Should I sell my steam account?

[Taja]

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

 

snip

thanks dude, I didnt know about that but that was my mindset. its just ridiculous to pretend your stuff is not really yours, using shady practices and bullshit terms of service. BUYING a game and RENTING a game should be (and are) two different things. if you pay for a license with a limited amount of time, then the stuff is not yours. but if you pay for the thing itself, then there should not be any doubts.

with physical goods that is really simple, so why make a mess out of digital stuff?

[Donut417]

11 minutes ago, Taja said:

so why make a mess out of digital stuff?

Because possession is 9/10s of the law. Companies figure it makes it harder to prove you own it in the court of law. Which they are right. Because besides the 1%'s who has the money to tell a billion dollar company to fuck off? You can go round and round with a company on the law, but until you show up with a lawyer whos worth a damn, nothing is going to get done. 

[jefire411]

On 11/9/2018 at 10:51 PM, Crunchy Dragon said:

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.

true, but even with 200 mbps I still get an occasional lag spike, or it would randomly just freeze for 3 seconds.

[vanished]

5 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

[...]

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.

[...]

Well that was going to be my next point - if it did actually claim you can't in the EULA, despite the fact that you can, then that agreement is illegal and the whole thing would cease to apply, which I'm sure they wouldn't want so it's odd to me companies wouldn't try harder to have realistic (enforceable) terms, and that they can get away with trying to enforce things that are illegal.

[Delicieuxz]

14 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Well that was going to be my next point - if it did actually claim you can't in the EULA, despite the fact that you can, then that agreement is illegal and the whole thing would cease to apply, which I'm sure they wouldn't want so it's odd to me companies wouldn't try harder to have realistic (enforceable) terms, and that they can get away with trying to enforce things that are illegal.

Made-up and illegitimate claims are the nature of EULA. Always have been, because EULAs were never legal documents to begin with - they were from the start publisher fantasies.

 

Here are some generally-extinct EULA claims that used to be ubiquitous:

 

This license is non-transferable

You may not reverse-engineer this software

By using this software you waive your right to sue the publisher (not valid anywhere except in the US and with some limitations)

The publisher reserves the right to change the terms at any time

 

And so many more formerly-common EULA terms that aren't anymore because it eventually became known by publishers that they're meritless.

 

The history of EULAs is one of overreaching claims of entitlement by publishers that have one by one, through the passage of time, become known to be illegitimate by basic laws shared by most countries.

 

There never was an official format for an EULA, and there never was a real cause to start making EULAs. They're just something that the industry started doing and then there was a monkey-see / monkey-do effect where everybody thought they are the thing to do and started doing them too and just writing in whatever they wanted mistakenly assuming that the publisher has some magic power to set those conditions. But, publishers nor corporations possess any law-making powers, and so all an EULA can legitimately claim is what is already established by law irrespective of whether an EULA claims it or not.

 

 

 

"This license is non-transferable" is an example of an archaic and illegitimate EULA term, and it's only still used by publishers that haven't gotten the memo that it's an invalid claim.

 

However, many publishers have gotten the memo, regarding "this license is non-transferable" and also regarding many other illegitimate EULA claims, and so an increasingly popular EULA claim is something that says along the lines of 'if any part of this EULA is deemed invalid by local law then that part of the EULA doesn't apply but the rest of it does.'

 

Steam's subscriber agreement also includes such a claim:

 

Quote

Except as otherwise expressly set forth in this Agreement, in the event that any provision of this Agreement shall be held by a court or other tribunal of competent jurisdiction to be unenforceable, such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible and the remaining portions of this Agreement shall remain in full force and effect.

 

Of course, publishers and corporations still don't possess any law-making powers, so where they are getting the authority to claim such a thing is anyone's guess. It's all made-up on the fly to sound authoritative. EULAs are primarily publisher propaganda, and don't particularly hold any weight. In many countries, an agreement that isn't presented on the outside of a package isn't legal at all.

 

And because EULAs are primarily publisher propaganda meant to invoke particular customer behaviour and to intimidate customers, to ward off potential challenges before they happen, publishers often milk them for all the psychological effect they can (because that's what EULAs are mostly about) and will often claim completely nonsensical and unequivocally invalid things and then add one of those absurd 'if any part of this EULA is deemed unenforceable by law, only that part doesn't apply' claims and then hope that it works and their invalid claims, including knowingly-invalid, will no longer threaten the integrity of the rest of the EULA, but will still accomplish a psychological effect on readers who don't know which or if any claims are invalid.

[vanished]

3 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

[...]

Of course, publishers and corporations still don't possess any law-making powers, so where they are getting the authority to claim such a thing is anyone's guess.

[...]

My understanding is that, while obviously it's not a law and breaking it is not illegal, it is a contract into which you enter when you use the product in the described manner, and so they could alter their service or sue you if you break the terms (assuming of course that it hasn't already been ruled in law that what you're doing is perfectly fine).

[Delicieuxz]

29 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

My understanding is that, while obviously it's not a law and breaking it is not illegal, it is a contract into which you enter when you use the product in the described manner, and so they could alter their service or sue you if you break the terms (assuming of course that it hasn't already been ruled in law that what you're doing is perfectly fine).

That's the publisher's preferred take on it. To what extent that's the reality is really questionable.

 

For example, some countries also don't count any agreement that isn't shown before purchasing, such as on the outside of a software package, as invalid. And some countries don't regard EULAs as anything, at all.

 

Also, I don't know if I've heard of people being legally punished for breaking an EULA term. For violating laws that exist regardless of EULAs but which EULAs include mention of, like copyright laws, yes, I certainly have. But, over violation of a claim uniquely created for an EULA? I don't know.

 

The examples of the EU and US top courts ruling against publisher / copyright-holder claims of people having to resell rights are pointedly cases of the purported authority of EULAs being refuted.

 

EU Court Says, Yes, You Can Resell Your Software, Even If The Software Company Says You Can't

US Supreme Court affirms first-sale doctrine applies to copyrighted goods, no publisher permission needed, US software association throws a tantrum

 

Those rulings resolutely declare that any 'this license is non-transferable' claims in EULAs are invalid. Those rulings confirm that publishers cannot dictate the rights of something they no longer own because they've sold it - and whether you define a software purchase as for the software itself or for a license to use it, in either case the buyer is owner over the right to an instance of software and they may resell that right to the software per their sole pleasure. You can also apply that same understanding of ownership rights to the rest of what's claimed in EULAs.

 

So, if one claim in an EULA being invalid invalidates the entire EULA, then every EULA that ever claimed 'this license is non-transferable' is completely meaningless because 'this license is non-transferable', a claimed denial of first-sale rights for the purchaser, has been ruled by the top courts for the two largest economies in the world to be illegitimate.

 

So, while you could question why a publisher would write fictional claims in their EULAs, you don't have to doubt that publishers would claim something that could undermine the integrity of their EULAs. It's fact that they do, and 'this license is non-transferable' is a perfect example of it.

[vanished]

6 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

*snip*

Alright, well for the purposes of this discussion at least I guess the answer is clear.  You can sell your account if you want, and Valve is very unlikely to do anything about it and if they tried you could take them to court and be virtually assured of victory.

[Delicieuxz]

By the way, on the topic of publishers claiming things that undermine and invalidate their EULAs, Microsoft's EULA for Windows 10 is entirely invalid, going by historical precedence:

 

A publisher is generally not entitled to be able to unilaterally change contract terms after its agreed to and have other parties to the contract still be subject to the new terms, whatever they may be.

 

Also, a publisher can't just make people's legal consumer protection rights disappear because the publisher says they do.

 

Either of those claims are invalid most anywhere in the world apart from the US where a recent court case seems to have suggested that a publisher can defer lawsuits to arbitration, with some limitations. However, putting both a claim of being able to unilaterally change license terms and that lawsuits must be deferred to arbitration has previously been ruled to effectively be a suicide-pill for EULAs:

 

How Zappos' User Agreement Failed In Court and Left Zappos Legally Naked

 

Zappos lost the lawsuit and their EULA was ruled to be invalid for multiple reasons. One of them is this:

 

Quote

The arbitration provision found in the Zappos.com Terms of Use purportedly binds all users of the website by virtue of their browsing. However, the advent of the Internet has not changed the basic requirements of a contract, and there is no agreement where there is no acceptance, no meeting of the minds, and no manifestation of assent. A party cannot assent to terms of which it has no knowledge or constructive notice, and a highly inconspicuous hyperlink buried among a sea of links does not provide such notice. Because Plaintiffs did not assent to the terms, no contract exists, and they cannot be compelled to arbitrate.

 

The same can be said of EULAs, which people generally don't read.

 

And another of the reasons why Zappos' EULA was deemed to be invalid is this:

Quote

As you can see from the screenshot snippet on the right, Zappos' terms of use says "We reserve the right to change...these terms and conditions at any time."  Zappos isn't the only website using language like this; it's ubiquitous on the Internet.  Unfortunately, despite its widespread usage, this language is toxic to a contract.

 

The court takes this amendment power to its logical conclusion.  If Zappos can change the terms at any time, then it can change the arbitration clause at any time.  Thus, citing to a long list of cases, the court says that such unilateral power to change the arbitration clause makes the clause "illusory"--and thus unenforceable.

 

And that leads to where Microsoft's Windows 10 EULA is therefore also invalid for the same reason. Both of these next 2 quotes are from the most recent revision of the Windows 10 EULA:

 

Quote

By accepting this agreement or using the software, you agree to all of these terms, and consent to the transmission of certain information during activation and during your use of the software as per the privacy statement described in Section 3.

 

Quote

We hope we never have a dispute, but if we do, you and we agree to try for 60 days to resolve it informally. If we can’t, you and we agree to binding individual arbitration before the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), and not to sue in court in front of a judge or jury. Instead, a neutral arbitrator will decide and the arbitrator’s decision will be final except for a limited right of appeal under the FAA. Class action lawsuits, class-wide arbitrations, private attorney-general actions, and any other proceeding where someone acts in a representative capacity aren’t allowed. Nor is combining individual proceedings without the consent of all parties. 

 

Microsoft's Windows 10 EULA claims that all lawsuits in the US will be deferred to arbitration. In the same EULA, Microsoft claims that a person agrees to having their data used according to Microsoft's extraneous-to-the-EULA "privacy statement" document. Microsoft's "privacy statement" is an ever-changing document (having been revised about once ever 2 - 3 months since 2015) that cannot possibly be an agreed-to part of the EULA unless Microsoft hold the right to unilaterally change their license terms. And if Microsoft claims to be able to unilaterally change the Windows 10 license terms, which Microsoft does by claiming that their "privacy statement" is a part of the EULA, then Microsoft is guilty of the exact same fallacy that Zappos made, which rendered Zappos' entire license agreement terms invalid.

 

And this enables people to be free of any Windows 10 EULA restriction opening up the door for people in the US to sue Microsoft. Since Microsoft's Windows 10 EULA is self-cancelling, with neither the deference to Microsoft's "privacy statement" or Microsoft's deference of lawsuits to arbitration are legally enforceable:

 

- If you're wanting to sue Microsoft in the US, just show Microsoft unilaterally constant revising of their license terms, which invalidates any right of a licenser to defer lawsuits to arbitration.

 

- If you don't agree to any part of Microsoft's "privacy statement", take note that Microsoft doesn't reserve a right to change their license terms, and that the existence of a claim of a right to defer lawsuits to arbitration invalidates any right of Microsoft to modify its license terms (and Microsoft's "privacy statement" did not exist in a familiar form when most people became owner of their Windows 10)

 

 

Also, in addition to the "privacy statement" part of the Windows 10 EULA spoiling the integrity of the whole thing, the Windows 10 EULA itself has been revised multiple times since Windows 10 released, which, for the same reason as in the Zappos case, nullifies any legal weight the entire EULA otherwise might have had. If the reasoning for the Zappos ruling holds true, then there effectively is no Windows 10 EULA.

 

 

I believe that all of this underscores the point I've made that EULAs are not serious documents - they're publisher propaganda meant to psyche out customers and invoke the type of behaviour the publisher wishes there to be. Why do publisher's write things that invalidate EULAs? I guess because EULAs don't stand on validity in the first place and so anything ventured in them by publishers is going to wind up being illegitimate in some way.

[corrado33]

If "purchased software is yours"

 

then why can I only install windows on a single computer? 

[Delicieuxz]

8 hours ago, corrado33 said:

If "purchased software is yours"

 

then why can I only install windows on a single computer? 

Because you purchased a non-reproduceable instance of a mass-produced intellectual property (IP), and not the IP itself. Therefore, you are entitled to install the one non-reproduceable instance of it that you purchased and own.

 

'This software is licensed, not sold' means both of the following things simultaneously:

 

- This software (intellectual property) is licensed, not sold

- This software (instance / copy / license) is sold, not licensed

 

Copyright law prevents you from being allowed to produce additional copies of an intellectual property that is help by someone else. And, when you buy software, you're buying a single non-reproduceable instance of the IP. It is exactly the same with software as it is with physical goods.

 

When you buy clothing, shoes, a car, a toy or tool, you aren't buying the intellectual property for those mass-produced goods, but you are buying the specific instance of those things that you picked up in the store or ordered online. You are the sole owner of that instance and may do whatever you like with that instance. However, you may not duplicate (except as a backup for yourself) and sell copies of that instance because the distribution rights for that IP belong to the copyright-holder.

 

If you purchase one copy of software, then you have one copy of the software to install. Same as if you purchase one copy of a car make and model, then you have one copy of that car make and model to drive, to use, and to resell.

[Guest]

Steam can ban you & your old account. 

 

Also the buyer could just hijack your account & refund the money. 

You probably won’t get much.