Accpet Steam's New EULA or Say Goodbye To Your Steam Account UPDATED

[targren]

Obviously they don't. However, contracts define the terms of transactions until and unless proven illegal. So once again it is foolish to sign a contract assuming you can't be held to it. Even if you are right, (and there is no guarentee you are) it can be many years before a case comes forward and receives final judgement. And even if there is a judgement, you have no way of knowing what the ordered correction will be.

There is one possible leg to stand on, though, and that's in the UI presentation. When you go onto Steam, they do use terms like "Buy", "Purchase", and "Pre-purchase," rather than "lease," "rent" or "subscribe", so the case may be able to made for misrepresentation. Of course, this presumes an actual interest in fairness, rather than a court system that's so far up the corporate colon that they allow things like unilaterally changing contracts and forced waivers of your rights in the first place.

So yeah, in practice, you're probably right. Don't hold your breath.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

I don't care about the new ToS.

1: The Dutch law states that a company may not without your right to file a class-action lawsuit against them. Dutch law goes above such things as a ToS.
2: A new 'contract' (the ToS) is only legal if it's signed at the time of purchase. If you first purchased a game, then only after that got a ToS to read, then it's not eligible. As law states that you have to be able to read the rules at the time of purchase for the rules to actually take effect. In other words, this new ToS doesn't apply to any game you bought before it.

This is how it works in Switzerland too.
And now with the precedence in germany, that digital copies of something are owned by you the same as physical copies are..
There'll be a change in how digital distribution works in the next few years.

 

[sanquin]

2. This is the way it should be by default for all Steam customers. You can disagree with the TOS and your account goes into a no buy mode but you can still get patches (since it's not possible to patch many Steam games without using Steam) and you can still re-download all the games you bought.

For those about to object, it's no different than someone who voluntarily stops buying from Steam right now but still has an active account. Also, Steam is consumer-friendly aren't they? They should do the right thing without laws to force them to.

I also agree with 1 but that has been ruled on here and that is WHY all these companies are adding the clause. Hopefully that will be overturned.

Valve is NOT consumer friendly. Valve is a business. They realize that staying friendly with their consumers is good for business, and that's the only reason they do it...until they think it doesn't suit them any more. Like now.

 

[sanquin]

Would that every country made such fucking sense. Attempting to amend an agreement to retroactively affect things it didn't even originally apply to and saying that if you don't agree, you don't have access to anything you got before the amendment should be a criminal offense. You shouldn't be allowed to just change the rules when it suits you, then play "Oh, but it says here you can't sue me!".

It's not a criminal offense. But the ToS is basically void for games you've already purchased. So you can go right back to them and say "Oh, but I bought this game before your new ToS, so I can still sue you!"

It was the same with when Sony banned Linux from being installed on their PS3 with a firmware update. A judge ruled that they weren't allowed to do that for consoles already bought.

 

[sanquin]

This is how it works in Switzerland too.
And now with the precedence in germany, that digital copies of something are owned by you the same as physical copies are..
There'll be a change in how digital distribution works in the next few years.

Not exactly. That law has some kinks in it still. Like it only applies to digitally bought programs, not games. And it applies to resale of activation keys and such.

However I agree. Extra credits did an episode about it as well. It's a classic story of the technology advancing faster than the law. The law will catch up, and I have no doubt that in the next few years laws will be made that force companies to at least let the consumer re-sell their digitally bought games. An idea that came up in that episode was something like steam giving an option to sell the game to them again for a fraction of the retail price, back to valve again. Or that you could sell your game to friends by means of it just being removed from your playable list, and added to theirs after a transaction.

EDIT:
Btw, this is why I'm against buying steam games. They can pull shit like this. You don't want to accept that new ToS because it goes against your rights to sue them? Too bad, gone are all the games you already BOUGHT over the years!

It's because of this that I only have about 75 dollars worth of games on my steam account, not counting my 1 expensive game which is skyrim. And I only have that on steam because I had no choice in the matter. If by any chance I do lose my steam account though, I would probably pirate all of those games again going 'Well eff you too then, game companies!' Luckily, I still have my account though. Since that ToS doesn't apply to me anyway.

 

[minimacker]

Nyehehe. Isn't Europe great?

 

[MammothBlade]

People should putting Valve on a pedestal. Don't act all disappointed because they can be jerkasses too. They just rank in the not-so-bad companies territory, or they have until now. Meh, I'm not bothered about the new ToS, but the consequences of rejecting it are rather nasty. It shows they view the games as a service not a product. They should be confronted about this. If they're the more reasonable type, they will give an explanation and offer to provide people access to games they already own.

 

[Zandarck]

Just had a thought... If we don't own our Steam games, does this mean they should, legally, change it so it doesn't say "Friend's who already own this game"?

 

[Stormz]

And to think, if I was a pirate I wouldn't even have to deal with any of this because none of my games would even have steam in the first place. Welcome to the future of Gaming everyone, where the consumer has no rights and the pirates win.

 

[targren]

Now now, that actually isn't true. In many countries the weight is actually the other way. It isn't uncommon for countries to have legislation or case law that indicates that that if there is doubt on the meaning of a clause, questions of reading contracts should be read in favor of the person/corporation that didn't draw up the contract, if that person/company could not reasonably have been expected to retain council to review the document.

I can't speak for the other countries, just the US. That's not one of those countries. Here, it absolutely is true.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Wait so let me see if I understand this. It's ok for Valve to change the TOS and punish people retroactively if they don't accept it because people agreed to a TOS before it was changed?

I think it's not so much willingness to do it as much as it is capability to do it. Valve says that they can't have a middle ground. As to why that is, I have only speculative ideas.

 

[Weaver]

What I don't get is how it's not an agreement made under duress?

I likely will never have a reason to sue valve (same reason I agreed to Sony's), but it still really pisses me off that they can do this.

 

[Epona]

Wait so let me see if I understand this. It's ok for Valve to change the TOS and punish people retroactively if they don't accept it because people agreed to a TOS before it was changed?

I think it's not so much willingness to do it as much as it is capability to do it. Valve says that they can't have a middle ground. As to why that is, I have only speculative ideas.

They could have a middle ground but they don't want to do that. They would rather blackmail you into agreeing to the new TOS.

 

[MysticToast]

So can someone give me the summary of the new ToS? Unless it's Origin-level-retarded, I'm probably not going to disagree with it, but if people are throwing tantrums about something I use on a daily basis, well, I wanna know what it is.

From what I gathered, you can no longer file class-action lawsuits against Valve.

 

[yuval152]

So can someone give me the summary of the new ToS? Unless it's Origin-level-retarded, I'm probably not going to disagree with it, but if people are throwing tantrums about something I use on a daily basis, well, I wanna know what it is.

From what I gathered, you can no longer file class-action lawsuits against Valve.

Look at what dexter111 wrote.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.384228.15233264
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.384228.15233362

 

[tsb247]

The question isn't whether you have to click "I accept", but rather or not they can legally uphold their TOS. If I pay you for, say, a year of internet access, with the agreement that I'd have access for exactly 12 months, and you later say "Well, we're changing our contracts so now it's only good for 6 months", do you figure that would hold up in court?

Steam can *say* "You can't sue us", but if I do, what are they going to do to stop me? Cut off my steam service? If I'm suing them I'm probably well past the point of caring about that.

Except now you can't sue, you can only go into small claims/arbitration. Wonder how this effects games that you've bought a physical copy of but require steam to play, like DoW2.

On the fence about how I feel about this, no real way I can see for a consumer to defend this with any amount of self-interest, objectively it's a good way to keep customers who may be thinking of jumping ship from the service, no one's gonna leave if their library is being held hostage, and in a month or two they'll forget being strong armed.

This sort of thing is why I have alwasy been skeptical of digital distribution. It greatly limits the power of the consumer. Don't like the terms of service? Too bad. Either accept it or lose everything you have spent your hard-earned money on.

I HATED Steam when it first came out. I had bought Half-Life 2 and I didn't have the internet because I had just moved. It was quite a while before I could play it, and that made me quite angry.

As of late, I have accepted Steam as a, "Necessary evil." Perhaps I should reconsider the encessary part?