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Steam should let users resell games, French court rules

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.exe

.exe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,241
Madjoki said:
Curia is the highest court of Eu law. They consider right of resale to be important but also control of distribution. So seems like unless law is specially created to allow this, it is not legal.
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I'm a little rusty on this, but as far as I know the ECJ is the highest court. More importantly, the referenced document is an AG's opinion, which will be taken into consideration once the ECJ renders its final interpretation*, but the ECJ doesn't have to agree with the AG necessarily. So, from my understanding, it is not yet final basically.
 
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FuzzyWuzzy

FuzzyWuzzy

Prophet of Truth
Member
Apr 7, 2019
2,090
Austria
daxy said:
I'm a little rusty on this, but as far as I know the ECJ is the highest court. The quoted document is an AG's opinion, which will be taken into consideration once it reaches the ECJ renders its final interpretation, but the ECJ doesn't have to agree with the AG necessarily.
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ECJ is the highest court and he is referring to that court with Curia
 
FuzzyWuzzy

FuzzyWuzzy

Prophet of Truth
Member
Apr 7, 2019
2,090
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daxy said:
It's a silly argument, but Curia is the case law repository for (and a general site about) the CJEU, which comprises not only the ECJ but also the General Court.
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i am aware of that but i think it still was very clear that he had the right idea ^^

But sorry if it came off as confrontational, that wasnt the intend since i agree with you on it
 
Zeneric

Zeneric

Banned
Aug 29, 2019
262
I'd probably be thousands of dollars richer from selling lots of my games, I don't care for, on steam. I wouldn't mind that. A new PC'd be neat.
 
gozu

gozu

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,341
America
collige said:
Several points:
1-This will affect more than just Steam
2-Steamworks is not anti piracy. From Valve's own words: "The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not a anti-piracy solution"
3-You don't actually have to use Steam to run all the games on there anyway
4-Pirating a game has a bunch of consumer downsides that a built-in solution wouldn't have. Buying a game -> backing it up -> selling it is far easier than finding a torrent or something
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1. yes
2. That's a misstatement at best. it is anti-backup / anti-piracy / drm. What they actually should have said is that it's *weak* anti-piracy but it doesn't matter to pirates. it's just as easy to download a Denuvo crack as it is a steam crack so the point is moot.
3. I've had steam installed on all my computers in the past 15 years. I don't mind it.
4. You can't backup a game without first cracking the steam DRM. It's not easier than finding a torrent. The only place that's "slightly" easier than torrenting is GoG where you can literally copy the installer and install the game anywhere because it has no DRM. The moment you cease to be able to do that, it's DRM.

I wish Disney et al hadn't tainted the legitimacy of the copyright law when they declared war on the public domain. This corporate assault on second hand sales of software is just as hurtful. Perhaps even more so.
 
mxbison

mxbison

Banned
Jan 14, 2019
2,148
I don't like it, sounds bad for the industry. There is 0 reason to buy anything new then.

Pretty much just means more GaaS models when the base game has much less value.
 
Alexandros

Alexandros

Member
Oct 26, 2017
17,812
dex3108 said:
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There is no law that specifically settles the issue of digital content resale. Companies are using the loophole of the "communication to the public" clause of copyright law which is intended for broadcasting and public events. If there was EU law that directly contradicted game resale, then the ruling by the french court (assuming that France would have already incororated that law into it slegal system) would have been different.
 
Spence

Spence

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,119
Sweden
People are cheering for this, but isn't the downside that game publishers and developers will get decreased sales and less income? How will that affect the future of the industry?
 
.exe

.exe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,241
Alexandros said:
There is no law that specifically settles the issue of digital content resale. Companies are using the loophole of the "communication to the public" clause of copyright law which is intended for broadcasting and public events. If there was EU law that directly contradicted game resale, then the ruling by the french court (assuming that France would have already incororated that law into it slegal system) would have been different.
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I don't know what legal basis you're referring to specifically with the "communication to the public" clause, but everything regarding the Oracle case was based on EU directives, so the question could also be whether the relevant directives have been adequately transposed into national law.

Edit: so after having read the Usedsoft and Ranks & Vasiļevičs cases some more, I don't really see any basis to restrict game reselling if all the relevant directives are appropriately transposed unless, indeed, some sort of loophole is used. Games are software too. If all the conditions stated in Usedsoft apply, game reselling should also be possible. Indefinite or long term licenses make it so that effectively a product rather than a license is sold. None of the language used seems to imply that there is a difference between business or personal licenses. What strikes me most then is how long it's taken for this to end up trickling down to videogames. I guess because it's more difficult to resell something that's exclusively associated with an account log-in and as such tied to different games as well. You can't just locate your "license" from your account, delete said license and somehow transfer it to somebody else. I'm still unclear as to how it was possible for software to be "transmitted" for resale then in the Usedsoft case. My assumption would be product keys that aren't account-bound. So I guess one of the practical effects of the enforcement of this (case) law would have to be the ability to "liberate" licenses from accounts.

Edit 2: having now gotten a better understanding of Usedsoft, 2001/29 and 2009/24 through a reading of the e-book case, it seems like the French court didn't apply the 2009 directive on computer programs correctly and videogames probably can't be classified as 'computer programs'. This + some of the conclusions from C‑355/12 make it so the resale of games will be highly unlikely, if the AG's opinion is followed in the e-book case.
 
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ShinUltramanJ

ShinUltramanJ

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,950
People are crazy if they think there won't be a big downside to this. The industry won't simply remain as it is, with you getting to sell your digital licenses.

Publishers can easily bypass this by selling their games exclusively to subscription services.
 
XR.

XR.

Member
Nov 22, 2018
6,583
ShinUltramanJ said:
People are crazy if they think there won't be a big downside to this. The industry won't simply remain as it is, with you getting to sell your digital licenses.

Publishers can easily bypass this by selling their games exclusively to subscription services.
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Yeah, I think we're in a great place right now where consumers can chose to buy their games or "rent" via subscription models. We're not in a rush to skew more to the latter because that's what will happen as soon as digital goods aren't profitable. Consumers have more possibilities than ever, I don't see a need for this at all right now.
 
.exe

.exe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,241
ShinUltramanJ said:
People are crazy if they think there won't be a big downside to this. The industry won't simply remain as it is, with you getting to sell your digital licenses.

Publishers can easily bypass this by selling their games exclusively to subscription services.
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I think so as well, but I do wonder how quick things will evolve. We've seen a shift to service/subscription based software in like Adobe's products and anti-virus software, among others, as well as an increased focus on cloud services. This is where games were headed already, I guess. Things will probably just accelerate to that model. One of the issues is that while I can conceive software as a service, since much of it involves or presumes continued necessity for its use (e.g. secure password management, anti-virus, software like Adobe's), a lot of media is often consumed once and only once. I don't tend to reread (e)books, so I have little use for them afterwards. Similarly, I don't replay many games, especially not if it's the type of game that relies heavily on not having played it before (i.e. something that plays on your expectations), for example FEZ or The Witness are very obvious cases of this. That kind of media and specifically that subset of it, makes less commercial sense if you're purely thinking about launching a successful product in a paradigm where digital used sales are infinitely possible as there is no distinguishable difference between new and "used".
 

Harlequin

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,614
Yeah, this would certainly create an interesting dilemma. What kind of advantage is there to buying new when new goods and used goods are indistinguishable from one another? Devs and publishers would inevitably end up putting sth akin to online passes back into their games or lean even harder into the GaaS model to ensure "user retention".

Maybe one solution would be to somehow incorporate a physical key into the resale process? Like, for your second-hand games to work, maybe Valve needs to send you an "activation disc" or sth? That would make things a bit more impractical and inefficient. Not sure if it'd be sufficiently impractical for people to feel like it's a significantly worse option than buying new, though.
 
Dascu

Dascu

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Oct 28, 2017
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.exe

.exe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,241
Madjoki said:
Same. (as much as I'd want to resell)

It would just drive publishers complying with the law by selling time limited licenses, and not by allowing resales
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Yeah, I can only see it taking a very unfortunate turn for end-users -- as much as I would love to get sell off a bunch of games that I've only played for a few minutes or hours or didn't end up liking.
 
Weltall Zero

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
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Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
Stop It said:
But that's only a perceived value.

Games discs are nothing more than digital tokens. The games are installed and updated online to the same spec as currently available. The disc is a representation of the license only.
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This is only a half-truth. Discs can be scratched, deteriorate and become unusable. Disc games come with a warranty that will eventually expire. If you own a scratched and unreadable copy of a game that's no longer under warranty, you don't own a digital license; you own nothing.

This is not the case with a digital license; such a license lasts forever, unless the servers are turned off, in which case all licenses are worthless. That is, a second hand license is identical in every sense to a brand new one.

Edit: Sorry, didn't realize I was replying to a 3-month-old post. :D
 
NookSports

NookSports

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Oct 27, 2017
5,213
ShinUltramanJ said:
People are crazy if they think there won't be a big downside to this. The industry won't simply remain as it is, with you getting to sell your digital licenses.

Publishers can easily bypass this by selling their games exclusively to subscription services.
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Exactly this. Look at what the textbook industry did. When they lost too much money to the secondary market, they started selling homework keys.

The lack of a secondary market is what's kept steam relatively cheap. Introduce reselling and things might change dramatically. It won't be status quo+reselling
 
MechaMarmaset

MechaMarmaset

Member
Nov 20, 2017
3,582
If steam is a marketplace, then I don't see why they'd care if you could resell games. They take 30% of the publisher's cut. Why not 30% of your cut too? If it's that way, then I don't see it as a problem for them. If publishers are worried about that cutting into their profits, then they can raise the price of a first-purchase game. I don't get why a license is transferable as long as it's on a disc, but not in a digital space.

I'd keep most of my games, but I wouldn't mind getting rid of a few turds I don't want anymore if someone else was willing to take them.
 
Taffy Lewis

Taffy Lewis

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Oct 27, 2017
1,527
Because transferring a physical good is a harder, more costly process than sending someone a license key.

Steam wants the games market to remain healthy so they can sell new games. And people wouldn't need to sell their used games on Stream; if selling "digital used" would be reality, I'm sure dedicated platforms with lower cuts would appear - essentially a race to the bottom.
 
kubev

kubev

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Oct 25, 2017
7,533
California
nazgul_hunter said:
Exactly this. Look at what the textbook industry did. When they lost too much money to the secondary market, they started selling homework keys.

The lack of a secondary market is what's kept steam relatively cheap. Introduce reselling and things might change dramatically. It won't be status quo+reselling
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Out of curiosity, when was the last "online pass" sold that people who purchased certain multi-player games were required to buy in order to play online? The reason I ask is because it'd be interesting to line that up with the increase in digital games sales (or at least an upward trend). Maybe they did away with those so quickly because it was apparent that digital sales would make them unnecessary due to the lack of reselling. If we're suddenly able to resell our games, then I wonder if we'll see something like online passes return. Or just a general shift toward free-to-play and/or lootboxes for just about everything.
 
justiceiro

justiceiro

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
6,664
Dascu said:
French court annihilated.


EU Court of Justice rules that digital resale of e-books is not allowed without publisher/rightholder consent. The same conclusion can easily be drawn in parallel towards other copyrighted works such as video games. Reminding again that the UsedSoft ruling is not applicable to video games (see Nintendo ruling form 2014, para. 23).

I told y'all.
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What does this means? Resale of digital games is happening or not.
 
Dreams-Visions

Dreams-Visions

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
41,368
Miami, FL
Dascu said:
French court annihilated.


EU Court of Justice rules that digital resale of e-books is not allowed without publisher/rightholder consent. The same conclusion can easily be drawn in parallel towards other copyrighted works such as video games. Reminding again that the UsedSoft ruling is not applicable to video games (see Nintendo ruling form 2014, para. 23).

I told y'all.
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Makes sense.
 
Dascu

Dascu

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,994
justiceiro said:
What does this means? Resale of digital games is happening or not.
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saci said:
Not happening. At least for now.
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Well, exact situation would be:
- French lower court ruled that Valve should allow resale of digital games.
- Valve will go in appeal, if necessary all the way up to the EU Court of Justice.

Looking at the latest cases from the CoJ (such as the one I linked, from today), it looks very likely that this court would rule in Valve's favour. So no resale. In any case, Valve would not allow this until a final judgment and until it's exhausted all of its appeal options.

The only situation in which it would happen after all, would be if the case makes it up to the CoJ and it decides that, contrary to books or other types of copyrighted material, and somewhat reversing its earlier opinions, would make an exception for video games and say that they are eligible for digital resale anyway. But that's super unlikely and would, as I said, entail a reversal of their earlier rulings.
 
ThreepwoodMighty

ThreepwoodMighty

Banned
Dec 14, 2019
464
First of all, why Steam? How about everyone else? This is going to kill revenue for publishers and developers, and can't be compared to physical media. With physical media you actually have to hand someone the copy of the game. It's a inconvenience. That's also why digital media is becoming more popular. If you can sell or give games without any hassle it's going to hurt the industry.
 
G_Zero

G_Zero

alt account
Banned
Mar 19, 2019
457
ThreepwoodMighty said:
First of all, why Steam? How about everyone else? This is going to kill revenue for publishers and developers, and can't be compared to physical media. With physical media you actually have to hand someone the copy of the game. It's a inconvenience. That's also why digital media is becoming more popular. If you can sell or give games without any hassle it's going to hurt the industry.
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The ruling would apply to everyone, not just Valve.
 
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