Should I sell my steam account?

[akialwayz]

I planning to build a new gaming pc but I have to wait 5-6 months to have enough money for the build.I have a solid steam account with 35 games(some of them AAA and a few indies).Should I try to sell my steam account for a bit of cash which i can use towards a new pc?.IF yes,what are the risks involved and how do you suggest I do it?

P.S-Accnt started in 2015,no VAC bans or such ever

[Fasauceome]

Sell your PC games to get a gaming PC? Why exactly?

[akialwayz]

Just now, fasauceome said:

Sell your PC games to get a gaming PC? Why exactly?

for money for good hardware plus i have other platform accounts(GOG,EA,Ubisoft)

[Crunchy Dragon]

2 minutes ago, akialwayz said:

for money for good hardware plus i have other platform accounts(GOG,EA,Ubisoft)

I'd just save up some money. Suppose you wanted to play those games again, you'd end up having to make a new account and buying them again.

 

If you needed the money for something more vital, I'd be all for selling the Steam account but this doesn't make much sense to me.

[ATFink]

I don't see the point unless you'll never play those games again. You might as well wait anyways with 7nm Ryzen on the horizon.

[vanished]

Pretty sure you can't do that.

[akialwayz]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I'd just save up some money. Suppose you wanted to play those games again, you'd end up having to make a new account and buying them again.

 

If you needed the money for something more vital, I'd be all for selling the Steam account but this doesn't make much sense to me.

1 minute ago, ATFink said:

I don't see the point unless you'll never play those games again. You might as well wait anyways with 7nm Ryzen on the horizon.

 

ok thanks guys.I have decided not to sell but i'm not sure i can wait 6 month without gaming

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, akialwayz said:

ok thanks guys.I have decided not to sell but i'm not sure i can wait 6 month without gaming

If you can get into the GeForce Now beta, you could game that way.

 

I have a buddy that has a Razer Blade Stealth, no dGPU and he plays through GeForce Now.

[johnt]

Even if you were to sell, you probably won't get much for it. Maybe $20 to $50 if you're lucky. 

[LogicalDrm]

6 hours ago, akialwayz said:

ok thanks guys.I have decided not to sell but i'm not sure i can wait 6 month without gaming

 

Whats your problem part? You can very well buy in pieces to keep one time hits to your bank account minimal. Like getting GPU now and rest of platform later, depending on what the base is.

 

As said, selling account would give you such minimal price compared to its worth. As Steam, nor any other platform, does not allow account sales. And because those are very easy to set scams about. Both ways. You could be scamming buyer, and they you.

[akialwayz]

5 hours ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

 

Whats your problem part? You can very well buy in pieces to keep one time hits to your bank account minimal. Like getting GPU now and rest of platform later, depending on what the base is.

 

As said, selling account would give you such minimal price compared to its worth. As Steam, nor any other platform, does not allow account sales. And because those are very easy to set scams about. Both ways. You could be scamming buyer, and they you.

I had a decent gaming laptop but it broke(mobo) a few days ago.Fixing costs almost half of the price of lap.I have a spare macbook air from ages ago for daily browsing and some  work.I'm not gonna buy expensive laptops anymore,only pcs,but im broke af.building a R3-2200G system without a dedicated gpu will take me 4-5 months.It could take longer to find a second gpu for good deal.Anyway thats why I thought If I could sell my account i could get some money for the build.

 

8 hours ago, JohnT said:

Even if you were to sell, you probably won't get much for it. Maybe $20 to $50 if you're lucky. 

only that much?.I've seen people selling accounts with 1 or 2 AAA game and a few indie game(2-3) for 10-15USD in ebay,which made me think of selling my account.

If i'm only gonna get 20-50usd,I rather not sell

[LogicalDrm]

9 minutes ago, akialwayz said:

I had a decent gaming laptop but it broke(mobo) a few days ago.Fixing costs almost half of the price of lap.I have a spare macbook air from ages ago for daily browsing and some  work.I'm not gonna buy expensive laptops anymore,only pcs,but im broke af.building a R3-2200G system without a dedicated gpu will take me 4-5 months.It could take longer to find a second gpu for good deal.Anyway thats why I thought If I could sell my account i could get some money for the build.

 

Ok, well thats worse. I thought you had desktop with some issues only.

 

9 minutes ago, akialwayz said:

only that much?.I've seen people selling accounts with 1 or 2 AAA game and a few indie game(2-3) for 10-15USD in ebay,which made me think of selling my account.

If i'm only gonna get 20-50usd,I rather not sell

The issues is scamming part. Nobody with little experience of buying over internet isn't going to pay more than $50-70 of something they cannot verify or have some sort of insurance that they get their moneys worth. Nor should you do it unless you are sure they can't backoff with money and account in their disposal.

[akialwayz]

13 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

 

Ok, well thats worse. I thought you had desktop with some issues only.

 

T

yah I had a good gaming pc too but it was from work,had to give it back.

18 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

 

The issues is scamming part. Nobody with little experience of buying over internet isn't going to pay more than $50-70 of something they cannot verify or have some sort of insurance that they get their moneys worth. Nor should you do it unless you are sure they can't backoff with money and account in their disposal.

Thats why i came here to ask if anyone has done it or it was a good idea in general.Anyway thank you and everyone who helped and gave me advise.

[Donut417]

23 hours ago, akialwayz said:

Should I try to sell my steam account for a bit of cash which

Im pretty sure that this is against Valves TOS. https://www.geek.com/games/valve-teaches-kid-a-lesson-for-trying-to-sell-his-steam-account-1327929/

[Andreas Lilja]

33 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Im pretty sure that this is against Valves TOS. https://www.geek.com/games/valve-teaches-kid-a-lesson-for-trying-to-sell-his-steam-account-1327929/

Impossible to track if you're relatively smart.

 

Where did he post? /r/Steam? 

[corrado33]

Quote

"you may not sell or charge others for the right to use your account, or otherwise transfer your account."

 

From steam ToS. 

[Taja]

On 11/10/2018 at 12:46 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

Pretty sure you can't do that.

Why? If you buy the games, they are YOURS, so you should be able to sell them.

 

18 hours ago, corrado33 said:

 

From steam ToS. 

The steam ToS has legal weight? Because its VERY common for ToS to say things that are not constitutional.

 

Either way, if you want to sell it, just do it. Dont abide by these "rules" that try to tell you what to do with stuff YOU PAID for and therefore, own. That is one of the reasons GOG rules, ffs.

 

That being said: I dont think it is a good idea to sell it, personally I wouldnt.

[Donut417]

7 minutes ago, Taja said:

OU PAID for and therefore, own

Technically the copy right holder "Owns the software" thats how it works. You have a license to use the software thats all. 

 

While I do agree, you should be able to sell either for money or some kinda of steam credit, or trade games, they dont want you do. Remember what it took to have them offer refunds? You talking a billion dollar company with the ability to hire an entire law firm. Can the average Joe hire a Law firm? I think not. 

[Taja]

39 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Technically the copy right holder "Owns the software" thats how it works. You have a license to use the software thats all. 

 

While I do agree, you should be able to sell either for money or some kinda of steam credit, or trade games, they dont want you do. Remember what it took to have them offer refunds? You talking a billion dollar company with the ability to hire an entire law firm. Can the average Joe hire a Law firm? I think not. 

That is one of the reasons why I dont think piracy is REALLY bad. In Brazil, a few years ago, piracy was the only way to have access to a LOT of stuff. Today i like to pay for good services, but even recently I bought a game and played the pirated versiom becausr it was more convenient. Ridiculous right? But thats how things are

[vanished]

2 hours ago, Taja said:

Why? If you buy the games, they are YOURS, so you should be able to sell them.

 

The steam ToS has legal weight? Because its VERY common for ToS to say things that are not constitutional.

 

Either way, if you want to sell it, just do it. Dont abide by these "rules" that try to tell you what to do with stuff YOU PAID for and therefore, own. That is one of the reasons GOG rules, ffs.

 

That being said: I dont think it is a good idea to sell it, personally I wouldnt.

You may want to check the terms a little closer.  I don't think you actually own the games, you just have a license to use them under certain conditions, those conditions of course being the steam tos.  If they find out the account was sold they could terminate it, at which point everyone loses since the buyer would want a refund and your account will be gone.

[corrado33]

2 hours ago, Taja said:

Why? If you buy the games, they are YOURS, so you should be able to sell them.

 

The steam ToS has legal weight? Because its VERY common for ToS to say things that are not constitutional.

 

Either way, if you want to sell it, just do it. Dont abide by these "rules" that try to tell you what to do with stuff YOU PAID for and therefore, own. That is one of the reasons GOG rules, ffs.

 

That being said: I dont think it is a good idea to sell it, personally I wouldnt.

Then seemingly every "non transferable" license ever would be illegal. 

 

And yes, steam has gone after people for selling or trying to sell their account. 

[Delicieuxz]

On 11/9/2018 at 7:46 PM, Ryan_Vickers said:

Pretty sure you can't do that.

 

On 11/10/2018 at 6:46 PM, Donut417 said:

Im pretty sure that this is against Valves TOS. https://www.geek.com/games/valve-teaches-kid-a-lesson-for-trying-to-sell-his-steam-account-1327929/

 

22 hours ago, corrado33 said:

From steam ToS. 

 

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You may want to check the terms a little closer.  I don't think you actually own the games, you just have a license to use them under certain conditions, those conditions of course being the steam tos.  If they find out the account was sold they could terminate it, at which point everyone loses since the buyer would want a refund and your account will be gone.

 

You do own the games that you purchase through Steam. Australia's High Court ruled specifically on this very matter recently, and the EU top court has ruled on it, too. And the US Supreme Court has ruled that people may resell their copyrighted goods without the copyright-holder's permission.

 

The Steam ToS isn't a binding agreement. Like lots of EULAs, it's largely just noise.

 

 

In Western countries, it is pretty strongly established that people own their software and therefore the first sale doctrine applies and people may resell their software per their sole discretion.

 

If Valve choose to condition access to those purchased games on the Steam account, and the games cannot be transferred independently of the account, then it stands to reason that the account must be transferable for the sake of people being able to exercise their right to resell their games.

 

 

Australia:

 

http://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2016/2016fca0196#_Ref445465996

 

The EU:

 

EU Court: When You Buy Software You Own It
EU Court Says, Yes, You Can Resell Your Software, Even If The Software Company Says You Can't

European Court confirms the right to resell used software licences

Top EU court upholds right to resell downloaded software

 

The US:

 

US Supreme Court affirms first-sale doctrine applies to copyrighted goods, US software association throws a tantrum

 

 

So, if Valve claims you cannot transfer your account, that claim is ignorable. Also, Valve does allow the transfer of accounts in practice and also facilitates transferring them if they're asked to, such as when one person wills their Steam account to another person. The same authority of ownership that enables a person to will their Steam account to another person is the authority by which a person sells their account to another person.

[vanished]

10 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

*snip*

Has it always been like that or was this changed at some point based on these rulings?  I guess I'll have to re-read the terms again, I could swear I remember this not being the case but it has been a good 4 years now, I could easily be misremembering.  What would you say to this then:

1 hour ago, corrado33 said:

Then seemingly every "non transferable" license ever would be illegal. 

 

And yes, steam has gone after people for selling or trying to sell their account. 

Is there any recent (post-'those links') articles or evidence supporting or refuting this?

[Delicieuxz]

23 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Has it always been like that or was this changed at some point based on these rulings?  I guess I'll have to re-read the terms again, I could swear I remember this not being the case but it has been a good 4 years now, I could easily be misremembering.  What would you say to this then:

Is there any recent (post-'those links') articles or evidence supporting or refuting this?

It might claim it in the Steam Subscriber Agreement, but that doesn't make it so. The last time I read the SSA, I found a few things I don't believe hold any water. The whole thing reads like it's very amateurly-written, to me. In practice, people do transfer their accounts and some have transferred them with the assistance of Valve support. And when lawyers have been involved, such as in cases of a Steam account being entitled to another person in a will, Valve put up no challenge to the request.

 

There never has been an authoritative ruling anywhere establishing that people don't own their games or software of any type. There was corporate propaganda spread as urban myth and misrepresentation of a (as in one, AFAIK, while there were multiple rulings concluding otherwise) old court ruling that is overruled anyway by the 2013 US SC ruling.

 

 

Every single "this account is non-transferable" claim in an EULA is illegitimate. It's not illegal for a person to say whatever they want, and so I don't know if it would be called an illegal claim since EULAs aren't regarded all that seriously by courts in the first place. I can write a document claiming that I own everything - but that won't magically make it so. Likewise, a company writing "this license is non-transferable" in some document they chose to include with their software doesn't make it so.

 

Most EULA's aren't written by legal experts, but out of a monkey-see / monkey-do mentality, where people just copy what they've seen in other EULAs before and mistakenly assume they can write whatever they want in an EULA and have it count.

 

Licenses are properties. When a company sells something, including a license for something, the the item that was sold, whether it is the game or just the license itself, that item transfers in ownership to the person it was sold to. After a person sells something they no longer retain any decision-making authority over that thing to dictate whether the new owner of that thing may resell it or not. That's what the first-sale doctrine, which EU, US, and Australian courts have ruled applies to software, says.

 

https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine

 

Quote

The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy.

 

[Delicieuxz]

A lawsuit was filed in December of 2015 in France against Valve over the matter of being able to transfer games out of a Steam account for the purpose of reselling them.

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-sued-by-french-consumer-association/

 

I don't know what the status of that lawsuit currently is, and I haven't found updated news for it. Maybe I should email the French consumer rights group to ask about it.

 

The Australian consumer rights case against Valve was filed in 2014, and concluded only earlier this year with the verdict ruling in the  Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's favour and against Valve.

 

 

Since it's already granted in the EU by the highest court that people own their software and have a right to resell their software, specifically including digitally-downloaded software, people would naturally be allowed to resell their Steam-purchased games. However, Valve doesn't facilitate that right with their Steam client software. So, the lawsuit seems to be claiming that Valve must honour that right in the Steam client.

 

Valve, through Steam, is a reseller of game licenses. They don't rent them or lease them, they advertise them for sale and transfer those game licenses to person who purchases them. And the person who purchases those game licenses can also return them within the allowed return windows - which is something a person could only do if they received those game licenses in the first place.