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French high court rules that Steam can’t ban users from reselling digital games

• logfromblammo 7y ago
  I could easily see this as setting the minimum sale price as the current new-purchase price, Valve taking a 2%-5% cut, and then putting the balance of the proceeds in the seller's Steam wallet just before throwing out an offer to use it to buy the top game on their wishlist that costs less than that amount (maybe after a 5% post-transfer incentive discount).
• uncoder0 7y ago
  I really wonder how this will work with VAC bans and cheating. You can be banned from a game by various means VAC is one of them and Battleye is another popular tool. If a person gets banned from DayZ then they sell their game to buy a new copy that isn't banned does the buyer of their original game remain banned?
  • cannonedhamster 7y ago
    VAC bans are account based and can impact multiple games at once. A new user installing the software couldn't be tied to that account. The original user is still banned. That said you might be prevented from reselling as a form of punishment. I'm guessing that it wouldn't be difficult to set up a new account, however it couldn't be associated with the same MAC addresses.
    • BlueTemplar 7y ago
      Thing is, looks like that Valve would be prevented to forbid reselling of an account on these grounds...
• criddell 7y ago
  Could this extend to ebooks as well? Valve's argument that what they sold was a license and not the game feels like a distinction without a difference to me. Say I accept that. Then why can't I sell that license?
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • ldng 7y ago
    Under French law, probably. Not A French Lawyer.
  • ajnin 7y ago
    I think this should. Using the same logic, this should apply to in-game items and other "dematerialized" goods.
  • roblabla 7y ago
    A license is a contract between you and valve. You can't transfer that license because the contract says you can't. The court says that the digital game is a good (just like a DVD is), and not a license, so you must be allowed to resell it to somebody else.
    • deleted 7y ago
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    • shadowgovt 7y ago
      So is an ebook not a good?
    • criddell 7y ago
      So the end result must be that licenses can't take away your resale rights.
    • jandrese 7y ago
      Transferring the doctrine of first sale to the digital realm would have massive implications for pretty much every digital distribution service we have today. Streaming services wouldn't be affected, but Kindle, Steam, iTunes, and so many others are built on the assumption that their product has no secondary market.
      • criddell 7y ago
• sparkpeasy 7y ago
  "Although its unlikely a policy change this momentous would be made, Valve has a history of making changes based on court rulings it’s involved in." Sooo...Valve has a history of changing its policies to follow the law?
  • impalallama 7y ago
    Steams refund policy came about not long after being convicted in Australian court for not allowing them.
    • big_chungus 7y ago
      "convicted"? It seems as though this would be a civil issue, not criminal. I'm not sure to which case you're referring in Australia, but it appears this case was civil.
      • waste_monk 7y ago
        https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/full-federal-court-confirms-that-valve-misled-gamers https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/full-federal-court-con... TL;DR they got a big fine and also had to put a message on the storefront informing customers of their rights under Australian consumer law.
  • behringer 7y ago
    Pretty strange in this day and age with companies like Uber, Google or Facebook.
  • vonmoltke 7y ago
    > Sooo...Valve has a history of changing its policies to follow the law? The article isn't well written, but I believe the point is about Valve making the change worldwide, even though their legal obligation is just to do it in France (or possibly the EU).
    • hnarn 7y ago
• magashna 7y ago
  I can't imagine Valve won't find some loophole or way around this. Being able to resell digital games would destroy that economy. A possible outcome would be games in France are never on sale and they can only be traded within the French Steam economy. Can Valve still take a cut of all sales on their platform or add fees? Very curious how this turns out, but I feel like it's 50/50 whether this makes things better or worse.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • jerf 7y ago
    From the article: "Valve’s defence hinged on the argument that Steam sells game licenses – subscriptions – to games, not the games themselves. The court, however, doesn’t see game purchases on Steam as subscriptions, since the owner has access to them indefinitely, and isn’t required to pay recurring payments in order to maintain access." Guess what the loophole's gonna be? Steam will cost you 1 euro a month to maintain access, BUT WAIT, we've got this awesome "temporary introductory" deal where for every Euro you spend on anything in our store, anything at all, you get one free month of subscription! Yes, buy one brand new AAA game and you get 5 or 6 years of free subscription! Wowzers! What a stonking great deal for the consumer! Such an incredible deal that has been so successful that we're running it indefinitely, despite the fact it's totally temporary. But if you do somehow manage to run out of months, you will indeed lose access. That part has to be real. And there will be a real "just buy subscription access" option, though nobody will ever use it because why just give Valve 12 Euro when you can buy a game with it instead? I'm fairly confident in common law traditions, that would be too blatant and they couldn't literally do that. They'd sidle up in that direction, though, as close as they thought they could get. I don't know about how France's Civil Law tradition would take that, but, still, same principle; head in that direction as close as you think you can get. "As close as you can get" may in fact be quite far, but I think this is still the general direction you're going to see.
    • bluecalm 7y ago
      I agree, the court's argument doesn't make much sense. It can only result in various work arounds, for example making everything subscription based which most customers don't really want. Another work around could be selling per computer license -you will have to pay for using it on every new computer. It's not something anyone wants.
• chongli 7y ago
  Personally, I like the fact that Steam games can’t be resold. Why? Because that keeps the prices down since the resale value of a game does not need to be included in the price. If games could be resold then I’d have to go through the trouble of reselling them in order to recoup the difference.
  • MayeulC 7y ago
    How about the ability to sell one's account, then? This is currently forbidden in the EULA, as far as I know, but I don't think it would hurt prices that much. Or purchase a "license upgrade" to resell the game. That would be a deferred commission not everyone has to pay. Include the option to purchase it together with the game, and attach it to the license being transferred (I don't think they could get away with selling that upgrade multiple times in a row). I do not see this as a black-or-white situation. I am all for giving consumers more rights, and feel like we have been brainwashed into accepting the status quo by Big Tech™. I do not blame valve. They are one of the better players in the market, and it doesn't surprise me that they just used an existing commercial model everyone was already familiar with. I appreciate the fact that we are having this overdue conversation right now, and that at least some courts recognize the consumer some rights. > How about the ability to sell one's account, then? This is currently forbidden in the EULA, as far as I know, but I don't think it would hurt prices that much. That point was made again and again to justify the previous "no refunds" policy. It wouldn't surprise me if changing that policy actually kind of had the opposite effect (have people buy more games). Of course, people can also buy more expensive games now due to the same reason: not sure if the game is worth that price? Buy it and refund if it isn't (previously you wouldn't have bought it). I am quite interested in seeing the same ruling apply to ebooks/others as well. The only thing I am afraid of is if they turn everything into a subscription. Subscriptions are evil (except for recurring donations, in my book).
  • nabdab 7y ago
    The fact that triple A games have similar prices today on steam to the times when they also had both disk printing, physical distribution to stores and resale figured in seems to contradict that assertion. The main thing that’s keeping prices down seems to be the storm of smaller indie games and sales (which for Triple A games happen much much later in the lifecycle these days).
• golergka 7y ago
  This is absurd. When I buy a game on Steam, I fully understand that it doesn't have any resale value – and I easily agree to this deal, because I choose to forgo resale rights so I can get the game cheaper. But now this court have effectively destroyed my freedom to make this choice as a customer. And to add insult to injury, it's done this under the pretense of defending my rights, as if I'm an idiot who's not capable of making an informed choice. I really hope Valve finds a way to fight this. I don't want to go back to pre-Steam PC game prices.
  • CJefferson 7y ago
    The first game I could find on Amazon and steam is F1 2019. Its £34.99 on Amazon and £44.99 on steam. The legends edition is £54.99 on both platforms.
  • quaquaqua1 7y ago
    The more I think about this, the more it sounds generally correct to me. It should be proper that a "no resale rights version" is offered at a cheaper price compared to a higher priced "this is an asset you can resell" just like an N64 cartridge or etc. There are benefits to both models and the user and company should have the freedom to offer both.
  • archi42 7y ago
    For some titles there is no option to get a "resale allowed version". E.g. I bought a retail version of Borderlands 2 several years ago on DVD (long time post release, was like 20 Euro in a local games store). Well, turned out that DVD basically was a Steam Installer plus key (of course, that's a decision made by the publisher). Also, "so I can get the game cheaper" - do you? When I buy a newly released game on Steam it's usually in the 50 to 60 Euro range. Most games I buy are a lot cheaper, but they're usually a few years old by the time I pull the trigger. Still, I also have mixed feelings. If games get a resale value, it will be more difficult to earn money making games. Especially those with great, but short content.
    • Causality1 7y ago
      On the upside, having resale value is a direct attack on loot boxes, micro transactions, and other forms of in-game financial exploitation. You might be less likely to sink a thousand dollars into loot boxes if you're thinking about selling the game.
• deleted 7y ago
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• de_watcher 7y ago
  DRM is a crazy thing. Now it distorts the already DRM-distorted reality.
  • cameronbrown 7y ago
    Steam's DRM isn't technical, it's the community and platform itself. Any technical restrictions are completely optional.
    • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      This always gets brought up when Steam and DRM are mentioned in the same sentence, and it is true technically speaking. However, I'm not convinced it matters in practice. In reality, the vast majority of games on Steam will not start if Steam isn't running. And some which appear to work at first will have strange errors later on. There's also no way for me as a consumer to tell if a given game has DRM before I buy it. That pcgaming wiki has been wrong for me before (many times), and sometimes games that used to work will no longer do so after an update.
      • cameronbrown 7y ago
        My point is it's not forced on to developers like some platforms do, hint Epic Games Store. Edit: Not true. I know a plethora of people who support only Steam on principle alone. Not only have they been kind to the Linux community but they've so far held up their end of the bargain when it comes to Steam. Valve's willingness to uphold free speech (while accepting all the downsides like negative brand attention) also means a lot to me. They used to be awful for customer service but it's really come around lately.
        • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
          I'm not sure where you read that, but I can confirm from first-hand experience that it isn't true. My Epic Game Store copies of Journey and Control are both completely DRM-Free. I actually don't have the Epic Game Store installed on my main Windows partition at all, its isolated in its own VM. As long as the games I buy are DRM Free, I can download them in the VM, back them up, and move them to my real OS, and they run fine.
• de_watcher 7y ago
  Another problem is that the court probably means that you can resell games for real currency. Currently you can buy games with the Steam currency, which means that reselling games is a legit method of piping out real currency from Steam.
  • zouhair 7y ago
    How is that?
    • ihuman 7y ago
      If you sell items from certain games (like CSGO) or redeem a gift card, you get credit applied to your steam account. This can be used to purchase games, then you could (hypothetically) sell them for real-world cash.
      • zouhair 7y ago
        Well yeah. But if they are forced to allow reselling of games, I bet they won't allow that. Only games you bought with real money could be resold. They can set more rules too.
  • strig 7y ago
    They wouldn't necessarily need to implement that though, just a way of transferring licences to someone else. People could figure out their own payment.
    • shadowgovt 7y ago
      There's the problem of needing escrow for selling the game in that scenario; if, say, they implement game resale as "You can ask Steam to cut your access and give you a unique code someone else can enter to gain access," there's the problem that if I buy that code from you, I have no knowledge of if it'll actually work when I get home (maybe you sold it twice?). ... and then Steam can offer payment via their in-store currency (with x% shaved off the top) to basically serve as an escrow intermediary. Win-win for everyone except the developers deprived of first-sales by the new resale market.
• _edo 7y ago
  With laws like this you generally have to ask what's best for the consumer. I'm not sure reselling is. The current setup gives game developers a somewhat predictable revenue model and on the strength of that model they can encourage investors to put up money to make the games. Changing the revenue model may change how investors look at the market. Maybe for better maybe for worse. Who knows, but it would be a disruption if Steam has to adopt this model worldwide. The thing that I don't like is if you allow reselling then developers get less long-term revenue but (hopefully) more short-term revenue. This will cause them to focus more on getting a big opening weekend than making a solid game that might have years of appeal. Portal is still $10 on Steam. Maybe they only sell 100 copies a month at this point but that's still money coming in rewarding them for investing in interesting core game mechanics. I'd rather see them get rewarded for that than for dishonest advertising campaigns because 50% of their money will come from the first few days of sales.
  • ElonMuskrat 7y ago
    > The thing that I don't like is if you allow reselling then developers get less long-term revenue but (hopefully) more short-term revenue. This will cause them to focus more on getting a big opening weekend than making a solid game that might have years of appeal. But this exactly what happens now anyways. Not a cynical view point just a statement of what I believe to be facts. I had some interest in making indie games myself, so I looked at the market. Almost all games sales follow a power curve with most sales falling in the first week. The publishers build a tidal wave of marketing hype months before the game is released. AAAs spend tons of money to build-up to a critical mass of media influencers [e.g. YouTubers, entertainment conventions, TV ad spots, etc...].
    • friendlybus 7y ago
      Warframe, Path of Exile, GTA V, Minecraft, ect all have long tails. I think we need new categories for different kinds of game sales & financial performance. There certainly are still flash in the pan style sales like you describe, but there's more sustained forest fires too.
  • shadowgovt 7y ago
• umvi 7y ago
  Sweet, time to create a bunch of steam accounts, stock up on cheap games during steam sales, and then resell after the steam sale, undercutting the the "new" version (it's not like a digital resale is any lower quality than the "brand new" one). Rinse and repeat. Profit.
  • rat9988 7y ago
    You can do that with every product on sale. Buy clothes on sale and sell them later at full price or close to it.
    • umvi 7y ago
      Yeah, and as a result, prices are going to be higher for everyone. No more 90% off steam sales like we currently get - that would just encourage profiteers to stock up on as many digital copies as possible in order to resell and undercut later. And certainly no more "Celeste is free" type promos - that would be a feeding frenzy for profiteers.
      • ratww 7y ago
        People can already buy on discount and resell later if they use Humble Bundle or stores that gives Steam keys. We have been able to do that for years.
  • tomatotomato37 7y ago
    I'd imagine Valve is going to have some sort of market fee to prevent shenanigans like this; they'll probably just slap this feature on their regular community market which already has a 5% transaction fee. Edit: Or better yet just force sell price equal to at-time purchase price when it is bought off the steam store. The law just says they have to allow users to resell games, it doesn't say anything about allowing users to make a business off of it.
    • moate 7y ago
      Or just let people do act as resellers of your product. Presumably Valve is doing this hyper-low prices because they have the ability to and it makes the customers happy. They might decide to thumb their noses at everyone and say "okay fine, you guys are the secondary market now, figure it out yourselves, but we have no reason to give games away for free or sell them for 95% off"
• orra 7y ago
  Sensible but not surprising decision. The right to resell software was made incredibly clear in the CJEU case Oracle v UsedSoft. In fact, how did Steam manage for so long to ignore the pivotal case law?
  • hoffs 7y ago
    Steam? How about pretty much every digital storefront? You can't sell prime movies, you can't sell iTunes music and so on. All of these store fronts should ideally allow people to resell all digital content they purchased.
    • cannonedhamster 7y ago
      Prime movies is all you can watch rental service. Buying movies from Amazon digital is buying a perpetual license. The distinction is in selling access versus selling goods.
      • ozymandias12 7y ago
        >The distinction is in selling access versus selling goods. That's the core issue. We shouldn't let firms dictate ownership. Buying stuff is historically a right to property. The whole discussion is pointless because digital firms are using the regulatory capture, its slow reaction and legal loopholes to dictate ownership, all while doing PPP with the gov and lobbying for its causes. This whole thing is a temporary theater show (while we discuss the issue, the firms are making money and donating it). People should DEMAND regulatory instruments to react quicker and respect our rights.
    • bluecalm 7y ago
      Why should? The whole idea of copyright is that only the author (or otherwise copyright holder) can profit from making copies. Just because you purchased a copy yourself shouldn't automatically result in a right to making another copy for someone else as long as you promise not to use yours.
      • 7y ago
• throwaway66920 7y ago
  I think this is a bad idea which will encourage more in game transactions to be profitable. Margins aren’t good enough for the majority of games. I hope this doesn’t expand out of France.
  • roblabla 7y ago
    This will likely expand to at least the whole European Union since european texts were used to arrive to this ruling.
    • C1sc0cat 7y ago
      "texts"? there is an EU ruling that you cant sell e books. Each EU country implements EU law in its own way I suspect this would be challenged at the EU level. Some European countries are known for not really implementing EU law as they are supposed to - Spain and TUPE for example
  • Gene_Parmesan 7y ago
    > bad idea It's not a policy decision, it's an interpretation of current law. There is a very big difference between a legislative body deciding to add a new law as a policy matter, and a court interpreting pre-existing law.
• Noos 7y ago
  This is incredibly stupid. This is just going to make games even more unprofitable to make for their developers, and push it towards live-service/F2P games over traditional ones, since account selling is prohibited. Its hard enough to survive in that sphere making traditional games now; enabling the Gamestop effect on digital games is probably going to hurt beyond compare.
  • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    I think it will cut down on those massive Steam sales, which basically work by encouraging people to buy a bunch of games they don't actually want and won't play. I think that might cut down on the diversity of titles, but also could drive up quality.
  • C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Its going to increase dark patterns and loot boxes for kids who cant / wont pay £50 for a AAA game
    • deleted 7y ago
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    • ukoki 7y ago
      It might fix the problem of loot boxes. If the law applies to games, then it may apply to in-game items as well. Then players would be able to buy in-game items on secondary markets at known prices rather having to gamble for them as they do now.
• jmpman 7y ago
  So, don’t sell in France in order to keep your business model in tact?
  • archi42 7y ago
    More like "don't sell in the EU". Not sure if that's a market to easily ignore...?
    • ihuman 7y ago
      Does this ruling affect all of the EU?
      • archi42 7y ago
        Not a lawyer, but since it seems to be based on some EU harmonized market regulation, I suppose it could.
• shadowgovt 7y ago
  If this ruling is accepted, it's going to go a bit further than "can't ban," right? AFAIK right now, there's no infrastructure for transferring one's games on Steam from one user to another (apart from, say, selling the password to one's Steam account). So would compliance of the ruling imply Steam has to build some kind of digital marketplace infrastructure to allow for licenses to be resold?
  • tinalumfoil 7y ago
    I dont see why they would need to create the marketplace themselves. Why couldn't they just let users convert purchased titles back into keys and then sell them on tons of third party key sellers that already exist?
    • shadowgovt 7y ago
      They could. ... but they could also offer the option of doing that, but alternatively just letting you transact the game to another Steam user directly, using the in-store currency (with an x% shaved off the top) for the cost of Steam basically working as an escrow service (to guarantee you haven't done something like converted to a key and then sold that key twice). If doing so is fully compliant with the law, I predict that's what they would do (and it's probably worth the cost to them to pay the lawyers to argue that's fully compliant... ;) ).
      • uremog 7y ago
        I wonder what the highest x% is that the courts would accept as not totally bs. I'm pretty sure if Steam said, oh yeah, you can re-sell within Steam but we'll just take 99% lol, that would not be ok.
  • meheleventyone 7y ago
    Users could sell their accounts without that requirement. But Steam already has an extensive digital goods resale platform for all sorts of things from trading cards to in game items it actually includes gifted games (not sure if you can sell these but certainly you can transfer them).
• ineedasername 7y ago
  You can't resell your copy of Windows, I don't see how games are much different. I think at least one likely result would be many fewer deep discount sales. Having them would allow a resell arbitrage as people stocked up at the low price in order to resell when the sale ends.
  • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Is there anything to stop you from reselling your retail Windows key? It's against Microsoft's TOS, but has an EU court ever verified that the restriction is actually enforceable? As far as I'm aware, the answer is "no".
  • jeroenhd 7y ago
    Why not? It's perfectly legal in the EU to sell any digital goods second hand as long as you stop using the software you sold.
    • ineedasername 7y ago
      I didn't realize that! Though in researching it, I found that the law allowing resell is somewhat linked to the original install media, i.e., you couldn't sell the license key and a backup copy. I don't see any EU cases that square this with digital distribution, but maybe this current ruling will provide guidance on that issue.
      • jeroenhd 7y ago
        There was the famous Oracle vs UsedSoft lawsuit: https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3134867/eu-court-of-justice-used-software-download-ruling https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3134867/eu-court-of-justic... This basically added jurisprudence that digital downloads can be resold provided that the original is made unusable.
        • gamblor956 7y ago
          That case was one of the reasons that Adobe and Microsoft switched to a subscription-based model for their software suites.
• deleted 7y ago
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• GreaterFool 7y ago
  > and isn’t required to pay recurring payments in order to maintain access Simple solution: make French users pay recurring fees. Problem solved? EDIT: would be nice if I could prune my library and perhaps swap some games. But what about other marketplaces and other stores? Why only Steam?
  • jeroenhd 7y ago
    If Valve prefers not selling games in the EU to implementing a way to sell second hand games, sure. Remember that the French court is referencing EU law. This basically means that the practice is forbidden across the entire EU based on current jurisdiction. It's possible for Valve to introduce pay-as-you-go games, but doing so would probably violate the contract under which previously sold games were sold. This means that they still need some way to allow customers to either resell or download and resell the old games regardless of whether they will charge a fee to their users or not. They might also undo the sale of the old game, assuming the customer agrees to do that, and give back the entire paid amount spent on the platform in exchange for removing the old games. This would be a huge financial loss to the company and would only be possible if all customers agree to getting their money back. If they do charge a fee, they should expect their consumer base in Europe to shrink significantly. If Steam wants to appeal, they might be able to put the case in front of an EU judge. This will cost them even more legal fees and is likely to end in the same result. Reselling digital goods is allowed in the EU and Valve (as well as other companies like it) are breaking the law. In my opinion, just following the law would be a better choice commercially than trying to work around it.
    • dageshi 7y ago
      I think this could get interesting. Would valve be legally required to offer their services (game download + cloud saves) to a second hand buyer? Surely the person selling the game would need to provide the second hand buyer the copy of the game along with the key? Valve merely provides a service which says "this key now belongs to this account" but that second hand buyer has no right to download from valve?
      • 7y ago
• jeroentrappers 7y ago
  If steam loses this case, what is to stop someone to ask the same of app stores and reselling apps you have purchased, or eg movies on iTunes.
  • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Nothing, I would imagine. ...which seems to me like a good thing.
• jboydyhacker 7y ago
  Surprised to see so much sentiment against this ruling. Digital software sale and distribution is just supposed to make software management easier and faster. A license is the same regardless of wether it's physical or digital. Why shouldn't this apply to resale of said merchandise? I rarely say this- but the French really make a ton of sense here.
  • gamblor956 7y ago
    A license is not the same for a physical copy vs a digital copy. A physical copy is an actual tangible thing, and courts have ruled that licenses travel with the ownership of the actual thing--i.e., copyright law does not trump property law. A digital copy is an ephemeral, transitory thing. The very nature of a digital object means that the object used/viewed/etc is not the same digital object that was stored (i.e., the copy on your hard drive is not the copy in memory, though they may be identical). Copyright law is entirely about restrictions on copying things and digital goods are trivially copyable things. The French law makes little sense. The distinction between physical goods and intangible items exists for a reason in copyright law, and indeed is inherent in other parts of EU law, such as with respect to e-books. Importantly, earlier this week the EU itself ruled that ebooks cannot be resold (see https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/international-book-news/article/81151-second-hand-e-book-retailers-ruled-unlawful-by-eu.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/i...) and the French court's reasoning in this case is entirely contrary to the reasoning of the EU. Expect this law to be overturned, or for PC game prices to go up dramatically in the EU if it is not.
    • cannonedhamster 7y ago
      So if a license is what's on the disc. You can sell a license. The only difference is that it's on the hard disk of your computer. Steam can still ask for a portion of the proceeds as a digital marketplace.
    • EpicEng 7y ago
      >A license is not the same for a physical copy vs a digital copy. >A physical copy is an actual tangible thing, and courts have ruled that licenses travel with the ownership of the actual thing--i.e., copyright law does not trump property law. >A digital copy is an ephemeral, transitory thing. The very nature of a digital object means that the object used/viewed/etc is not the same digital object that was stored (i.e., the copy on your hard drive is not the copy in memory, though they may be identical). ...as defined by courts, but not this one. It is those things because we say it is. In another reality it's perfectly reasonable to assume courts ruled that there is no difference. It's a situation which benefits the producer, not the consumer. I agree that it's tricky because you also can't allow for a buyer to produce copies and undercut you but, at the same time, I am getting a low less with my money. >or for PC game prices to go up dramatically in the EU if it is not. There has been a second hand market for games since they have existed (which was also fought against btw, along with rentals.)
• danarmak 7y ago
  A game only has value while I'm playing it. If two people play the same game at different hours or timezones, they can buy a single license and transfer it back and forth. (This is different from e.g. server software.) A tariff on resales would cut back on that (if the ruling allows it). But the effective price of a game would still tend to approach the cost of reselling it. You would need to re-download the game every time you buy it, but with modern broadband this is feasible. An efficient marketplace for 'renting' games (or game licenses) would let you buy a game just before you start playing, and resell it when you go to sleep. The marketplace would only need to buy enough licenses to satisfy peak demand and could amortize the cost across players and games.
  • dwild 7y ago
    The article doesn't mentions that the judgment would force Steam to facilitate game resell though. You can be allowed to do it, but it can still be a pain in the ass to do it (giving access to your account, etc...). Same goes for a marketplace that would use that rule to allow people to rent the games. None of theses games has to facilitate the resale and they aren't forced to sell license to the marketplace either (though they could buy license through Steam or anything else, but that would still go with the "pain in the ass" argument).
    • danarmak 7y ago
      This is true. But if it's at all possible, the marketplace could automate it. History shows that DRM and adjacent technology rarely succeeds if the law doesn't make it illegal to circumvent. And history also clearly shows that most users are willing to click a button letting others access their Steam account if needed.
• deleted 7y ago
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