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German Court Forbids Resale of Valve Games
sfcrazy writes "A German court has dismissed a 'reselling' case in favor of Valve Software, the maker of Steam OS. German consumer group Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (vzbv) had filed a complaint against Valve as Valve's EULA (End User License Agreement) prohibits users from re-selling their games. What it means is that German users can't resell their Steam Games."
For a german, that is trivial to pronounce and no native german will have the slightest difficulty.
Welsh names, on the other hand... "Gwrhyr Gwastawd Icithoedd" - yeah, right. Did your cat jump on the keyboard? No, that's actually some real welsh name.
Then again, I assume native welsh speakers now think "uh, what's the deal? That's easy, it's pronounced ..."
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
[ Still using Slashdot until beta takes over, then I'll dump it. ]
It's an interesting ruling. While Steam's lack of support for re-sale of games may run into legal issues, their willingness to keep games available at lower and lower price points as games get older shows that they're not abusing the privilege. If you can wait a while, the price will come down to a reasonable point and the game is available for people who'd have otherwise needed to buy the game used. And I've been delighted to see old games that I've enjoyed, such as the original Doom or Thief or X-com games, be available on Steam. It's helped me avoid having to recover and old games and simply pray that they'd be playable on modern operating systems: I'm very pleased with Steam for making older games available at very reasonable prices. We're actually getting something from them in return for their exclusive licensing.
If it's a rental, Valve is in some hot water, when it comes to software. Because the owner of the rented item has to keep it in usable shape. Thus Valve would be liable for everything their software causes on their client's systems.
The European High Court applied the Duck Test on this one, and it found thus: If it is a one term payment and if there is no time limit to the usability, it's a sale, independent on what the contract says, and the First Sale doctrin applies.
"Steam has been DRM since before Half-Life 2." Anyone who thinks Steam isn't DRM is an idiot.
With that being said, Steam is the example of "good" DRM. As good as you can get atleast. Sure you can't resell your games, but you can download games you bought any time, on any number of computers without having to dance "Authorize/Deauthorize" dance. It also handles connecting to servers, game saves, friends lists, audio chatting...
Steam is pretty much the ONLY DRM service to get remotely close to right.
If you are militantly against DRM, then of course Steam can't do ANYTHING to win you over. For the other 99.9% of humans who understand compromise has to happen some time... Steam is a good product.