A French court has ruled that Valve should allow people to re-sell their digital games

Quoting: Avehicle7887DRM-Free stores would have to stop selling games to french customers otherwise they risk a serious issue.

I don't see how it affects them at all.

Quoting: Avehicle7887This is a very bad call, and it shows clearly that the people making these decisions have no clue about games and of the challenges devs face every day. They're just paper pushers who didn't think of the consequences, which outweigh the benefits here.

Being able to resell what you own used to be possible. What's so horrible about getting that right back ?

This is simple, Valve should close doors on France. This is beyond ridiculous, why suing Valve specifically when every other virtual store including console ones are doing the same.
Now imagine the impact for developers, Funny thing Epic shills will celebrate this when they support Epic because "Epic is cool with devs", lol. They are so dumb.

Quoting: linuxcityi would not mind selling games i no longer play or transfer them to another user

Of course you dont!! All of this is about you and only you, the other people who could get involved negatively doesnt matter.

This behavior of not thinking how anything could affect anyone else but me is a cancer.
We have a healthy gaming sector(not in the employee yet) when we have plenty of competition that allows users to get games in nice sales, but with things like this, I see developers raising prices in order to get the revenue lost by the fact people can resell their games for whatever price they like. This is something really stupid, ruled by a court that has no idea of how the gaming industry is working right now!!

This will affect indies really hard.

My take on this:

Digital License* is a supplement for a Physical Good -- namely a DVD game that retains value and be resold.

I can see Frances take on this being practical, and from a consumer perspective I 100% agree with users should be able to sell games or accounts (collections of games).

Where it gets tricky for Valve is I am not sure what their license terms stipulate with content creators and if they legally have the authority to implement this feature.

Assuming they are strong-armed be the law though I can't see how publishers and content creators can really hold them accountable when they are forced to legally comply.

I agree with France, I also think that this should not be a suit against Valve but effect all digital software goods hopefully not only in France but the greater world.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 19 September 2019 at 10:50 pm UTC

Quoting: minidouBeing able to resell what you own used to be possible. What's so horrible about getting that right back ?

If you dont get it now, youll be not getting not even in a million years.
Funny thing is how to get an indie game for 5$ then reselling it in 3$, taking 5$ for a possible sale to that indie. But who fck1ng cares you are not an indie dev, right?

Quoting: ElectricPrismI can see Frances take on this being practical, and from a consumer perspective I 100% agree with users should be able to sell games or accounts (collections of games).

You said it, this is 100% from the consumer POW without taking into account how this could hit devs.

Tell me how we can create better laws for a better world when we make laws just taking one of the sides into account?

It is really disappointing to see the comments and likes here, its like Linux people really hates proprietary software so hard that they would like to see the gaming scene being hit negatively, Just because some extra bucks.


Last edited by orochi_kyo on 19 September 2019 at 10:10 pm UTC

Quoting: minidouBeing able to resell what you own used to be possible. What's so horrible about getting that right back ?

It's the implications and how it will affect the industry that we all love, that's what's horrible. You need to look at it more than just an us versus them type of situation. If this goes through and goes across other countries and stores, look at what I wrote at the bottom of the article. PC gaming would become pretty terrible as a whole and indies especially, a large majority would likely throw in the towel completely.

Quote... I'm all for consumer rights but I do try to think about all angles. We could end up looking at higher prices overall, no release day discounts, more micro transactions, more games updated as a constant service, games that require an online account as a service so you're not paying for an actual product and so on as developers try to keep more income when many smaller developers are already struggling.

My thoughts exactly. While I don't doubt the good intentions behind this move, publishers/stores aren't just going to throw up their hands and leave everything as it is just with re-selling allowed. They'll figure out workarounds. And those will probably end up being more harmful to consumers than non-transferable licences.

The one law that always gets passed is the law of unintended consequences.

Quoting: Dunc

Quote... I'm all for consumer rights but I do try to think about all angles. We could end up looking at higher prices overall, no release day discounts, more micro transactions, more games updated as a constant service, games that require an online account as a service so you're not paying for an actual product and so on as developers try to keep more income when many smaller developers are already struggling.

My thoughts exactly. While I don't doubt the good intentions behind this move, publishers/stores aren't just going to throw up their hands and leave everything as it is just with re-selling allowed. They'll figure out workarounds. And those will probably end up being more harmful to consumers than non-transferable licences.

The one law that always gets passed is the law of unintended consequences.

I see many devs including Ubisoft leaving France, losing hundreds of jobs just because people want to resell a game they get for 15$ for 5$ bucks. I would be agree if this were the gaming market in the 90s where every game on cassette or disk costed 60$ but in this digital era, games are really cheap and people still want to resell it? How cheap one can be?

There is potential that this move could cause the gaming industry to go into a subscription model, where you actually pay to use (rent) a game per hour, rather than having any ownership. Potentially the games would be "free" but then playing them would cost money. This would bother me, because I like an upfront payment and then being able to play the game as long as I like with no additional costs (other than electricity bill).

This will be an interesting change. It really benefits DRM free stores like GOG - their users already could sell the game if they wanted(breaking the law in a hard to detect fashion), but usually didn't. Some publishers will definitely try to dodge the problems by going into microtransations, where the game is free, but the money is in small items tied to the account, although if this ruling stands, in game item trading might be next.

Quoting: chancho_zombieI don't think valve will allow copies to sell in their own marketplace, stupid politicians they want valve to shoot at their own legs.

But there’s no other sensible way to do it. What Valve sell is already licenses, not self-contained products. The same argument used in favour of piracy (it’s not stealing because it doesn’t take anything away from the seller) applies here in reverse: if a gamer sells an executable, they can also keep it and keep selling more copies. There’s no way to manage that if you look at it this way. A single person could buy a game from Valve then resell it for 1$ less to every other gamer in the world. That’s an extreme example, but it’s the kind of unsustainable opportunity you would create with this kind of law (not that we’re talking about an actual law at this point).

As much as I want to have control over the software I buy, by not being hindered by DRM, it has to be considered a license for it to be commercially practicable. It doesn’t matter that it’s a perpetual, permissive license, just as long as it protects the rights of the content creators and authorized distributors. Valve need to retain control over what is being sold somehow, otherwise it’s really just piracy with benefits since now the pirates get to make money off of it.

So if you’re selling licenses to download and use software via a Steam account, where else are you going to resell them but on Valve’s own systems where they can manage who rightfully owns those licenses?