
Valve is convicted in France for banning the resale of dematerialized games - alexsb92
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/d6cclt/steam_valve_is_convicted_in_france_for_banning/f0rqo7p/
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al2o3cr
Hot take: the likely response from AAA publishers will be "that's OK, we don't
sell games anymore just LIVE SERVICES"

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parliament32
They basically already do, considering most new console games refuse to start
without a working internet connection.

I had a service outage from my ISP the other day, so I figured I'd play some
offline AC:Odyssey. Imagine my surprise when it refused to launch (from the
disc, no less) without a connection.

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rasz
not most games, most games by Ubisoft, and probably EA

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rasz
Better than previous case where German court decided games are "works of art",
thus licensed not sold :/ [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/10/german-
court-rul...](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/10/german-court-rules-
against-rights-to-resell-steam-games/) It was a BS ruling, basically saying if
you bundle a song and pretty graphic in your program its no longer "just"
software and rule of exhaustion doesnt apply.

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Goronmon
Doesn't this have implications for any industry that sells a digital product?
Games, music, movies/tv, software, etc?

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WorldMaker
It _should_. Digital asset rights should be universal regardless of digital
asset. We'll see how the courts respond.

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scohesc
Well, Valve will either have to make a specific part of the store for re-
selling games in France, or roll it out to all customers.

I think they'll roll it out to just France.

It's also frustrating when the legal system works so slow that competitors
like Epic, Origin, et al. don't have to abide by this ruling yet.

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WorldMaker
Valve may not be able to confine any such thing to France.

One article I read said France is fighting the issue in a way under EU laws
that the rest of the EU should be able to adopt the judgment quickly
thereafter, though it may take a few more court cases to do it, as it partly
depends on whether Valve appeals the case enough. (The semi-ironic risk versus
reward of the appeals process pushing it closer to EU courts, versus
overturning France's decision here.)

I'm still somewhat upset that the GDPR writers knew digital asset rights would
be the "next fight" after a lot of the privacy concerns were addressed but
explicitly kicked the can on it (a brief like half paragraph about how they
considered it but ignored it). This fight maybe increases the likelihood we
could see some future GDPR-like bill for digital assets rights.

Such an EU-wide measure might be real hope that, like the GDPR, it would apply
quickly to other competitors and generally worldwide since the EU market is
big enough (and covers its citizens even when residing in non-EU nation
states) that it would be too much work to run two systems.

(Aside: my personal fascination is how long it may take us to start fighting
over digital asset inheritance laws, given that most terms of service
agreements imply that services do not survive their owner.)

