French court rules country's Steam users can resell their games

D

Davros

Legend
About time too

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...s-countrys-steam-users-can-resell-their-games

The District Court of Paris has issued a ruling saying that French owners of digital games on Steam are permitted to resell them under EU law.

Next Inpact reports that the court ruled in favor of the French consumer interest group Union federale des consommateurs, the Federal Union of Consumers on a number of clauses including the issue of digital resales.

The Federal Union of Consumers has been pursuing Valve for several years now over numerous issues in the Steam Subscriber Agreement. This particular ruling by the French court looks at Valve's claim that consumers do not actually purchase a digital product when they buy a game -- rather, they purchase a subscription to access and use content and services on Steam. The court's ruling classifies these sales as digital licenses rather than subscriptions, thus allowing them to be resold in the same way that physical games have been resellable.

Per the court, the prohibition against digital resales violates EU laws that maintain "the free movement of goods within the Union." All goods sold within the EU must be able to be resold without permission from the person who originally sold them.

Additionally, the court says Steam's terms claim a number of other rights Valve does not actually have, including keeping wallet funds without reimbursement when users leave the platform, relinquishing responsibility if users incur harm using the platform, as well as certain rights regarding mod use, user-submitted content, and account termination. A total of fourteen clauses were determined to be unacceptable.
 
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This would extend to any of the stores.

Does anything prevent Steam from taking 30% of sales made by users to other users? Or even more if they wanted to? It would be like GameStop market, they could keep making profit from games resold.
 
That is a interesting question indeed.

Last week the EU ruled ebooks do not have to be allowed to be resold. If that ruling is anything to go buy the same would most likely apply to games as well. You'd also have to wonder if digitally purchased games have to be allowed to be resold, then how about other digitally purchased software?
 
I like that digital gets pressured more but the thing I fear is that this easily could be the prompt towards subscription services instead. But I have always been greatly annoyed that the move to digital has been 100% in favor of the companies, with us consumers getting none of the benefits.

Back in the day, you and your bro could even play different games at the same time, but Steam and the others limited it to only one person being able to play. It must really be a PITA for kids growing up today.
 
So, this should apply to the Apple Store, Google Store, EGS, GOG, etc. right?

This would also open the door to reselling Windows and every single digital app on the internet, etc. right?

This would also apply to reselling digital music and video as well right?

Reselling of physical goods makes sense because physical goods degrade over time thus giving incentive for people to buy new product which keeps companies both large and small in business.

Digital items are basically always in perfect condition and only become obsolete if the thing required to run them no longer allows them to be run.

Basically this law would put smaller developers in danger of going out of business.

This punishes small developers and not the stores that sell software.

I can already see situations where someone buys a DRM free copy of a game, and then sells it multiple times over at a reduced price. And there would be nothing a small developer or a storefront like GoG could do about it. At least currently they could potentially go after someone doing something like that as they would be an unauthorized reseller.

Meh, huge can of worms there.

Regards,
SB
 
Can the reselling adapt the DRM Microsoft originally planned for Xbox one?

So the store and the pub/dev will still get a cut every time a game was resold
 
orangpelupa said:
Can the reselling adapt the DRM Microsoft originally planned for Xbox one?

So the store and the pub/dev will still get a cut every time a game was resold
Click to expand...

There's have to be something along those lines to make something like this feasible. But then the idiotic courts may rule that since it's second hand goods that the developer and storefront can't limit how it is resold.

And this doesn't help DRM free storefronts like GoG.

Regards,
SB
 
Davros said:
Why should they?
When you sell your car should ford get a percentage? When you sell a gfx card should evga get a cut?
Click to expand...

Isn't that false equivalent, or whataboutism?

Honda didn't give your car free upgrades, new improved tires, etc for free. Honda cars also become more broken with use.

Video games may release with shitty quality, bugs, glitches, broken levels. With time, instead of becoming more broken, it become much better and may have more contents, all for free.

Even if the game doesn't get any update, at minimum, the quality will stay the same indefinitely. Sure you may need to spend extra effort (e.g. Installing dosbox) but the original product you bought is still there as-is.
 
Reselling digital games in online stores will only mean big publishers will push even harder for mtx and loot boxes if people aren't buying the full price base game as much.
 
No reason it wouldn't apply to console digital games either.
 
Davros said:
Your point is the makers of non degrading products like diamonds or certain plastic goods should get a cut of any resale indefinitely ?
Click to expand...

That is a good point indeed. The experts at the court will have many arguments from many aspects.

As game devs that care with their work probably prefers updates to be received by everybody, including those that have 2nd hand products.

On the other hand, publishers maybe prefer 2nd hand products to not be able to apply updates. To incentives buying new stuff
 
Davros said:
Your point is the makers of non degrading products like diamonds or certain plastic goods should get a cut of any resale indefinitely ?
Click to expand...

Sure, you'd have a point if games were worth hundreds of dollars each like diamonds. And if they were as rare and limited in supply as diamonds.

Plastic goods generally decay over time unless extremely well taken care of, and not that many people do that. Hence why plastic collectors items go for sometimes incredibly high prices. Also why resale value on regular plastic items are a tiny fraction of the cost of new plastic item. IE - people would rather a new perfect condition plastic item and a used plastic item in uncertain condition.

Digital goods are in permanently good condition unlike plastic items but like diamonds. Unlike diamonds they are neither rare and can be replicated indefinitely, hence why they are so much cheaper than diamonds. In most cases at the price level of commodity goods that degrade heavily over time.

Regards,
SB
 
Even when talking about for example cars, there's a drastic value decrease that happens immediately when you sign the purchase agreement. It's not just about physical degradation.
Likewise, I've sometimes tried selling Steam codes and brand new console games still in the plastic, and people do still want them to be much cheaper than buying from the store directly.

And for there to be a big used market, all of the games on sale must have been bought new in the first place. And if the sellers see that there's little competition, they'll try to take even higher prices when reselling their games.
 
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