141–150 of 178 posts
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How is that?
If you sell items from certain games (like CSGO) or redeem a gift card, you get credit applied to your steam account. This can be used to purchase games, then you could (hypothetically) sell them for real-world cash.
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.
A physical copy is an actual tangible thing, and courts have ruled that licenses travel with the ownership of the actual thing--i.e., copyright law does not trump property law.
A digital copy is an ephemeral, transitory thing. The very nature of a digital object means that the object used/viewed/etc is not the same digital object that was stored (i.e., the copy on your hard drive is not the copy in memory, though they may be identical).
Copyright law is entirely about restrictions on copying things and digital goods are trivially copyable things.
The French law makes little sense. The distinction between physical goods and intangible items exists for a reason in copyright law, and indeed is inherent in other parts of EU law, such as with respect to e-books. Importantly, earlier this week the EU itself ruled that ebooks cannot be resold (see https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/i...) and the French court's reasoning in this case is entirely contrary to the reasoning of the EU.
Expect this law to be overturned, or for PC game prices to go up dramatically in the EU if it is not.
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GP currently has the ability to buy a product in a way they like (not purchasing resale rights that they don't want.) Somebody wants to take that away from them. GP is upset they're losing the freedom to do business in the way they like. You're calling their view Orwellian because French Big Brother knows what ownership rights they really want to purchase? It's not Orwellian, it's just a complicated issue of how inte…
> GP currently has the ability to buy a product in a way they like (not purchasing resale rights that they don't want.) Why is GP's freedom more important than my freedom to buy the product in the way I like (purchasing resale rights, or even having them included by default)? On top of that, the fact that GP has the "freedom" now doesn't mean that having the freedom is an inherent good. Remember that slave owners pre…
On Orwell. I was commenting that I could accuse the accuser of Orwellianism of Orwellianism. But I could do it with the advantage that their version includes using the machinery of the state to call a restriction of a freedom a freedom.
I don't think it's productive to argue over who's really Mr(s). 1984. Instead we can accept that we're talking about trade-offs in freedoms, that it will be complicated, and go from there.
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?
A license is a contract between you and valve. You can't transfer that license because the contract says you can't. The court says that the digital game is a good (just like a DVD is), and not a license, so you must be allowed to resell it to somebody else.
A game only has value while I'm playing it. If two people play the same game at different hours or timezones, they can buy a single license and transfer it back and forth. (This is different from e.g. server software.) A tariff on resales would cut back on that (if the ruling allows it). But the effective price of a game would still tend to approach the cost of reselling it. You would need to re-download the game eve…
The article doesn't mentions that the judgment would force Steam to facilitate game resell though. You can be allowed to do it, but it can still be a pain in the ass to do it (giving access to your account, etc...). Same goes for a marketplace that would use that rule to allow people to rent the games. None of theses games has to facilitate the resale and they aren't forced to sell license to the marketplace either (…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A license is a contract between you and valve. You can't transfer that license because the contract says you can't. The court says that the digital game is a good (just like a DVD is), and not a license, so you must be allowed to resell it to somebody else.
Transferring the doctrine of first sale to the digital realm would have massive implications for pretty much every digital distribution service we have today. Streaming services wouldn't be affected, but Kindle, Steam, iTunes, and so many others are built on the assumption that their product has no secondary market.
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
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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.
There was the famous Oracle vs UsedSoft lawsuit: https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3134867/eu-court-of-justic... This basically added jurisprudence that digital downloads can be resold provided that the original is made unusable.
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.
If you can buy a game, play it for 100h and them hand it off to somebody else who can do exactly the same, with the publisher/developer/store are getting nothing from those transactions, they are quickly going to find another business model. There is no degeneration like there is with physical goods. There is no reason why anybody would prefer new.
And while publishers only lose a potential sale, vendors like Valve actually have to service a new customer (bandwidth, save storage, etc) without extra pay. They're not going to go quietly here.
And that will quickly turn into publishers and vendors both ceasing to sell software licenses. You'll still pay full price, but you'll get 100 days play, or a few years for a multiplayer. Or membership services like Origin Access. Or straight up gaming as a service (eg Stadia).
So while this is great for owners of existing software licenses in the EU, we shouldn't celebrate this ruling. We're about to own even less than we historically have.
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.
A license is not the same for a physical copy vs a digital copy. A physical copy is an actual tangible thing, and courts have ruled that licenses travel with the ownership of the actual thing--i.e., copyright law does not trump property law. A digital copy is an ephemeral, transitory thing. The very nature of a digital object means that the object used/viewed/etc is not the same digital object that was stored (i.e.,…