Yeah, Steam is policed with a lot more intelligence.
I'll admit, though, the game sharing/lending/selling platform for Xbone is somewhat less draconian than what you find on Steam, at least.
From my understanding you can "share" your games like so:
- Sign in on your friend's xbone and play the game, but have to maintain a once an hour network check in.
- Lend your friend the license through the XBL marketplace for a couple days at the cost of not being able to do anything with the physical copy you have.
- Give (not sell) your friend the license in the XBL marketplace, also rendering the physical copy useless unless you give it to them as well.
- Sell your license to the XBL marketplace for probably even less than you'd get at gamestop, and Microsoft will probably sell it for more (these prices are, of course, guesses)
So if you simply just gave them the disc, it'd just say something like "this disc has already been activated, please sign in with the account associated with this game's license." Or I think they also said something about having to pay a fee for multiple activations or something.
In this way, it's more "free" to sharing than Steam is. And this is actually something I've wished Steam had for a while now. The depressing part about all this mess is that I'm starting to realize just how restrictive Steam is, as much as I love the service and appreciate their A+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ customer service (to use the eBay phrasing)