Slashdot Mirror
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."
Fuck beta
DOWN WITH BETA
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##altslashdot
I have the honor of being very close the the international date line, it is almost midnight, February 9th. I just want to say that the opposition by Slashdotters to our new corporate overlords has renewed my faith in humanity, and especially the nerd faction of humanity. Live long, and prosper, and I will see you on the other side. End Transmission, Carrier lost.
I feel that it is a bad ruling. Typically EULAs aren't shown to the user until the purchase has been done. Shit like that should not be tolerated in contract law.
If you want to put restrictions on you customer, not only should you be required to show the contract before purchase. Just like with regular contracts you should have verified that the other part is mentally sane and have read through the contract.
Yes, you will get less sales if customers can't just ignore the EULA but if your business model depends on people not taking the time to read the EULA every time then you shouldn't have one.
So everything in .de 'sold' via Ireland or another tax haven will not pay Germany's version of VAT - ever. German (Physical) storeowners will go broke. Never mind the distinction between 'Rent' and 'Buy'. Never mind the distinction between rent and buy. The solution is a sticker that says 'You may not purchase this product - it is only rented - and worthless upon resale which is not permitted' .de court has not thought through the tax implications. Wanna bet the 'price' is not reduced accordingly?
It seems the
Come guys, enough FB's.
Valve has every right to restrict reselling downloaded games. There is no physical media to resell, and the service is at no risk of shutting down any time soon.
In hindsight, games should be permitted to be disconnected from Steam, so if at some point Steam goes bellyup or is bought by EA and renamed Origin, that there is some way of actually still playing the games without being forced to rebuy the games YET AGAIN.
I say Yet again, because certain games I have several copies of because they originally came on floppies, then CD-ROM, and then I ended up buying them again on Steam AND GOG.com because the steam version was broken.
Valve won this case on the grounds that judge was not able to pronounce "Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband".
839*929
Seems like something went wrong when translating. Can someone re-write this /. snippet in plain Engrish prease?
I don't think Valve should be forced to make the changes necessary to make individual games transferrable, but I think they should have to make it clear that you do not have the right to do as you please with your "copy." I know it's in the EULA, but they should stop calling them "sales" and "purchases" and call them what they are: rentals. That said, they can't stop you from selling your entire account and giving over your login/password. In the US, the first amendment would protect your right to divulge that information no matter what the EULA says.
Hello Beta, farewell slashdot
Down with beta
[ 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.
The correct headline would be:
German court refuses to force Valve Steam to allow resale of games
Too complicated?
I have to edit out "beta" many times in the address bar and enter in "www" just to get it to a functional state where I may view the summary and the comments.
This is the final straw. Goodbye Slashdot.
This is a decision by a regional court. They universally suck at rulings regarding any technology invented after 1900. A state court recently held a domain registrar responsible for copyright infringement. And nevermind the treasure trove of truly grotesque copyright-related rulings coming out of the city-state of Hamburg - they are legendary here in Germany, similar to patent cases in Texas.
This is bound to be appealed, and our higher courts usually fare better when it comes to dealing with Das Internet.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
so say we all
The internet is not Germany.
Maybe you shouldn't be on a computer.
their software. Not!
They accept piracy. If they accept piracy and stop persecuting the practice then all these stupid copyright laws are fine.
I can't resell something I bought? fine... I can take the money I didn't make selling it and put that towards a pirated copy.
Happy publishing industry?
The sad thing is that a resale market might actually get people to treat this stuff like property again. But if its set up as a system where only they own anything then... fine. We'll see what the market has to say about that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This follows a previous ruling:
The matter was litigated all the way to Germany’s highest civil court, the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof; "BGH"), which dismissed the suit in 2010, finding that while the doctrine of exhaustion limited the rights holders’ powers with regards to an individual DVD, it did not require them to design their business in a way that facilitated the sale of used games and therefore did not make the Steam terms of service unenforceable.
-- Osborne Clarke
This second suit was prompted by a court case which found that the first sale doctrine ("doctrine of exhaustion") did apply to digital goods. However, it's not surprising this case was dismissed because it is not a question of what rights the consumer has over software they have purchased, it is a matter of what duties the software provider must guarantee to continue providing.
IMHO it is perfectly reasonable that if it is a matter of online support (cost of server maintenance, etc.) that the one-time fee charged to one person does not in turn mean that person can give their support contract to someone else. The one time fee is presumably calculated based on typical use for a single account holder.
But the single-player package should remain fully transferrable.
And as for companies making games require internet connnections they really don't need to abuse the ambiguity here, let's just say I'm not going to cry when they complain about piracy.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
I remember reading an analysis a while back that actually does a bit of economic/game theory on this, and he found that forbidding resale actually has positive benefits for the *consumer*. Part of his analysis was looking at prices between console games, resellable computer games, and games bought via services like Steam. More specifically, he looked at games with online-playing modes that require servers.
What he found is that with resellable games, gaming companies typically only got that 'first bite' and continued play was essentially free through quite a number of customers. Remember that places like gamestop will buy the old games for a song, and sell them for almost as much as a new game.
With games that can't be resold they're able to price the initial game lower, and keep the profit flowing in. It removes places like gamestop from the equation(so they hate it, of course). Consider that I can buy many year old initially $60 games from steam for like $10. Because the game is still being sold, there's still incentive to fix/patch/expand the game.
Roughly speaking, the results were that new game consumers don't pay any more(the new game is slightly cheaper, on average, by about the same amount as what they'd be able to sell it to gamestop for), used game consumers don't pay more, and the studios get more money vs resellers, increasing their profits and encouraging more/bigger games.
I don't read AC A human right
Do the Germans have a single, very long, really angry-sounding, word for 'this software is licensed, not sold'? Inquiring minds want to know.
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
This is a win for publishers and developers of games, so once you bought the game and it's "yours" you cannot "resell" it, even tho your not going to make your money back..
I don't care whether it's physical, or digital I bought the game if I choose to resell it they can kiss my arse. Of course with this DRM communist approach it is impossible to resell, since I'm renting the game, but never "own" it.
Im not sure what is involved with this consumer group, nor there motives, but if Steam goes down the path of DRM, or standing up for publishers/developers they kiss any chance they have at being any type of player in the gaming market goodbye. It's one thing to claim be open hardware/firmware it another to follow in the demands of gaming companies.
DRM needs to die, and it's not going to die if people keep buying from Steam. Stop buying from Stream, people.
Oh, but Steam is the best form of DRM there is!
BOLLOCKS.
EULAs have been rated by the German higher court to be ineligible as a contract, therefore even if the EULA says "No resale", the EULA can't forbid it.
Valve can just refuse to activate it for anyone else, but they would not be able to claim violation of EULA allows them.
But i can sure sell it when used...
So if they come with piracy is stealing then if i buy it i want to be able to sell it also!
Wooooo hooo!!!
Also note GOG games are ancient(although I do love them), Steam not only has modern games but massively discounts those games and its DRM is mild. Once youve downloaded the game from steam you can switch to offline mode and never contact steam again. If Valve dies switch to offline mode. Steam also supports independent software developers and charities with humble bundle(I had already bought half the games in the bundle so steam lets me gift the codes to someone else).
If this ruling means that after buying a license to copy, you have no right to sell that license on, then if Valve don't own the copyrights (hence don't have to buy a license to copy), then Valve are selling goods they have no right to sell.
Steam would be wise to set up a program that allows you to transfer your license for a small fee. I'd prefer they simply allow regifting or resale, but clearly this is not going to happen. However a small fee ( say 10% of the purchase price or $2 which ever is higher ) would work out much better.
If you allow resale, allowing people to set their own price ( and still taking your 10% ) you will naturally be able to enforce pricing. No one will ever sell higher than your own price.
First, I'm going to operate under the assumption that proprietary software is considered ethical; if you disagree you may have some valid points but we're just going to have to disagree.
With digitally distributed software, the per-unit cost is negligible - the cost to the seller is almost entirely the cost to produce the "first copy". The ideal method of funding games entirely would reflect this fully, but I think it's going to take a while for crowd-funding to reach that level of cultural acceptance. Until then we'll continue with the selling a completed product at an arbitrary price to recover costs. But the point is, software is not a physical product - it is information.
Console software handled that by trying to emulate physical software. They tied to software to a specific disc (or earlier, cartridge) that did have a non-negligible per-unit cost. This was mainly a piracy-prevention system, but it made reselling games both possible (from a technical perspective) and sensible (from a consumer perspective).
Steam, and similar programs, does not tie games to a physical product. Even if you buy retail, you basically just get a Steam code to add the game to your account, and a physical copy of whatever the latest patch was when the disc was burned, so you only have to update from there (not that it always helps much - I think HL2 has more patches now than the original game occupied). From a legal perspective, they handwave it as a rental - of indefinite duration, and with no ongoing cost, but your "purchase" is just adding the game to your rental list. IMO that's bullshittery that's only necessary because the law hasn't caught up with reality yet.
Laws made for physical products make sense for physical products. They rarely make sense for virtual ones. We've seen this with "piracy" being made equivalent to theft - which /. regularly decries as being false because making a new copy does not deprive someone of their copy, merely the opportunity to have sold it. However, the same applies to reselling - you cannot be sure that the reseller will have removed all their copies (even with Steam's DRM, I can see ways to do keep a copy of a game playable after reselling). Further, because of the pressure of piracy, Steam has very low prices (with some exceptions - Activision seems to insist on keeping their games at $60 for years), which reduces or even eliminates the benefit to the consumer of reselling.
Yes, this is siding with a corporation over user rights. I don't like that much either, just on principle, since user rights are an endangered species these days. But they seem to actually be in the right on this.
I do think that they need to add refunds, though, for games that you purchase but then find either will not run, or do not work as advertized. I would like to think that the only reason they have not is because of the holes that would leave in their DRM.
And Witcher 3 will be on GoG.
Moreover, many ancient games are on Steam, so I guess you'll discard them utterly for having such old and crappy titles, right?
PS Steam will want to update itself and will not start (the steam client is required to start many steam games), so your claims are wrong there too.
also... what about transfer or gift ? I do have some games that I could give on my list to my friends...but i can't. Re-sell i could understand and I would like to resell my games but transfer or gift on my current list should be allowed and available
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
because we all know that the world only have NORTH americans and Germans!
Steam is the biggest DRM platform that exist on the Internet. It's almost impossible to play games without being connected even with the offline mode available.
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
That's why Valve says your buying software and it's not a rental. Well on paper and my receipts I receive says its a sale and I never saw rental anywhere
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
This is digital content. There's nothing for you to "sell" and nothing requiring Valve to allow anyone but you to use it.
Seems this case and the headline is a bit misleading. The title should be "German court refuses to force Valve to implement third party sale capabilities for their digital content."
I imagine you can still sell any physical item you may possess including but not limited to DVDs with games on them.
Fuck Beta.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
When I buy a game for $2.50 on a steam sale, I don't care about the ability to resell.
However, I don't buy $20 games through steam, since I can't resell.
The court didn't "forbid" anything like reselling games. They simply agreed with the EULA stipulation that you're not allowed to transfer ownership of an *account*. This actually makes perfect sense.
The fact that Steam also disallows/lacks the functionality for the transfer (gifting or resale) of used games on Steam, simply means there's a market for other providers to start a platform that would allow sale and resale of games. Of course, they might have some trouble attracting large game publishers, but that's another matter altogether.
And therefore your points are proving that resales will reduce prices at launch, not a lack of resale market.
Calling it "renting" is just a means of freeing them from the unwanted aspects of buying. It will in no way obligate them to any of the unwanted aspects of renting.
They will never call it a rental though, because that would upset people. So they will keep on calling it a purchase, even though it really isn't.
The goal is simple enough to understand: they want you to cough up cash for a license to use the software, with no option to transfer that license, while they retain the option to revoke it. This is not hard to understand. It is kind of crappy, which is why they still use words that make it sound like you are actually buying something, but no amount of semantic hair-splitting will change the nature of the agreement, nor will any amount of holding them accountable to their (effectively) false advertising impact them.
Vote with your wallet.
Okay, I readily admit it: I didn't read the story, because of the new design of the web page, which sucks. Fuck it.
...use is what would apply on a lease.
I find this whole issue very interesting though more in what I hope is the really long term. I personally have no interested in actually reselling any game I have on Steam, even those I have no intention of every playing (bought during Humble Bundle sales etc). I'm a hoarder/collector by nature.
However, what happens to my digital games, my digital music collection, my ebooks etc. when I die? All my physical possessions will likely pass on to my kids. I'd really like to pass my digital properties on as well. I've really only started buying pure digital stuff the last few years and this is only going to increase. Possibly more or less totally replace physical entertainment media in the pretty near future. The games are probably not that interesting since they may be more or less unplayable in a some decades. The books, music and films however are less likely to be obsolete.
Given the extremely long copyright terms publishers have at the moment this really is something that sort of worries me.
Fuck Beta!
Except no, you're full of shit, compromise doesn't have to happen. Humble Bundle games are sold DRM-free. Good Old Games sells all their games DRM-free, including ones that had DRM at initial release and even ones that are brand new, concurrently under sale through other vendors, and are DRMed there. Both of them allow unlimited re-downloading. There are other
Friends lists and audio chat and such have nothing to do with Steam. There's nothing very special about Steam's implementation of those features, either; I've been using online game services, with friends lists that tell me who is in what game and server lists and all that jazz, since the mid-90s. None of them required any DRM, either...
Steam doesn't allow re-sale, and it doesn't allow gifting. It doesn't allow sharing games (sharing *accounts* is not the same thing; even other DRM systems let me play X while my roommate plays Y even if we only have one copy of each between us). When (not if; it has happened multiple times) Steam servers go down, the games stop working. Steam can, at any time, modify or prohibit your access to their service and to the games you have "purchased". Steam can (and has before) modify their "license agreement" for the service - which of course means for all games running on it, as well - and there's fuck-all you can do about it except walk away and lose all your "investment".
SRM is shit. Steam is DRM. Steam is shit. QED.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The difference is that licenses for pharmaceuticals, driving, etc all have some benefit to the public good. Whether that be not including arsenic in your pills or knowing which side of the road to drive on, it is beneficial for society to have you be licensed (also, those licenses are almost exclusively granted or required by the GOVERNMENT and do not really enter in to the discussion). Another way of viewing this is that those license grant an expansion of rights (or a privelege) normally restricted for the common good. Software licenses do not follow this analogy.
How about an example (in the US) of a physical good sold with a license (and even this is because of regulation) - sodastream home carbonation systems' canisters. They are sold under license and remain the property of sodastream such that they will be returned and maintained in such a way that the risk of blowing something up from misuse of the canister is limited (of course there are plenty of other ways in which you can have a CO2 canister without a license, but I digress). Here's the interesting thing - I can sell my sodastream to someone else because it's my personal property and the canister goes with it (still under license that I presumably would have to provide the new owner - not sure, never read the license). THIS is a reasonable analogy to the software license model PROVIDED that I can no longer use the software (as I have sold my rights to use the software, or the license).
The EULA may say that I cannot sell the game (and, rightfully I can't, because I never bought it) but I sure as heck can sell the license and the 'physical' bits that go with it as long as they are transferred to the new owner (i.e. I no longer have them).
Digital makes this all quite convoluted, but if these were physical BD/DVD/CDs, no one would bat an eyelash (cf. music CDs, console games) because the license is more obvious when accompanied by a physical item.
While copyrighted materials might not be the most fungible goods(able to substitute for each other), as a simple example there's dozens of tower games out there, hundreds of first person shooters, etc...
As such, while my boycott of EA means that I'm not playing Mass Effect anytime soon, there are plenty of other games to occupy my time.
I don't read AC A human right
Until I can do everything that I would with a physical copy, including borrowing and reselling, the prices of all of this (games, music, movies, books) should only be a fraction of the cost (and I'd put the true costs at median used prices for older wares). The convenience is not worth what we're losing. So, where, pray tell, are the super cheap movies of yesteryear? Certainly a legit downloadable copy of something like The Wizard of Oz should be under a dollar. When is this stuff going to start scaling down to its true cost? Will we give up everything for instant gratification?