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French court rules Steam games must be able to be resold

352 points by abbe98 7y ago

byron_fast 7y ago
I've always wanted to re-sell my Steam games. I assume Valve has a real business reason why they haven't allowed this, since when sharing your games locally they are better than anyone. Clearly they don't have the big company mindset of forcing people to pay for a license on every device. If Valve complies with this ruling I'd guess we'll find out what that reason is. I think loot crates and the item market reveals the problem. Steam licenses will turn into some kind of black market money laundering machine that will be impossible to regulate.
- tensor 7y ago
  This is all speculation, but I would guess that the main issue is legal agreements with the publishers. The publishers don't want any game resales, they want only new sales. Unless France can equally compel the publishers to allow this, it might end up being that Steam is forced to withdraw from France.
  - byron_fast 7y ago
    Maybe, but I don't see that publishers could push Valve around too much these days. You're right everyone wants new sales - but they've learned to be okay with offering 90% off at some point, and smaller discounts along the way.
  - adev_ 7y ago
    > I would guess that the main issue is legal agreements with the publishers. The publishers don't want any game resales, they want only new sales. Publishers tolerated reselling for decade when game mediums where physical. Nowadays they complain about it to increase their margin, purely because they can technically lock the medium. This is bullshit of the same level than the DRMs and other lock-in nonsense. I am pretty happy some consumer association finally arrived to say them to fuck off.
- opencl 7y ago
  There already is sort of a black market money laundering machine around steam licenses. It basically goes like: buy steam keys (not buying the game directly on steam, but a redeemable key from some other vendor) using stolen credit cards, resell the keys on a site like G2A, then when the stolen credit cards inevitably get chargebacks you still have the money from selling the key.
  - rebuilder 7y ago
    This is what cryptocurrencies really opened my eyes to: Everything is fungible if it can be traded online. And if it's fungible, it's going to attract scammers and criminals.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  I wonder if something could be worked out like a rebate for giving up access to a title (e.g. 10% of current retail price or original sale price, whichever is less), or a discounted license transfer to a friend (perhaps the recipient pays 10% to the publisher to transfer the license). That way, publishers still make money, friends can cheaply "give" games to their friends, and everyone else can still feel like they're "selling" old games, which would hopefully increase engagement in the platform. I know I have a ton of games I no longer care about, and if I could "sell" them, I would, which cleans up my library and makes me want to spend the balance. Also, if a game is no longer supported by a publisher, transfers should be free.
  - IndrekR 7y ago
    I do not see a good reason why one should not be able to sell the game more expensive than the purchase price. Say when the title becomes unavailable from the original source or was obtained as part of a bundle.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  The first thing that comes to mind is contracts. Imagine you're signing a contract to let Valve sell your games. That's fairly straightforward - you agree on the terms for any given sale, probably Valve take a fixed percentage of the sale cost, and you sign. (Any lawyers among us, I beg your forgiveness!) Now, imagine the contract gives Valve the right to let third parties resell the games at a price of their choosing. What now? Do you, the publisher, still get a cut? How much? What if it's a used game being resold for the Nth time? There's quite a bit of complexity being introduced here.
  - meheleventyone 7y ago
    In the old physical store days distributors and retailers held the power so they cornered the resale market by letting people trade in old games for money off new games. This let them sell the same product twice (or more!) without paying any money from the resale up the chain to the publisher or further to developers. Valve already has a store that allows for resale of digital assets with an attached transaction fee. So naively it’d be an extension of that to games. Whether they think they can cut out the people upstream remains to be seen.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      > Valve already has a store that allows for resale of digital assets with an attached transaction fee. So naively it’d be an extension of that to games. Does first sale doctrine apply here? I think this would violate that.
- still_grokking 7y ago
  My best guess on why Valve doesn't like the idea of a second hand market for content sold on Steam is that it would destroy Valve's internal price structures if such a market would emerge (globally). The prices on Steam vary quite substantial between regions / countries. Depending to which country an account is linked to the price for the same content may be only a small fraction (down to single-digit percentages) of the price called out elsewhere. If there would be a free market for "second hand" Steam licenses, and those licenses could be freely transferred form low price regions to high price regions, Valve couldn't uphold its artificial price structure any longer. I guess they don't like this idea. Even if Valve finds a way to avoid allowing second hand sales between arbitrary counties they might get in some trouble even with this ruling now: I guess they can be forced to allow second hand sales between EU countries with this ruling (because of properties of the trading union). But AFAIK there are also price differences between countries inside the EU. A free second hand market will likely put an end to this.
  - user5994461 7y ago
    They could region lock each acquisition. It's not difficult and it probably wouln't cause issue with the law because it's already happening with video DVD.
    - still_grokking 7y ago
      Region locking inside the EU is not an option. The union demands goods being freely tradable within its borders. Just lately this was even extended to explicitly include digital goods. [1] [1] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/new-eu-rules-e-commerce https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/new-eu-rules-e...
      - dogma1138 7y ago
        It is still an option for purchases, the digital content rules have not been formalized yet and currently only aimed and preserving access while traveling within the EU, the current complication is licensing as well as license derived copyright (e.g. translations). As most content is created outside of the EU and then licensed to various entities within the EU on different agreements there isn’t much that can easily be done. Sky for example licenses HBO content for the UK you can’t become a Sky subscriber if you do not reside in the UK and pay a TV license. You can access the streaming VOD service as a subscriber from your tablet if you have traveled to Berlin, but you can’t subscribe to it as a German resident.
staplor 7y ago
I think this is bad; not necessarily for the consumer, but for the industry as a whole. Reselling means that copies sold after the release benefit random consumers, not the developer. On the other hand unresellable licenses along with sales mean that everyone pays the same price, but the developer gets all of the revenue. Digital goods cannot be scarce; we shouldn't treat them as if they are.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  > On the other hand unresellable licenses along with sales mean that everyone pays the same price no, unsellable licenses result in price discrimination, because it gives the distributor a monopoly on the sale. That is why steam games have different prices in different regions. Through resales this is eliminated because people can trivially use the arbitrage opportunity to buy low and sell high. This is a good thing because it maximises consumer surplus. I'm not really sure what a 'random consumer' is either. I don't really see why we should let platform owners or developers exercise market power to the disadvantage of consumers.
  - throwaway34241 7y ago
    > no, unsellable licenses result in price discrimination > Through resales this is eliminated > I don't really see why we should let platform owners or developers exercise market power to the disadvantage of consumers. No price discrimination may result in the single sale price being the first world country price rather than the developing country price (it may make more financial sense to ignore developing countries than to cut the first world price by 3x). So it wouldn't necessarily be to the advantage of consumers. Secondly this is ignoring what games are a viable financial enterprise to begin with. Without taking that into account, mandating all games be free would be to the advantage of consumers. If a low friction way to buy/sell digital copies single player games existed, I could imagine a single player game changing hands 10 times rapidly after it's released as people finish playing it and sell it to the next person. Unlike physical goods used digital goods would be basically perfect (and would require no time or money to ship). But rather than consumers paying 10x less overall and developers finding a way to make the same games with 10x less money, I expect a different equilibrium would be reached. Probably developers mostly ignoring pay-once single player games altogether in favor of multiplayer games and/or in app purchases.
bdz 7y ago
>For Valve, it would only apply to tangible games, not to online licenses. According to the UFC, the initial purchaser must be able to resell these games second-hand, even those acquired on the platform. Sounds like physical games that must be activated on Steam to be able to be played. Once you activate them you can't play on another account even if you have the DVD (but sometimes it's just a code in the case). That's an opposite of most physical console games that can be resold and played on other consoles, under other accounts. For example I have The Evil Within phsyical collector's edition (awesome game btw) and it comes with a Steam code. I can't play the game under other Steam accounts. And the physical DVDs are worthless, I can't resold them. On the other hand if I would have bought the game on PS4 or XBox One I could just give the disks to someone else and they can play the game no problem.
- nolok 7y ago
  Given that the EU court has confirmed it was legal to resale your own digital Oracle license AND Oracle had to allow the new buyer the same downloads/update/support as the original one (and given that it's Oracle), I'm not sure the ruling would be different with purely digital games. 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...
  - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
    About 7 years ago I had purchased an annual LinkedIn subscription. About a month into it I decided I didn't like running a recruiting business anymore. I was stuck with the subscription. I found someone who was willing to buy it off me for maybe 20% of what they would have paid. LinkedIn had zero interest in letting and/or helping me transfer to another person. What I ended up doing was adding the buyer to my company account, changing the company name (on LinkedIn), and then had them remove me. It worked great!
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Which is why Oracle now provides mostly subscriptions instead of licenses.
- 7y ago
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
What a dumbass ruling. Games are insanely cheap as a co-result of the online distro model. Expect game prices to creep up.
chongli 7y ago
Reselling games on Steam seems so silly to me. Many of my games cost less than $1 because I bought them in bulk during the big seasonal sales. What am I going to resell them for 50 cents? Too much effort! Maybe it makes more sense to resell those $80 AAA games, but I get the feeling those who are thrifty enough to want to resell games all the time are probably fine with waiting until they go on sale anyway.
- catalogia 7y ago
  It's patently absurd to state that anybody who buys a product new would, by virtue of buying it new, be the sort of person who'd never sell that product after they're bored with it.
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  Why do you have to resell it for less than you paid?
  - catalogia 7y ago
    Even if you do, it hardly matters. I bought my car new and sold it used for less money. It's very common to buy something new then sell it when you're through with it.
  - wernercd 7y ago
    Why would you expect to get what you paid for on resale? Old things aren't worth as much, generally...
    - landryl 7y ago
      If he got his games in a bundle as he stated, and the bundle do no longer exist,, he could resell these games at a price closer to the standalone price, usually higher
      - friendlybus 7y ago
        This will guarantee the death of those bundles. It will give a few hundred dollars in profit to whoever bothers to collect on the resale arbitrage and change the sellers landscape for a decade or more.
amelius 7y ago
Why don't they sell games as a subscription without upfront costs? That would solve the problem for everyone.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  They do. Xbox Live Game Pass is exactly this (and there's a PC version as well.) See also Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass.
- anoncake 7y ago
  That would just make the problem of not being able to actually own things anymore worse.
comex 7y ago
Note that this is from September. Not sure if anything interesting has happened with the case since then.
mnm1 7y ago
I think this should apply to all software one buys that can and does run solely on one's hardware. The idea that only a license to the software can be sold is frankly absurd and in a world of SaaS, unnecessary and destructive. It's amazing what kind of illogical craziness our courts of law can justify in the name of profit.
shultays 7y ago
This sounds very bad for single player story based games. Which are my favorite type of games to play. Digital games would be very easy to resell and a game can be easily bought once and resold tens/hundreds of times. Plus any kind of discount would probably mean that you devalued your game forever.
- nolok 7y ago
  Game resale has been a staple ever since video games exists. Gaming stores chain have built their business' margins around it. And game would easily go through several people's hands, not just one sale. The only thing that may seem different is the amount of potential customers you can reach at once by your sale, but it's not either: game resale on ebay or amazon allow the same thing, as well as whatever local personal ads site is popular (eg leboncoin in france). Also, people like to own things, which is why no you didn't go and sell all your books/vhs/dvd/... after watching them when you bought those. Don't let the "it's digital" be used as an excuse to allow companies to strip you of your rights, and especially don't think it's a good thing.
  - ketzo 7y ago
    > Gaming stores chain have built their business' margins around it. But modern game studios have not; quite the opposite. The indie game industry exists almost solely because of digital distribution, and resale would cripple them.
    - nolok 7y ago
      Says who ? Modern indie didn't thrive because there was no resale, they started thriving because the hard barrier to publishing got removed (first with xbox live arcade, then steam and psn, then every store).
      - shultays 7y ago
        This makes current solution (steam/digital markets) to "hard barrier of publishing" a less desireable solution for indies. But I agree, I think this is a smaller problem for indies. Low cost of those games would make people not to bother much. 40$ aaa games on the other hand would lose a lot of bucks though.
jsnell 7y ago
Valve's defense in this case was puzzling. It appears that they tried to argue that Steam is a subscription service (which are exempt from secondary sales), which was just obviously bullshit. From a bit of reading, it seems like there would have been at least two much stronger defenses available. First, the way the 2012 CJEU decision was actually interpreted in practice by other lower courts incredibly strictly[0], requiring outrageous levels of proof that the secondary seller no longer had access to the sold software. And then separate from that, the core of the 2012 court decision was the 2009 "legal protection of computer programs" directive. But in 2014 (in the Nintendo vs. PC Box case) the CJEU basically ended up ruling that games did not fall under that directive due to how heavy they are on non-software (audio-visual) content[1]. I'd be really curious why Valve's lawyers ignored these avenues and went for the ridiculous subscription option. (And equally, I'm curious about why France was going after Valve when PSN, Xbox Live, Apple App Store and Nintendo eShop appear to be softer targets). [0] https://gameslaw.org/the-end-of-the-usedsoft-case-and-its-implications-for-used-software-licences/ https://gameslaw.org/the-end-of-the-usedsoft-case-and-its-im... [1] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=146686&doclang=en http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=146...
- benologist 7y ago
  This is the same company who's argument for defrauding 20,000+ Australians through refused refunds was they didn't check what the law was, they just blanket-refused refunds and shut down people's Steam accounts if they got chargebacks, until the government consumer protection watchdog sued them. They even claimed to not be doing business in Australia, despite accumulating 20,000+ refund requests which implies 6 - 7 digit quantities of undisputed transactions. This is the origin of their refund policy today, which is no questions asked within usage limits. Australia is only like 5% of Steam users so they unfortunately got away with the vast majority of their fraud, perhaps several hundred thousand other instances. https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/23/valve-steam-fined-2-million-australia-refund-policy/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/23/valve-steam-fined-2-mill...
  - dannyw 7y ago
    Australian here. I sought a refund for a broken game. Steam refused. I cited the ACL. Steam closed my ticket. I reported it to that ACCC. Along with many other reports, ACCC sued. One year and nine months later, Steam implemented the refund policy. I asked again for a refund. Steam declined it because the purchase was made too long ago.
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dmos62 7y ago
Digital assets can be duplicated for free, but can't be created for free. That holds a conflict, which we've not been good at solving. So far, it's been phrased as: do we forbid digital asset duplication or do we make the creators carry the cost? There's no win-win from this viewpoint. Which is the lesser evil: architectural technology castration or economic punishment of creators? I'm confident that neither of those is a sustainable solution, and a more fundamental rethink is needed. Currently I'm interested in alternative ways of compensating the creators.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  There's nothing particularly novel here, IMO. This is exactly why we have copyright in the first place; creating new content is much harder than reproducing it is. There's no obvious optimum AFAIK, which is why IP law is as problematic as it is.
  - sbarre 7y ago
    Yeah I am a bit conflicted about the idea that I can pay money to consume the hard work that someone created, and then turn around and sell that work to someone else (and keep the money) and then another person gets to experience the creator's work but the creator doesn't get paid? I know this was possible with physical goods, but I feel like there were real-world constraints on how much this secondary market could affect the primary market due to other costs such as storage and shipping of products, and even basic things like wear and tear. If digital goods can be infinitely resold, we will inevitably have secondary marketplaces that will appear to optimize and streamline the discovery and sale process of these goods (without any of the creator overhead), and I think it will be a bad thing in the long run.
    - BEEdwards 7y ago
      I'm confused by your conflict, you buy a creative work. The artist is paid, you sell that work to someone else, the artist already has their money. They didn't sell two things they sold one, why would they get x2 money?
walrus01 7y ago
This legal ruling also sets a precedent for digital purchases and resale of xbox one and PS4 games in France.
- acd 7y ago
  Also digital purchases for movies in the EU.
- anoncake 7y ago
  France uses civil law so this ruling doesn't set any kind of precedent.
Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
Soon: all games are purely SaaS and require subscription to play. Want to play this game on another account? Buy new subscription!
- still_grokking 7y ago
  Wait for it… We're already almost back to the dark-ages of "mainframe computers". When you had to pay for every time slice to run your program (of course, on "someone else's computer"). The age of "personal computers" is almost over again. (A "personal computer", what a silly idea anyway. Everybody knows that only experts™ can maintain a computer-system properly. That's nothing an "user" could do! IBM told you that already 50 years ago. See, they've been right the whole time… /s).
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Would personal computers have been so successful if high bandwidth connections were available at the time?
- landryl 7y ago
  Stadia sales pitch
- kevingadd 7y ago
  Already the case for many games, especially if you count 'Free To Play, requires subscription to access most content'
- catalogia 7y ago
  If the true nature of those transactions is clear to consumers, then it would be an improvement over the status quo.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Wait til HNers/gamers find out they can’t even play games in their Steam library if they’ve been offline for too long. When it happened to me, I switched to GOG permanently.
legopelle 7y ago
This is great. Anything that may only be "owned" by one person at a time should categorically be able to be resold. Licenses too. If you're a proponent for capitalism (which I guess all publisher decision-makers are), then let the market work. The profit motive will solve all problems.
- theptip 7y ago
  I think this means that either prices for the first copy sold will go up, or profit from games will go down, since the marginal late purchaser will be getting their copy second hand instead of purchasing it new. As a customer of mostly non-AAA / indie games (I.e. often borderline profitable), both of these outcomes are a negative for me. If you are a customer of AAA games, and/or if you think there is no more room for prices to go up, this would be a good outcome for you. I think “[the market] will solve all problems” is a bit too simplistic an analysis.
Causality1 7y ago
I love this. We are so desperately in need of digital consumer protection laws, like mandatory labeling for the minimum length of time server-dependent products like home automation or games will be supported by the manufacturer.
XorNot 7y ago
Valve could avoid most of this trouble if "sharing your library" actually worked on the level of individual games and wasn't functionally identical to just giving someone your password for the entire account. It is ridiculous that my partner and I can't play different games which I have bought at the same time via Steam. I'm all for Valve getting a fire lit under their ass for this.
Proven 7y ago
Morons. What gives them the right to tell consenting adults how they may trade? I wish Steam could stop selling games in France. The EU has become such a statist s*hole.
jmpman 7y ago
Steam should pull out of the French market.
- anoncake 7y ago
  Companies that think they are above the law should be thrown out of all markets. Including the EU one.
  - jmpman 7y ago
    If their business model no longer works in France, why should they continue the market?
    - anoncake 7y ago
      I don't think the French authorities think that this law will make selling games a non-viable business else they wouldn't have made this law. And they're in charge, not Valve.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    That would be the opposite of thinking they are above the law. It would be an acknowledgement that if they sell to that market, they must obey its laws. As doing so would undermine their the viability of their business, they back out. Thinking they were above the law would be something like, "We removed our servers from your country, we're no longer in your jurisdiction, we don't have to listen to you" Or some other loop-hole attempt.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      To pull out of the market goes against the spirit of the law. The French people ordered Valve to stop preventing resale of games, not to stop doing their job. Besides, giving companies that kind of choice gives them power over the state and its people which shouldn't happen in a democracy.
      - 7y ago
Sargos 7y ago
I would love to see video game licenses as ERC-721 tokens that you buy and can use and move between the different digital game platforms out there. If you own the token in your wallet then the DRM or whatever system lets you play the game. If you don't own the token then no game unless you pirate it like today. This would allow games to be purchased at many different competing stores (like you can with physical boxed games today) and also allow selling games on any market out there (again, like boxed games and ebay). It keeps all of the upsides of boxed games but since it is digital has all of the convenience of digital downloaded games. This concept extends to all media like music, movies, etc but games seems like a great first use case. I hope someone at Valve pitches this idea.
ineedasername 7y ago
If this ruling holds, my expectation is simply that games will sell at higher prices, or keep their original prices instead of having frequent Steam sales with deep 70-80% discounts. That would keep the after-market price higher as well, and then sellers could have more modest sales that just seek to undercut the secondary market for a few days. I also think people would be more willing to purchase at higher prices if resale were possible: I used to buy a lot more games at full $60 price when it was all physical and I resold most games a month later for 60-70% of the purchase price. I'd experiment a lot more with games I wasn't sure of. Now I only pay that much for games I know I'll like, and otherwise wait for the inevitable deep sales. I would also not be surprised is Steam sets things up so that they collect a sizable transaction fee like the iOS app store for such transactions, and that publishers demand a cut of those proceeds as well in order to publish on the platform. In fact it would be forward-thinking of Steam to initiate that on their own. Finding a way that everyone gets what they want may be the best way forward here.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  I share a lot of your views but don't forget, this is only about the French market; in all likelihood Steam would either comply only locally (though other countries might follow suit, literally, especially in Europe) or pull out entirely from France (unlikely imho, it's still a rich market, but who knows how crazy things can get nowadays).
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    I'm not sure it would only be France. The law in this case is tightly bound to EU laws on the matter, and so it seems a pretty good chance this would end up forcing Valve to do this for the entire EU. That would complicate things quite a bit beyond the EU too: If consumers have a right to resell, can Valve abridge that right to prohibit resale by an EU citizen to someone in the US? I suspect that question too would need to be tested in courts.
    - K0SM0S 7y ago
      Oh you're probably right about this. It's probably integrated at the EU level now. However, a precedent in 1 one country isn't binding at the EU level, you'd have to attack at the Union level to force a Union-wide judgement (afaik). Meanwhile, individual countries, likes States in the US I suppose, may sue these digital providers. Your point about cross-country (e.g. France <-> USA) transations is very, very interesting. Afaik, with physical goods, I'm not allowed to take an EU game and sell it second-hand in the US because the product is not allowed in the first place in that market (if you remember, console cartridges weren't even the same format sometimes, and nowadays I don't think consoles discs can be played in any region). So there's that, I can see the gaming industry replying that it's only normal to prohibit products from crossing geographical markets. Which I always found one of the worst attack on customer experience, but I feel internet in general is about to become more and more restricted in its commercial use, just as much if not more than the physical world ever was.
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drdd 7y ago
Since they are treating virtual products as physical products same thing goes for non-consumable virtual products for apps on apple devices which includes app sale or in-app non-consumable. Maybe apple could provide this in the future to all users with generated codes for each non-consumable transaction for trade purposes.
jokoon 7y ago
As an european, I really like how the EU is progressively standing up to the US on many aspects. I know it's very subjective, but beyond the islamic anti-americanism, there are other more moderate, valid views that the US is often abusing its power. It applies to monopolies, uber, airbnb, GAFAs, tax avoidance, and many other things. California has its own GDPR equivalent.
SuperSandro2000 7y ago
This would also apply to all other digital stores like Origin and what happens with consumables?
boyadjian 7y ago
French court is one of the dumbest in the world. That's a completely stupid idea : A video game is sold to only one person, if it is resold, it means that the initial selling price must cover the usage for an infinite number of users ? That is nonsense.
martin1b 7y ago
Half Life : Alyx, coming soon to everyone, except France.
bobharris 7y ago
How do we get this case brought against Valve (and all the others) in the US?

352 points by abbe98 7y ago

I've always wanted to re-sell my Steam games. I assume Valve has a real business reason why they haven't allowed this, since when sharing your games locally they are better than anyone. Clearly they don't have the big company mindset of forcing people to pay for a license on every device. If Valve complies with this ruling I'd guess we'll find out what that reason is. I think loot crates and the item market reveals the problem. Steam licenses will turn into some kind of black market money laundering machine that will be impossible to regulate.

tensor 7y ago
This is all speculation, but I would guess that the main issue is legal agreements with the publishers. The publishers don't want any game resales, they want only new sales. Unless France can equally compel the publishers to allow this, it might end up being that Steam is forced to withdraw from France.
- byron_fast 7y ago
  Maybe, but I don't see that publishers could push Valve around too much these days. You're right everyone wants new sales - but they've learned to be okay with offering 90% off at some point, and smaller discounts along the way.
- adev_ 7y ago
  > I would guess that the main issue is legal agreements with the publishers. The publishers don't want any game resales, they want only new sales. Publishers tolerated reselling for decade when game mediums where physical. Nowadays they complain about it to increase their margin, purely because they can technically lock the medium. This is bullshit of the same level than the DRMs and other lock-in nonsense. I am pretty happy some consumer association finally arrived to say them to fuck off.
opencl 7y ago
There already is sort of a black market money laundering machine around steam licenses. It basically goes like: buy steam keys (not buying the game directly on steam, but a redeemable key from some other vendor) using stolen credit cards, resell the keys on a site like G2A, then when the stolen credit cards inevitably get chargebacks you still have the money from selling the key.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  This is what cryptocurrencies really opened my eyes to: Everything is fungible if it can be traded online. And if it's fungible, it's going to attract scammers and criminals.
beatgammit 7y ago
I wonder if something could be worked out like a rebate for giving up access to a title (e.g. 10% of current retail price or original sale price, whichever is less), or a discounted license transfer to a friend (perhaps the recipient pays 10% to the publisher to transfer the license). That way, publishers still make money, friends can cheaply "give" games to their friends, and everyone else can still feel like they're "selling" old games, which would hopefully increase engagement in the platform. I know I have a ton of games I no longer care about, and if I could "sell" them, I would, which cleans up my library and makes me want to spend the balance. Also, if a game is no longer supported by a publisher, transfers should be free.
- IndrekR 7y ago
  I do not see a good reason why one should not be able to sell the game more expensive than the purchase price. Say when the title becomes unavailable from the original source or was obtained as part of a bundle.
rebuilder 7y ago
The first thing that comes to mind is contracts. Imagine you're signing a contract to let Valve sell your games. That's fairly straightforward - you agree on the terms for any given sale, probably Valve take a fixed percentage of the sale cost, and you sign. (Any lawyers among us, I beg your forgiveness!) Now, imagine the contract gives Valve the right to let third parties resell the games at a price of their choosing. What now? Do you, the publisher, still get a cut? How much? What if it's a used game being resold for the Nth time? There's quite a bit of complexity being introduced here.
- meheleventyone 7y ago
  In the old physical store days distributors and retailers held the power so they cornered the resale market by letting people trade in old games for money off new games. This let them sell the same product twice (or more!) without paying any money from the resale up the chain to the publisher or further to developers. Valve already has a store that allows for resale of digital assets with an attached transaction fee. So naively it’d be an extension of that to games. Whether they think they can cut out the people upstream remains to be seen.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    > Valve already has a store that allows for resale of digital assets with an attached transaction fee. So naively it’d be an extension of that to games. Does first sale doctrine apply here? I think this would violate that.
still_grokking 7y ago
My best guess on why Valve doesn't like the idea of a second hand market for content sold on Steam is that it would destroy Valve's internal price structures if such a market would emerge (globally). The prices on Steam vary quite substantial between regions / countries. Depending to which country an account is linked to the price for the same content may be only a small fraction (down to single-digit percentages) of the price called out elsewhere. If there would be a free market for "second hand" Steam licenses, and those licenses could be freely transferred form low price regions to high price regions, Valve couldn't uphold its artificial price structure any longer. I guess they don't like this idea. Even if Valve finds a way to avoid allowing second hand sales between arbitrary counties they might get in some trouble even with this ruling now: I guess they can be forced to allow second hand sales between EU countries with this ruling (because of properties of the trading union). But AFAIK there are also price differences between countries inside the EU. A free second hand market will likely put an end to this.
- user5994461 7y ago
  They could region lock each acquisition. It's not difficult and it probably wouln't cause issue with the law because it's already happening with video DVD.
  - still_grokking 7y ago
    Region locking inside the EU is not an option. The union demands goods being freely tradable within its borders. Just lately this was even extended to explicitly include digital goods. [1] [1] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/new-eu-rules-e-commerce https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/new-eu-rules-e...
    - dogma1138 7y ago
      It is still an option for purchases, the digital content rules have not been formalized yet and currently only aimed and preserving access while traveling within the EU, the current complication is licensing as well as license derived copyright (e.g. translations). As most content is created outside of the EU and then licensed to various entities within the EU on different agreements there isn’t much that can easily be done. Sky for example licenses HBO content for the UK you can’t become a Sky subscriber if you do not reside in the UK and pay a TV license. You can access the streaming VOD service as a subscriber from your tablet if you have traveled to Berlin, but you can’t subscribe to it as a German resident.

staplor 7y ago

I think this is bad; not necessarily for the consumer, but for the industry as a whole. Reselling means that copies sold after the release benefit random consumers, not the developer. On the other hand unresellable licenses along with sales mean that everyone pays the same price, but the developer gets all of the revenue. Digital goods cannot be scarce; we shouldn't treat them as if they are.

Barrin92 7y ago
> On the other hand unresellable licenses along with sales mean that everyone pays the same price no, unsellable licenses result in price discrimination, because it gives the distributor a monopoly on the sale. That is why steam games have different prices in different regions. Through resales this is eliminated because people can trivially use the arbitrage opportunity to buy low and sell high. This is a good thing because it maximises consumer surplus. I'm not really sure what a 'random consumer' is either. I don't really see why we should let platform owners or developers exercise market power to the disadvantage of consumers.
- throwaway34241 7y ago
  > no, unsellable licenses result in price discrimination > Through resales this is eliminated > I don't really see why we should let platform owners or developers exercise market power to the disadvantage of consumers. No price discrimination may result in the single sale price being the first world country price rather than the developing country price (it may make more financial sense to ignore developing countries than to cut the first world price by 3x). So it wouldn't necessarily be to the advantage of consumers. Secondly this is ignoring what games are a viable financial enterprise to begin with. Without taking that into account, mandating all games be free would be to the advantage of consumers. If a low friction way to buy/sell digital copies single player games existed, I could imagine a single player game changing hands 10 times rapidly after it's released as people finish playing it and sell it to the next person. Unlike physical goods used digital goods would be basically perfect (and would require no time or money to ship). But rather than consumers paying 10x less overall and developers finding a way to make the same games with 10x less money, I expect a different equilibrium would be reached. Probably developers mostly ignoring pay-once single player games altogether in favor of multiplayer games and/or in app purchases.

bdz 7y ago

>For Valve, it would only apply to tangible games, not to online licenses. According to the UFC, the initial purchaser must be able to resell these games second-hand, even those acquired on the platform. Sounds like physical games that must be activated on Steam to be able to be played. Once you activate them you can't play on another account even if you have the DVD (but sometimes it's just a code in the case). That's an opposite of most physical console games that can be resold and played on other consoles, under other accounts. For example I have The Evil Within phsyical collector's edition (awesome game btw) and it comes with a Steam code. I can't play the game under other Steam accounts. And the physical DVDs are worthless, I can't resold them. On the other hand if I would have bought the game on PS4 or XBox One I could just give the disks to someone else and they can play the game no problem.

nolok 7y ago
Given that the EU court has confirmed it was legal to resale your own digital Oracle license AND Oracle had to allow the new buyer the same downloads/update/support as the original one (and given that it's Oracle), I'm not sure the ruling would be different with purely digital games. 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...
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  About 7 years ago I had purchased an annual LinkedIn subscription. About a month into it I decided I didn't like running a recruiting business anymore. I was stuck with the subscription. I found someone who was willing to buy it off me for maybe 20% of what they would have paid. LinkedIn had zero interest in letting and/or helping me transfer to another person. What I ended up doing was adding the buyer to my company account, changing the company name (on LinkedIn), and then had them remove me. It worked great!
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Which is why Oracle now provides mostly subscriptions instead of licenses.
7y ago

GhettoMaestro 7y ago

What a dumbass ruling. Games are insanely cheap as a co-result of the online distro model. Expect game prices to creep up.

chongli 7y ago

Reselling games on Steam seems so silly to me. Many of my games cost less than $1 because I bought them in bulk during the big seasonal sales. What am I going to resell them for 50 cents? Too much effort! Maybe it makes more sense to resell those $80 AAA games, but I get the feeling those who are thrifty enough to want to resell games all the time are probably fine with waiting until they go on sale anyway.

catalogia 7y ago
It's patently absurd to state that anybody who buys a product new would, by virtue of buying it new, be the sort of person who'd never sell that product after they're bored with it.
dillonmckay 7y ago
Why do you have to resell it for less than you paid?
- catalogia 7y ago
  Even if you do, it hardly matters. I bought my car new and sold it used for less money. It's very common to buy something new then sell it when you're through with it.
- wernercd 7y ago
  Why would you expect to get what you paid for on resale? Old things aren't worth as much, generally...
  - landryl 7y ago
    If he got his games in a bundle as he stated, and the bundle do no longer exist,, he could resell these games at a price closer to the standalone price, usually higher
    - friendlybus 7y ago
      This will guarantee the death of those bundles. It will give a few hundred dollars in profit to whoever bothers to collect on the resale arbitrage and change the sellers landscape for a decade or more.

amelius 7y ago

Why don't they sell games as a subscription without upfront costs? That would solve the problem for everyone.

Pfhreak 7y ago
They do. Xbox Live Game Pass is exactly this (and there's a PC version as well.) See also Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass.
anoncake 7y ago
That would just make the problem of not being able to actually own things anymore worse.

comex 7y ago

Note that this is from September. Not sure if anything interesting has happened with the case since then.

mnm1 7y ago

I think this should apply to all software one buys that can and does run solely on one's hardware. The idea that only a license to the software can be sold is frankly absurd and in a world of SaaS, unnecessary and destructive. It's amazing what kind of illogical craziness our courts of law can justify in the name of profit.

shultays 7y ago

This sounds very bad for single player story based games. Which are my favorite type of games to play. Digital games would be very easy to resell and a game can be easily bought once and resold tens/hundreds of times. Plus any kind of discount would probably mean that you devalued your game forever.

nolok 7y ago
Game resale has been a staple ever since video games exists. Gaming stores chain have built their business' margins around it. And game would easily go through several people's hands, not just one sale. The only thing that may seem different is the amount of potential customers you can reach at once by your sale, but it's not either: game resale on ebay or amazon allow the same thing, as well as whatever local personal ads site is popular (eg leboncoin in france). Also, people like to own things, which is why no you didn't go and sell all your books/vhs/dvd/... after watching them when you bought those. Don't let the "it's digital" be used as an excuse to allow companies to strip you of your rights, and especially don't think it's a good thing.
- ketzo 7y ago
  > Gaming stores chain have built their business' margins around it. But modern game studios have not; quite the opposite. The indie game industry exists almost solely because of digital distribution, and resale would cripple them.
  - nolok 7y ago
    Says who ? Modern indie didn't thrive because there was no resale, they started thriving because the hard barrier to publishing got removed (first with xbox live arcade, then steam and psn, then every store).
    - shultays 7y ago
      This makes current solution (steam/digital markets) to "hard barrier of publishing" a less desireable solution for indies. But I agree, I think this is a smaller problem for indies. Low cost of those games would make people not to bother much. 40$ aaa games on the other hand would lose a lot of bucks though.

jsnell 7y ago

Valve's defense in this case was puzzling. It appears that they tried to argue that Steam is a subscription service (which are exempt from secondary sales), which was just obviously bullshit. From a bit of reading, it seems like there would have been at least two much stronger defenses available. First, the way the 2012 CJEU decision was actually interpreted in practice by other lower courts incredibly strictly[0], requiring outrageous levels of proof that the secondary seller no longer had access to the sold software. And then separate from that, the core of the 2012 court decision was the 2009 "legal protection of computer programs" directive. But in 2014 (in the Nintendo vs. PC Box case) the CJEU basically ended up ruling that games did not fall under that directive due to how heavy they are on non-software (audio-visual) content[1]. I'd be really curious why Valve's lawyers ignored these avenues and went for the ridiculous subscription option. (And equally, I'm curious about why France was going after Valve when PSN, Xbox Live, Apple App Store and Nintendo eShop appear to be softer targets). [0] https://gameslaw.org/the-end-of-the-usedsoft-case-and-its-implications-for-used-software-licences/ https://gameslaw.org/the-end-of-the-usedsoft-case-and-its-im... [1] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=146686&doclang=en http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=146...

benologist 7y ago
This is the same company who's argument for defrauding 20,000+ Australians through refused refunds was they didn't check what the law was, they just blanket-refused refunds and shut down people's Steam accounts if they got chargebacks, until the government consumer protection watchdog sued them. They even claimed to not be doing business in Australia, despite accumulating 20,000+ refund requests which implies 6 - 7 digit quantities of undisputed transactions. This is the origin of their refund policy today, which is no questions asked within usage limits. Australia is only like 5% of Steam users so they unfortunately got away with the vast majority of their fraud, perhaps several hundred thousand other instances. https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/23/valve-steam-fined-2-million-australia-refund-policy/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/23/valve-steam-fined-2-mill...
- dannyw 7y ago
  Australian here. I sought a refund for a broken game. Steam refused. I cited the ACL. Steam closed my ticket. I reported it to that ACCC. Along with many other reports, ACCC sued. One year and nine months later, Steam implemented the refund policy. I asked again for a refund. Steam declined it because the purchase was made too long ago.

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dmos62 7y ago

Digital assets can be duplicated for free, but can't be created for free. That holds a conflict, which we've not been good at solving. So far, it's been phrased as: do we forbid digital asset duplication or do we make the creators carry the cost? There's no win-win from this viewpoint. Which is the lesser evil: architectural technology castration or economic punishment of creators? I'm confident that neither of those is a sustainable solution, and a more fundamental rethink is needed. Currently I'm interested in alternative ways of compensating the creators.

rebuilder 7y ago
There's nothing particularly novel here, IMO. This is exactly why we have copyright in the first place; creating new content is much harder than reproducing it is. There's no obvious optimum AFAIK, which is why IP law is as problematic as it is.
- sbarre 7y ago
  Yeah I am a bit conflicted about the idea that I can pay money to consume the hard work that someone created, and then turn around and sell that work to someone else (and keep the money) and then another person gets to experience the creator's work but the creator doesn't get paid? I know this was possible with physical goods, but I feel like there were real-world constraints on how much this secondary market could affect the primary market due to other costs such as storage and shipping of products, and even basic things like wear and tear. If digital goods can be infinitely resold, we will inevitably have secondary marketplaces that will appear to optimize and streamline the discovery and sale process of these goods (without any of the creator overhead), and I think it will be a bad thing in the long run.
  - BEEdwards 7y ago
    I'm confused by your conflict, you buy a creative work. The artist is paid, you sell that work to someone else, the artist already has their money. They didn't sell two things they sold one, why would they get x2 money?

walrus01 7y ago

This legal ruling also sets a precedent for digital purchases and resale of xbox one and PS4 games in France.

acd 7y ago
Also digital purchases for movies in the EU.
anoncake 7y ago
France uses civil law so this ruling doesn't set any kind of precedent.

Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago

Soon: all games are purely SaaS and require subscription to play. Want to play this game on another account? Buy new subscription!

still_grokking 7y ago
Wait for it… We're already almost back to the dark-ages of "mainframe computers". When you had to pay for every time slice to run your program (of course, on "someone else's computer"). The age of "personal computers" is almost over again. (A "personal computer", what a silly idea anyway. Everybody knows that only experts™ can maintain a computer-system properly. That's nothing an "user" could do! IBM told you that already 50 years ago. See, they've been right the whole time… /s).
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Would personal computers have been so successful if high bandwidth connections were available at the time?
landryl 7y ago
Stadia sales pitch
kevingadd 7y ago
Already the case for many games, especially if you count 'Free To Play, requires subscription to access most content'
catalogia 7y ago
If the true nature of those transactions is clear to consumers, then it would be an improvement over the status quo.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Wait til HNers/gamers find out they can’t even play games in their Steam library if they’ve been offline for too long. When it happened to me, I switched to GOG permanently.

legopelle 7y ago

This is great. Anything that may only be "owned" by one person at a time should categorically be able to be resold. Licenses too. If you're a proponent for capitalism (which I guess all publisher decision-makers are), then let the market work. The profit motive will solve all problems.

theptip 7y ago
I think this means that either prices for the first copy sold will go up, or profit from games will go down, since the marginal late purchaser will be getting their copy second hand instead of purchasing it new. As a customer of mostly non-AAA / indie games (I.e. often borderline profitable), both of these outcomes are a negative for me. If you are a customer of AAA games, and/or if you think there is no more room for prices to go up, this would be a good outcome for you. I think “[the market] will solve all problems” is a bit too simplistic an analysis.

Causality1 7y ago

I love this. We are so desperately in need of digital consumer protection laws, like mandatory labeling for the minimum length of time server-dependent products like home automation or games will be supported by the manufacturer.

XorNot 7y ago

Valve could avoid most of this trouble if "sharing your library" actually worked on the level of individual games and wasn't functionally identical to just giving someone your password for the entire account. It is ridiculous that my partner and I can't play different games which I have bought at the same time via Steam. I'm all for Valve getting a fire lit under their ass for this.

Proven 7y ago

Morons. What gives them the right to tell consenting adults how they may trade? I wish Steam could stop selling games in France. The EU has become such a statist s*hole.

jmpman 7y ago

Steam should pull out of the French market.

anoncake 7y ago
Companies that think they are above the law should be thrown out of all markets. Including the EU one.
- jmpman 7y ago
  If their business model no longer works in France, why should they continue the market?
  - anoncake 7y ago
    I don't think the French authorities think that this law will make selling games a non-viable business else they wouldn't have made this law. And they're in charge, not Valve.
- ineedasername 7y ago
  That would be the opposite of thinking they are above the law. It would be an acknowledgement that if they sell to that market, they must obey its laws. As doing so would undermine their the viability of their business, they back out. Thinking they were above the law would be something like, "We removed our servers from your country, we're no longer in your jurisdiction, we don't have to listen to you" Or some other loop-hole attempt.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    To pull out of the market goes against the spirit of the law. The French people ordered Valve to stop preventing resale of games, not to stop doing their job. Besides, giving companies that kind of choice gives them power over the state and its people which shouldn't happen in a democracy.
    - 7y ago

Sargos 7y ago

I would love to see video game licenses as ERC-721 tokens that you buy and can use and move between the different digital game platforms out there. If you own the token in your wallet then the DRM or whatever system lets you play the game. If you don't own the token then no game unless you pirate it like today. This would allow games to be purchased at many different competing stores (like you can with physical boxed games today) and also allow selling games on any market out there (again, like boxed games and ebay). It keeps all of the upsides of boxed games but since it is digital has all of the convenience of digital downloaded games. This concept extends to all media like music, movies, etc but games seems like a great first use case. I hope someone at Valve pitches this idea.

ineedasername 7y ago

If this ruling holds, my expectation is simply that games will sell at higher prices, or keep their original prices instead of having frequent Steam sales with deep 70-80% discounts. That would keep the after-market price higher as well, and then sellers could have more modest sales that just seek to undercut the secondary market for a few days. I also think people would be more willing to purchase at higher prices if resale were possible: I used to buy a lot more games at full $60 price when it was all physical and I resold most games a month later for 60-70% of the purchase price. I'd experiment a lot more with games I wasn't sure of. Now I only pay that much for games I know I'll like, and otherwise wait for the inevitable deep sales. I would also not be surprised is Steam sets things up so that they collect a sizable transaction fee like the iOS app store for such transactions, and that publishers demand a cut of those proceeds as well in order to publish on the platform. In fact it would be forward-thinking of Steam to initiate that on their own. Finding a way that everyone gets what they want may be the best way forward here.

K0SM0S 7y ago
I share a lot of your views but don't forget, this is only about the French market; in all likelihood Steam would either comply only locally (though other countries might follow suit, literally, especially in Europe) or pull out entirely from France (unlikely imho, it's still a rich market, but who knows how crazy things can get nowadays).
- ineedasername 7y ago
  I'm not sure it would only be France. The law in this case is tightly bound to EU laws on the matter, and so it seems a pretty good chance this would end up forcing Valve to do this for the entire EU. That would complicate things quite a bit beyond the EU too: If consumers have a right to resell, can Valve abridge that right to prohibit resale by an EU citizen to someone in the US? I suspect that question too would need to be tested in courts.
  - K0SM0S 7y ago
    Oh you're probably right about this. It's probably integrated at the EU level now. However, a precedent in 1 one country isn't binding at the EU level, you'd have to attack at the Union level to force a Union-wide judgement (afaik). Meanwhile, individual countries, likes States in the US I suppose, may sue these digital providers. Your point about cross-country (e.g. France <-> USA) transations is very, very interesting. Afaik, with physical goods, I'm not allowed to take an EU game and sell it second-hand in the US because the product is not allowed in the first place in that market (if you remember, console cartridges weren't even the same format sometimes, and nowadays I don't think consoles discs can be played in any region). So there's that, I can see the gaming industry replying that it's only normal to prohibit products from crossing geographical markets. Which I always found one of the worst attack on customer experience, but I feel internet in general is about to become more and more restricted in its commercial use, just as much if not more than the physical world ever was.

deleted 7y ago

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drdd 7y ago

Since they are treating virtual products as physical products same thing goes for non-consumable virtual products for apps on apple devices which includes app sale or in-app non-consumable. Maybe apple could provide this in the future to all users with generated codes for each non-consumable transaction for trade purposes.

jokoon 7y ago

As an european, I really like how the EU is progressively standing up to the US on many aspects. I know it's very subjective, but beyond the islamic anti-americanism, there are other more moderate, valid views that the US is often abusing its power. It applies to monopolies, uber, airbnb, GAFAs, tax avoidance, and many other things. California has its own GDPR equivalent.

SuperSandro2000 7y ago

This would also apply to all other digital stores like Origin and what happens with consumables?

boyadjian 7y ago

French court is one of the dumbest in the world. That's a completely stupid idea : A video game is sold to only one person, if it is resold, it means that the initial selling price must cover the usage for an infinite number of users ? That is nonsense.

martin1b 7y ago

Half Life : Alyx, coming soon to everyone, except France.

bobharris 7y ago

How do we get this case brought against Valve (and all the others) in the US?