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

[kv]

Just remember Microsoft already pitched a concept of 'Digital trade-in' way back when the Xbox One was launching. So this concept is not new. 

 

https://kotaku.com/you-will-be-able-to-trade-xbox-one-games-online-micros-509140825

 

Digital is not special when it comes to a consumer good. 'Wear and tear' seems like an excuse not to give back some overdue consumer rights that have been eroded over time

[Donut417]

15 minutes ago, kv said:

Just remember Microsoft already pitched a concept of 'Digital trade-in' way back when the Xbox One was launching. So this concept is not new. 

 

https://kotaku.com/you-will-be-able-to-trade-xbox-one-games-online-micros-509140825

 

Digital is not special when it comes to a consumer good. 'Wear and tear' seems like an excuse not to give back some overdue consumer rights that have been eroded over time

Now you getting in to trade ins vs Sale of goods. To me they are not the same. A trade in would mean Valve would be buying the game back and giving you some credit. A full sale would mean your actually selling it to another person. 

 

Also yes digital is special. Because with physical copies you have an indication from the condition on how much the game is worth. With digital is not clear how the game depreciates in value. If your trading it in to Valve, then they will come up with a price. But private sales it becomes a challenge. Because you know people will want to get as much money as they can. So what you going to get a $1 discount on it being used? Then theres the matter on how you get paid. Is it going to be Cash or Credit to your Steam account? 

 

On 9/24/2019 at 3:42 PM, Thaldor said:

Do you own the game when you bought the game from credit card fraud seller from G2A? Do you own the game when you bought the game from some other shady dealer from G2A?

These are technically legal keys. Though how they are selling them are not exactly as Valve intended. My guess is most of these "Cheap" keys are from regions where the game is very cheap. Valve will just region lock the fuck out of the Keys from now on. Making so you can only use keys from your region. 

 

On 9/24/2019 at 3:42 PM, Thaldor said:

hould you be able to sell basicly that old-school "pirated" game (bootlegged or however you remember the time when piracy was buying/selling physical clones)?

Never seen pirated games thru Steam or was able to activate a pirated game thru my Steam account. 

 

On 9/24/2019 at 3:42 PM, Thaldor said:

Should you be able to sell the CSGO from the account which you used to cheat and got VAC banned? Or the tenth VAC banned burner account for CSGO?

This one is a bit hairy. Part of me says No. Because if you cheat your a jack ass and should not be able to make your money back. BUT technically it is their game to sell. VAC bans are account based not game based. 

[Augustin]

right now i see a software license as like a ticket at a fair ground. You pay once and you get to go around the haunted house over and over again until you leave. You cannot go and sell your ticket to your neighbour even though you could have gone for more rides. I would like to see more liberty to the games market. I am not a stake holder. I am not a IP holder. I am also not an investor. The industry right now is being realistic in making sure their investors get their money. ideologically, it conflicts and brings up some hypocrisies with my understanding of free markets, so i am internally conflcited on this issue.

[Thaldor]

39 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

These are technically legal keys. Though how they are selling them are not exactly as Valve intended. My guess is most of these "Cheap" keys are from regions where the game is very cheap. Valve will just region lock the fuck out of the Keys from now on. Making so you can only use keys from your region. 

 

Never seen pirated games thru Steam or was able to activate a pirated game thru my Steam account.

G2A has been quite salty subject because while there is legal keys on sale, there is also a ton of "pirated" keys (bought with stolen credit cards, credit card frauds as bought with CC and then cancelled the transaction but still got the key, just straight out frauds as in the key never existed but the seller is more than happy to take your money and so on, not a new subject). Can't say in which numbers but at least it seems to be more like buying a game from flee market and while most of them are legal there's always good chance that they are not legal.

 

Quote

This one is a bit hairy. Part of me says No. Because if you cheat your a jack ass and should not be able to make your money back. BUT technically it is their game to sell. VAC bans are account based not game based. 

It's not really a secret that many CSGO and whatever cheaters and lootbox hunters have multiple Steam accounts and when one gets VAC banned they just move their inventory to next one and continue. So far the only downside has been that they must have bought the game for every account (in case of CSGO at least) and being able to sell their game that would basicly mean that there isn't any downsides what to they are doing. They could just restrict VAC banned accounts from selling games, which actually would be ok, except there would still be people arguing on ownership and bla bla bla (getting VAC banned is kind of hard to do without cheating and even while cheating it's not certain that you get VAC banned).

[Pauleft]

Moving to France

[kv]

On 9/26/2019 at 7:48 AM, Donut417 said:

Now you getting in to trade ins vs Sale of goods. To me they are not the same. A trade in would mean Valve would be buying the game back and giving you some credit. A full sale would mean your actually selling it to another person. 

 

Also yes digital is special. Because with physical copies you have an indication from the condition on how much the game is worth. With digital is not clear how the game depreciates in value. If your trading it in to Valve, then they will come up with a price. But private sales it becomes a challenge. Because you know people will want to get as much money as they can. So what you going to get a $1 discount on it being used? Then theres the matter on how you get paid. Is it going to be Cash or Credit to your Steam account? 

 

The value of a 'used' key is to be determined by the buyer and seller. No different to any other transaction of this nature. (Heck one could argue certain versions of a game could be considered a 'condition'). Either way, I can transfer my Windows key to another user's computer as part of a private transaction. No one bats an eye.

 

You bring up a good point about how the sale is transacted - preferrably there should be a way to 'cash-out' and not have the credit be limited to the Steam/MS/PSN/Nintendo/Epic store.

[kilgore_T]

i wonder if in the future i will be able to go into used game store and next to the 1000s of used console games on disc i will be able to buy a slip of paper with the serial code for a used digital game inside...steam killed off the second hand pc games market maybe this will rejuvenate it

 

 

[Andrijaaa]

Since I'm also from that particular small country(Croatia) but now live in Germany for few years. I know the difference between Croatian and Germans Netflix, and the difference is big.

 

That Steam BS about "merely subscribing" to the games library is complete BS since you're paying the retail price for what? They should then put significantly lower price on the games and tell everyone that the whole time they didn't actually own the games but just subscribed to them.

 

And again, Paypal, you should have at least 3 - 4 Paypal accounts with credit card from 3 - 4 different countries to be able to spend money?

 

It sucks that everything is geo-blocked inside EU.

[Anomnomnomaly]

On 9/20/2019 at 12:54 AM, MadDuke said:

(I know this is boring for most of you, but I live in a small country called Croatia and would like not to have the need to fire up my VPN to get the same content and/or services as someone else). 

 

 

I'd really like legislation that prohibits companies blocking people with a VPN from watching their content... I'm in the UK, I pay for UK services I use a VPN service based in the UK... I am unable to watch UK based services such as Netflix/Prime Video or BBC iplayer because I am in the UK, using a UK based VPN service.

 

That kind of bullshit is why people pirate stuff... and why I'm probably going to cancel my TV license altogether. I'm paying £160 a year to not be allowed to watch UK broadcast TV.

[MadDuke]

1 hour ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

 

 

I'd really like legislation that prohibits companies blocking people with a VPN from watching their content... I'm in the UK, I pay for UK services I use a VPN service based in the UK... I am unable to watch UK based services such as Netflix/Prime Video or BBC iplayer because I am in the UK, using a UK based VPN service.

 

That kind of bullshit is why people pirate stuff... and why I'm probably going to cancel my TV license altogether. I'm paying £160 a year to not be allowed to watch UK broadcast TV.

Actually. Since you are in EU (still, no pun intended), they have no right to block you. 
How do they know that you are using a VPN?  Who gave them permission to gather that information from you?  You surely didn't. And according to GDPR that information can not be interpreted as necessary for the functioning of their service. 

Sometimes I wish we had a litigation "culture" like which exists in US for these kinds of cases. 

[2DollaKoala]

The worst part about today's digital economy is what happens to out stuff when we die. I think laws like this are a good first step but there's still more work to be done. Apple, Amazon, Blizzard, Google, Microsoft, Steam, you name it. If they sell you digital content, the license we have to agree to says it is not transferable. No even after you die. So if you want to pass on your digital library to your kids, you better make sure all of your account information and passwords are given to your family. Without that information, these companies won't give next of kin access to their account.

 

Amazon used to do it, I helped a few people who's spouses passed away and a simple call to Amazon support transferred everything they bought to the spouses account.... but that changed by the time my parents passed. So now I have my dad's Kindle with about 150 books on it and if that thing dies, all those purchases vanish like a Thanos snap.

 

This should be criminal. Everything else we buy can be passed on to someone else after we die. Digital purchases should be treated the same way. Some sort of licensing dispute between two studios shouldn't mean we lose access to a purchase either. I've bought albums on iTunes only to discover that one or two songs from the album are no longer available. It's BS! We should have the right to this property. Our purchases shouldn't be beholden to the whim of the provider. What's mine should stay mine unless I want someone else to have it.

[MadDuke]

23 hours ago, 2DollaKoala said:

The worst part about today's digital economy is what happens to out stuff when we die. I think laws like this are a good first step but there's still more work to be done. Apple, Amazon, Blizzard, Google, Microsoft, Steam, you name it. If they sell you digital content, the license we have to agree to says it is not transferable. No even after you die. So if you want to pass on your digital library to your kids, you better make sure all of your account information and passwords are given to your family. Without that information, these companies won't give next of kin access to their account.

 

Amazon used to do it, I helped a few people who's spouses passed away and a simple call to Amazon support transferred everything they bought to the spouses account.... but that changed by the time my parents passed. So now I have my dad's Kindle with about 150 books on it and if that thing dies, all those purchases vanish like a Thanos snap.

 

This should be criminal. Everything else we buy can be passed on to someone else after we die. Digital purchases should be treated the same way. Some sort of licensing dispute between two studios shouldn't mean we lose access to a purchase either. I've bought albums on iTunes only to discover that one or two songs from the album are no longer available. It's BS! We should have the right to this property. Our purchases shouldn't be beholden to the whim of the provider. What's mine should stay mine unless I want someone else to have it.

Wow.  Really?  

Here in EU. You basically inherent everything (good and bad, unless you refuse and get nothing of both). if anyone has an EULA policy that says no it goes automatically against the law and is basically void. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 9/20/2019 at 7:51 AM, The Benjamins said:

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

The thing is, Valve's argument in France was that the market is 100% subscription-based, so laws about goods don't apply. In other words, that particular consequence of Valve being wrong can only happen if Valve is indeed wrong - Valve needs to defend in its appeal the position that, in fact, you are not purchasing a license in any case when you use Steam. 

 

 

On 9/20/2019 at 3:25 PM, dalekphalm said:

I don't see it as inherently bad, but I do see it as extremely complex, and there may be a considerable number of downsides that people aren't considering or are dismissing.

Dead games Paladin Accursedfarm's Ross Scott has a very interesting comment on this court ruling, highlighting a crucial point of the court's line of thought: the nature of games as goods. It has far reaching consequences beyond the existence of a used market, and while he comments on that, his focus (as always) is in games' preservation. He has made a compelling case in the past as to why games as a service vs games as a good is crucial for that discussion, and the assertion by a court that games are indeed goods could provide a cornerstone for future litigation on that front.

Source:

Spoiler

 

 

[Delicieuxz]

I don't see any inherent problems with being able to resell your digitally-purchased games. The concerns I see expressed about the threat to developers, especially indie and small-title developers, seem to me like they're FUD, and are dependent upon a view where it's assumed that being able to resell games means that the platforms, publishers, and developers are not making profit off of the 2nd-hand sales market. Well, that's an impossible scenario.

 

 

First, every transaction that involves selling a game that's currently registered on a platform necessarily has to use that platform's services in order to be transferred, and likely also for the listing and the payment processing. And that's just for the sale of the game. Then, if the sold game key is specifically for that same platform (as is the case with purchased new games), then whoever purchases that game has to use the platform's services in order to activate the game with that platform to be able to download and play it.

 

This means that platforms can charge listing, payment processing, transfer, and 2nd-hand license activation fees. And then platforms can split the revenue from those fees with games publishers along the same lines that new game sales are split with publishers. A 2nd-hand market can be done in a way that it's a guaranteed revenue stream for platforms and publishers, and can also be done in a way that pretty much maintains their current revenue streams.

 

The possible points to charge for fees that I've thought of are:

 

- listing fee

- payment processing fee

- game account de-activation fee

- 2nd-hand license activation fee on a different account

- a fee to cover maintenance of a registry to keep track of who owns and is entitled to have on their account which game

 

Things like listing and payment processing fees are just standard for marketplace services (eBay, Amazon, Paypal). The other listing fees are specific to a 2nd-hand games market, and as they're services that require development and maintenance costs, a provider of those services is entitled to recoup their expenses and likely to charge extra for providing the service - just like with every other service.

 

A 2nd-hand license activation fee to play a game on a different account is not a new concept. It has been considered by companies before:

 

https://www.ea.com/news/online-pass-for-ea-sports-simulation-games

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/thq-to-charge-second-hand-users-for-online-play

 

And some companies have implemented the idea:

 

https://www.cinemablend.com/games/Xbox-One-Used-Game-Activation-Fee-52-56040.html

https://www.engadget.com/2013/06/06/xbox-one-used-games-always-online/

 

 

22 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

 

 

 

Ross' video questions whether platform fees for 2nd-hand game transactions would run afoul of anti-trust laws in the wake of the Paris High Court's ruling. That concern misses an important detail.

But first, let me say that a company is entitled to charge fees for the development and usage of its services. A company cannot be forced to be a charity, and doing that would be paramount to state seizure of the company or an aspect of the company and turning it into a public resource, which only the corporation pays for. It would be like slavery of corporations.

 

Now, the important detail which that concern of platform fees running afoul of the Paris court's ruling misses is that not all of the prospective fees are related to selling a game. A 2nd-hand activation fee is entirely unrelated to the ability to sell a game, and comes after a game has already been sold. That technical difference is what law is about.

 

It is necessary for a person to activate their 2nd-hand license with a platform before they can possibly use it with that platform. And if 2nd-hand games are like new game purchases are, then a purchased 2nd-hand game could be activated only with the specific platform its key is for - which means that the platform a 2nd-hand game is purchased from will necessarily also be the same platform that it gets re-activated with. That means the platform which sold the game and likely made profit on the selling of that 2nd-hand game also gets to make profit on the account activation of that 2nd-hand game.

 

In the case of a 2nd-hand digital games market, it is literally unavoidable that a platform's services be used. Therefore, it is also unavoidable that platforms will be a part of any 2nd-hand digital games market. And they could charge fees for their involvement in the market.

 

 

Setting minimum fees, whether it's just for 2nd-hand game activation with a platform, or for all of listing, payment processing, transferring, and 2nd-hand game activation, will protect indies and small-title developers, and can easily make it so that it's cheaper to buy those games today brand new from "grey market" game license resellers than it would be to buy them through a 2nd-hand digital games market.

 

Fees could be hard-set, or they could scale as a % or a tier bracket according to the listing price or the current non-sale retail price for a game. There could be minimum fees. And additional fees could be justified by platforms having to maintain a registry of who sells what, who is lawfully entitled to activate which license, and that registry might need to be one that is shared by all digital games platform hosts, to prevent fraud, theft, duplicate activations (though, they already can't happen when a key can only be activated on a specific platform), and to settle disputes.

 

So, platforms, publishers, and indie developers can all be protected in the face of a 2nd-hand games market, and can make a 2nd-hand games market lucrative for themselves. I don't see the Paris High Court's ruling as reckless, clumsy, or not thought-out by the court. I instead view a lot of the responses to the ruling as being knee-jerk reactionary alarmism which is hyping up fears ahead of examining what the realistic changes to the market are likely to actually be.

 

 

 

 

There are some arguments I've seen people bring up that makes digital goods seem like they're a whole new concept and are different than physical goods because they don't degrade, but they're actually neither new concepts or different in terms of degradation to property that has existed for centuries. And so here are refutations for some common misconceptions about digital goods and ownership concerns:

 

 

1.

The concept of non-degrading property is not new:

 

The first patent for an industrial invention was handed out in 1421 in Italy (1790 in the US). Since then, individuals and businesses have been benefiting massively from possessing property that doesn't degrade. IPs, copyrights, patents, are non-degrading property. Record labels have non-degrading digital masters. Book publishers have non-degrading manuscripts.

 

Non-degrading property never was a complaint or cause to claim that the law has been thrown for a loop so long as it was businesses and copyright-holders who were gaining more and more benefits over the decades from having non-degrading property. The idea that non-degrading property changes everything suddenly in 2019, only when consumers have suddenly realized that it can mean something for them, too, suggests to me there is unfair play at hand and that we are witnessing the expression of a conditioning of the masses by big businesses who have long acted as though the law is their private tool to be used only to set themselves up as evermore-domineering masters over consumers, who they see as their subjects. It's like the "consumer" people are imposing it upon themselves at this point after having been conditioned that they are just corporations' resources.

 

Regardless, non-degrading property isn't new. Businesses and copyright-holders have been benefiting themselves by it for centuries. So, the concept when applied to consumers shouldn't cause any hysteria or confusion. It's old-hat.

 

Regarding degradation, though, computing standards mean that an older program degrades in functionality as hardware and software standards evolve. Also, the appreciability of older software products changes for the market at-large due to new developments that make the older products seem more archaic, limited, unappealing graphics-wise... not to everybody, but to a huge chunk of the mainstream market. So, there is degradation with software products, but it is manifested in unique ways - unique ways that physical products often escape. So, it's like there the degradation merely expresses itself through different avenues.

 

 

2.

Regarding the US legal wording which says that the first-sale doctrine (which stipulates that people are entitled to resell their copies of copyrighted works) applies to "instances", and the idea that there is something about a digital copy being non-degrading that makes it not an instance or a "particular" copy:

 

So... when George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, he didn't actually lose his right to distribute Star Wars and can right now sell Star Wars again, and again, to other companies who can then make their own Star Wars movies? Of course not. There is nothing about a property being hard-physical or intangible that decides whether the first-sale doctrine applies to it.

 

And there has never been a qualifier that each copy has some unique flaw or condition to make a copy a "particular" copy. Each copy that exists is a particular copy, and each copy that a person owns is a particular copy. Does the significance of having access to one copy versus another diminish when each copy is a perfect replication of the others? Yes, in a good way. But that's neither here nor there to the law's reason for stating that the first-sale doctrine applies to particular copies, and I think that detail actually has nothing to do with the identification of particular copies and doesn't factor into the first-sale doctrine. The particular copies are the definitive instances that belong to specific people.

 

 

3.

Regarding the idea that software might be different because it is not materialized, or is intangible:

 

A thing's physical or non-physical state doesn't determine whether it can be owned, sold, and purchased. What does everybody think Intellectual Property is? IPs are not really or necessarily materialized but they are still transferable property and goods when they are sold in transactions. What do people think a patent is? A copyright? Just like with non-degrading property, intangible property has existed for centuries, and even millennia.

 

Further, data has even more presence than something like a patent or copyright. Any defined data, such as a software program or any particular function of a software program, has a defined form to it. And when it's stored on any storage medium, it takes up real space and technological capacity. It has size, it has a specific form, it takes up presence, and it has specific identifiable capabilities and features. When it is being transferred between end-points in a network, it exists as particles, and particles have physical properties. A computer program is a defined form of data, and data has quantifiable presence.

 

And if data suddenly is different than hard-physical property and so it can't really be said there's ownership of it, then how does the publisher own it? And then how can people be arrested and charged for hacking of a state's computers and possession of their data and secrets? Obviously, in pre-existing law, data property is treated no different than a hard-physical property where it's the state, or big corporations, or somebody with a lot of money, who is the victim and is seeking action against whoever infringed upon their data property. The idea that it's different exclusively for the lowly peasant consumers is Stockholm Syndrome, and it means that our societies are not ones of justice and equality, but which are made up of different rules for different castes.