By Nelson Schneider - 08/25/23 at 03:50 PM CT
Recently, a new startup calling itself RobotCache has started advertising in the gaming community. The service bills itself as a “game changer,” in that it is yet another digital videogame storefront, but that it also includes the incredibly-common-sense feature of allowing users to sell their games to each other when they’re done with them.
This is the type of thing I’ve been advocating as a killer feature for the Steam Community Market for as long as there has been a Steam Community Market. However, without being attached to any of the major players in the digital game sales space, like Steam, GOG, Humble, or even Fanatical and Greenman, it really feels like RobotCache has an uphill battle ahead of it to gain market share. After all, most people who are into digital game purchases already have sizeable libraries elsewhere, and without the ability to bring in those licenses into a universal bucket, RobotCache really only offers the tantalizing possibility of being able to recoup part of the investment into digital games that turn out to be duds at some point in the future… provided the business stays in operation that long.
Hopefully RobotCache can gain something of a toehold and compel the big competitors to adopt a similar function to maintain parity. But the pessimist in me doesn’t actually see this happening, and, as a result, it’s unlikely that I, myself, will bother signing up for this new service.
