Re-Selling Steam Games Thanks to the EU (Potentially)

[pacerfan]

Been talking about this on another Forum and thought it would be applicable here
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/07/03/e ... l-software
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs ... 0094en.pdf

The EU Court of Justice has issued a ruling that says people should legally be able to sell games they acquire digitally, such as through Valve Software's Steam distribution service. Prompted by a legal battle between Oracle and German company UsedSoft, who was selling "used" licenses of Oracle's software against Oracle's wishes, the case may not have originally been about games, but the ruling's language covers "computer program[s]" in general.

Why is this Important you may be thinking as it happened in July?

THIS
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2026797/ ... rship.html

Since European law overrides that of the Member Nations in this case chances are Valve are going to lose thanks to the court decision back in July. The ramifications of this are massive to say the least. I know it won't happen for a few years yet as the European Court system is a slow moving beast and Valve and other companies are going to fight it to the end. Still the thought of it is interesting, don't like a DLC you bought? Sell It! Now there is the chance that Valve decide not to listen to the ruling by pulling out of Europe altogether but the chance of that is slim at best.

[smarty2]

Interesting, so would that include dlc?

[crumplezone]

I've pretty much gone over this subject on another forum, and the consensus was that Steam will avoid the European Law by doing the following:

1. Re-writing the subscribers agreement for EU side.
2. Create a new EULA which will strictly prohibit reselling to EU users or outright ban it and you will have to agree or lose your steam account.
3. They will state that Valve, the client and distribution network is on US soil so is not subject to European Law and that any specific games/DLC before a specific date were issued from the US.

Also to point out, European law overwriting of member nations is subject entirely to only EU member states and the last time I checked the USA wasn't part of the european union, so european laws will have no effect on Steam being owned and run by a US company.

They have already changed the EULA and subscribers agreement last year to counter small claims court battles with disgruntled customers, which was basically you click "I agree" to not take them to court, if you disagreed then your Steam account would be closed.

Either way, its unlikely to change anything for a number of years and we'll probably have TS2016 by the time they got around to enforcing it all have all the legal arguements are finished.

[Easilyconfused]

Before all the armchair lawyers come out to comment, I would say any any changes are some years away given the glacial pace the legal system moves at so let's not get to excited yet.

I do have some insight into the business end of things since my day job involves issuing purchase requisitions for software licences that run into 6, 7 or 8 figures on an annual basis.

Like it or not - the software you "buy" is governed by the EULAs and is most cases they say you do not "own" the software - only a licence to use it on 1 or more computers. It is not like buying a car or some other tangible asset that you can touch - software is generally "licensed" which means you have the legal right to use it but not sell it on. The legal system has yet to catch up with this concept let alone the online download concept.

[smarty2]

Pity one can't have all dlc sold on a disk. Ergo you can sell it. aah well nice idea but as John says glacial legal movement ages everyone and rarely benefits anyone save the lawyers!

[andynwt]

I'd be happy if steam allowed me just to remove something from my library and give me 25% of the purchase price back or something. Not really fussed about re-selling.

[Oldpufferspotter]

If you legally sold on the licence to use one of RS.com's DLC, then RS.com would need to be able to look into your TS20xx program files to establish that you had in fact uninstalled that DLC from your system. They would need to do this every time you ran the game/simulator, to prevent you reinstalling that DLC afterwards from a memory stick or USB hard drive etc.
This would mean that the OFF-line option to run the game would have to be withdrawn, thus forcing you to run the game on line every time you used TS20xx, to enable RS.com to verify each time that you are not trying to run that DLC illegally.
Just a thought,
regards Ted.

[jstange]

If you legally sold on the licence to use one of RS.com's DLC, then RS.com would need to be able to look into your TS20xx program files to establish that you had in fact uninstalled that DLC from your system. They would need to do this every time you ran the game/simulator, to prevent you reinstalling that DLC afterwards from a memory stick or USB hard drive etc.
This would mean that the OFF-line option to run the game would have to be withdrawn, thus forcing you to run the game on line every time you used TS20xx, to enable RS.com to verify each time that you are not trying to run that DLC illegally.
Just a thought,
regards Ted.

I think it is possible to illegally share the content this way even now and they still do not check it.

However I would be careful here, guys. If Steam will be forced to allow selling the licenses of once sold games it clearly means loss of income for them (as many licenses will be "re-used") and this could mean death to any future sales. Not sure if the chance to sell your old stuff would give you back the money you can save in today's sale deals.