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Valve Sued In Germany Over Game Ownership
An anonymous reader writes "The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZVB) has sued computer game distributor Valve because it prohibits Steam-gamers from reselling their games. Steam users own the games they purchase and should be able to resell them when they want to, just like owners of traditional card or board games can, said Carola Elbrecht, project manager for consumer rights in the digital world at the VZVB, on Thursday. But while those traditional game owners can resell their games whenever they like, Steam users often cannot, she said."
Yeah, but if the law in Germany says otherwise, then it is the law that applies. That's the difference between laws and contracts (of which a license agreement is just a small part) and it's actually impossible to have a contract to break the law; contracts must be lawful or they are simply not contracts by definition. Even if the agreement says that it is not conducted under German law, German consumers will have the right to use German law anyway. (Well, probably; I've not actually checked what the relevant law says, but there's a lot of similarity in this area across different EU members and I know that UK law is very clear on this point.)
The real question is not whether there's recourse in law, but how any ensuing judgements would be enforced. An unenforceable ruling really isn't much use.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Physical copies of games over here (Poland) are always much cheaper than Steam ones. Especially with Steam's usual $1=E1 prices, the difference is often quite significant and for some reason Steam counts us among the same price region as Netherlands, Germany, e.t.c.
Example: Far Cry 3. E49.99 on Steam, E31 in a shop right next to my flat and you get one extra DLC with it.
Steam gets cheap only during sales.
cya
Raziel-chan
EULAs have been challenged in courts multiple times here in Finland, every single time ending up in loss for the EULA-enforcer. The simple fact is that an EULA is covered by copyright laws, and copyright law cannot remove rights given by other laws. It most certainly is NOT covered by contract laws. That means that even if the EULA e.g. specifically said that you cannot sell the item after you're done with it the clause is invalid and you are perfectly within your rights to sell it.
No. It's Germans who make a contract with a german outlet of Valve, following german law. If Valve's infrastructure is not able to handle the problem, they shouldn't do business in Germany. And a change in an EULA does neither change a court verdict nor a law in Germany. The new EULA has to adhere to german law too, and german law says that either Valve rents the game or it sells it, so either the legal framework of a rent or that of a sale applies. No EULA can change this legal fact.