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

Quick note on anyone saying Valve should 'just exit France'. France is part of the EU, of course and this ruling would likely become EU law. I'm pretty sure the EU market is gigantic enough that just abandoning it is out of the question.

Also, for those wondering why they're going after Valve only, you can absolutely bet that if this becomes EU legislation, it'll affect all online digital stores. Valve are just the test case here.

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: fagnerlnIs hypocrisy that a defensor of freedom want a intervention from state.

Preventing people from abusing their freedoms is one of the most basic reasons for governments (and thus, laws) to exist in the first place. If we wouldn't have laws preventing you, it would be in your "freedom" to murder somebody because you don't like their face. Humans are by nature greedy and egoistic. They one thing that can guarantee a stable society is a strong government that steps in when people abuse their power and makes some laws telling them not to.

*snip by mod, don't be rude to other users*

You don't know what freedom means. Isn't freedom to kill someone, people have natural rights, life is the more important one.

THE STATE KILLS WITHOUT REASON, the "strong government" steal from peoples to turn them slaves, state abuses their power, not the peoples.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 20 September 2019 at 11:17 am UTC

Quoting: subWhy doesn't this automatically affect other digital game stores in France immediately?
Someone hast to go to court against Epic, GOG, ... separately, one by one?

Hard to believe, as the concepts of the stores are basically the same, when it comes to DRM and not being able to resell the purchases made.

A precedent needed to be set in France when it comes to digital goods .

In fact whether a game's license was a purchased good or a lease was until that court ruling up in juridical limbo and it was left to customers and sellers to figure themselves out .

What Laurie Liddel did here is argue ( AND convince the judge) that a game digital or not is a good of cultural value and therefore rules of ownership should apply . Also she relied and used previous E.U rulings to substantiate her claims.

Lastly the way she has argued various points are almost preemptively addressing any rebuttal during an appeal. The way she has crafted her argument in court was quite the show ...

I'd be curious to see what Valve will come up with during appeal because really in terms of French law she pretty much slammed every fucking door shut right behind them ...


Last edited by TheSyldat on 19 September 2019 at 10:55 pm UTC

Interesting. Basically, confirmation that first sale doctrine should apply to digital goods as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

However not sure if there is a major consensus that it's a good idea.


Last edited by Shmerl on 19 September 2019 at 10:46 pm UTC

That's it, I'm telling my son right now to stop dreaming of developing games. This basically legalises keyshops and now even allowing you to sell the games you're already played and finished, if it wasn't bad enough before...


Last edited by pb on 19 September 2019 at 10:54 pm UTC

As a EU citizen, I am very grateful to our courts and consumer groups for defending our rights against abusive EULAs and monopolies. I am also confident that Valve and the other distributors have the resources to adapt to any change in the regulation with little impact in their business model.

Quoting: pbPiracy killed Amiga gaming, socialism will kill PC gaming?

Dude can you not please ...

Or more precisely , "if you wanna be taken seriously could be please take off the fuckin' tin foil hat for at the very fucking least enough time to let you type a coherent message ?"

Quoting: TheSyldatDude can you not please ...

Or more precisely , "if you wanna be taken seriously could be please take off the fuckin' tin foil hat for at the very fucking least enough time to let you type a coherent message ?"

I was just removing that part the moment you were quoting it. ;-)

Hm, according to this. EU already allowed it before. So what's new in this ruling?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#Application_to_digital_copies

QuoteIn Europe, the European Court of Justice ruled, on July 3, 2012, that it is indeed permissible to resell software licenses even if the digital good has been downloaded directly from the Internet, and that the first sale doctrine applied whenever software was originally sold to a customer for an unlimited amount of time, as such sale involves a transfer of ownership, thus prohibiting any software maker from preventing the resale of their software by any of their legitimate owners.[5][6][7] The court requires that the previous owner must no longer be able to use the licensed software after the resale, but finds that the practical difficulties in enforcing this clause should not be an obstacle to authorizing resale, as they are also present for software which can be installed from physical supports, where the first-sale doctrine is in force.[8][9] The ruling applies to the European Union, but could indirectly find its way to North America; moreover the situation could entice publishers to offer platforms for a secondary market.

Quoting: pbThat's it, I'm telling my son right now to stop dreaming of developing games. This basically legalises keyshops and now even allowing you to sell the games you're already played and finished, if it wasn't bad enough before... Piracy killed Amiga gaming, socialism will kill PC gaming?

Can we maybe not be so dramatic? Some of us are old enough to remember that that’s how it was for the majority of video gaming’s existence. And books, DVDs, cars, etc. Sure it would be a disruptive change, but as long as it doesn’t open the door to duplication (piracy), the market can adapt. It might not be pretty for a while, but it won’t just die like that.

I think the actually big thing here is the ruling that this is an actual purchase and not just a subscription. This will hopefully put an end to the steady push on taking away control from the customers.

And I completely agree with other that stated "what took you so long"?

I'm not sure what to think of the fear for indie games. In my opinion only high volume games will have an actual secondary market that may cut into their profits. The reason why there is a crisis in the indie industry is because of the extreme market over-saturation. I mean you just can't expect that everyone was waiting for generic pixel art side scroller #6254.

Quoting: chancho_zombieThis sound really authoritarian, how can a government force a store to sell games cheaper if they don't want. That's what sounds not ethical for me. Valve or any store shouldn't be forced to sell something they don't want or don't meet their standards.

The same way it can 'force' a store to give out refunds. Is it inconvenient/costly? Probably. But otherwise it'd be impossible to change and improve our regulatory systems. And in this situation I'd argue there's a strong case of the individual's rights over that which they purchase. Also keep in mind that digital goods are still pretty new to the world, and their nature continues to change (DRM, Games-as-Service, etc), and that means our laws have to change with it.

Quoting: ShmerlHm, according to this. EU already allowed it before. So what's new in this ruling?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#Application_to_digital_copies

QuoteIn Europe, the European Court of Justice ruled, on July 3, 2012, that it is indeed permissible to resell software licenses even if the digital good has been downloaded directly from the Internet, and that the first sale doctrine applied whenever software was originally sold to a customer for an unlimited amount of time, as such sale involves a transfer of ownership, thus prohibiting any software maker from preventing the resale of their software by any of their legitimate owners.[5][6][7] The court requires that the previous owner must no longer be able to use the licensed software after the resale, but finds that the practical difficulties in enforcing this clause should not be an obstacle to authorizing resale, as they are also present for software which can be installed from physical supports, where the first-sale doctrine is in force.[8][9] The ruling applies to the European Union, but could indirectly find its way to North America; moreover the situation could entice publishers to offer platforms for a secondary market.

Again in France individually digital purchases are in legalistic limbo , and juridical limbo

A precedent needed to be set ON FRENCH GROUND .

Also the E.U ruling is nice and cute but from a juridical stand point is strictly theoretical .

While here the ruling is specifically about saying "Nooo you're not leasing anything you're selling goods and as such rules of ownership of our laws applying to cultural goods in particular do apply "

Our framework for cultural goods VS general goods is a bit peculiar . And throwing games sold on steam where they belong ( in the cultural goods ballpark ) is gonna change quite a lot in france at least .

soo i gonna make some epic accounts and then i sell the free games i got.....

For those thinking this will be a good thing for DRM-Free Gaming: I think the opposite - This will push all new commercial games to become purely rental titles, i.e. You can download the game for free, but you won't be able to play it without a subscription. DRM-Free games will just be for free gaming (i.e. where no money is paid for the game title). Commercial game developers won't be releasing DRM-Free any more.

The effect of enabling game reselling on the gaming market could lower profits for many companies to such an extent that they go out of business (bankruptcy) or there isn't sufficient profit to release game titles any more (so those developers would not even create their game titles). As the gaming market currently stands, many developers struggle to make a profit / break even - This law change would make it harder.


Last edited by g000h on 19 September 2019 at 11:10 pm UTC

Quoting: chancho_zombie

Quoting: mylkasoo i gonna make some epic accounts and then i sell the free games i got.....

another good point, we can forget about free keys!

but you could sell your games and maybe you get games cheaper

it has its pros and cons

maybe valve and co charges us for each download. 1cent/GB or sth like that


Last edited by mylka on 19 September 2019 at 11:11 pm UTC

Quoting: g000hFor those thinking this will be a good thing for DRM-Free Gaming: I think the opposite - This will push all new commercial games to become purely rental titles, i.e. You can download the game for free, but you won't be able to play it without a subscription.

I can see some publishers reacting to this, by only selling games where you can't download actual games (i.e. Stadia). Essentially DRM on steroids. And this really "fixes" their worries about illegal reselling part. Transferring something like Stadia game access is trivial and the original user loses access as soon as it's transferred.

However I don't think it fixes their worries about total number of sales going down. Imagine someone playing a game, and then selling it to others, who are buying from such people instead of the store directly. The bottom line would be less sales for the store and developers.


Last edited by Shmerl on 19 September 2019 at 11:15 pm UTC

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but games you buy on steam and other platforms aren't like real physical purchases. You are buying a licens to be able to play a certen game on steam, battle net or any other game platform. The only exception here is gog I guess. And I don't think I like to be able to buy a game from another user. Is there a discount? And why so? There is no physical damage to that licens.

So it is indeed a proper purches.... of a licens. To me this is just dump and make no sence.


Last edited by Zelox on 19 September 2019 at 11:23 pm UTC

This whole "license" thing is messed up. What you are buying are files. Something that contains digital goods. Attempts to frame it as "licensing" are just dumb methods to reduce user's rights.

However, the problem is in the nature of digital goods themselves. Once you have the result, it costs practically nothing to reproduce it. Question is, how to make this whole model sustainable. I.e. developers make a game, and they need to have certain number of sales to make profit. If this idea of reselling will make it a lot worse for them - they might go bust altogether. May be it won't though. It's up to the user, whether they'll prefer to support those developers, or buy a "used" copy (even though there is no idea of "used" in digital sense).


Last edited by Shmerl on 19 September 2019 at 11:23 pm UTC

Quoting: chancho_zombie

Quoting: mylka

Quoting: chancho_zombie

Quoting: mylkasoo i gonna make some epic accounts and then i sell the free games i got.....

another good point, we can forget about free keys!

but you could sell your games and maybe you get games cheaper

it has its pros and cons

maybe valve and co charges us for each download. 1cent/GB or sth like that

Imagine the ruling comes to effect, now only the french ppl can sell their free copies they got from humble bundle. That would really unfair.

it would be EU law, so the whole EU can resell games
i mean i also can sell my DVD, Book, or anything else

as i said.... pay for the download

i am thinking of google.... they need more money for stadia, but now i could sell all my games there and someone can play the game without giving google any money