While the UK High Court is busy banning piracy sites, the French High Court has just finished up another battle within the gaming industry. The French High Court has just ruled that Valve must make some drastic changes to their digital games storefront, Steam, stating that all French users must be allowed to resell their digital games. The legal dispute was led by the French consumer rights association, the UFC Que Choisir, who initially filed the lawsuit against Valve back in 2015. As it stands currently, purchases made on Steam are tied to your account, and once redeemed, cannot be resold--only refunded under certain circumstances.

The court ruled that not allowing for consumers to resell their digital library goes against European law, and that Valve has 30 days to comply, or will risk a daily fine of 3,000 Euros for up to six months, until a change is made. Valve, not pleased with the ruling, has decided to appeal the decision, with a representative claiming, "We disagree with the decision of the Paris Court of First Instance, and will appeal it. The decision will have no effect on Steam while the case is on appeal".

Previously, Valve dealt with an Australian legal battle, in which the courts ruled that Valve must implement a refund policy, which it appealed, and then lost against. A year after, Steam added a refund policy for games purchased on the storefront. Should Valve's appeal be dismissed, it could also open the gates to other digital storefronts being investigated, fined, and forced to add a method of reselling their digital titles.

Source

 

[GurenTonic]

It's about damn time. Not being able to refund or resell digital games has always been one of the biggest downsides to them for me.

 

[MasterZoilus]

Is that like the trillions I "lost" by not playing the lottery and not working 100 hour weeks in a finance firm? Or perhaps that nobody gave me for no real reason other than I am a sort of likeable person.

If we can imagine money/profit as we dance through the land of faeries then why am I not god king of mankind as I am that rich?

Long before software left the hardware* it was on we had rulings that intellectual property rights did not trump resale rights, every ruling since up to this very day has affirmed the right to resell on a wide variety of things and nobody seems to be able to make a case why software in this instance should be an exception.

*I would say long before we had software but Babbage and Ada Lovelace arguably did something there, and at the more philosophical level there is a lot of maths that broaches the area even if it is run on wetware.

Likeable? hmmmm would you like a lubed banana to assist with your ceremony of self endulgence?

Working 100 hour work week nor playing lottery are not correct comparisons/examples or whatever, as you would be ASSUMING that you either would WIN the lottery....either EVERY time you played or at the very least multiple times since there is no trillion dollar prize and its possible and way more likely that in 40+ yrs you would have not won much of anything. Working a billion hours doesn't guarantee you would make anything...ask all the businesses throughout history that have gone belly up despite massive amounts of hours put in by all employees/management/ownership because they either started in the red and never got out or after being in the black for X amount of time.... things just didn't quite pan out to sustain it, for whatever reason/s

When I wrote that since the 70's companies have lost trillions in potential profits, every single time a game was traded or sold use ever, in the history of the world, they lost $$$. Every single time. Its not like playing the lottery because you will NOT make money every time you play. Nor does working an 100 hours today guarantee income from that job a year from now. The gaming industry lost money on every transaction. I wrote that line because while we can't change the past, the point I was making (which a 3rd grader could have easily comprehended) is that the past loss of all that money, serves as a motivation to end physical games. They can look back and with basic 6th grade math skills and the interwebs.....they (the industry) can say that after 40-50yrs of losing so much money (enter amount here which yes its in the trillions) in used game sales and trades, they don't have to loose out on a dime of off any transactions of current new and future releases once they move to a stadia type model or something similar. My statement serves as part the motivation that they would have to go to a non-physical games platform. They know that they HAVE lost money of used sales and trades....lots of it and of course it was beyond their control, BUT they wouldn't have to any more, they can forecast based on the past and THAT was my point. Maybe next time stop dorking out, control your nerdgasm and read things through pointdexter.

 

[FAST6191]

Likeable? hmmmm would you like a lubed banana to assist with your ceremony of self endulgence?

Working 100 hour work week nor playing lottery are not correct comparisons/examples or whatever, as you would be ASSUMING that you either would WIN the lottery....either EVERY time you played or at the very least multiple times since there is no trillion dollar prize and its possible and way more likely that in 40+ yrs you would have not won much of anything. Working a billion hours doesn't guarantee you would make anything...ask all the businesses throughout history that have gone belly up despite massive amounts of hours put in by all employees/management/ownership because they either started in the red and never got out or after being in the black for X amount of time.... things just didn't quite pan out to sustain it, for whatever reason/s

When I wrote that since the 70's companies have lost trillions in potential profits, every single time a game was traded or sold use ever, in the history of the world, they lost $$$. Every single time. Its not like playing the lottery because you will NOT make money every time you play. Nor does working an 100 hours today guarantee income from that job a year from now. The gaming industry lost money on every transaction. I wrote that line because while we can't change the past, the point I was making (which a 3rd grader could have easily comprehended) is that the past loss of all that money, serves as a motivation to end physical games. They can look back and with basic 6th grade math skills and the interwebs.....they (the industry) can say that after 40-50yrs of losing so much money (enter amount here which yes its in the trillions) in used game sales and trades, they don't have to loose out on a dime of off any transactions of current new and future releases once they move to a stadia type model or something similar. My statement serves as part the motivation that they would have to go to a non-physical games platform. They know that they HAVE lost money of used sales and trades....lots of it and of course it was beyond their control, BUT they wouldn't have to any more, they can forecast based on the past and THAT was my point. Maybe next time stop dorking out, control your nerdgasm and read things through pointdexter.

They were examples of faulty logic (might want to check your humorous sarcasm and exaggeration detectors) wherein money would have appeared in my wallet, or not appeared as the case may be, or some kind of opportunity cost (the game industry seems keenly aware of this if the push to multiplayer has been anything to watch). Just as faulty as the logic that the game industry deserves a taste from, has lost or continues to lose money on second hand sales. It would take going into a radically different universe for that to make sense. As we are stuck in this one then complaining about "lost" profits to second hand sales makes about as much sense as "lost" income due to the money printers not sending a truck round, which is to say none at all but imagination and dreaming you are dancing through the land of faeries is fun so play it that way if you want.

There has never been a scenario wherein it was disallowed or disallowable. Top courts in most regions (I have not checked all at this point) have routinely ruled for well over a hundred years (so longer than such games) that right to resale is a bloody strong one and I don't see how games represent a special new case (nor has anybody argued that from what I can see). If you want to do some kind of number of trades * retail price/profit then sure that is easily trillions (though I would be curious to see how it changes word of mouth setups as restricted markets with high cost of entry are interesting things) but it is a meaningless number -- no accountant would have it on a balance sheet, no tax man would allow you to write off the "loss", no investor would care about it, no court would allow you to sue someone for the loss... at very best some marketer/producer/whatever somewhere would do some kind of play time calculation vs expected profit schedule and tell the devs to make it long enough (multiplayer being the "easy" option here for most) that the second hand supply is limited until the main profit window has passed.
I don't doubt some will aim for a workaround like streaming and thus render it (games as) a service or something but that is a different matter, though I will say "part the motivation that they would have to go to a non-physical games platform" is not the same as the as a service model, and courts seem to have ruled and are continuing to rule that non physical but still "owned" titles do get to be resold (philosophically speaking you then always having the right but the services stepping on that during their operation).