Valve and game developers have a bit of a fight on their hands here, with a French court ruling that Valve should allow users to re-sell their digital games.
Reported by the French website Next Inpact, the French consumers group UFC Que Choisir had a victory against Valve as French courts have ruled against them on the topic of reselling digital content. From what I've read and tried to understand, the courts have basically said that when you buy something on Steam it is indeed a proper purchase and not a subscription.
Valve has been ordered to pay damages at €20K plus €10K to cover some costs. On top of that, they will also have to publish the judgement on Steam's home page (presumably only for users in France) and for it to remain visible for three months. If they don't, they will get a fine for each day of €3K. To Valve though, that's likely pocket change. The bigger issue though, is how other countries inside and outside the EU could follow it.
Speaking to PC Gamer who got a statement from Valve, they are going to fight it. Of course they will though, they could stand to lose quite a lot here and it would set a pretty huge precedent for other stores like GOG, Epic, Humble, itch and all the rest.
There's a lot to think about with this situation. Valve could end up changing the way they deal with this, just like they did with the nicer refunds option which came about after legal issues too. Imagine being able to sell and transfer a game over to another Steam user. Valve could take a cut of that most likely too.
Something to think on there is how this could affect game developers too, 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.
Interesting times.
Hat tip to Nibelheim.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
ZeroPointEnergy Sep 19, 2019
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 .
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_zombieQuoting: 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
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
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_zombieQuoting: mylkaQuoting: chancho_zombieQuoting: 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
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