consumer rights Steam Users Have the Right to Resell Their Digital Games Rules French Court

[mr moose]

It's already law in Australia, that's the whole reason they classify software as a product not a service.  It just hasn't been challenged yet.

[mr moose]

Also given that this is now law in 2countries, it might open up the way to steam operating what is effectively a kinguin or g2a that is no longer a "grey area".

 

I could be the start of something really exciting in the world of digital products.

 

 

[Thaldor]

10 years ago this could have been a good ruling overall, but today just no. I can just see big publishers going crazy once again and either making their games "shells" for which the whole content must be bought as a DLC or just abandoning PC completely. Biggest monetary hit would be on the indie side where sales are not that big and quite many just buy the game to because it looked like interesting and was cheap and after playing it for few minutes forget it.

 

And yeah, we did the trade of physical games to digital and didn't care about the ownership because convenient. Anybody else remember StarForce and other crap game publisher came up with before Steam pushed through? I'm not defending Steam but we already know that publishers will do batshit crazy stuff and they are not afraid to fuck things up million times and couple more as bonus if they are not given their "opportunities".

 

And personally,I couldn't give a crap. I have a lot of games I could trade away, but I'm too lazy to do that and most probably their "value" is going to be somewhere around 5 and 20 cents, so it's not worth it. Just like I have quite collection of PS2 and Xbox360 games just because carrying them to Gamestop would have been a bigger job than just throwing them into a box and taking that box to my storage and forgetting it there, not to mention that probably 50-80 games wouldn't probably given me money to even buy one used game. And the same would happen even if there wasn't wear-and-tear, people would put their games up to the sale and sooner or later people would start to drop the prices to get their copies sold and after a while some games would be in the same situation as 99% of the trading cards and other shit Steam Marketplace is filled and it takes more effort to put things to sale than it yields in money.

[TechyBen]

8 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

This is going to create interesting situations, with people buying a game in a cheap region and selling it with a profit to someone in a more expensive region.

 

Games as a Service.

Though to be fair, this was always going to happen. You cannot invent free energy, then expect no one to use it. You cannot expect no one to copy a copyable thing.

I literally have purchased games I don't want to play, but do want to support the developers/programmers/etc. Like, I value and return their effort where I see it worthwhile to. But also don't expect everyone to pay for every drawing/musing/art/hobbycraft I ever do.

 

Balance is needed. But in such a massive world, finding it is near impossible.

[JupiteL]

At best we'd have Steam market for used games and the price would be adjusted to region pricing. Honestly, living in a country where if the price is the same as in the US, I'd have less than half games in my library.

[Rusted]

Didn't Microsoft go to court in some EU country over reselling their licenses. They lost that case year's a go, so it's quite odd that Valve would think their case ends differently.

 

Now Microsoft has office with yearly licence that bypasses this, but steam has only onetime payments for games so I would think there is no change on the ruling.

[minibois]

1 hour ago, porina said:

Even in physical sales where you can trade disks easily, there were some ways to devalue used sales. I forgot which version it was, but it was one of the previous Gran Turismo series. When you get the game new, you get a one-time use key that unlocks some DLC. That gets activated on your account. If you later sell the physical game, the buyer would not get that bonus DLC. It doesn't stop the game from being resold, but if buying used you get a little less stuff than if you bought new.

 

Also note it is typical for game pricing to drop over time anyway. Pre-order or get it on launch day, you're paying max $. Give it a couple years, it'll probably be in the budget section or even given away on Humble Bundle.

The Last of Us on PS3 did  a somewhat similar thing, except this one-time use key was for the online aspect of the game. (Which wasn't really a required part of the game.. But still something you would be missing)

[LeSheen]

17 minutes ago, minibois said:

The Last of Us on PS3 did  a somewhat similar thing, except this one-time use key was for the online aspect of the game. (Which wasn't really a required part of the game.. But still something you would be missing)

there are some games that limit multiplayer in this way.

[The Benjamins]

This will push the market to go to subscriptions over buying licenses.

[Origami Cactus]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

It seems like "people these days" have been so used to having their freedoms removed and restricted, and constantly being kicked by large companies that whenever something positive happens for consumers, they are more worried for the companies than themselves.

"Oh no, I'll regain some of my lost freedoms! How will this affect the bottom line of massive mega corporations?".

4 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I'm surprised so many people are seeing this as a bad thing.  It's more freedom for consumers, and while it must be noted that it's not a new freedom but simply regaining one we used to have in the physical days, it is what it is. 

 

How can you not see this as anything other than a bad thing?

 

So now instead of paying 60$ for one time purchase for a game, game developers will go over to subscription models, so now you have to pay every month, or make the base game cheaper, but all the content is inside DLC's. More microtransactions etc. How is that good for you as a consumer?

[Donut417]

42 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

subscription models

Why? Devs have people buying and selling used games on consoles all day long. Its the same thing, just digital. 

 

The hardest part is going to be pricing the digital goods. The only way I see this working as well is private sales. What I mean by that is I sell my game to another person, not back to valve. So a market place will need to be setup for there sales. Where you input the price you would like and people can just buy them, just like buying a key off Amazon or any other site that sell Steam keys. 

 

The issue will be DLC as well. Will this be sold with the base game or as a stand alone product? 

 

Hell I would unload a good portion of my Steam library if I could. Mainly because I dont play a lot of the titles and secondly I now am a Linux user and many of those titles dont work on Linux. 

[Sauron]

11 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

This is going to create interesting situations, with people buying a game in a cheap region and selling it with a profit to someone in a more expensive region.

 

As you can do with non digital goods.

[Jito463]

The courts shouldn't have ruled on this, as it places an undue burden specifically on Steam.  If France wanted to make this happen, it should have been a law that applied to all services, not just one digital distribution service.  Even then, Steam is merely selling software that other companies have made, so how would these deals work with the publisher of the software in question?  There's a reason why our courts in the US only apply the law, not create it, activist judges notwithstanding (but there is a recourse for that, as well).

4 hours ago, Thaldor said:

I can just see big publishers going crazy once again and either making their games "shells" for which the whole content must be bought as a DLC or just abandoning PC completely. Biggest monetary hit would be on the indie side where sales are not that big and quite many just buy the game to because it looked like interesting and was cheap and after playing it for few minutes forget it.

One change I could potentially see, is some publishers specifically blocking selling their games in France.

3 hours ago, Rusted said:

Didn't Microsoft go to court in some EU country over reselling their licenses. They lost that case year's a go, so it's quite odd that Valve would think their case ends differently.

The difference there is that MS was both the developer and the publisher of the software in question, Valve is merely the distributor, except in the case of their own first party titles.

[Thaldor]

5 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

One change I could potentially see, is some publishers specifically blocking selling their games in France.

Or make "French Edition", just like they have done German, Australian and other versions to get their game to their markets without R18 or just being banned because reasons spreading from "Lily here has nipples" to "red blood means too much violence". French version would just be a game without content and the content is either bought as DLC or that DLC is included in the original purchase. But I expect companies like EA, Ubisoft and Activision to fuck things up nicely and probably then I will be even surprised how well they managed to fuck things up.

[spartaman64]

this wont affect AAA devs that much as they make most of their money in the opening few days of a game release but indie devs that rely on the game revenue for a longer period of time might be forced to add microtransactions into their games. the problem with digital products is that they dont degrade over time. you have an incentive to buy games on discs new because if you buy one used it might have scratches etc and wont last as long but theres no reason to get a new game key over a used game key

[TVwazhere]

6 hours ago, Humbug said:

When I spend money on a game I would rather that money goes to the dev, than to the last player... I'm worried about devs losing revenue because of a 2nd hand market.

This already happens with CD/physical copy purchases. I dont see this being a big impact for most dev's bottom lines. I'd imagine the bigger AAA games are the more likely ones to be resold anyways (IE: old copies of Call of Duty or Battlefield) rather than smaller indie games.

[jiyeon]

So now, my hoarding of games that I bought on sale finally have a use!

[spartaman64]

9 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

This already happens with CD/physical copy purchases. I dont see this being a big impact for most dev's bottom lines. I'd imagine the bigger AAA games are the more likely ones to be resold anyways (IE: old copies of Call of Duty or Battlefield) rather than smaller indie games.

the thing with physical copies is that there is incentive to buy it new as the disc might be damaged and you have to wait for and maybe pay for shipping. this isnt a concern with a game key 

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, Jito463 said:

The courts shouldn't have ruled on this, as it places an undue burden specifically on Steam.  If France wanted to make this happen, it should have been a law that applied to all services, not just one digital distribution service.  Even then, Steam is merely selling software that other companies have made, so how would these deals work with the publisher of the software in question?  There's a reason why our courts in the US only apply the law, not create it, activist judges notwithstanding (but there is a recourse for that, as well).

 

One change I could potentially see, is some publishers specifically blocking selling their games in France.

 

The difference there is that MS was both the developer and the publisher of the software in question, Valve is merely the distributor, except in the case of their own first party titles.

The law doesn't just apply to Steam, it applies in general. It's just that Valve got sued for it first. But I agree that there are a lot of questions about how this will work in practice.

 

It would not be legal to block sales in just France, due to EU legislation they'd have to block EU-wide. Which is too much money to miss out on.

[SOLO_AVENGER]

The only people I see losing from this are the developers. Valve or other companies can just take commission from the sale of used digital games, but the developer won't get any money from the sale of used digital games.

[yolosnail]

7 hours ago, Humbug said:

When I spend money on a game I would rather that money goes to the dev, than to the last player... I'm worried about devs losing revenue because of a 2nd hand market.

When I spend money on a phone I would rather that money goes to Apple than the last owner... I'm worried about Apple losing revenue because of a second hand market

 

See how silly that sounds when we change one little thing? What we have to remember is game Devs are just businesses too. They aren't there to be your friend, they're there to take your money.

[spartaman64]

20 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

When I spend money on a phone I would rather that money goes to Apple than the last owner... I'm worried about Apple losing revenue because of a second hand market

 

See how silly that sounds when we change one little thing? What we have to remember is game Devs are just businesses too. They aren't there to be your friend, they're there to take your money.

like it said it depends on the dev. AAA devs are not going to be that affected by this but it would put some indie devs out of business

[Kisai]

15 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

This is going to create interesting situations, with people buying a game in a cheap region and selling it with a profit to someone in a more expensive region.

 

This is why they geolocked Steam in the first place. If you have a US address you have to pay in USD, if you live in Canada, you have to pay in CAD. 

 

I used to just buy the games in USD to begin with. So I've bought less since, since CAD prices end up being inflated relative to the USD prices. I'm sure the issue is worse between EU and AU since VAT/GST-included-in-price is something CA/US doesn't do.

 

The most likely situation here is further geolocking by currency. If you buy a game in the EU region, then you can only resell the game in the EU region. But it doesn't solve the problem since there are places, even in north america where the purchase power parity is completely lopsided. Digital goods shouldn't have this at all, there's no distribution or manufacturing cost to justify a different price for any country.

 

Just sell everything advertised in USD, have the ability to pay in USD, your local currency (steam does the currency conversion), or the currency of the publisher/developer (to avoid currency conversion twice.) If a publisher wishes to undermine their own prices for a specific region then customers in that region will be required to use a local credit/debit card (no prepaid cards) drawn upon a local bank.

 

Then if a steam subscriber has a game and they want to sell/trade it, they have to "sell" it back to Steam for a transfer code and stated price, and then the person it's sold to has to enter that transfer code, steam deducts the price as though they were purchasing it, adds it to the account, and then marks the game as "sold/removed" from the sellers account. If the game is still installed at the time, steam would prevent it from running without buying it again. It's not like this mechanism doesn't already exist for the trading cards.

 

I hope the law errs on the side of "selling without making a copy", eg, you can't simply zip the game up, DLC and all and transfer it to someone, you have to actually transfer the license, which includes all the DLC bought with it. If it sides on "a copy is a copy, regardless of tangibility" it just opens up a can of worms where someone will buy a game once from steam and then make an infinite number of copies and just modifying the games so they don't need the steam license. eBay at one point stopped allowing people to sell digital goods because they were 100% illegal, and were used as feedback farms.

[MageTank]

Interesting to see the logistics behind setting this up. I imagine Valve or the digital storefront would take a cut of the resell. I also wonder if they would cap the sell at the original MSRP of the game to prevent people from overselling or using the digital store as a way to exchange large funds to one another. It also begs the question as to whether or not the party buying the "used" game is eligible for a refund if they don't like it, akin to how it's done now with the actual storefront.

 

While the ruling itself is interesting for consumers, I imagine it's going to be an absolute nightmare to implement, and will no doubt lead to future litigation.

[TetraSky]

15 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

This is going to create interesting situations, with people buying a game in a cheap region and selling it with a profit to someone in a more expensive region.

 

And that's why we have region locking on games since a long time ago...

 

Honestly, PC games were almost never resell-able, due to the nature of game keys, DRM and online activation. It's not something that Steam came up with. For this to even work, they'd basically have to say that DRMs needs to go.