French court rules that Valve must allow for Steam users to resell their digital games

raxadian · Sep 20, 2019

What if Valve agreed to allow digital games to be resold but that they must be sold at the current price they have in the Steam store? That way they would be agreeing with the court order while at the same time making it pointless.

Foxi4 · Sep 20, 2019

Ev1l0rd said:
Most second hand sales aren't trade-ins.

They're people selling their shit on eBay or the local equivalent or just rummage sales.

I'm not so sure about that, most people don't bother with selling their old software on eBay by themselves, they usually trade it, at least in my experience. Either way, the same rules apply, besides the resurfacing - the software you purchase is exactly the same regardless of whether the disc is new or not, "wear and tear" is not a part of the equation unless you're a collector who's specifically looking for the physical manifestation of the software in good condition to put on your shelf.

CMDreamer said:
Kinda blurry...

In Valve's business point of view, the allowance of reselling digital games would impact on their servers and network resources negatively, as "the game" would be "salable?" indefinitely at any given time the actual owner want (whom would change every time the digital game is sold and the digital owner rights over it are transferred to the buyer). All at the expense of Valve's network/server resources.

Another good reason for not getting digital games on any gaming platform (Android is out of bounds on this chance). Even less as I don't like Steam at all.

I prefer playing/collecting the physical copies (when available) and if they're not available I just don't play them, period.

Nobody says that they can't charge a nominal fee for putting your software up for sale on their server, provided they introduced software resale to the Community Marketplace. It's a wee bit monopolistic to only allow it on their service, but ultimately it is a Steam copy, do it's inseparably connected to the Steam ecosystem. Perfectly tangible solution that doesn't cost them as much as straight up converting the software back into a download code that can be resold outside of Steam.

AbyssalMonkey · Sep 21, 2019

I'm not going to read pages 5-9, they're probably mostly the same old tired arguments as were had in the first 5 pages.

This is nice. If this catches on, it could force other industries to follow suit. Games could be used as the beach head to force larger industries to comply with basic goods rights.

I guess the one bad part of this is that regional pricing, arguably the most beneficial part of having a non-transferable license, will likely get the cut. In the real world, games usually only come with the language of the country they are sold upon, while digitally you have to offer every language for regions you want to be able to reasonably sell in. This alone, plus importing costs, keeps an extremely vast majority of games resales between regions locked to that region. There is probably no good fix for this on digital goods which can probably be trivially patched to include any language.

The regional pricing argument is the one I would bet would hold the most traction. Currently, regional pricing is a great boon to equity, and allows poorer regions of the world access to the same tools as richer ones. The destruction of this means effectively destroying the progressive movement. I fear this could cause a lot of turmoil. In any case, this isn't going to be the last we've heard of this case.

KingVamp · Sep 21, 2019

FAST6191 said:
They could try. Why would I care to give them anything though? As for control then nope. Same as every other business -- once you sell the product to someone else then they can dispose of it how they will.

Foxi4 said:
Nobody says that they can't charge a nominal fee for putting your software up for sale on their server, provided they introduced software resale to the Community Marketplace. It's a wee bit monopolistic to only allow it on their service, but ultimately it is a Steam copy, do it's inseparably connected to the Steam ecosystem. Perfectly tangible solution that doesn't cost them as much as straight up converting the software back into a download code that can be resold outside of Steam.

This was pretty much what I was getting at.

piratesephiroth · Sep 21, 2019

beautiful

Xzi · Sep 21, 2019

As others have been pointing out, there is a third (likely) possibility here. If the decision is upheld, and the court doesn't go after other tech companies with equal fervor, Valve will probably just pay the fine and leave Steam unchanged. €540,000 is nothing for them in the long run.

the_randomizer · Sep 21, 2019

This won't be abused at all, I'm sure

SonicRings · Sep 21, 2019

Rune said:
I meant the original price of the game might rise, not the price from the resellers.

Wouldn't that discourage people from buying from them and encourage them to buy from resellers?

Xzi said:
As others have been pointing out, there is a third (likely) possibility here. If the decision is upheld, and the court doesn't go after other tech companies with equal fervor, Valve will probably just pay the fine and leave Steam unchanged. €54,000 is nothing for them in the long run.

Don't you mean €540,000?

AbyssalMonkey · Sep 21, 2019

sonicrings said:
Don't you mean €540,000?

It's still pennies.

Xzi said:
As others have been pointing out, there is a third (likely) possibility here. If the decision is upheld, and the court doesn't go after other tech companies with equal fervor, Valve will probably just pay the fine and leave Steam unchanged. €54,000 is nothing for them in the long run.

I would bet that this is what is going to happen. The thing is, UFC has stated that they are going to actively go after others in the industry as well, not just games storefronts. This could mean things like Google/Amazon Video that you buy to own have to be resellable too. Think about all the old iTunes catalogues. The digital distribution has a boatload of goods rights breaches, and UFC may go after them too.

If this does get upheld, it could also lead to widespread litigation by other consumer advocacy groups in other countries. If enough of it happens, something is likely to change; either FAANG buys the governments, or EUP starts to actively enforce and pile more fines.

SonicRings · Sep 21, 2019

AbyssalMonkey said:
It's still pennies.

Yeah honestly the fact that it's only for 6 months makes it better for them to just absorb the fine.

Xzi · Sep 21, 2019

sonicrings said:
Don't you mean €540,000?

Yeah, missed a zero.

Uiaad · Sep 21, 2019

sonicrings said:
Yeah honestly the fact that it's only for 6 months makes it better for them to just absorb the fine.

Not a lawyer, but this would be up to 6 months before other sanctions are acted upon them. Which in theory could mean the banning of Steam operating within the EU.

SonicRings · Sep 21, 2019

Uiaad said:
Not a lawyer, but this would be up to 6 months before other sanctions are acted upon them. Which in theory could mean the banning of Steam operating within the EU.

Ah, fair enough.

dude1 · Sep 21, 2019

AbyssalMonkey said:
It's still pennies.

no its not the EU has a one-cent piece not a penny

xdarkx · Sep 21, 2019

Confused as to how one would be able to resell digital goods, but good I guess?

mike4001 · Sep 21, 2019

sonicrings said:
Wouldn't that discourage people from buying from them and encourage them to buy from resellers?

Don't you mean €540,000?

Even if the ruling says: Pay € 3000 for 6 Months I don't think that the ruling vanishes after these 6 months.

It´s more likely that then there is another court date where they set an even higher per day fee.

scottydog27 · Sep 21, 2019

Easy fix do what game stop does for hard copies make a trade in program that way the digital keys are controlled and not just passed around like a hard copy your friend just beat and is now letting you use

Ev1l0rd · Sep 21, 2019

Uiaad said:
Which in theory could mean the banning of Steam operating within the EU.

Fairly sure they'll just crank up the fines until either Steam stops operating in the EU themselves or complies rather than outright banning them.

Uiaad · Sep 21, 2019

Ev1l0rd said:
Fairly sure they'll just crank up the fines until either Steam stops operating in the EU themselves or complies rather than outright banning them.

Cranking up the fines to a point where they couldn't effectively pay would be tantamount to banning them no ? so what I said was correct.

Jiehfeng · Sep 21, 2019

Everybody here is wrong and doesn't understand what the court decided.

The decision said valve cannot PREVENT you from selling your games, it DID NOT say valve needs to facilitate it. This specifically was about their TOS, which says your ownership of games is non transferable to others. This is illegal according to EU law.

So now this part of the TOS needs to go. There, now you can sell your games without valve suspending your account. Go on. How will you do that? Valve doesn't have any way to move games from one account to another.

The only way you could do that of course is by selling your steam account itself. This was also the only consequence of valve their TOS banning sale of owned games:

https://www.geek.com/games/valve-teaches-kid-a-lesson-for-trying-to-sell-his-steam-account-1327929/

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/30/135509823661421677/

http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk/2010/is-selling-your-steam-account-illegal/

Son all that has changed is that now valve cannot suspend an account because the owner wanted to sell it.

This is a small change with little consequences, contrary to what some idiot gaming news websites are trying to tell you with sensationalist click bait.

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