German Consumer Group Sues Valve

[teebeeohh]

because people keep bringing up weird arguments: as far as i can tell they only want you to be able to sell the game, nothing would stop valve from implementing a "you can only sell this for 90% of what you payed for it"(because you stretched the bytes or something), no buying up games during sales and selling them en mass later.
and valve will not drop Germany because this is an EU thing and they really would not want to loose that market.

and in related News: Internet access was recently ruled to be as important as access to power and water in Germany, so yay.

 

[Sylveria]

I think the obvious solution is that people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their Steam games including selling them.

'Anything they want'? Okay, here goes: I copy it. Then I 'sell' it to a friend for $0.01. Then I make another copy. And I sell that to another friend for $0.01. In fact, while I'm at it, why not just throw it up on my website and offer a 'donate what you want' system.

Is that okay? I mean, it's MY game! I paid for it! I should be allowed to do whatever I want for it.

Woo do you work for ESA? Cause that's the same argument they use when they try to equate used games to piracy. Selling your licence and blatant copyright infringement are two different things. Just like selling a DVD and selling home-burnt duplicates of a DVD are vastly different things.

 

[Therumancer]

Interesting.

As far as digital distribution platforms go, I like STEAM, it's the one I use. That said I turned to STEAM out of duress due to everything going digital. I am a big believe in people owning their purchuses and doing what they want with them, including trading them, and selling them, which is also why I'm a big defender of used game sales on Gamespot and the like.

There is the legitimate issue here that Digital Games by their nature are not something that can be sold or traded reliably due to their digital nature in most cases.

I'm hoping that The Germans "win" this one and other countries follow suit, starting a domino effect accross the civilized world (including the US) where digital distribution basically beomes illegal, as does company controls and security that hamper the sale and trade of games between people. Meaning we go back to "Disc in hand", no more online registration, DRM, digital distribution accounts and services, or even Downloadable Content gimmicks. Again you go to a store, hand over your money, and get a game that is yours to do with as you please.

 

[mateushac]

Games ARE a product. If they aren't, why do I need to give someone money for them? I don't give money to people for other things than products or commodities. A team of artists and technicians produce a product, which I pay money to obtain. This is no different to a painting or a car.

Thank god you never visit parks or private museums... or watch movies in the theater for that matter.

I've never heard of a indie dev whining about their 'licensing' rights - it's always multinational companies.

Well, I've never seen anyone fight for their rights to sell used indie games.

And, btw, quite a lot of those indie devs also include nontransferability clauses to their EULA. Please check your facts.

 

[Rednog]

Now if only someone will take Valve to task about removing and/or refunding games that they throw up and don't run properly without having to find solutions on the forums/online.

 

[Bostur]

I already said I approve the germans fighting for the enforcement of their right to sell their used games (even though steam might figure it's best just to pull the plug on germany instead).

What really bothers me is people saying it IS their right to do whatever pleases them with the games to which they have licenses. Unless there is law saying so (which is the case of Europe), or the contract says so (maybe if it makes no statement about the issue too), it is not your right.

I imagine people are expecting that they are buying a copy of a game, just like they would have bought a copy of a book, a movie or a CD. The terms by which such items are traded are governed by national copyright laws that states that the owner (the buyer) is allowed to do what they want with them, as long as it doesn't infringe upon the distribution rights and the artistic rights of the authors. There is no reason at all why software can't be traded on the same terms.

Software used to be sold on those terms, and it doesn't make much of a difference whether the distribution method is floppy, cd, dvd or bytes through a network connection.

In Europe we are generally not used to signing contracts, waivers and other legal documents as consumers. We are used to following the laws. Software agreements are almost impossible to read as a consumer, because half of what they claim are not things we can legally sign away. So exactly what parts of an EULA counts and what parts doesn't? Thats not a simple thing to figure out.

Should we just silently accept to abandon our consumer rights just because some random foreign company says so? Where I live democratically elected representatives make the laws. Not Valve, or Microsoft or Sony. Thats the problem I have with licenses, and I imagine a lot of other Europeans as well.

Unfortunately most normal people don't have the personal or economic ressources to sue a company every time we buy a game or another piece of software. So the validity of the licencing practices has rarely been tried.

 

[Dr. Mongo]

Snip

In essence you are saying that it should not be possible to resell your gaming licenses because the companies wouldn't make as much money as they would like to. I am sorry, but that is not the way capitalism is supposed to work (though a lot of companies like to tell us a different story these days).

Granted, there will be a lot less people who will buy new games when they can get the used ones. Granted, Steam will make a LOT less money than before. Granted, this will influence the gaming industry in some big ways (and certainly not only in positive ways) for the consumer.
But does it prove the concept of being able to resell used games (or licenses) wrong?
I think not.

Captcha: crop up. There you go, captcha.

 

[Falterfire]

In essence you are saying that it should not be possible to resell your gaming licenses because the companies wouldn't make as much money as they would like to. I am sorry, but that is not the way capitalism is supposed to work (though a lot of companies like to tell us a different story these days).

Granted, there will be a lot less people who will buy new games when they can get the used ones. Granted, Steam will make a LOT less money than before. Granted, this will influence the gaming industry in some big ways (and certainly not only in positive ways) for the consumer.
But does it prove the concept of being able to resell used games (or licenses) wrong?
I think not.

Captcha: crop up. There you go, captcha.

No, you misunderstand. I'm not saying it shouldn't happen because of the money aspect, I'm saying that the current system you use was built with knowledge of nontransferrable licenses in mind. If licenses become resaleable, you should be prepared to deal with the resulting shockwaves through the industry, which may very well include Steam cutting back greatly on the quantity and quality of sales and the a number of indie game devs getting hit HARD.

You can't just change the fundamental nature of what is being sold by a service such as Steam without a huge amount of backlash. It would be one thing if Steam was selling only Valve games, but it isn't. Immediately after licenses became transferrable, Steam would have to renegotiate every single contract they have, meaning that the only games available on Steam would be Valve games until they talked to each individual company.

Will it end PC gaming to have digital licenses become transferrable? Probably not, but it certainly won't doing anything good for PC gaming in general and not much good for the consumer in particular.

Ultimately, what you and I think doesn't matter because this issue will be decided not by industry veterans but by lawmakers who have only a passing knowledge of how to use this newfangled internet thing and who have no clue of the actual ramifications on the industry.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I love this thread!

EA uses DRM to slightly penalize used game sales = EA is the devil and is destroying video games
Valve uses DRM to completely negate used games sales = Rally the troops to Valve's defense!!!

That's just too funny.

The amount of people on these forums blinded by their love of Valve is astounding sometimes. Not that I think they're evil, they're a company just like any other. Just better at manipulating their consumers.

 

[Falterfire]

The amount of people on these forums blinded by their love of Valve is astounding sometimes. Not that I think they're evil, they're a company just like any other. Just better at manipulating their consumers.

Ultimately it comes down to a fundamental difference: Valve is selling single-user nontransferable licenses, which in the PC world is the accepted method of selling pretty much all non-game software, so applying it to games isn't much of a stretch. Therefore accepting what Valve does and how they handle things is easy. EA tends to do limited single-user nontransferable licenses in a bid to further limit the existing system, which is the source of most of the anger.

 

[Dr. Mongo]

Snip

Snap

True, but that is what I mean. While I think that it should be right to be able to sell your used games I am almost certain that there will be a backlash for us gamers.
When big companies lose money they start flailing their arms in a violent manner. It is hard to predict what they will hit when they do it.

 

[mateushac]

The amount of people on these forums blinded by their love of Valve is astounding sometimes. Not that I think they're evil, they're a company just like any other. Just better at manipulating their consumers.

Ultimately it comes down to a fundamental difference: Valve is selling single-user nontransferable licenses, which in the PC world is the accepted method of selling pretty much all non-game software, so applying it to games isn't much of a stretch. Therefore accepting what Valve does and how they handle things is easy. EA tends to do limited single-user nontransferable licenses in a bid to further limit the existing system, which is the source of most of the anger.

Aside from the criticism to EA (which I think is just the same as valve when it comes to this specific matter), the statement in bold is exactly what I feel.
You know, we've had most software available to general public in the form of nontransferable licenses ever since the invention of the personal computer. How come this only became a problem after digital distribution came by?

 

[Albino Boo]

If you read the steam Eula, it says all sales in the european union take place under UK law. This term was introduced to get round the German courts.

Just because someone writes something doesn't make it true. I doubt Valve can bypass national laws like that, but I'm no lawyer so I may be mistaken.

I think it's great if this area will get some attention. When buying games most of my consumer rights is being bypassed and I doubt that everything that EULAs claim are actually enforcable. It seems like a bit of a loophole that copyright laws can be bypassed like this by claiming that games are not actually sold.

It's tricky when a whole industry decides to change how the business works. What if car manufacturers decides not to sell cars anymore but only offer rentals? Or selling a license to use the car without actually transfering ownership. I think similar business practices could be used for physical products, it's not really something that is unique for intellectual property.

The EULA was written by someone who charges £700-£1000 an hour and they more about EU law than you do. They are not bypassing national law so much as using the single market rules and the internationally accepted principal that parties to a contract can choose what jurisdiction they use.

 

[CommanderL]

why the fuck do you need used digital games it make's no sence and if it goes forward all the steam sales will stop

 

[Dryk]

As worried as I am that this sort of case could bring the whole cheap PC gaming bubble crashing down, I want to see them at least make a little headway.

This, this, this. The blind loyalty of Steam fans (under the thin justification "no we trusssttt them") never ceases to amuse me. if Activision start charging $1 for every round you play in the next CoD the rage would shake the foundations of the internet, Vale does just that and the reaction is "omg we love you Gabe imma spend $100 on hats to celebrate".

The MVM thing isn't a problem for a few main reasons

- All that $1 gets you is a shiny badge that says you did it and a chance at a unique cosmetic
- You only have to spend that $1 the first time you do that mission, then it's free
- It's trivially easy to start your own server with those missions, you just don't get the tick on your badge or your cosmetics

All you lose out on by not paying is cosmetics, what's the problem?

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

As much as we all love the functionality of Steam and all the things Valve does, VZVB winning this can only do good.

 

[1337mokro]

If you don't agree with this, which is understandable, don't use Steam, go buy it from a store.

Do we need to repeat the point about store-bought games requiring Steam?

I get that. I think that practice is pretty shitty, but doesn't it say that it requires Steam to play? Also, this is quite clearly a reason to get mad at the company that makes the game, not the company that distributes the game.

Why not? Isn't the company that distributes it limiting your sales?

There is an actual company that allows you to trade in game, though that still is not transferring the license, it at least shows that some companies already allow at least a trade in for a lower value. It is still not perfect forcing a consumer to have only one choice in who to sell it but again the retailer is the one selling you the game.

If you buy a washing machine for example and it breaks the retailer is responsible for the warranty, it has to deal with the shipping, giving you a replacement, etc. for a period of time.

When we get into the License bullshit it gets even more illogical. So we are buying a License to use the game, why can I not sell this license to someone else? Because it is non-transferable, why not? Because we say so. But the license is nothing more than a CD key tied to my account that you CAN revoke whenever you want to, so that already shows the ability to take away license keys, so they are capable of being transferred they just don't allow us.

Now we have a Supreme court judgement that they should be transferable so Steam should do one of two things, pack up and fuck off out of Europe or adjust the services they offer by allowing license transferals. The publishers are not the ones operating as retailers in this case so they have nothing to do with it. The retailer is forced to offer certain services and the publishers have to abide by those services if they wish to sell on a certain market.

I doubt publishers are going to stop selling their games in Europe seeing as that is a good third of all videogame sales worldwide.

On top of that games are not advertised as licenses but as games "Add this game to your cart, buy this game, get this game now!" Do you see "License to this game" anywhere, no that stuff is tucked away in the EULA so that it doesn't scare off new customers?

"Buy a license to this movie, buy a license to this car, buy a license to this piece of chicken." Doesn't sound quite right don't you say?

I love this thread!

EA uses DRM to slightly penalize used game sales = EA is the devil and is destroying video games
Valve uses DRM to completely negate used games sales = Rally the troops to Valve's defense!!!

That's just too funny.

It's amazing how consumer loyalty works for companies that actually deserve trust. And if Germany wants to sell downloadable games and sell multiple copies of them for a penny and call that legal, then steam has no reason to sell to them at all.

Infact, why not open a site and sell full price games on your own website after buying them from steam for a 1$ for your own profit? it would happen, and giving in to these people would cause a snowball effect that would cannibalize online gaming. If I were Gabe I would cut off the German's entirely to prevent that. And I admit, I would like them to give this group a kick in the balls for potentially ruining digital downloads.

Thank you for your soul. We here at Valve corp. value these very much as they allow us to sustain the God-Emperor Newel.

Seriously? RUIN digital downloads? Bit dramatic there. Greenman gaming already has a sort of used digital download market and it hasn't ruined anything has it? They even pull the same shit as you are afraid of. They buy back a digital key and then sell it for full price again.

OH DOOM DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!!!

Please, drama queen much?

More consumer rights and less License bullshit is all the better in my eyes.

I doubt God-Emperor Newel will cut of Germany as it is one of the largest gaming markets of Europe. I think God-Emperor Newel will take the used game trading hit and keep selling his other games to the German masses.

Though seriously thanks for that delicious soul.

 

[Something Amyss]

If you don't like what steam has to offer....

SUE THEM!

I mean seriously, if you want a hard copy to do with it as you please, don't buy a licence, buy a hard copy from a brick and mortar shop.

EDIT: but even then, you'll have to deal with some even more draconian DRM...

So did you just talk yourself out of your own argument?

OT: Good. Consumer rights have taken a major hit in the ditigal era.