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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."
Shame I can't transfer it to another article...
The biggest drawback, as I see it, is longer term not being able to pass the games on to family/friends to play. Perhaps an option is to have a higher tiered pricing which gives you the ability to resell the game later?
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
and sell it too.
Back in the days when you bought games individually, you could share them around the household. So if I had bought say, a copy of unreal tournament 3 and call of duty 2, I could play one, and my wife could play the other on her pc (real example! if you prefer, substitute mate or brother for same effect)
Now, with two online game equivalents on my steam account, we can only play one, as both require being online. Even if it came in a box from retail for cash, you often still end up with a steamworks copy. Just giving my wife access to my steam account so we can juggle offline mode between us violates the ToS which theoretically means they can shut down my account and deny access to all my games, or make most of them non playable online with a VAC ban. Same applies for creating a new steam account for each game; not only would that be a giant pain in the ass, but trying to register the same card for multiple accounts risks the lot getting disabled.
They already have the ability to transfer licences between accounts with the gifting system, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to transfer my games to my wife so she can play them when I'm done with them, other than greed.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
I think it's even worse when they're disallowing physical media. I specifically purchased a game for my son (Portal) so that when he was finished playing it, I could uninstall it from his computer and install it on mine so I could play. But, even though it was purchased at a store (Wal-Mart, Target, something like that), and it came on a physical disc, uninstalling it from his computer is not enough. It's already been registered and locked to his Steam account, and after several communications with Valve, they refuse to disassociate it from his account.
If it was just a download, then I could sort of, kind of see the restriction. But purchasing a physical object, like a book or a DVD or a CD-ROM, should allow one to disassociate the application from one account and sell it on to the next person to associate with their account.
I'm not an actor, but I play one on television.
In the west, Communism is decried in part because it doesn't respect the concept of personal property. None of 'your' stuff is owned by you. So why, given that, should we accept for even one second a culture where we only rent and license things from corporate owners? We can't even be said to own the license since there are so many ways a 'permanent' license can just evaporate.
Just because "everybody does it", doesn't mean it's right. There's a certain price point at which you're effectively paying second-hand prices for a game anyway, so the inability to resell them down the road doesn't bother me - a lot of the GoG back catalog (especially when it's on sale!) fits that bill. But just because it doesn't bother me doesn't mean that I shouldn't have that right. More important, though, is the question of what happens when the company goes under, or decides it doesn't want to support a particular game any more. If I drag out my old Karateka discs, and my old Apple II, I can still play it (barring physical media issues, or the computer having a fault.) If, in thirty years' time, I drag out my Starcraft II DVD (or my Assassin's Creed DVD, or whatever), will I still be able to play it? (assuming I have access to a system that can run the code, of course; I'm not necessarily expecting to be able to do the equivalent of playing Apple II games on a Commodore Amiga.)
We're entering a world where physical scarcity no longer matters for a great many things (currently, video, music, and electronic games; this may extend into other items as well in the not-too-distant future); navigating all the issues that that creates will be extremely interesting, for Chinese values of the word.
As a Finn I have waited for this to happen somewhere in Europe. I guess the legislators don't play games or at least buy them from Steam. I hope that this changes how digitally distributed games are seen in light of ownership before every purchase is somehow locked to buyers dna. Tinfoil hats ahoy! :)
GOG doesn't take measures to prevent you from selling their games. There's nothing which prevents you from buying some games from GOG, burning them to a disk, and selling someone that disk. The person who you sell it to won't be able to redownload the games from your account, and if you try to redownload them yourself that's piracy, but there's nothing to keep the person you sell the disk to from using the disk to play the game.
Of course, it would be illegal to sell someone that disk and keep a copy for yourself, but that's also true for a game you can buy in a store.
The abbreviation should be VZBV, for Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband. See here (article in German): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/VZBV
Taken from the official Steam license. http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/?l=english You may not sell or charge others for the right to use your Account, or otherwise transfer your Account, nor may you sell, charge others for the right to use, or transfer any Subscriptions other than if and as expressly permitted by this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use). 2. LICENSES A. License Terms. Steam and your Subscription(s) require the automatic download and installation of Software onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a limited, terminable, non-exclusive license and right to use the Software for your personal use in accordance with this Agreement, including the Subscription Terms. The Software is licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Software. To make use of the Software, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.
People here in Australia often bitch about Valve because of the regionalised pricing of video games - it's not uncommon for some games to cost almost 2x as much as they do in the USA (given the strong value of our dollar).
However, it's not Valve that sets the prices for the games - it's the publisher.
In this case I don't know if Valve are just honoring requirements set by the publishers, or if this just a part of their platform. Either way, I think Steam would be a much tougher sell to publishers if one of the features they provided to gamers was the ability to sell your account at a discounted price to someone else.
(If you want to sell games on Steam, my advice would be to separate out game purchases into different email accounts. Then you can sell the email account and the associated games. I'm sure it's still against T&Cs to do that - and it's a giant pain in the ass - but at least it means you can buy and sell Steam games in discrete chunks.)
Yea it was, but wonder if reason you can't resell your steam games besides ones like assassin's creed III which has striped down version of uplay which you have to register your key with, is the game companies that choose to have steam as their distro platform. Some of them made that call to say they couldn't transfer games. If its made easy to sell a game to another person, protections that are needed to be in place to stop say someone from getting their account hacked and all their games transferred to another person for say 10 cents.
GOG on the other hand has inexpensive games compared to Steam. It also focuses on very old games that the kids don't want to play anyway. They're not paranoid about the resale market like Valve is.
And that is the difference between Owning a physical copy of a software title, and Licensing a digital version of the same. Games on Steam are not sold as property that can be traded, they are licensed to you the purchaser for your personal use. Now, if you are saying that German law requires that the licensor permit the licensee (are those even the right terms?) to transfer the license to an arbitrary third party at any time, that's a right that the license cannot take away. I'm not German, and am definitely no lawyer, but I rather doubt the law works that way.
It is an easy problem to fix. Upon transfer the seller's copy is deleted and a fresh copy is provided to the buyer.
Not being able to resell a game is nothing compared to the fact that we can lose all our games anytime with Steam. The license agreement say that Steam can change it whenever they want for whatever they want and if we refuse the new license agreement, then the only option is to close the account and lose all the games we "bought". No refund. We own nothing with steam and considering the current license agreement contains clauses which are clearly abusive (they can do whatever they want with whatever information they can gather from their spyware, err... I mean client software), I'd say Steam is one of the most evil company I ever saw.
Almost never?
I've almost _always_ been able to resell my games. Fallout 3 was late 2008, thats the last big bethesda game i can recall without drm. Aside from the past 5 years of drm bs, I'd say being able to resell is the norm. Though I guess if you're younger you may think it's always been this sucky.
Yup. We've got very strong customer rights in Germany. They have a very strong lobby. Multiple of them in fact. Its own fairly powerful ministry on a federal level even.
... insulting.
Everybody still marvels why we haven't yet gone bankrupt. Quality products and quality service might actually be a good idea. Who knows?
Also note the use of the word "customer". Being called a consumer is a bit
20 minutes into the future
I see this as an opportunity for Valve to get Steam installed on just about every PC. Make it so you can "gift" used copies of the game to other Steam accounts.
This will ensure just about every gamer has Steam. The ability for a gamer to make an impulse purchase is now there. Increase in sales.
Let's face it, if someone is looking for a used copy of a game, their urge to play it probably isn't real high.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
GOG is in the business of selling old games. They do "stock" some contemporary indie titles too. The prices for the old games falls into the "affordable" line because they cost 5.99 to 9.99 bucks a piece and often come with some very nice extras, but they are old games. Some of them very old (does not mean they are not fun games though). The prices for the newer titles are simply normal for indie titles (10-15$ price range). "Omerta" is selling for a whopping 40$. The main advantage to buying from them is that you get the games without any sorts of DRM and the fact that they are very much in touch with their community.
Just waiting for people who download other media (e.g. music, TV shows, movies, AppStore applications, etc.) to sue. I bet the EULA states purchasing gives user the right to use now own said media but who reads those EULAs anyways? I've seen excerpt from them and some EULAs are pretty draconian.
GOG has many newer games in its catalog currently. Including releases.
It is an easy problem to fix. Upon transfer the seller's copy is deleted and a fresh copy is provided to the buyer.
That of course is dependant on whether Steam are allowed to do this according to their contract with the people who created / distribute the game in question?
I would not be at all surprised if the who way Steam negotiates the very cheap prices they offer stuff for is that the publishes know the use a very restrictive form of DRM that prevents resale. That DRM may actually be a condition attached by the company who actually own the copyright on the game in question. Since many of the games bought through steam have a different form of DRM if bought on disk this is definitely the case for some stuff.
It will be funny if that is the case as this could just end up in Steam having to not sell those products in Germany in future.
Of course there are also the other companies that are following Steam's example now as well. Is Origin (EA's offering) any different in this regard?
I dont read
If users can sell or give away games as they see fit, that would put a lot of stress on the steam servers. Would it be possible for valve to take out a fee to cover expenses?
I'm guessing if this is allowed, you should be able to sell iTunes Music as well.
The main problem I see with this concept isn't that games will get sold, the problem is that they will be given away. Fox example if you had 1000 games, they could be shared between 10000 people, just swapping back af forth whenever needed. It is unlikely that everyone plays this game at the same time, you will create a mentality that allows thinking like "Oh I can buy it somewhere else anyway" and in the end the profits will drop drastically.
Lo and behold, for I am a sig!
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.
BS,
In the early 2000s, games (at least all the ones I played) could be installed and played without online activation. Many games did prevent multiple simultaneous uses of the same CD key online which made buying a used copy for online use a little risky but that was about the extent of problems with resale.
Steam was first made available to the public in 2002 but didn't really rise to prominance until 2004 when valve shut down it's WON servers and released half life 2. People bitched and moaned a lot but ultimately desire to continue playing half life/counter strike online and desire to play half life 2 at all outweighed dislike of steam and gamers sucked it up. As the performance issues were sorted out some even started to like steam. Having seen gamers put up with steam gradually everyone else started putting some form of online activation into their games too.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I don't know about that, but I know that the exact opposite can be true too. Games NOT bought through Steam can only be played through Steam. Example: The physical copy of Skyrim I got last christmas.
This just in - Steam offers 100 year video game rentals in Germany...
(Something tells me it isn't that simple)
How long w ill that last after a court declares they have to change all the buy buttons to rent buttons. People don't want to rent a $9.99 game.
local laws super seed that contract
It means also that Valve has no legal standing in Germany, which might not be very desirable for them.
Anything sold in a web "store" with a "buy" button is a sale. These products even have 20% off "sales." If they were honest about licensing or renting out games then they would be labeled as such.
I suspect that Valve will effectively kick this up stream. Even if they choose do make this feature available with their games, they don't control the licensing restrictions laid down by the publishers/devs/studios.
This case should be tossed. Has anyone thought how much this would cost Valve and the game studios to implement? Doing this correctly would be seriously expensive, and there is no scenario here where it doesn't result in driving up the costs of games on Valve just to benefit a tiny fraction of the user base.
Once again, a consumer protection agency driving up the costs for consumers.
Who wins? A handful of cheapskates get $10 for their used game, and bunch of lawyers make $ millions.
More like greedy media ruining the planet. They claim they dont sell you a product but only a "license". But that license isn't something you own either, as you can't sell it or transfer it or even use in a manner you want to. The system is more like a 'rental at our indulgence, you dirty potential thief'
nor does it stop you from breaking in to my house and stealing all my posessions. Doesn't make it legal.
Thing is, unlike breaking in to my house, this would be extremely easy to track where the games went, and this case is treating them the same way as physical property, so the police would be able to investingate the theft really easily.
The EU made it so all licences for anything, including software, dongles, etc can be resold, even if the EULA forbids it. All countries that reside in Europe have this protection. Buy a $10 Dell with Windows 7? You can sell JUST your Windows 7 license to someone else, Dell has to allow it, Microsoft has to allow it. Want to sell a Nintendo Wii game you bought to someone else? Nintendo will have to allow it. Want to sell your iTunes songs? Apple has to allow it.
Do they all support it yet? Nope! But they have to. You will see more cases like Steam popping up until the industry realizes they need to allow reselling in all their apps and stores.
And how do you delete the seller's copy, exactly?
Not all Steam games require a perpetual connection to the Internet to work.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Well that's dead easy to answer. You sell a game or games online, you are already connected to the Internet. "To complete the transaction, click this button to uninstall the software from your machine. The license will then be transferred to the buyer who may then install the software". Not hard, is it? Click or not click, sell or not sell.
As Steam knows every copy of every game and who owns it, I should think that even if you could cheat the system by installing a backup, the next time you were online and Steam is running it could politely tell you if you were being a dick. If you did it legit, you'd have payment (in lucre, Steam store credit or some other goods), the buyer would have the game. Everybody happy, I like that!
Who absorbs the cost of all the re-downloading bandwidth?
I know it isn't all that great a cost, but I can't imagination they are obligated to keep supplying it. I'm assuming that Valve can't force you to give them a cut of the sale to cover it. Perhaps they would give you the ability to pickup your files and transfer the title to another account, and make you responsible for ensuring the next party gets the game files, not unlike gamestop insuring you get the game disk in "usable" condition. I suppose the buyer could pay a fee to re-enable direct downloading, or Valve could give you the middle finger and tell you your on your own.
Everybody still marvels why we haven't yet gone bankrupt. Quality products and quality service might actually be a good idea. Who knows?
They might be. Too bad about your cars these days. I still jump up and down with glee when I come across used German tools though (the jokes just write themselves, don't they?)
Also note the use of the word "customer". Being called a consumer is a bit ... insulting.
If you consume, you're a consumer. "Customer" implies money changes hands but a) that's not always the case and b) it doesn't have to be that way, we're all stuck in the mindset that the mercantilism which we call capitalism is superior to all other systems.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Pretty delusional to think Valve wouldn't have anticipated this kind of lawsuit. I'm fairly certain they will have artfully closed any and all loopholes that could be used for this in their terms of agreement.
The cult of the contract isn't nearly as strong in Europe as it is in the United States.
Just because they wrote it in an agreement doesn't necessarily mean it will hold up in court.
I think that software seller should stop their EULA craziness and comply with good trade laws. When a society negotiates a license to use a software, it is a very different business than a usual consumer who buys a software or a game in a supermarket. Laws should be there to protect consumers. When I buy Microsoft Office, I own it, I have the right to decompile it to learn how to use Windows API. If Microsoft Office makes my computer burn, Microsoft shall be responsible. Of course I do not have the right to copy it and to sell copies, but it is the same as with any other object I buy.
We forget it's been eons since anyone could buy and therefore own any software. We only license the vast majority anymore. And the license is not transferable if you read the fine print. But who reads the EULA?
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Probably the same company that absorbs the re-downloading any time I install my 8 year old copy of Counter-Strike on a new or reformatted computer: Valve.
Steam routinely sells games at significant discounts. You can get AAA titles for under $10. Do people feel they need to recover a $10 investment by turning around and selling it for, what, $5, $2? Do people feel they need to look for bargain games resold for single digit prices?
Also for the most part the majority of AAA titles on Steam are also available for physical purchase. You opt to buy through the convenience of online distribution by forgoing the ability to trade or resell the game.
So I don't agree that Valve should be sued for game ownership. You clearly are making a choice to buy from the Steam walled garden, meaning you are accepting whatever state of terms they apply to the purchase of that game.
I think Valve should just pull Steam support from Germany, period. End this BS about pandering to lawyers only interested in a cash payout. I am also tired of petulant twits that feel they are owed something back. Gaming is a purely optional function of society. Buying a game is about having disposable income. You have a choice to buy a game or not and its about time adults and caregivers of infants started making responsible decisions about how they spend their money. Any dumb-ass that buys a game through Steam and are surprised they can't resell it is just that, a dumb-ass. Companies should have a right to block dumb users, and countries of dumb users.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The US has the first-sale doctrine. The first sale doctrine doesn't say that the company selling you the good has to enable or help you resell. It just says that they can't prevent you from reselling using legal means (i.e. lawsuits, injunctions, etc).
I don't believe the above is true. The first-sale doctrine is part of US Anti Trust laws. Any effort to shut down second hand markets could be prosecuted under anti trust laws. The whole point of these locks is price fixing.
'Cause the police have so much time available to look for your stolen game - they're gonna hop on tracking down that IP address right away. Fact is this is not a trivial problem to solve.
+1 Disagree
Whether or not they investigate the crime is actually relatively irrelevant, I was just pointing out that the fact that you can come up with a way for someone to steal the property doesn't make it any worse than physical property which has exactly the same problem. If you report a physical CD copy of a game stolen the police may decide not to investigate too. But if this ruling is successful it would make it exactly the same crime. (and I honestly fail to see how your doom and gloom hacking scenario is any more likley than someone stealing the physical copy now.)
Sure having freedom carries risks, but in general those risks are far outnumbered by the rewards. (if everyone was locked in a padded room 24/7 most crime would diminish, that doesn't make it a good idea)
Getting somebody's password is far easier than breaking in to their house, has far less dire consequences, and can be done remotely (with even *lower* risk of consequences).
I'm certainly not arguing against being able to resell games you've purchased, I'm just trying to point out that there are some hurdles that would need to be overcome.
+1 Disagree
I'm not sure if Valve has a German presence. If they don't, German laws or rulings don't really affect them.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
We Americans always re-sell our games with the crack on a DVD so they buyer doesn't have to deal with Steam. Why sell something to someone then make them go through a bunch of bullshit to use it. That is just plain mean. :P
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Why not? They can have legal standing in the EU without needing to worry about a specific troublesome country.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Taken from DIRECTIVE 2009/24/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer programs. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:111:0016:0022:EN:PDF
Obviously game transfer is not a technical challenge, they simply want to abolish used games market since it hurts SO MUCH MORE THAN PIRACY, since this time it involves people who actually buy stuff, paying to other people, and not the original seller of the product.
I wonder if German Court is also after Blizzard.
Because this suit is based on a decision of the European Court of Justice, which states that each buyer has the right to resell used software, and the First Doctrin applies also on downloads and other means to get the software. No license agreement can change this, also not Valve's. This effectively renders technical means to stop the resale of used software illegal in the whole E.U.
"At the 2009 Macworld Conference & Expo, it was announced that the iTunes Music Store would be DRM-free, with all songs DRM-free by April 2009."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itunes
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
Just change the TOS to say that you're not purchasing the software, you're purchasing a non-transferable permanent license. Just like the new model for MS Office, you pay a fee to use the software but you can't sell that software. The only difference is that in the case of Steam, it's a one time fee that grants unlimited use for a single person.
How would an MMO like the Secret World or Guild Wars 2 fall into a potential ruling, where you pay upfront to access to the MMO, but don't have to pay a subscription?
Most gamers will acknowledge there's a difference to buying an MMO like Guild Wars 2 and a primarily single player game like Torchlight that just happens to have a multiplayer component, since you are not really buying the client, but access to their persistent world servers, but someone with a non-gamer perspective might not view it that way. What would the ramifications be if you could effectively be legally allowed to resell Guild Wars 2 accounts? If the court deems that those type of games deserve an exemption, what would the legal rationale be? If the legal rational gives publishers a loophole, could we be seeing a shift into how future games are designed if the exemption is too broad?
I don't know where I really stand on this. The side effects of a ruling for the plaintiffs could make things really weird if the judges don't consider the way they make their ruling carefully.