Last week the European Parliament stated that it’s illegal to not let customers resell their own software, even if it’s been bought on a digital delivery platform.
What Valve answered, about the chance to let customers resell their legally bought software, is basically a very simple, direct, straight middle finger.
“We don’t have any plans to change”.
Again and again, law shows us it has absolutely no power over money.
@glubbar
You should be able to pass on your lifetime license. You won’t own it anymore, but someone will.
Valve is right on this one.
Laws are stupid and won’t make anything change, because laws are useless.
You don’t buy a products on Steam. You buy a “lifetime” license to use a game through the Steam service. (lifetime means Valve/Steam’s lifetime). You don’t own anything on Steam.
The EULA should be more clear though that’s for sure.
The real problem lies with games you buy offline (retail, boxed edition) which won’t let you play unless it’s linked to an online service such as Steam/Origin. Now THAT is fucking bullshit, because you own the DVD.
@SUMKIN
What’s stupid about wanting a fair market?
Do you prefer giving up right after right to be able to pay less a game that probably should cost less to begin with?
Game pricing and the super discounted mass sale was a safe haven for publisher and game developer, but it’s a situation that is not right.
If, as you say, Valve raise the price for its game, we’ll be back at the situation we had years ago. People will buy less so Valve will need to lower the price again like it already did.
The inability to resale your own game it’s like stealing from customers. It’s a lack of freedom to do what you want with things you own, and the limitation to be bound to a service or a third party to manage that.
@stranded
I don’t understand why the first saler should be entitled with some compensation for the “missed sale”. It’s like to own a business and have to pay to avoid being beaten up.
If the want they could provide a service to manager relelling, but that should be something additional. As base the customer should be able to resign from the ownership of the game and pass it to other the way he like.
Why control the market with limitation instead of doint it in a fair way with competition? If I buy a game and want to resell it for a lesser price. it’s the store that have to be competitive to earn its sale. It’s to easy to create rules that benefit only one part.
This could be simply fixed by implementing a fee option, when you resale a game to someone you need to pay 10€. 2€ goes to Valve, 8€ goes to publisher/developer. It’s that simple. Profit is still profit or better any profit is better than no profit. You have no warranty that the game would sell to this particular person, maybe they couldn’t afford it in the first place, but if they really want the game they will either wait for mega steam sale like this one right now or buy it from someone.
They could also make you use Steam Wallet, so when you sell a game… you don’t get cash, you get Steam Wallet cash that you will eventually spend on games on Steam anyway. And if that still doesn’t please you, they could implement an option, if you’re selling away EA game, you can re-buy only EA games with the money you made.
People in EU are stupid they don’t understand that if this law would apply on steam then valve simply rises games prices 2-4 times to compensate reselling. so now you can buy game for you for 10 euro and in the future you will buy it for 20-40 euros but with the right to resell. Valve is distributor with highest price drops you can’t blame valve for being greedy it’s simple math. if game costs 1 000 000 euros and publisher can sell it to 100 000 people it will sell it for 10 euros. With new law publisher can sell only 25 000 copies ( because 75 000 peoples will buy it from other people) so 1 000 000 / 25 000 people = 40 euros per game. Are you really sure you want that?
“You don’t own the rights to the software itself”
No EULA can be above the law. Law says this is bullshit, that this license to ask for a permission to be allowed to try to play is bullshit.
Can you see the pattern?
“- Valve, insofar as Steam the digital distribution company is concerned, is merely acting as an agent for the multitude of publishers whose catalogs it has chosen to carry”.
It’s a store. It’s like being tackled and beaten by the owner of the grocery store near my home when trying to make my friend a sandwich.
It it’s true that the agreement is between the purcharser and the publisher, then the store shouldn’t be a contrain and the purchaser should be entitled to play his game from every source. But that doesn’t happen.
Being the product owner or having the right to use it (a concept immorally made pass through the years) you should still be able to resign from that and transfer it to another person.
I don’t think the original store (steam in this case) should be entitled with some sort of compensation or shoud manage the transaction, otherwise it won’t be free. The user should be able to choose the price and manage the transaction the way he want the same way he does with any other product, digital or phisical.
There’s a couple of things to point out:
– Valve, insofar as Steam the digital distribution company is concerned, is merely acting as an agent for the multitude of publishers whose catalogs it has chosen to carry. The EULA (or equivalent) is between the purchaser and the publisher; Steam has nothing to do with the ability to resell games, with respect to laws and regulations is concerned. This of course excludes Valve’s own titles.
– When you buy software, you are not buying a tangible thing, unless you’re purchasing a physical copy. When you buy physical, you have certain rights w/r/t theft, fire, etc., etc., ad nauseum. But otherwise and including the bits on a physical disc, you’ve purchased a “right to use”. You don’t own the rights to the software itself; you’ve paid for the right to use it, the same as you pay for the right to ride a subway or bus. You don’t own it, but as long as you comply with the rules that you agree to by laying money down, you can use it for as long as you’ve paid.
Should Steam have a facility to let you sell your “owned” games to other Steam users? I think it would be a great new market for them – they take a percentage of the sale, you get rid of games you don’t want for a credit into your Steam Wallet, someone else gets a game cheaper than list price – everyone wins.
And if that happens, I also think that there should be an option for gifting any owned title to another Steam user. But there’s no money to be made in that so I doubt it’ll happen. :/
That’s the problem when people with money stand above the law. The only way to set things right, is to make them lose money until we are even. They should be fined by a huge amount of money every time they try to subdue the law to earn profit. If the fine is too low or uncertain they would rather pay, but if the fine is important enough to cause them to go bankrupt if they are fined repeatedly, than they’ll think twice before doing it.
What system like Steam and similar are experiencing these last years is a safe place where all the rules benefit them so it’s not like they are losing a right, but maybe they’ll be forced to be fair.
There is no such thing as “rent” on steam. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Or a sale.
If you buy a game, you buy a license. It is nowhere stated that you actually “rent” anything for a limited amount of time. It is probably written somewhere in the ToS, but, at least in Italy, you simply can’t write anything you want in the ToS and advertise otherwise.
If you say “Buy an iPod for $100” and in the agreement you say “hey you are not actually getting it, you are just renting it for a few days”, that statement is void.
Afaik Valve and any other account-stuff was never really affected by this law/sentence.
And even if they would be… they could still make their games “free” but charge 50€ “administrative charge” for binding the game to an account (necessary, ofc!). Problem solved, everything legal and nothing will change anyway.
For the main, you can’t resume the situation as: “The judgment is the law, Valve break the law”. A society was trying to buy and resell used licences, and they have the right to despite the Oracle sued. It’s not the European Parliament who state that but the Court of Justice of European Union.
Now, you just can’t resell an used licence, because Valve don’t propose the option, and they don’t have to. But if anyone is suing Valve for that, he could use this judgment to win the trial.
(btw, sorry for the misspellings).
Point is, law says that all this “you buy the license to rent” is bullshit: no EULA can be above the law, and according to law whatever we buy is ours and ours only, and we have each and every right to dispose of it as we please.
Only that we actually can’t, because people with more money than us can chose we can and can’t do, despite the law.
As like those people hadn’t enough privileges already: do you know that a ltd can’t be fined (indipendently by the charge) for more than 10% of its yearly income? It’s like if I killed somebody and I got away with it paying 100 euros.
It’s a very complex situation, really. You kind of rent the games you play, you don’t even buy the license for them, you buy license to rent them, that’s different. They have awesome lawyers.
That’s Valve for ya.
Yet people still think they’re the fucking champions of gamers everywhere.
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