EU rules publishers cannot stop you reselling your downloaded games

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Also I can see a way that steam and the likes can put a positive spin on it by charging a service charge to sell the content that sneakily goes to the publisher.

That's how I see it playing out if anyone acts upon this (although I'm unconvinced the bigger ones will, since ultimately they'll lose out on huge amounts of revenue too). Pay two or three euro service charge - a euro for Steam, a euro for the publisher, a euro for developer. Or something along those lines.

But waiting to see how it plays out. I'm not confident it makes business sense for anyone involved. Worst case scenario some cynical upstart shows up to challenge Steam and the ilk.

humanji

Retr0gamer wrote: »

2) I think the ruling said that they have to provide a means to sell your digital content.

Hmm, it seems to say that the publisher has to provide a means to download, so Steam and the like may not have to do anything. They could possibly then stop users from being able to add games that weren't bought on their system to their games list. All speculation, or course, based on a press release I don't fully understand. Time will tell, I guess.

stevenmu

Limericks wrote: »

This will end up in higher RRP's. Meaning games will be more expensive at launch and you will have to wait for people to finish / get sick of the game to get it cheaper.

titan18 wrote: »

I dont see how this could be good, will likely drive game prices higher starting off, and probably end the likes of Steam Sales etc

No it won't. If this was a factor then digital downloads, where 2nd hand sales haven't been a factor, would already be significantly cheaper than physical copies where it is a factor. Games are sold at the highest price people are willing to pay. If anything this could lead to cheaper games because they now have to compete with 2nd hand prices.

Retr0gamer

humanji wrote: »

Hmm, it seems to say that the publisher has to provide a means to download, so Steam and the like may not have to do anything. They could possibly then stop users from being able to add games that weren't bought on their system to their games list. All speculation, or course, based on a press release I don't fully understand. Time will tell, I guess.

It will need to be tested in court as well. Some one will have to bring one of the distribution services to court over this and get a ruling. At the moment there's no incentive to do it because there's no reprecussions.

Varik

Retr0gamer wrote: »

2) I think the ruling said that they have to provide a means to sell your digital content.

There was only mention of allowing the new owner to download not making any means to sell the program that i can see in any case.

In the oracle case they are the retailers and developer, they also made the downloads available themselves.

Steam has it's own EULA that it separate to the software you bought and for the steam service, you may be able to transfer the licence but would steam be require to do anything about it.

Retr0gamer

It would need to be tested in court first but this is a very strong legal argument in favour of it.

Varik

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It would need to be tested in court first but this is a very strong legal argument in favour of it.

From what, every other possession that i own would not require the manufacturers help to sell or for any older serial key software & disc.

There is a section that does not allow a person to divide a multi user (multi program could be included) license to sell, dependant on steams and origins own licence and any current/future licences it could be worded to be a part of this.

blaa85

There won't be anymore massive steam sales if this is implemented. Buy low, sell high problems would ruin them.

Retr0gamer

Varik wrote: »

From what, every other possession that i own would not require the manufacturers help to sell or for any older serial key software & disc.

There is a section that does not allow a person to divide a multi user (multi program could be included) license to sell, dependant on steams and origins own licence and any current/future licences it could be worded to be a part of this.

I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that EULA terms and conditions don't hold any legal weight in Europe. It's meant to grant a license and that's it. Even the service charge thing I mentioned i a bit dodgy because the copyright holder has no right to profit from a private sale of a copyrighted work they have already sold. The multi user license might be a way around it but then again there's nothing stopping the user from selling all licenses at the same time without dividing them.

blaa85 wrote: »

There won't be anymore massive steam sales if this is implemented. Buy low, sell high problems would ruin them.

Rubbish. We're not all going to be millionaires buy low and selling high either.

Beefy78

Will this not just lead to an increase of things like online passes?

hooradiation

Beefy78 wrote: »

Will this not just lead to an increase of things like online passes?

I'm looking forward to how that in order to make it feasible the level of invasiveness of DRM will have to increase greatly.
Remember, this selling of licences comes with the caveat that you don't just keep a working copy for yourself.

Which should cause most of the people celebrating this to explode in confused rage.

TheDoc

Just as digital downloads were becoming more managable, cheaper and better then their bricks n mortar alternative, this ruling comes along which will probably stiffle the whole developement

le sigh

Kiith

Good interview with the head of Green Man Gaming on PcGamer now.

PcGamer wrote:

Yesterday the European Court of Justice ruled that consumers had the right to sell digital their digital games. This is something that could potentially change digital distribution forever, but how exactly? Eurogamer have been speaking to Paul Sulyok, CEO of Green Man Gaming, about what all this could mean.

The ruling states that you can sell your digital games onward, but that you must disable your own copy to do so. Currently most digital retailers have no way to do this beyond selling your entire account. Sulyok believes that companies will be forced to provide this, but only after a test case has gone to court. “There will be a first case against one of the platform holders.” He says. “The result of that is a foregone conclusion. So they will have to facilitate that.”

There’s a few potential impacts this could have on the market. With Sulyok pointing out that the current trend for short term, high discount sales is vulnerable to the emergence of a used market. A third party could buy keys in bulk during a sale, and then sell them on at a mark up once the sale has ended, undercutting the original distributor. “The classic technique of deep discount, short time limited discounts, all of that will be slightly skewed now.” he says “Because you don’t want to have a deep discounted game that can then be sold on elsewhere.”

Green Man Gaming currently allows gamers to trade in their downloaded games to get discounts on future purposes. But Sulyok points out that if Steam or Origin were to enact the same practice it would have a serious impact on his business. Again this allows third parties to game the system by taking advantage of a short term sales, then trading them in.

Gamers have grown accustomed to big Steam sales and Humble Bundles giving them cheap games in a short term window, but this ruling could threaten that practice. If putting your game in the Humble Bundle just once will grant third party distributors an infinite number of one penny copies, people might not be willing to take the risk.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/07/04/green-man-gaming-ceo-speaks-out-on-eu-digital-sales-ruling/

Raises an interesting point in that companies could buy keys in bulk during sales, and then sell them on at a profit.

Varik

One of the particulars of this was that the court decided to treat the download and the licence as one, as the program could be downloaded without the licence but not used. This was was of Oracles defences as to why first sale did not apply, but as the program was useless without the licence the court disregarded this and that the maintenance licence they sold was not a separate service but part of the product.

If the there was a free feature restricted version with the option of an maintenance/upgrade fee then it would have been different. How this could be applied to games is debatable but as with diablo 3 which will allow act 1 to be played free some (now if you get a code off someone), most things we buy are a mix of service and product so if the developers can push it to move more towards a service which would avoid first sale doctrine.

Blowfish

Dapics wrote: »

Interesting Developments.

Steam wont be happy about this.

On the contrary, I think they'll love it, the only reason they don't do this now, is because publishers are opposed to it.

Think about it, this allows Steam to create the equivalent of ebay for digital games. You put up your game for sale on their system for say €12, Steam will take €2 and give you the €10, then directly transfer the game from your account to the other persons.

It gives them a whole new revenue stream. €2 per game may not seem like much, but if that game just continuously keeps getting resold, it's revenue with little effort on Steam's part.

titan18

Blowfish wrote: »

On the contrary, I think they'll love it, the only reason they don't do this now, is because publishers are opposed to it.

Think about it, this allows Steam to create the equivalent of ebay for digital games. You put up your game for sale on their system for say €12, Steam will take €2 and give you the €10, then directly transfer the game from your account to the other persons.

It gives them a whole new revenue stream. €2 per game may not seem like much, but if that game just continuously keeps getting resold, it's revenue with little effort on Steam's part.

And, it would lower sales of new games, and make the big sales redundant

Retr0gamer

Kiith wrote: »

Raises an interesting point in that companies could buy keys in bulk during sales, and then sell them on at a profit.

They're already doing that with CD-keys from the likes of Russia. It won't change anything.

gizmo

Retr0gamer wrote: »

They're already doing that with CD-keys from the likes of Russia. It won't change anything.

Except they've always been counter balanced by the higher western sale prices which, under this new system, could be drastically reduced.

AlmightyCushion

I'm pretty sure you can take advantage of the big sales right now. Can't you just buy a game as a gift on steam and send it to yourself and then sell it on once the sale is over. If you can this ruling doesn't really change that. It would probably be easier to do it the gifting way because you just need an email address and not an account. It's much easier to create 1,000 email accounts (you could probably gift all the codes to the one email address) than 1,000 steam accounts. I've never bought a gift on steam so I could be way off though.

Varik

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I'm pretty sure you can take advantage of the big sales right now. Can't you just buy a game as a gift on steam and send it to yourself and then sell it on once the sale is over. If you can this ruling doesn't really change that. It would probably be easier to do it the gifting way because you just need an email address and not an account. It's much easier to create 1,000 email accounts (you could probably gift all the codes to the one email address) than 1,000 steam accounts. I've never bought a gift on steam so I could be way off though.

You could gift it to an email you own and then later sell it on after the sale is over at a higher price but if it's redeemed for you to play then it's tied to your account

AlmightyCushion

Varik wrote: »

You could gift it to an email you own and then later sell it on after the sale is over at a higher price but if it's redeemed for you to play then it's tied to your account

Oh I know that once you activate the key on an account it's tied to it but you could still take advantage of the cheap sales to make a profit so this law shouldn't affect those cheap sales.

I'm glad to see something like this come into place although I doubt I'll ever use it. I'm a bit of a hoarder and keep loads of crap I'll never use because I may need or use it some day. I doubt I'd ever get rid of a game in my collection unless it was completely shíte or I hated it and knew I would never play it. Even then I'd probably still keep it just in case.

CORaven

After giving it some thought:
Could this be a deterrent for companies to do business with EU citizens? Could we end up seeing small indie game devs blocking their sites to us?
Does this extend to DLC and the console market as well?
And could this affect the Apple app store, giving customers the ability to resale apps they do not like?

I look forward to the implementation of the ruling, however I am interested in the above.

hooradiation

Having asked someone who knows their arse from their elbow, legally speaking, I'm getting the feeling that this ruling means the square root of fuck all.

What I was told follows -

The key difference here is buying an oracle product supplies keys and a means by which to physically own said license.
The difference of sale vs service arises because of the simple fact that for most Steam purchases you are never given a key, nor do you ever have access to it, nor are you ever told you will gain access to it.

There is no way for you, as an individual, to sell a license you've technically never seen and cannot even get your hands on. This is where the difference is. It's legally a very distinct one, because without those keys and with no legal ruling to force them to make those keys available, you can't make any kind of attempt at a sale.

Also the oracle ruling doesn't even touch on things like account bound software. At that point the entire account is considered a single entity and all licenses beneath it could be handled as parts or as a whole. All that would have to be hashed out in court before you could rule whether Steam or Origin is a service, or a product.

Thats why this case matters so little. Because oracle software is a standalone thing. With a key you own. Which isn't bound to any overarching system. Kind of like Photoshop. But nothing like a Steam account.

Retr0gamer

Maybe so but it's still something that could really strengthen the argument if one of these distribution services were ever brought to court over it.

I'm not sure how steam works and can't confirm it here but if there's a seperate license for each piece of software then really the difference between getting a key and accessing the software through steam in negligible, it's just different forms of DRM when it's really dealing with the right to sell on the license.

If software access is granted by a single steam license then it's different but still it's a strong argument for the right to sell your steam account and maybe even to sell seperate games.

Again it all needs to be proven in court anyway.

hooradiation

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Maybe so but it's still something that could really strengthen the argument if one of these distribution services were ever brought to court over it.

If that happens, then maybe there'd be something worth talking about.
And how much it strengthens the argument is.... debatable.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'm not sure how steam works and can't confirm it here but if there's a seperate license for each piece of software then really the difference between getting a key and accessing the software through steam in negligible, it's just different forms of DRM when it's really dealing with the right to sell on the license.

Your account is granted a license to that piece of software, and the license is bound to your account. You can't run the software legitimately without the game being able to query the client and check that the client is licensed.
But you never, ever access this license.
So, let's say you want to sell me one of your steam games - What are you going to sell to me? You can't sell something you can't access.

So, technically, yes you can sell your Steam games. Now figure out how to do it!
That's the kicker. And why would anyone bother to make a way to do so when the decision doesn't legally require them to?

Retr0gamer wrote: »

If software access is granted by a single steam license then it's different but still it's a strong argument for the right to sell your steam account and maybe even to sell seperate games.

Software access is granted by having a steam account AND the licenses that are bound to it. You can't have one without the other.
So someone would have to take valve to court in order for this to have any real affect. Hence why this is mostly meaningless.

Retr0gamer

It's a strange one. As far as I'm aware if you haven't got access to the license, haven't seen the license and haven't agreed to it before using the software then the license agreement is null and void. Which in a way means Valve can just say, yes the license isn't legally binding, here's your money back and take the game away from you.

That's of course if there's even a need for a license in the first place. So I'm guessing the license agreement for steam works something more like netflixs where the license is only with steam and they grant you access to their content on their service when you pay for it.

TheGunns

If you look at the steam keys, the games you buy online dont get a key until they are downloaded and played. There is currently a situation with Sacred 2 on steam as they sold copies during a sale last year and now they have no more keys but not everyone has registered it so there are people who have bought the game but have no access to it. You also have access to your CD key somewhere on steam, cant remember where though.

This really isn't much for games on PC as I like the low prices compared to consoles and is one of the attractions. Think this would create a load of hassle I think and I don't see much benefit to it given the prices are pretty low now anyways. If the price of current games was to stay the same with the addition of the second hand sales then there cant be much opposition to it but the fear that it will up prices or go wrong are the only problems I could see with it. That said though those problems might not come to pass, so really it is a risk and we will just have to see if theyre ready to take it and how they will

Overheal

hooradiation wrote: »

The key difference here is buying an oracle product supplies keys and a means by which to physically own said license.
The difference of sale vs service arises because of the simple fact that for most Steam purchases you are never given a key, nor do you ever have access to it, nor are you ever told you will gain access to it.

There is no way for you, as an individual, to sell a license you've technically never seen and cannot even get your hands on.

any time you purchase a game on steam though and install it you're presented with the EULA... and to Retr0's point, you agree to it at that point in time.

Helix

all that'll happen is that you dont buy games on steam/xbla/etc any more, you just rent them, for a term of say 100 years

if you dont own them you cant sell them

Retr0gamer

Overheal wrote: »

any time you purchase a game on steam though and install it you're presented with the EULA... and to Retr0's point, you agree to it at that point in time.

If that's the case then I don't see why this ruling wouldn't apply to a service like steam.