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.
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Arehandoro Sep 20, 2019
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: ArehandoroOn Steam (and perhaps the devs) getting a chunk of resale, that's still probably less than the overhead for resales of physical goods. Consider used bookstores--people who actually have gone to used bookstores to sell them your old books* will realize that they pay diddly for them, and only partly because the thing itself is used. They pay diddly because they have to pay rent on a store and utilities and some money for themselves so they don't starve, out of the markup. Similar things are true for used clothes and other things; lots of used goods stores don't pay for the stuff at all, people just donate whatever to get it out of their way. So if Steam or whoever takes a cut of resale, that's hardly unprecedented; they're providing the infrastructure just like a used bookstore.Quoting: subQuoting: SalvatosQuoting: 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'm not yet having a position on all this yet, tbh.
Being honest, this pure digital distribution is different to what
we had back then for games or even more for the book example.
If you sell a used book, it's used - no matter how hard you try.
Those old game boxed were usually plastic sealed and you had to open them.
From my experience the cardbox boxes suffered as did the jewel case plus the CD.
All I want to say is this: Usually a used product is not mint anymore.
It shows signs of use that is represented in the price when you resell it.
This is completely gone for digital products.
You sell something that's perfectly the same as you bought it first hand.
There is no price on the consumption of the game anymore, which is what the
developer actually wants to get paid for - and that's fair, isn't it?
It's a dilemma.
Not entirely true.
When one buys a 2nd hand book, film, album or game, does the content differ? Is the content less enjoyable because the medium it comes in isn't in mint condition? In my case, I know the answer to both questions (NO).
One might decide to pay less for the state of that format but ultimately the importance here is what you do with that content. Therefore, Valve's case isn't different to existing consumer rights and market laws. Besides, let's not forget that more often that not 2nd hand books are equally, if not more, expensive that new ones in many situations AND that 2nd hand market is completely out of companies revenues. In a platform like Steam, if 2nd hand were to be enabled, they could, and they will, still control how it works getting a chunk of every sale for them as platform and for the dev. Which I believe, it should create another topic in itself.
* I very rarely do this but I have occasionally ended up with duplicates of the same book. Of course where I live, there hardly are any used bookstores any more. Rent got too high, Amazon took over, they all died except a couple legendary ones.
Totally agree with you. What I wanted to express with creating another topic, and mentioning the Steam-infrastructure case, is that we are still to see whether Steam copies could be resold elsewhere -something we can do with physical goods- and whether the devs see a portion of the sale -something they currently don't-.
Continuing with the bookstore analogy; where I live there are still several 2nd hand books though mostly people, and me, buy from online platforms. Quite sad in a way.
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: 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. 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.Until the next lawsuit. I'm not sure getting around law is quite so simple as all that.
I'm not sure you're quite getting my point on this.
My point isn't that a subscription model would be leveraged onto current games (although it isn't impossible). My point is that it will push game publishers/developers to adopt a subscription model (e.g. rent per hour) for all their new and future titles. This is something which is perfectly fine from a legal perspective, and it would allow them to get around the resale problem entirely (and not lose any profits to resale).
A subscription model like that would change the gaming industry in a big way, i.e. no DRM-Free titles from commercial developers, people who play more hours could end up paying more for the privilege. A loss of consumer ownership of the software - The software would not work if the rental wasn't paid. A subscription model is similar to a streaming model, but rather than streaming the game's video and remotely-controlling it, you still download the files and run it locally.
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ObsidianBlk Sep 21, 2019
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: ObsidianBlkI get this... and I'm not saying I don't have digital games myself, but still... I have CDs I bought in the early 90s that I can still read data off of. How many hard drives can you say the same for?
Consider yourself lucky, but don't think it's a reliable method of storage. Optical discs deteriorate with time, and are a lot more error prone than hard drives which in contrast are built to last for many years.
I'm not sure how you treat your optical media, but all I do is keep them in their cases, on a shelf, and they all still work for me. In fact, I don't think there's a single CD/DVD I've attempted to use in recent years that failed to read. No media is 100% fool proof... especially if treated roughly... but, yeah, I do not see how you think optical media is worse than hard drives. I've rarely heard of a drive lasting much longer than a decade (and, that's actually a pretty solid amount of time).
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: ObsidianBlkAlso, depending on the size of your collection (and the size of the games within your collection), that huge hard drive may still only store about a hundred or so (thinking ~50gb sized games these days).
Not all games are 50 GB. But let's say they are and let's say you have 8 TB hard drive (around $200 these days). That will fit 160 of such games? If you need more, you can get even bigger hard drives (14 TB for example), or get several. Still a lot easier than managing a whole pile of optical disks to hold the same amount of data. If you need backups, get a NAS.
So no, you don't need to give up on actual ownership. You should just use the right tools for it.
To each their own.
Your side has the downside of having to purchase the hard drives (let's go with $200 a piece) and the NAS (not always a cheap option in and of itself). Those have moving parts (unless you do SSD, but then you're driving up the cost of the drive) which I can virtually guarantee will fail at some point and then you'll need to buy replacements to get things up and running again. Furthermore, even with low power components, you are still paying money just to keep that NAS going. Not everyone has the money to run and maintain that sort of equipment. If you can, wonderful! But a solid NAS is not an inexpensive item even without hard drives, if you want it to be fast, reliable, and not need maintenance every couple of years.
My side does have the downfall of having to maintain physical objects... and if each and every one of my games were physical, that would be 150+ optical discs to have to manage. Yes, cumbersome. But my greatest expense for maintaining them is perhaps a $200 book/display case (if I want to get really fancy). Again, I have not encountered an optical disk to date that (barring it having been manhandled by children or used as a coaster) failed to read for me, including, but not limited to, a 1995 copy of Doom II for Windows 95 (23 years and still going. Not bad).
To bring this back to the original topic of this whole thread being the ability to resell your games... digital media nearly strips you of that right. You will either have to relinquish ANY chance of even being able to use that NAS for storing your games and only sell them (the license to use them, anyway) on the storefront in which you purchased them, or you will be allowed to "back them up" as encrypted data blobs which can only be unencrypted by the store front you backed them up from. Going to the argument that these storefronts can take your games away from you as they see fit (See PT), there's no guarantee that even if you backed up your game in an encrypted file, the service would allow you to unencrypt it to play again or sell if *they* no longer "have" the game. With optical media there's no such worry. Buy a game. Play it. Give it to your friend and/or sell it. It is now *YOURS* to do with as you please. The storefront, developers, publishers, etc have no control over what you do with your physical media! (BTW... yes, piracy, but that's ever present, so I'm only arguing purely legal situations).
One last thing... This is all about being able to control what you put your money into. Digital distribution is extremely convenient (and, again, I use it just as heavily as the next gamer), but you own nothing! You're not buying anything! You have no control! You can't trade it. You can't resell it. Your money goes into a hole.
And let me be clear... games are *NOT* a service! You're not renting your copy of Monopoly. You're not being told what to do with your copy of Settlers of Catan, or Magic the Gathering... why should we allow publishers to dictate that video games are really any different?
Physical games (that're not just glorified download codes) can be traded. They can be resold. There is a chance with physical media that the value (when reselling) could remain or even go up as they age (don't bank on it, but it's far more possible with physical media than digital only)!
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Quoting: ObsidianBlkQuoting: ShmerlQuoting: ObsidianBlkI get this... and I'm not saying I don't have digital games myself, but still... I have CDs I bought in the early 90s that I can still read data off of. How many hard drives can you say the same for?
Consider yourself lucky, but don't think it's a reliable method of storage. Optical discs deteriorate with time, and are a lot more error prone than hard drives which in contrast are built to last for many years.
I'm not sure how you treat your optical media, but all I do is keep them in their cases, on a shelf, and they all still work for me. In fact, I don't think there's a single CD/DVD I've attempted to use in recent years that failed to read. No media is 100% fool proof... especially if treated roughly... but, yeah, I do not see how you think optical media is worse than hard drives. I've rarely heard of a drive lasting much longer than a decade (and, that's actually a pretty solid amount of time).
Doesn't matter if your discs all still work.
Shmerl is right.
CDs and DVDs printed detoriate and should never be used as backup media.
In case of printed CDs/DVDs it's the reflection layer that detoriates.
For writable discs it's even more problematic due to the dye layer.
This is called "Disc rot".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
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Quoting: g000hYeah. Either someone will sue for the right to buy the goddamn game on the grounds that this is just the game sellers' way to avoid letting people have their normal consumer rights, or piracy will make a really big comeback, or both.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: 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. 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.Until the next lawsuit. I'm not sure getting around law is quite so simple as all that.
I'm not sure you're quite getting my point on this.
My point isn't that a subscription model would be leveraged onto current games (although it isn't impossible). My point is that it will push game publishers/developers to adopt a subscription model (e.g. rent per hour) for all their new and future titles. This is something which is perfectly fine from a legal perspective, and it would allow them to get around the resale problem entirely (and not lose any profits to resale).
A subscription model like that would change the gaming industry in a big way, i.e. no DRM-Free titles from commercial developers, people who play more hours could end up paying more for the privilege. A loss of consumer ownership of the software - The software would not work if the rental wasn't paid. A subscription model is similar to a streaming model, but rather than streaming the game's video and remotely-controlling it, you still download the files and run it locally.
I don't think it will happen. At least, not as a response to this particular event, which I am pretty sure will have less impact than many here think.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 21 September 2019 at 6:45 pm UTC
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If this goes big, we will see more subscription models happen. Ubisoft would love that, they think the future of gaming is to stream content.
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ZeroPointEnergy Sep 21, 2019
Quoting: g000hMy point isn't that a subscription model would be leveraged onto current games (although it isn't impossible). My point is that it will push game publishers/developers to adopt a subscription model (e.g. rent per hour) for all their new and future titles. This is something which is perfectly fine from a legal perspective, and it would allow them to get around the resale problem entirely (and not lose any profits to resale).Valve already says that what they currently sell is only a subscription. They explicitly did this to try to circumvent the customer rights an actual license would give us. The court in france now checked this and basically ruled that what they are doing is equivalent to a license and therefor the normal customer rights apply, which means you can sell the license.
Last edited by ZeroPointEnergy on 21 September 2019 at 8:48 pm UTC
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Quoting: chancho_zombieQuoting: Salvatosbut where does that article say that? I don't see it there nor in the French articles that I've read about this ruling. Is it just the headline?
in the headlines, but it also can be a spelling mistake.:|
Journalists does not write their own headlines, that is always done by some editor that have no real insight into what the article is about and is always just there to gather interest (aka click bait). I know many journalists (especially one who cover science) that is really mad about this but there is nothing that they can do since this is the nature of how media works.
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Quoting: ObsidianBlkI do not see how you think optical media is worse than hard drives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
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ObsidianBlk Sep 22, 2019
Quoting: subQuoting: ObsidianBlkQuoting: ShmerlQuoting: ObsidianBlkI get this... and I'm not saying I don't have digital games myself, but still... I have CDs I bought in the early 90s that I can still read data off of. How many hard drives can you say the same for?
Consider yourself lucky, but don't think it's a reliable method of storage. Optical discs deteriorate with time, and are a lot more error prone than hard drives which in contrast are built to last for many years.
I'm not sure how you treat your optical media, but all I do is keep them in their cases, on a shelf, and they all still work for me. In fact, I don't think there's a single CD/DVD I've attempted to use in recent years that failed to read. No media is 100% fool proof... especially if treated roughly... but, yeah, I do not see how you think optical media is worse than hard drives. I've rarely heard of a drive lasting much longer than a decade (and, that's actually a pretty solid amount of time).
Doesn't matter if your discs all still work.
Shmerl is right.
CDs and DVDs printed detoriate and should never be used as backup media.
In case of printed CDs/DVDs it's the reflection layer that detoriates.
For writable discs it's even more problematic due to the dye layer.
This is called "Disc rot".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
Why shouldn't my 20 year old disks count? I have several dozen optical disks, and, as said, I have yet to see a single one as unreadable and decades. I see the wiki article supplied by Shmerl, and I acknowledge it, but in it's own description... "The causes include oxidation of the reflective layer, physical scuffing and abrasion of disc, reactions with contaminants, ultra-violet light damage, and de-bonding of the adhesive used to adhere the layers of the disc together" ... so, basically normal wear and tear. That reflective layer isn't exposed to oxygen until it's outer layer is damaged, and that shouldn't happen if the disk is kept safe. Sure... shiz happens... and (to quote a quote from an article I'll supply shortly), "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everything drops to zero.", Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club... but, again, my collection has still readable disks over 20 years old. Not a single one of them has ever rotted on me (again, I just jewel case them, so no special protections). That's a LOT of evidence for me that while Disc Rot exists, it's not like suddenly, tomorrow, BAM! scores upon scores of my discs will suddenly all have Disc Rot, so long as I don't start leaving them out of there cases, or using them like coasters.
That said, look up the average life span of a hard drive...
https://www.prosofteng.com/blog/how-long-do-hard-drives-last/
https://www.recordnations.com/articles/hard-drive-lifespan/
These were quick google searches for "average life span of hard drives".
The TL;DR of it is, hard drive have an average life span of 3 to 5 years. If the alternative to optical disks is a NAS, which utilizes hard drives, I'm honestly not seeing what makes HDDs that much better. For a solid backup you would want a RAID setup (minimum of two drives). If one of those fails, you still have to buy a new HDD to reconstruct the RAID before the other HDD fails.
Now, let's take a quick look at optical media...
https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246856696_Optical_Disc_Life_Expectancy_A_Field_Report
Again, these were quick google searches for "average life span optical discs"
The TL;DR here says +R, +RW, etc, etc discs have an average life expectancy of 20+ years, while regular, factory pressed CD/DVD disks have an estimated average life span between 25 to 100 years (some estimates suggest upwards of 200 years). This even with Disc Rot as a possibility.
Finally... let's even agree with each other. DVD/CDs AND HDDs are less than ideal for long term storage... create a new physical distribution media. One of my original posts on this thread suggested an SD card-esk physical media (at least in form factor). Much smaller than an optical disk, and no moving parts like a hard drive... hell... that's pretty much the distribution model of DS games.
((NOTE: I say "google search", but I use Duck Duck Go as my search engine... if that matters to anyone))
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