular with desktop/core gamers due to some past behaviors. Reputation aside, EA are not known as risk-takers and being first in any marketplace with a new strategy always carries a certain risk. The question of 'why would EA do this' is the subject of a lot of current speculation.

My personal opinion is that they've seen they're losing ground. Origin ranks well below Valve's Steam service and may even be trailing non-game-company services such as Amazon's digital downloads and Green Man Gaming. EA needed to do something to break out of the pack and this move is likely to get them some notice. Whether it leads to a shift in customer buying is less certain. Valve could easily choose to copy this program or even improve on it (one hopes). The fact that a big name has taken this move first means lesser companies may have both more room and more impetus to try out returnable or maybe even resaleable game policies, which we sorely need.