Steam must provide new rights for selling used games - Paris court ruling.

dublinman1990

Steam, owned by Valve, has been ruled by a court in France this week to provide new rights for consumers in selling 2nd hand games within it's digital marketplace.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/09/19/french-court-valve-steam-resold/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAG4Fct6kQcncj4t_u6S2nK87CcZ6fHeF-2GIY629C2oMNJ3xl3V9dA_u4WhsLNjxUHiO_L0aByJ88rztkxCNmkco3ocjJX4XK7tF1OUyS4BBfUvKU1jxHVqCqyvW49hsXajp5QPI6EyogZ4mtOxu7tMECwuTc0uv-4b-2UhGsp96

The Paris Court of First Instance ruled on Tuesday that Steam's policy of not providing 2nd hand games to EU consumers is illegal under EU law & it must provide rights for EU consumers to allow 2nd hand games to be resold on it's digital store under the rules of the EU Digital Single Market. Valve's owners had argued in court that the games provided by Steam under a Steam subscription. But the court ruled that Steam did not sell it's games on a subscription package. The court than went on to say Valve's game reselling policy was against EU laws that govern the free-flow of digital goods. Under EU law, all goods, including software, can be sold used without the permission of the maker or the original seller.

A statement has been released from Valve to say that the case is being put under appeal following the decision of the French court. Here is what it's says.

“We disagree with the decision of the Paris Court of First Instance and will appeal it, The decision will have no effect on Steam while the case is on appeal.”

The court did clarify, however, that any used games sold on Steam, if the French court's ruling is approved, must be sold as a single copy. It must not be sold as a duplicate. Valve must amend it's term of service within 3 months which I presume is to take place after the decision of the appeal has been made by the court. This ruling also affects other EST storefronts as well that currently sell digitally downloaded content.

If you are reading this decision from this court at this current time. What are your thoughts on this ruling? Will it give you a lot of benefits in not wanting to play your games on Steam anymore?

Ten of Swords

I guess Gabe's not having a great day so

DesperateDan

I can see both sides to this. But Valve have created this market place and it should be up to them to decide what to do with it to maximize profits to keep the company in a healthy state.

No one has ever bought a game on Steam expecting to be able to hand it back for cash, so why should people be entitled to that now?

I do think the paradigm shift of a second hand digital market place is a pretty cool idea, just don't see why Valve should be forced into it

EoinHef

I would have thought this should apply to all software sold in the EU not just on Steam?

Its a strange one,there is always the worry Valve will fold some day and what then happens to access to software purchased on Steam i have no clue

You hear the spiel from companies that your only buying a license which can be revoked etc but that does not seem to be the case when it comes to the law,more like companies deciding they set the law with their ToS but they dont obviously.

Im glad there is some fight back regarding consumer rights when it comes to games,up until fairly recently games companies have had it all their own way with afformentioned ToS.

Maybe thats coming to an end and we will see some unifomity of rights on all software platforms.

How that works ive no idea though,i suppose steam already has a marketplace but there are more and more companies entering the sapce,how would they manage it?

dublinman1990

If Steam is forced to comply with this ruling in future; what is going to happen to their regular Steam sales, their current pricing system on their digital store? Is their going to be a likelihood that digital games will be priced the same or more as physical game discs/cartridges? Would we see the end of their regular steam sales by being replaced with an official monthly subscription cost to users on Steam?

I think the Steam sales are really good to keep going. I don't want them to go away from us because I have bought so many games from them over the past 4 years for very little cost to me. I don't like the idea that games from online web stores can only be streamed from the internet with no opportunity for people to download the game in perpetuity. Obviously full priced games are the only way for developers to gain an income from the opportunity to sell it to a customer. They would gain a fair bit of return for selling the game on when the transaction takes place on the service. For that to be replaced with a subscription is a business model that might give independent developers a financial hit with Steam's new potential subscription pricing model if they do develop one in future.

Game platforms like Stadia are not particularly popular when people do hear of the limitations of the service. It was prone to poor performance and failures when it was by launched by Google for the first time earlier this year. A game streaming model is not going to be one that is going to catch on for the majority of people playing video games; most video game players prefer to download games onto their hard drives rather than unsecurity of being on a streaming model.

cherryghost

The only consistent model I could think of is a licence 'release' after X number of years, ie when the game, the devs and Valve have extracted 95% of the profits from it anyway. After only eg 3 years you could sell a title on at a fraction of the price, with a small fee going to devs and Valve again.

Varik

More subscription services, more loot boxes, and season passes to come, and indies to get completely ****ed.

Valve charge publisher 30% to sell on their platform and take the same for cards and everything else on the market place, valve get their cut either way.

Robert ninja

I'm conflicted. On one hand I would love more power to the consumer but I also know that Valve wouldn't be able to turn a profit if you could just resell on your games and I really like steam so I want it to stick around and improve. The digital world is still a difficult beast to understand in law and business.

Here's a possible solution: Make selling your account not against the TOS anymore. Then they could just say they never get in the way of people trading/selling away their games. Valve just don't have any responsibility to implement a new system for it. "This is the way we add games to your expanding library, you can sell the whole lot yourself. Good luck." It's brazen and unlikely but it's probably how I'd do it.

They wouldn't have been in this damn mess if they stopped with so many anti-consumer changes to the platform. Remember when you could buy games as gifts but add them to your inventory to trade/play later? I used that feature for almost every purchase if I wasn't going to play straight away. It allowed unplayed games to remain in a limbo where if I found I was never getting around to playing something I could eventually trade it for other games I did want or just gift it to a friend. I still have some games in my inventory actually.



They removed it because it allowed people to build a pseudo-library that was tradable and dynamic. It slowed down games being permanently binded to accounts and therefore slowed sales by taking away activity of purchasing from the store to players trading games to each other over and over. The games would eventually be perma bound to a library so I don't know why they got so bloody butthurt about it. Pure greed.