SajuukKhar said:
viranimus said:
They were until this year a tolerable evil. Before they were simply helping to undermine the concept of games as a product, and trying to convert them into being subscriptions and licenses in order to bypass laws surrounding ownership.
However as of this year if you hadnt been made aware, Steam has saw in their infinite wisdom fit to extort your voluntary forfeiture of your licenses and subscriptions you bought legally without such provision, in exchange for your right to engage in class action lawsuit against them. They have no legal standing to actually do this, but they bank on the ignorance, and complacency of their customers who will agree to these unreasonable extortion by holding your licenses hostage until you comply.
In other words.. You either agree to the demands Steam has wrongly laid out so they prevent you from properly defending yourself if Steam does wrong, And they hold the content you purchased without such provision hostage until you do. The same way Sony, Microsoft and Origin have done.
Games never were a product, and were never treated as product, they cant undermine something that never existed.
Furthermore Valve extorted nothing, you were not forced to accept the EULA, and if you didn't, your Steam account was nly disabled, you still had access to all your games, you simply couldn't buy new ones. Valve changed the policy on account disabling ages ago.
On top of that, class action lawsuits never benefit the consumer, if you look back on many in the past, you will find the only people who truly benefited were the lawyers.
You are looking at that wrongly. While in a sense it is in fact true games are not a product, that is ONLY in a sense for individual to take them and alter them in some fashion for profit. Sort of like taking the Mona Lisa and painting it blue and calling it your own. THe key point to that is there is no right for that content to be modified.
However Games did in fact start off as a product in the days when there was no such thing as digital media and all media was physical. That is the means valve and other digital purveyors are undermining laws of ownership. There has been no essential change in the product. It is a legal transaction that offers currency in exchange for content. It was protected when a physical media was involved, but there is nothing that breaks that arrangement simply by transferring it to a digital format and calling it something else. It was always there. Once a cartridge was purchased if the purchaser was not happy with it, tired with it, bored with it, any reason they had every legal right to sell that product as used. That also is what allowed corporations to be built like Blockbuster that focused on the "rental" of said product. It was most certainly there, ao it has most certainly been undercut wrongfully. However Companies such as steam who are trying to convert them into subscriptions and selling licenses, are also wrongly selling those licenses as the same thing as a product despite NOT having the same value. Compare ANY game launched on steam, Say Dishonored. That game has a physical counterpart. However that physical counterpart on say 360 or PS3 intrinsically has more value because the product can be resold as used. However the same is NOT true of steam, Yet their prices invariably will be mirrors and sold for the same value despite NOT having the same value.
Second, Yeah there is extortion. I mean I would love to know how I can legally play games I legally purchased without those provisions considering that I cannot access them devoid of the steam client that will NOT allow the game to launch without first auto launching the steam client which will shut down both the client AND game if the TOS is not agreed to. Now while there may be certain work arounds that bypass the need, I am completely unaware of how one can do so with direct support FROM steam, including being able to download purchased titles that were not installed at the time of this TOS. If its a bypass, and not supported by steam that is not the same thing as giving access. That makes it extortion that demands voluntary compliance.
Lastly, It absolutely does not matter in any way shape or form WHO class action lawsuits benefit. I will cheerfully agree that lawyers are the ones who benefit. But that is completely 1000% irrelevant. It is wrong to be forced to give up legal rights that you have no right to claim. When we voluntarily give up our rights to things we find irrelevant, it just makes it easier to take other rights away. There is no easy way to get back rights given away freely. So this argument never has been nor ever will be appropriate for this case.
Now that is all I am speaking on this. This is not the point of the thread and it is not my intention to derail the entire thread on an anti steam rant. My point of bringing this up is because this NEEDS to be repeatedly brought up. If there was someone asking "
how is steam evil, who didnt know about all of this it illustrates why there is a problem and why it bears repeating. This should not stop until Steam is forced (like with what is occurring in Germany) to remove this illogical, and frankly illegal provision of their TOS. The only reason it has not been already has specifically been because of flimsy arguments like this and the amazing complacency and lethargy exhibited by most western gamers in their willful defiance at defending something that they supposedly love while it is being destroyed right in front of them. I have expressed my opinion on it, and you are entitled to disagree, but that dissent is why this is still an issue and the reason I must keep bringing it up where ever and when ever I can. Trust me, I would love nothing more than to stop talking about it. So I wont talk about it more in this thread, If you are going to retort, your going to. We have to agree to disagree and allow the thread to be put back on the main topic regarding project eternity.
