French high court rules that Steam can’t ban users from reselling digital games

Guess what the loophole's gonna be?

Steam will cost you 1 euro a month to maintain access, BUT WAIT, we've got this awesome "temporary introductory" deal where for every Euro you spend on anything in our store, anything at all, you get one free month of subscription! Yes, buy one brand new AAA game and you get 5 or 6 years of free subscription! Wowzers! What a stonking great deal for the consumer! Such an incredible deal that has been so successful that we're running it indefinitely, despite the fact it's totally temporary.

But if you do somehow manage to run out of months, you will indeed lose access. That part has to be real. And there will be a real "just buy subscription access" option, though nobody will ever use it because why just give Valve 12 Euro when you can buy a game with it instead?

I'm fairly confident in common law traditions, that would be too blatant and they couldn't literally do that. They'd sidle up in that direction, though, as close as they thought they could get. I don't know about how France's Civil Law tradition would take that, but, still, same principle; head in that direction as close as you think you can get. "As close as you can get" may in fact be quite far, but I think this is still the general direction you're going to see.

Or purchase a "license upgrade" to resell the game. That would be a deferred commission not everyone has to pay. Include the option to purchase it together with the game, and attach it to the license being transferred (I don't think they could get away with selling that upgrade multiple times in a row).

I do not see this as a black-or-white situation. I am all for giving consumers more rights, and feel like we have been brainwashed into accepting the status quo by Big Tech™.

I do not blame valve. They are one of the better players in the market, and it doesn't surprise me that they just used an existing commercial model everyone was already familiar with. I appreciate the fact that we are having this overdue conversation right now, and that at least some courts recognize the consumer some rights.

> How about the ability to sell one's account, then? This is currently forbidden in the EULA, as far as I know, but I don't think it would hurt prices that much.

That point was made again and again to justify the previous "no refunds" policy. It wouldn't surprise me if changing that policy actually kind of had the opposite effect (have people buy more games). Of course, people can also buy more expensive games now due to the same reason: not sure if the game is worth that price? Buy it and refund if it isn't (previously you wouldn't have bought it).

I am quite interested in seeing the same ruling apply to ebooks/others as well. The only thing I am afraid of is if they turn everything into a subscription. Subscriptions are evil (except for recurring donations, in my book).

Sell a game for $10, you take $9, valve take $0.50 and gives $0.50 to the publishers.

I see this working well for games that are no longer available to buy on the "new games" store. For example, the Deadpool game, It's no longer for sale, but I have a copy the I son't play anymore. I could sell it for a few bucks for someone who wants it.