SimCity needs more than just a better return policy---it points to a fundamental flaw in the concept of digital ownership that goes beyond video games.
I think Jason Evangelho's idea for an industry-wide standard for video game returns is great. I would support such an idea in a heart-beat, though I don't think getting the White House involved would do a terrible amount of good.
If anything, the question of refunds for digital products will eventually need to be decided by courts, both here in the United States and abroad.
At the heart of the issue is the question of whether or not we can actually return something that we don't own: and do we really own our video games? If EA or Valve can shut down our Origin or Steam accounts, what happens to our catalog of titles? We paid to use those games, but did we pay to own them? If sometime far in the future, Blizzard shuts down the Diablo III servers how will we play our PC version of the game?
If EA and Maxis launch SimCity and you can't log in to play, is it really yours at all? You may "own" the physical copy of the game or have a receipt for the digital download, but you certainly don't own the servers that are required to play it.
How can we regulate any sort of mandatory return policy for consumers if we can't even define ownership?
This goes well beyond games, of course. What happens to your collection of eBooks if Amazon goes bust? What happens to your controversial political tome if the country you live in decides to start censoring and forces booksellers to delete certain books?
At issue here, among other things, is the first sale doctrine. In the US, so long as you're sold a "license" instead of a product, you no longer have rights to re-sell your purchase---a controversial interpretation of the law that the Supreme Court has refused to hear challenges to.
In Europe, however, the European Court of Justice upheld first sale doctrine for digital purchases, noting that:
It makes no difference, in a situation such as that at issue in the main proceedings, whether the copy of the computer program was made available to the customer by the rightholder concerned by means of a download from the rightholder’s website or by means of a material medium such as a CD-ROM or DVD. Even if, in the latter case too, the rightholder formally separates the customer’s right to use the copy of the program supplied from the operation of transferring the copy of the program to the customer on a material medium, the operation of downloading from that medium a copy of the computer program and that of concluding a licence agreement remain inseparable from the point of view of the acquirer, for the reasons set out in paragraph 44 above. Since an acquirer who downloads a copy of the program concerned by means of a material medium such as a CD-ROM or DVD and concludes a licence agreement for that copy receives the right to use the copy for an unlimited period in return for payment of a fee, it must be considered that those two operations likewise involve, in the case of the making available of a copy of the computer program concerned by means of a material medium such as a CD-ROM or DVD, the transfer of the right of ownership of that copy.
Of course, the question of ownership over your digital purchases is further complicated by the always-online nature of games like SimCity.
Even if first sale doctrine were upheld for digitally purchased or "licensed" software in the United States, if a company shut its servers down your game would no longer work.
In other words, an industry-wide standard for returns is a good idea, but it faces a serious uphill legal battle and only resolves a small portion of the problem over digital ownership.
As someone who owns myriad eBooks, games, movies, and music in strictly digital format (and often in "the cloud") this is something that concerns me---just not enough to counter the miraculous convenience of it all.
Digital ownership and distribution of goods has profound implications for consumers that are at once extremely promising and absolutely frightening at the same time. Each new release of an always-online game built around a single-player experience is a good reminder of the latter.
There are cases currently under consideration that may bring clarity to this issue, such as the Capitol Records v. ReDigi case, though that case focuses on the second-hand sale of digital music. The real question is whether the courts will side with consumers.
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