Steam, banning players for being generous?

[Fetzenfisch]

I don't know... That anology would be more correct if the care was say, 30,000 USD in America but 50,000 USD in Europe and the person who stole the car only gave 30,000 USD.

Edit: You paying for an agreed price on a game; be it that the price was lower than the price for the person it was given to...

Actually, for a better analogy: Ever bought something overseas because it was cheaper than buying it here? Steam just banned him for that (Apparently)

Okay, perhaps a better analogy would be someone importing a bunch of dvds from china or something, and then selling them inside a local electronics store at half price. I'd say that the store owners are right within their legal/moral grounds to kick the guy out of the store.

Only if the importer bought them from the same company, but in china and chinese currency.
They lost exactly the same amount of money as if the 20 people buying the games would be american.
Its just prevending them from ripping of the rest of the world. Its not that long range digital distribution cost them anything. There is no reason for different prices, except that the dollar is weaker than the Euro so the europeans are used to pay more.

Its like me selling a self programmed game at 20$ if your first name starts with A-H and 40$ if it starts with I-Z.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

It's an industry standard not a legal standard.

Doesn't matter. There's enough industry protective laws to make an industry standard equal to a legal standard; and a whole bagful of lawyers willing to make that happen.

Or perhaps you want to overturn the "degradation of drinking water/increase in bottled water" standard, the "Best Before Date < Edible Before Date" standard or any of the other industry standards that are prevalent?

Or simply the manufacturers saying that it's Piracy to copy their materials? Same TOS, Same industry standard.

 

[Jaded Scribe]

I don't know... That anology would be more correct if the care was say, 30,000 USD in America but 50,000 USD in Europe and the person who stole the car only gave 30,000 USD.

Edit: You paying for an agreed price on a game; be it that the price was lower than the price for the person it was given to...

Actually, for a better analogy: Ever bought something overseas because it was cheaper than buying it here? Steam just banned him for that (Apparently)

Okay, perhaps a better analogy would be someone importing a bunch of dvds from china or something, and then selling them inside a local electronics store at half price. I'd say that the store owners are right within their legal/moral grounds to kick the guy out of the store.

Only if the importer bought them from the same company, but in china and chinese currency.
They lost exactly the same amount of money as if the 20 people buying the games would be american.
Its just prevending them from ripping of the rest of the world. Its not that long range digital distribution cost them anything. There is no reason for different prices, except that the dollar is weaker than the Euro so the europeans are used to pay more.

Its like me selling a self programmed game at 20$ if your first name starts with A-H and 40$ if it starts with I-Z.

I see a lot of people making these claims that Valve is cheating you. Could you provide some numbers?

i.e.:

Typical cost for a new game on Steam vs typical cost for a new game at a big name store (Note: Big name store. Not some small seller that manages to get awesome prices, but the standard new price)

 

[Fetzenfisch]

...

I see a lot of people making these claims that Valve is cheating you. Could you provide some numbers?

i.e.:

Typical cost for a new game on Steam vs typical cost for a new game at a big name store (Note: Big name store. Not some small seller that manages to get awesome prices, but the standard new price)

ok i see what i can do.

Steam (europe-germany)
Dragon Age II 49,90 EUR (67,43$)
Dungeons 44,99 EUR (60,79$)
Left 4 Dead II 19,99EUR (27$)

Shop (Saturn, big chain)
Actually the same.But L4D2 is 5 bucks more.

 

[Jaded Scribe]

...

I see a lot of people making these claims that Valve is cheating you. Could you provide some numbers?

i.e.:

Typical cost for a new game on Steam vs typical cost for a new game at a big name store (Note: Big name store. Not some small seller that manages to get awesome prices, but the standard new price)

ok i see what i can do.

Steam (europe-germany)
Dragon Age II 49,90 EUR (67,43$)
Dungeons 44,99 EUR (60,79$)
Left 4 Dead II 19,99EUR (27$)

Shop (Saturn, big chain)
Actually the same.But L4D2 is 5 bucks more.

So.... It seems that Steam is the exact same price as buying retail, and in the case of L4D2, Steam is actually cheaper?

How does this equate to being cheated?

 

[Fetzenfisch]

...

I see a lot of people making these claims that Valve is cheating you. Could you provide some numbers?

i.e.:

Typical cost for a new game on Steam vs typical cost for a new game at a big name store (Note: Big name store. Not some small seller that manages to get awesome prices, but the standard new price)

ok i see what i can do.

Steam (europe-germany)
Dragon Age II 49,90 EUR (67,43$)
Dungeons 44,99 EUR (60,79$)
Left 4 Dead II 19,99EUR (27$)

Shop (Saturn, big chain)
Actually the same.But L4D2 is 5 bucks more.

So.... It seems that Steam is the exact same price as buying retail, and in the case of L4D2, Steam is actually cheaper?

How does this equate to being cheated?

By selling making different prices in digital distribution, where i wont have a dvd or box. And they have no cost of import at all. They are just using the convienience of higher prices,without extra service. Alone charging the same for a digital copy then a real one is an insult.

 

[Zer_]

Except everyone here is completely missing the main thing: VAT was paid. In the country where the product was originally bought. After that, the product was given to someone for the all-amazing price of NOTHING.

This is the sequence of events.

Money handed to buyer from consumer->Buyer selects game (VAT is included)->Selects to buy game (Sales tax added) ->Buyer hands game to consumer.

All applicable taxes were paid. There's no tax evasion involved. This is the far more likely series of events...

Steam/Valve realized that he's bypassing the publisher's (incredibly) unfair pricing. They know that if more people did this, they'd lose their cut of the inflated price on a lot more sales. So rather than do the "fair" thing and just cut out the pricing based on location, they ban him for threatening their profit in any way.

Valve: just as evil as the rest.

What?! No! He didn't pay VAT. I didn't pay VAT when I gifted something to MrLS. That's the problem with the whole thing. Where the heck do you get all these ridiculous ideas in your head? Holy cripes. I'm done arguing over this if you're just going to be a fool about all of this.

When one sends a gift to Canada from the US, no import fees are applied. Same thing happens when gifting to the EU. Exploiting this is against the law. Period.

For Valve, there are three possible outcomes here. One is nothing happens, the EU doesn't notice, and things are peachy. Two, they notice someone exploiting a loophole in their laws, Valve gets in trouble for assisting it. Three, the man breaks the law, and Valve is again in trouble for assisting it.

For the last time, Valve was simply covering their own asses to protect themselves from any potential legal issues. They are also protecting the publisher's interest as well. Valve does not want to lose any publishers from their service. It doesn't make sense for them to allow this either way, so stop arguing.

 

[Jaded Scribe]

...

I see a lot of people making these claims that Valve is cheating you. Could you provide some numbers?

i.e.:

Typical cost for a new game on Steam vs typical cost for a new game at a big name store (Note: Big name store. Not some small seller that manages to get awesome prices, but the standard new price)

ok i see what i can do.

Steam (europe-germany)
Dragon Age II 49,90 EUR (67,43$)
Dungeons 44,99 EUR (60,79$)
Left 4 Dead II 19,99EUR (27$)

Shop (Saturn, big chain)
Actually the same.But L4D2 is 5 bucks more.

So.... It seems that Steam is the exact same price as buying retail, and in the case of L4D2, Steam is actually cheaper?

How does this equate to being cheated?

By selling making different prices in digital distribution, where i wont have a dvd or box. And they have no cost of import at all. They are just using the convienience of higher prices,without extra service. Alone charging the same for a digital copy then a real one is an insult.
They just earn lots of money more, because i am not sitting in the US downloading it, there is nothing that outweights the higher price,neither in service nor material.

Trade regulations maybe? Agreement with your local retailers to keep them from being run out of business?

It is perfectly fair. You pay the price that is set by the economics in your region. It works this way for just about everything.

Self-entitled much?

 

[CoL0sS]

Oh what the hell, they made an example of this guy, and now people will probably think twice before they do it. There was no way they could have known whether he profited from those "gifts". Personally I think Valve overreacted a bit and that simple warning would have sufficed. I don't like paying more than American gamers, but it's still cheaper than retail. In most cases that is.....if the game is on sale....um, yeah.

 

[Chibz]

What?! No! He didn't pay VAT. I didn't pay VAT when I gifted something to MrLS. That's the problem with the whole thing. Where the heck do you get all these ridiculous ideas in your head? Holy cripes. I'm done arguing over this if you're just going to be a fool about all of this.

He paid all applicable taxes in the country where the product was purchased. He then gave the product away for $0.

How is it illegal to send something to someone for free, given that we have laws that explicitly allow this? This isn't a loophole either, it's the explicitly intended purpose of such laws and agreements.

But you are right on one thing, Valve is protecting the publishers' ability to price gouge people from the EU. They're also protecting themselves from the publishers getting angry at them for allowing people to obtain products from a fair price, and from reasonable competition.

 

[Plurralbles]

Considering it's just a bunch of 1's and 0's going over some tubes that some people have to pay per gigabit, it's really dickish to overprice the games.

 

[veloper]

What?! No! He didn't pay VAT. I didn't pay VAT when I gifted something to MrLS. That's the problem with the whole thing. Where the heck do you get all these ridiculous ideas in your head? Holy cripes. I'm done arguing over this if you're just going to be a fool about all of this.

He paid all applicable taxes in the country where the product was purchased. He then gave the product away for $0.

Ha no. The very moment his european clients send him money throught paypal to receive the game, a purchase was made, in Europe, so the taxman wants to see VAT.

Simply calling it a "gift" doesn't fool anyone. It would have been a gift only if the europeans hadn't send him any money for the game.

 

[Zer_]

What?! No! He didn't pay VAT. I didn't pay VAT when I gifted something to MrLS. That's the problem with the whole thing. Where the heck do you get all these ridiculous ideas in your head? Holy cripes. I'm done arguing over this if you're just going to be a fool about all of this.

He paid all applicable taxes in the country where the product was purchased. He then gave the product away for $0.

How is it illegal to send something to someone for free, given that we have laws that explicitly allow this? This isn't a loophole either, it's the explicitly intended purpose of such laws and agreements.

But you are right on one thing, Valve is protecting the publishers' ability to price gouge people from the EU. They're also protecting themselves from the publishers getting angry at them for allowing people to obtain products from a fair price, and from reasonable competition.

He admitted to receiving the money for the purchase. That's the damn problem. Cripes what's so hard to understand? Also, who in their right minds would send 20+ "gifts" to people in Europe you've never actually met. It's highly suspect at least.

And again, as a seller, Valve can easily find out from PayPal whether or not the user received the money from someone else prior to making the purchase. You see Valve makes the request. PayPal says "we'll check into it." They find out that this man indeed received money for the so called "gifts". PayPal realizes that it would be in their own best interest to forward this information to Valve, lest they avoid any trouble in doing so. Valve has their proof, they ban the user for breaking the TOS and breaking the law.

It's simple... It's illegal to sell goods cross-border and labeling as "gifts" to avoid taxes and import fees. Repeat that last sentence as many times as you need to get it through to you that what Valve did was to protect their own business.

There's a reason why sellers like ThinkGeek won't ever label their packages as gifts, because that would be ILLEGAL!

 

[Chibz]

He admitted to receiving the money for the purchase. That's the damn problem. Cripes what's so hard to understand? Also, who in their right minds would send 20+ "gifts" to people in Europe you've never actually met. It's highly suspect at least.

And again, as a seller, Valve can easily find out from PayPal whether or not the user received the money from someone else prior to making the purchase. You see Valve makes the request. PayPal says "we'll check into it." They find out that this man indeed received money for the so called "gifts". PayPal realizes that it would be in their own best interest to forward this information to Valve, lest they avoid any trouble in doing so. Valve has their proof, they ban the user for breaking the TOS and breaking the law.

It's simple... It's illegal to sell goods cross-border and labeling as "gifts" to avoid taxes and import fees. Repeat that last sentence as many times as you need to get it through to you that what Valve did was to protect their own business.

There's a reason why sellers like ThinkGeek won't ever label their packages as gifts, because that would be ILLEGAL!

If you want to go that route, he purchased it on their behalf and is just an intermediary. The difference is the sequence of events.

Valve was wrong, and remains wrong.

 

[Trolldor]

Valve was not wrong at all. Valve is in the legal and moral right by compying with the law.
If you have an issue, bring it up with the governments that enforce it.
Zer: The problem is not giving someone a gift, the problem is giving someone a 'gift' and then accepting its purchase value in return in order to avoid paying tax.

Also, just so you know, the reason it's called an import tax is that it's a tax. A revenue builder for the Government. Valve doesn't pocket the bloody tax.

 

[Chibz]

Valve was not wrong at all. Valve is in the legal and moral right by compying with the law.
If you have an issue, bring it up with the governments that enforce it.
Zer: The problem is not giving someone a gift, the problem is giving someone a 'gift' and then accepting its purchase value in return in order to avoid paying tax.

Also, just so you know, the reason it's called an import tax is that it's a tax. A revenue builder for the Government. Valve doesn't pocket the bloody tax.

The question is, how can you really be said to be importing a non-physical product? Also, realistically, they should be charging import taxes to any product sold outside the US by this logic. But they aren't.

At this point it's all arbitrary nonsense, so fudge the import tax element. It makes no logical sense.

 

[KalosCast]

I didn't buy this alcohol for children officer. They gave me money, I bought liquor they wanted, and then I set it on the ground and they stole it from me!

No, sorry, this guy doesn't have a case.

 

[Trolldor]

Valve was not wrong at all. Valve is in the legal and moral right by compying with the law.
If you have an issue, bring it up with the governments that enforce it.
Zer: The problem is not giving someone a gift, the problem is giving someone a 'gift' and then accepting its purchase value in return in order to avoid paying tax.

Also, just so you know, the reason it's called an import tax is that it's a tax. A revenue builder for the Government. Valve doesn't pocket the bloody tax.

The question is, how can you really be said to be importing a non-physical product? Also, realistically, they should be charging import taxes to any product sold outside the US by this logic. But they aren't.

At this point it's all arbitrary nonsense, so fudge the import tax element. It makes no logical sense.

Right, then you would have to raise the issue with the Government applying said Tax. Valve doesn't legislate Tax.

 

[KalosCast]

I didn't buy this alcohol for children officer. They gave me money, I bought liquor they wanted, and then I set it on the ground and they stole it from me!

No, sorry, this guy doesn't have a case.

lol you do realize how COMPLETELY flawed that argument is right. I will explain to you, You see buying alcohol for children is what we call a criminal act say it again criminal act which carries a penalty with it by local courts for doing it. The person doing the gift thing has committed no crime that I'm aware of and his only mistake was being dumb enough to use his main steam account to do this operation, from what I'm aware of that and nothing illegal about what he did and steam just ban him because they frowned upon it.

It's still the same thing, just a different law. Valve has made a price offer to HIM for a game (or rather, US customers). This offer is not available to European customers. He is selling this offer to people who aren't eligible for it. Anybody with any knowledge of contract law is going to know this guy doesn't have a case.

 

[darth gditch]

I'll quote an insightful comment from the link...

I wish more people would take a basic contract law class. Unreasonable clauses - primarily clauses which contract out of existing contract law - are unenforceable. Terminating an account which a person has paid for and reasonably expects to be able to use is a violation of the contract. It doesn't matter if Valve includes the clause "we may cancel your account and fuck you up the ass whenever we feel like it*. Neither stipulations are legal, and therefore any consumer could sue for the value of the games. Perhaps even punitive damages, since that would be shady as fuck.

If being banned indeed removes access to your purchased games, it's definitely a lawsuit situation. And nobody would call it frivolous.

But more OT, what this guy did was shady, but I highly doubt it's illegal. Since he bought the game, he owns it, and can sell it to anyone he wants. If Valve wants to fuck non-americans over with their stupid prices, consumers have a right to look for a better price.

Actually, not every country guarantees consumers the right to look for a better price. Just saying.

OT: Eh. It's shady, and it DOES mean that Valve is potentially losing thousands of dollars, if only a couple of dozen people do this. Not saying its cool or fair or that I agree with Valve, just saying that they're totally in the clear legally to ban someone who is costing them money.