The book industry is much older than ebooks, so what's the point of that question?
So, just like the games industry is older than the digital distribution... But that's the relevant bit here going by the thread title...
I'll answer it anyway... Maybe you can pretty soon, if this law means what we think it means.
Then you can't know if it will or won't harm it since it has yet to happen so why bring it up as a precedent?
I don't think it's even relevant to compare to non-digitally distributed software and objects. Sure, maybe used markets have been just fine in the past, games included, but the transaction in that case is rather transparent, often hard to find, and hard to exploit in large scale unless you have the gigantic presence of something like GameStop. If you do it all online and even do it with the help of the original distributor (ie like people say Valve could build the backend for it all) without enforcing any amount of $ to go to the software maker (or the publisher if such a deal is in place) then pretty much every buyer past week or month one could just as easily buy it used with no downsides whatsoever, unlike physical goods which are worn when used and have to be traded hand in hand, or with a more complex and time consuming procedure than a few mouse clicks. Which means a developer could never see any income beyond that small time frame, which for some may be the norm but many times games continue to sell over time, Minecraft sure didn't reach its current heights by the first sold alpha version or even close to that, it just grew over time.
Maybe there are ways to be profitable with such restrictions with DLC and F2P and whatever else but many games aren't suitable for that sort of system. How do you make something like The Witcher 2 friendly to such a system so that you can actually revenue beyond say, 100k who then resell it to another 100k the next week, who then resell it to another 100k the next week, until you end up with 3 million legitimate buyers, not pirates, of which only a 10% gave you a dime, which is quite a possible scenario with how easily accessible DD makes things compared to having to drive around in search of a physical copy in decent condition.
This could even stop companies from "traditionally" selling games altogether and charge you per play session (or time frame) like a credit card eating arcade coin-op game would. That sure would be disruptive, but I wouldn't like it more than the current situation which allows me some sense of ownership and manipulation of what I do with most of my games even if it's not to the full possible extent. And in the end we still wouldn't get most games with the dream of having full control, the publishers would just change the terms of the transaction so that it isn't an actual sale and so isn't affected by this law.
Note I'm not actually speaking against this happening, just questioning the logic some bring up to say it won't have any effects beyond cheap prices for anyone whatsoever. It's one thing to say you don't care because your own money is all that matters to you and this will allow you to get cheap games easily and money for your existing library, and a whole other thing to close your eyes to potential issues, or features, that could in fact affect what games and how they are available to you in the future. And if not you in particular because you're fine with whatever types of games are friendly to such systems alone, then the industry in general.
