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

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

#31

Post by hnarn »

vonmoltke wrote: post #12
sparkpeasy wrote: post #4

"Although its unlikely a policy change this momentous would be made, Valve has a history of making changes based on court rulings it’s involved in." Sooo...Valve has a history of changing its policies to follow the law?

> Sooo...Valve has a history of changing its policies to follow the law? The article isn't well written, but I believe the point is about Valve making the change worldwide, even though their legal obligation is just to do it in France (or possibly the EU).

From the article:

> the high court ruled that, under European Union law, Steam customers have a right to be able to resell ‘dematerialised’ goods, i.e., digital games on Steam.

IANAL but while this is a French high court, they have clearly interpreted EU (not domestic) law, so I think it's safe to say that if Valve loses the appeal, or decides to change it regardless ahead of time, they likely won't take the unnecessary risk of not rolling it out across the EU.

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

#32

Post by Barrin92 »

golergka wrote: post #14

This is absurd. When I buy a game on Steam, I fully understand that it doesn't have any resale value – and I easily agree to this deal, because I choose to forgo resale rights so I can get the game cheaper. But now this court have effectively destroyed my freedom to make this choice as a customer. And to add insult to injury, it's done this under the pretense of defending my rights, as if I'm an idiot who's not capab…

>But now this court have effectively destroyed my freedom to make this choice as a customer

To frame the idea that you don't have ownership of something you purchase as a freedom is some truly Orwellian spin on the term. You still have all the freedoms you had before, if you don't want to sell your games don't sell them.

Giving customers proper ownership rights over the goods they purchase is not freedom diminishing, what has the world come to where you frame giving up control or ownership as freedom?

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

#33

Post by de_watcher »

Another problem is that the court probably means that you can resell games for real currency. Currently you can buy games with the Steam currency, which means that reselling games is a legit method of piping out real currency from Steam.

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

#34

Post by bluecalm »

jerf wrote: post #11
magashna wrote: post #5

I can't imagine Valve won't find some loophole or way around this. Being able to resell digital games would destroy that economy. A possible outcome would be games in France are never on sale and they can only be traded within the French Steam economy. Can Valve still take a cut of all sales on their platform or add fees? Very curious how this turns out, but I feel like it's 50/50 whether this makes things better or…

From the article: "Valve’s defence hinged on the argument that Steam sells game licenses – subscriptions – to games, not the games themselves. The court, however, doesn’t see game purchases on Steam as subscriptions, since the owner has access to them indefinitely, and isn’t required to pay recurring payments in order to maintain access." Guess what the loophole's gonna be? Steam will cost you 1 euro a month to maint…

I agree, the court's argument doesn't make much sense. It can only result in various work arounds, for example making everything subscription based which most customers don't really want. Another work around could be selling per computer license -you will have to pay for using it on every new computer. It's not something anyone wants.

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

#35

Post by mrighele »

jerf wrote: post #11
magashna wrote: post #5

I can't imagine Valve won't find some loophole or way around this. Being able to resell digital games would destroy that economy. A possible outcome would be games in France are never on sale and they can only be traded within the French Steam economy. Can Valve still take a cut of all sales on their platform or add fees? Very curious how this turns out, but I feel like it's 50/50 whether this makes things better or…

From the article: "Valve’s defence hinged on the argument that Steam sells game licenses – subscriptions – to games, not the games themselves. The court, however, doesn’t see game purchases on Steam as subscriptions, since the owner has access to them indefinitely, and isn’t required to pay recurring payments in order to maintain access." Guess what the loophole's gonna be? Steam will cost you 1 euro a month to maint…

> Valve’s defence hinged on the argument that Steam sells game licenses – subscriptions – to games, not the games themselves.

IANAL but buying a license seems different to me than buying a subscription, and if you ask most Steam users they will tell you that they do the former not the latter. (In fact I have never seen the word subscription on their store, though I guess it is somewhere in their EULA).

If they go that way they may have to change their wording and that will also change the perception that people have of the platform: if I'm subscribing to a service the price I'm willing to pay to access (not buy) the games will probably much lower.

It may be better for them to just keep people thinking that the own the games forever (even though we know in practice this is probably not be true).

I'm wondering if instead they could just set themselves as the middleman for the used game market, since they already have all the infrastructure needed. In this way at least both steam and the publisher could get a cut.

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

#36

Post by zouhair »

de_watcher wrote: post #33

Another problem is that the court probably means that you can resell games for real currency. Currently you can buy games with the Steam currency, which means that reselling games is a legit method of piping out real currency from Steam.

How is that?

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

#37

Post by bluecalm »

Barrin92 wrote: post #32
golergka wrote: post #14

This is absurd. When I buy a game on Steam, I fully understand that it doesn't have any resale value – and I easily agree to this deal, because I choose to forgo resale rights so I can get the game cheaper. But now this court have effectively destroyed my freedom to make this choice as a customer. And to add insult to injury, it's done this under the pretense of defending my rights, as if I'm an idiot who's not capab…

>But now this court have effectively destroyed my freedom to make this choice as a customer To frame the idea that you don't have ownership of something you purchase as a freedom is some truly Orwellian spin on the term. You still have all the freedoms you had before, if you don't want to sell your games don't sell them. Giving customers proper ownership rights over the goods they purchase is not freedom diminishing,…

It reduces freedom to make the following deal: "you get it cheaper but you can't resell it". It seems it also forces Steam to do work (implement code to move licenses to another account, support the new customer as after every resale it's likely there will be more support work etc.). It definitely reduces freedom of contract and imo in the wrong way. I prefer to buy software cheaper and don't worry about reselling it later. If resell value is included in price I will just be subsidizing people who do resell their games.

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

#38

Post by strig »

de_watcher wrote: post #33

Another problem is that the court probably means that you can resell games for real currency. Currently you can buy games with the Steam currency, which means that reselling games is a legit method of piping out real currency from Steam.

They wouldn't necessarily need to implement that though, just a way of transferring licences to someone else. People could figure out their own payment.

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

#39

Post by umvi »

Sweet, time to create a bunch of steam accounts, stock up on cheap games during steam sales, and then resell after the steam sale, undercutting the the "new" version (it's not like a digital resale is any lower quality than the "brand new" one). Rinse and repeat. Profit.

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

#40

Post by rat9988 »

umvi wrote: post #39

Sweet, time to create a bunch of steam accounts, stock up on cheap games during steam sales, and then resell after the steam sale, undercutting the the "new" version (it's not like a digital resale is any lower quality than the "brand new" one). Rinse and repeat. Profit.

You can do that with every product on sale. Buy clothes on sale and sell them later at full price or close to it.
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