
French high court rules that Steam can’t ban users from reselling digital games - lultimouomo
https://www.vg247.com/2019/09/20/steam-users-right-to-sell-games-french-court-valve-ruling/
======
jboydyhacker
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
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/i...](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-
topic/international/international-book-news/article/81151-second-hand-e-book-
retailers-ruled-unlawful-by-eu.html)) 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.

~~~
EpicEng
>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.)

------
sparkpeasy
"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?

~~~
vonmoltke
> 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).

~~~
shadowgovt
If they have to build infrastructure to support reselling game use licenses to
comply with this law, it's unlikely they'll be able to justify releasing it to
France only; there'll be backlash from their users in other countries.

~~~
londons_explore
Companies release features to some regions all the time. For example, in
Google Photos, you can search by face in the USA but not Europe (due to
differing privacy expectations).

~~~
shadowgovt
Huh. TIL regarding Google Photos.

That sucks; glad I'm in the US because I use that feature often. It's great
for when friends ask for the photos I took of them.

In any case, I predict the Steam situation will differ because privacy and
retail goods are valued differently. Americans are going to want that feature
if Steam has to implement it, and they have options regarding what game store
they use; it becomes a point of competitive advantage for Steam to switch it
on in the States. They'll have to do the calculus on whether they lose more
potential developers if they do vs. lose more potential store users if they
don't.

~~~
Ultcyber
Funny enough, if you use a USA based VPN server, the option will appear on
your account and you'll be able to activate it. It Will stay activr for your
account even if you switch back from VPN

~~~
londons_explore
That's deliberate... Those kind of "annoy the customer" limitations are all
for PR/legal/business reasons, and the engineers building the features want to
make the restrictions as easy to get around as possible.

------
criddell
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?

~~~
roblabla
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.

~~~
jandrese
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
That's probably true, but it shouldn't factor into the decision about whether
or not digital goods should be transferrable.

------
orra
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
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.

~~~
bluecalm
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.

~~~
statusquoantefa
I know, people here are demanding that after you fill up at an all you can eat
buffet, you should be allowed to sell your seat to somebody else.

~~~
cannonedhamster
No they are saying that if you buy a meal, you should be able to package it up
and sell it to someone else, which you can do. If I go buy a hamburger, I can
walk right out onto the street and if someone else offers me money for it I
can sell it. What I can't sell is access, which is what a buffet is, you're
not paying for the individual item you're paying for access to the buffet.

~~~
bluecalm
So what is the difference exactly if Steam says they sell access to the game
for your personal account? Would it that be a good analogy then?

------
shadowgovt
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
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
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
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.

------
Noos
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.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Its going to increase dark patterns and loot boxes for kids who cant / wont
pay £50 for a AAA game

~~~
ukoki
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.

------
danarmak
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
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
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.

------
chongli
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.

~~~
nabdab
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).

~~~
C1sc0cat
Inflation and the use of things like performance capture has increased costs

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ineedasername
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.

~~~
jeroenhd
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
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
There was the famous Oracle vs UsedSoft lawsuit:
[https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3134867/eu-court-of-
justic...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3134867/eu-court-of-justice-used-
software-download-ruling)

This basically added jurisprudence that digital downloads can be resold
provided that the original is made unusable.

~~~
gamblor956
That case was one of the reasons that Adobe and Microsoft switched to a
subscription-based model for their software suites.

~~~
ineedasername
That makes sense. I also saw some speculation that it's helped accelerate some
vendors' efforts to convert customers to cloud offerings. On the other hand, I
saw a very insightful analysis that thought vendors fighting this were being
short sighted because annual maintenance can often be upwards of 20% of the
initial license, and so recipients of second hand software would still be more
than making up for the revenue in the not-so-long term.

------
throwaway66920
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
This will likely expand to at least the whole European Union since european
texts were used to arrive to this ruling.

~~~
C1sc0cat
"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

------
_edo
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.

~~~
jeroenhd
Funny how you can make the same comment about physical goods. Should we ban
selling second hand furniture?

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 furniture salesmen a somewhat predictable revenue
model and on the strength of the model they can encourage investors to put ip
money to make furniture. Changing the revenue model may change how investors
look at the marker. Maybe for better maybe for worse. Who knows, but it would
be a disruption if IKEA has to adopt this model worldwide.

The thing that I don't like is if you allow reselling then carpenters get less
long-term revenue. This will cause them to focus more on getting a big opening
month than making solid furniture that might have years of appeal.

Antilop is still $20 at IKEA. Maybe they only sell 100 chairs a month at this
point but that's still money coming in rewarding them for investing in
ergonomic chair design. 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 weeks of sales.

~~~
_edo
> Funny how you can make the same comment about physical goods.

No, you can't. That's why this is such a complicated issue.

The inherent value in a physical good is consumed with use. If somebody buys a
couch and takes it home it becomes a used couch. Used couches are not great
substitutes for new couches; they devalue with time and use and you eventually
have to _pay somebody_ just to take it off your hands. Its value actually goes
negative.

A used digital good is a _perfect_ substitute for the original. A digital copy
is also a _perfect_ substitute for the original. That changes everything. If
we want people to be able to make games professionally, and to be compensated
for their work, we have to use laws to make the digital marketplace resemble
the physical goods marketplace. Or find a whole new model which I don't
believe anybody has done.

~~~
jeroenhd
The inherent value for a digital food also decreases over time. Top of the
line graphics from ten years ago look bad in comparison to today. Story driven
games get their stories spoilt over time, especially the popular ones.
Compatibility with controllers and other such devices depend wildly on
backwards compatibility (for example, the xbox one controller had loads of
compatibility issues with games that only accepted xbox 360 controllers for a
while).

I would have paid 60 euros for Skyrim back in 2011. These days, I wouldn't
spend more than 10-15 bucks on it if it was new. This is reflected in the
price on steam as well, with it currently being sold for 15 euros.

The mere passing of time decreases the value of the goods, just like using a
game would.

I don't know what happened that people think that selling things you don't
need anymore second hand is suddenly bad just because the goods are on a
computer. The car industry would love a method to stop people from buying
second hand cars but consumers would never accept such limitations.

Games sales aren't affected by anything past the opening quarter. A study done
by the EU on piracy concluded that even piracy is barely affecting the price
of games after the opening period. Reselling games will barely touch the games
industry.

Adding arbitrary rules just because the game industry is unhealthy isn't a
solution to the problem. If I have to give up rights so that people can make
some shiny toys every now and then, I don't care about those toys anymore. I
don't want to give up rights to keep game developers employed because their
current ecosystem is unviable. And, in my opinion, neither should you.

~~~
gamblor956
You're still not getting it.

It's irrelevant that graphics from 10 years ago aren't as good as they are
today because that only matters for games where cutting-edge graphics are part
of the selling point of the game (i.e., AAA games). There are plenty of games
that don't try for cutting edge graphics and so look the same today as they
did when first released, like Cave Story, Celeste, Fez, Braid, etc.

The point the parent was making is that a copy of a game is inherently the
exact same as any other copy of the game, which is not the case with physical
goods. A physical good, however lightly used, still has some wear and tear
when resold, so it is not the same as a new good.

~~~
cannonedhamster
It's not that they're not getting it, it's that your point is a poor one. A
physical copy also came with the costs of storage, storefronts, retail space,
manufacture, shipping, etc. None of that is true now. A digital copy costs
almost nothing to store and retrieving that copy is again a nearly costless
process. The only person who loses by locking up digital goods is the
consumer. You're making the same arguments film studios made about VHS, except
VHS caused movie studios to make more money than ever because it forced then
to make better stories and movies. What do we get now that there's the digital
push? Rehashed super hero stories and 90s nostalgia.

~~~
_edo
> The only person who loses by locking up digital goods is the consumer.

In the short term they my be losing out (kind of. It's like how I lose out
when I don't steal at the grocery store.) but in the long term they're gaining
because the companies making the goods they're purchasing get to stay in
business.

It's a trade-off. Do you want video game consumers to have a short-term boost
because everything's free, or do you want them to have a healthy game
development ecosystem where talented devs can get loans to make good games
because they'll have a predictable revenue stream from sales. You can try to
balance the two, but you can't give them both.

Really all of this _I want it free, I want it now_ just leads to free-to-play
games where the developer recoups costs through micro-transactions, loot-
boxes, pay-to-play items, etc. And in this model you probably never own the
game at all. If the user can't be trusted to own the game, then never give
them a complete game! Always keep part of it on your own servers. Force them
to log in, force them to be connected, force them to have an active credit
card number on file.

If we demand to resell/copy/trade the digital goods we purchase without
restriction then this is the world we get - we stream movies, we stream music,
we connect to game servers, but we never possess any of it. We never listen to
a song without Spotify taking notice and putting it in our file. We never
watch a movie in privacy without Netflix, "oh, he's watched Fight Club three
times this week." We never get to play a game without server-side analytics
being run to look at how tweaking the boss difficulty affects sales of the
super-sword.

It's not as simple as saying locking up digital goods hurts the consumer.

------
jeroentrappers
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
Nothing, I would imagine.

...which seems to me like a good thing.

------
umvi
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
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
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
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.

------
GreaterFool
> 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
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
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?

~~~
jeroenhd
I'd say yes. The steam key comes with a set of perks that made the buyer pick
steam as a reseller over one of their competitors. Removing those features
would degrade the value of the product and, in my opinion, be a measure to
prevent proper resale of the product.

When I buy a key, I don't somehow get the download to my computer before
adding it to my Steam account. Steam designed their system in such a way that
the installer has to come from them, and that you can't burn an installer that
only works with your key.

Imagine buying a chair with massage functionality and a GPS tracker that stops
working when you move it outside your house. In my opinion, even though the
chair itself remains functional, the added DRM would prevent someone from
selling the chair second hand, because the main reason you buy the chair has
suddenly been disabled by a third party.

------
de_watcher
DRM is a crazy thing. Now it distorts the already DRM-distorted reality.

~~~
cameronbrown
Steam's DRM isn't technical, it's the community and platform itself. Any
technical restrictions are completely optional.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
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
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.

~~~
UserIsUnused
If you want to support a platform based on a DRM-free point of view, you
should only buy from GOG. The only ethical platform.

~~~
cameronbrown
Though I don't consider DRM-free the only metric for being ethical (being one
of the few platforms to really support Linux, contributing back to OSS
including the Linux Kernel itself, pushing free and open standards for VR,
etc.. are all reasons I support Valve), I really appreciate and support GOG
too.

------
magashna
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.

~~~
jerf
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.

~~~
mrighele
> Valve’s defence hinged on the argument that Steam sells game licenses –
> subscriptions – to games, not the games themselves.

IANAL but buying a license seems different to me than buying a subscription,
and if you ask most Steam users they will tell you that they do the former not
the latter. (In fact I have never seen the word subscription on their store,
though I guess it is somewhere in their EULA).

If they go that way they may have to change their wording and that will also
change the perception that people have of the platform: if I'm subscribing to
a service the price I'm willing to pay to access (not buy) the games will
probably much lower.

It may be better for them to just keep people thinking that the own the games
forever (even though we know in practice this is probably not be true).

I'm wondering if instead they could just set themselves as the middleman for
the used game market, since they already have all the infrastructure needed.
In this way at least both steam and the publisher could get a cut.

------
logfromblammo
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).

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uncoder0
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
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
Thing is, looks like that Valve would be prevented to forbid reselling of an
account on these grounds...

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de_watcher
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.

~~~
strig
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
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.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Not Valve's problem. Valve is not obligated to provide a framework that makes
reselling games safe and easy, they just need to allow the transfer.

~~~
shadowgovt
Not problem; opportunity.

------
jmpman
So, don’t sell in France in order to keep your business model in tact?

~~~
archi42
More like "don't sell in the EU". Not sure if that's a market to easily
ignore...?

~~~
ihuman
Does this ruling affect all of the EU?

~~~
archi42
Not a lawyer, but since it seems to be based on some EU harmonized market
regulation, I suppose it could.

------
golergka
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.

~~~
archi42
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
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.

~~~
archi42
Good point. I was skeptical of DLCs when they first game about, but if they're
decent quality/effort expansions, then that's fine with me. But games with the
kind of exploitation you mention I stay away from, and as someone who regards
games as a kind of art, I can't see how our cultural heritage benefits from
this... kind of games (I'd like to add some not-so-nice words aimed at the
beneficiaries of these "games", but those words seem inappropriate for HN).

//edited a little bit ;)

