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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

#111

Post by bobcostas55 »

Freak_NL wrote: post #92
criddell wrote: post #2

Could this extend to ebooks as well? Valve's argument that what they sold was a license and not the game feels like a distinction without a difference to me. Say I accept that. Then why can't I sell that license?

At the moment, no, because a ruling in the Court of Justice of the European Union this September concluded that the resale of e-books is illegal. Interesting to see how these two rulings will affect the notion of reselling digital items. https://www.trouw.nl/binnenland/doorverkoop-tweedehands-e-bo... (in Dutch)

What's the difference between the two cases?

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

#112

Post by ukoki »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #97
Noos wrote: post #47

This is incredibly stupid. This is just going to make games even more unprofitable to make for their developers, and push it towards live-service/F2P games over traditional ones, since account selling is prohibited. Its hard enough to survive in that sphere making traditional games now; enabling the Gamestop effect on digital games is probably going to hurt beyond compare.

Its going to increase dark patterns and loot boxes for kids who cant / wont pay £50 for a AAA game

It might fix the problem of loot boxes. If the law applies to games, then it may apply to in-game items as well. Then players would be able to buy in-game items on secondary markets at known prices rather having to gamble for them as they do now.

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

#113

Post by dageshi »

jeroenhd wrote: post #89
GreaterFool wrote: post #84

> and isn’t required to pay recurring payments in order to maintain access Simple solution: make French users pay recurring fees. Problem solved? EDIT: would be nice if I could prune my library and perhaps swap some games. But what about other marketplaces and other stores? Why only Steam?

If Valve prefers not selling games in the EU to implementing a way to sell second hand games, sure. Remember that the French court is referencing EU law. This basically means that the practice is forbidden across the entire EU based on current jurisdiction. It's possible for Valve to introduce pay-as-you-go games, but doing so would probably violate the contract under which previously sold games were sold. This means…

I think this could get interesting.

Would valve be legally required to offer their services (game download + cloud saves) to a second hand buyer? Surely the person selling the game would need to provide the second hand buyer the copy of the game along with the key?

Valve merely provides a service which says "this key now belongs to this account" but that second hand buyer has no right to download from valve?

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

#114

Post by Wowfunhappy »

cameronbrown wrote: post #110
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always gets brought up when Steam and DRM are mentioned in the same sentence, and it is true technically speaking. However, I'm not convinced it matters in practice. In reality, the vast majority of games on Steam will not start if Steam isn't running. And some which appear to work at first will have strange errors later on. There's also no way for me as a consumer to tell if a given game has DRM before I buy it…

My point is it's not forced on to developers like some platforms do, hint Epic Games Store. Edit: Not true . I know a plethora of people who support only Steam on principle alone. Not only have they been kind to the Linux community but they've so far held up their end of the bargain when it comes to Steam. Valve's willingness to uphold free speech (while accepting all the downsides like negative brand attention) also…

I'm not sure where you read that, but I can confirm from first-hand experience that it isn't true. My Epic Game Store copies of Journey and Control are both completely DRM-Free.

I actually don't have the Epic Game Store installed on my main Windows partition at all, its isolated in its own VM. As long as the games I buy are DRM Free, I can download them in the VM, back them up, and move them to my real OS, and they run fine.

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

#115

Post by ineedasername »

jeroenhd wrote: post #100
ineedasername wrote: post #71

You can't resell your copy of Windows, I don't see how games are much different. I think at least one likely result would be many fewer deep discount sales. Having them would allow a resell arbitrage as people stocked up at the low price in order to resell when the sale ends.

Why not? It's perfectly legal in the EU to sell any digital goods second hand as long as you stop using the software you sold.

I didn't realize that! Though in researching it, I found that the law allowing resell is somewhat linked to the original install media, i.e., you couldn't sell the license key and a backup copy. I don't see any EU cases that square this with digital distribution, but maybe this current ruling will provide guidance on that issue.

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

#116

Post by UserIsUnused »

cameronbrown wrote: post #83
de_watcher wrote: post #25

DRM is a crazy thing. Now it distorts the already DRM-distorted reality.

Steam's DRM isn't technical, it's the community and platform itself. Any technical restrictions are completely optional.

What do you mean by technical?

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

#117

Post by ratww »

umvi wrote: post #43
rat9988 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, and as a result, prices are going to be higher for everyone. No more 90% off steam sales like we currently get - that would just encourage profiteers to stock up on as many digital copies as possible in order to resell and undercut later. And certainly no more "Celeste is free" type promos - that would be a feeding frenzy for profiteers.

People can already buy on discount and resell later if they use Humble Bundle or stores that gives Steam keys. We have been able to do that for years.

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

#118

Post by UserIsUnused »

cameronbrown wrote: post #110
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always gets brought up when Steam and DRM are mentioned in the same sentence, and it is true technically speaking. However, I'm not convinced it matters in practice. In reality, the vast majority of games on Steam will not start if Steam isn't running. And some which appear to work at first will have strange errors later on. There's also no way for me as a consumer to tell if a given game has DRM before I buy it…

My point is it's not forced on to developers like some platforms do, hint Epic Games Store. Edit: Not true . I know a plethora of people who support only Steam on principle alone. Not only have they been kind to the Linux community but they've so far held up their end of the bargain when it comes to Steam. Valve's willingness to uphold free speech (while accepting all the downsides like negative brand attention) also…

If you want to support a platform based on a DRM-free point of view, you should only buy from GOG. The only ethical platform.

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

#119

Post by about_help »

jboydyhacker wrote: post #87

Surprised to see so much sentiment against this ruling. Digital software sale and distribution is just supposed to make software management easier and faster. A license is the same regardless of wether it's physical or digital. Why shouldn't this apply to resale of said merchandise? I rarely say this- but the French really make a ton of sense here.

Greed is not surprising, but understandable you might have thought this crowd was a bit better than the average.

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

#120

Post by UserIsUnused »

chongli wrote: post #9

Personally, I like the fact that Steam games can’t be resold. Why? Because that keeps the prices down since the resale value of a game does not need to be included in the price. If games could be resold then I’d have to go through the trouble of reselling them in order to recoup the difference.

Digital games are expensive because of ohisical media version price parity. And guess what? Those games already have the "can resell tax", so you digital games are already more expensive due to the ability to resell, even though you can't actually resell them.
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