By John Walker on July 3rd, 2012 at 4:00 pm.
Well here’s some pretty huge news. The Court Of Justice of the European Union has just ruled that people should be able to resell downloaded games. In an environment where publishers are trying to destroy basic consumer rights like the ability to resell physical products you’ve paid for, this could be one heck of a turnaround for customers. And that’s no matter what it might say in the EULAs. This could have absolutely enormous implications on how services like Steam, Origin, GamersGate and the like work, and finally restore some rights back to the gamer.
The draconian and almost inevitably unenforceable rules we all pretend we’ve read and agreed to whenever we buy an online game are packed with ridiculous attempts to remove our rights of ownership. At best, when those rules are held to their letter, we’re long-term renting the games, with no rights to protect their being taken away from us at any point. So a ruling saying we have enough ownership that we can actually sell them on to others is a massive difference. Of course, it does ask one rather huge question: Er, how?
The preliminary ruling states,
“The first sale in the EU of a copy of a computer program by the copyright holder or with his consent exhausts the right of distribution of that copy in the EU. A rightholder who has marketed a copy in the territory of a Member State of the EU thus loses the right to rely on his monopoly of exploitation in order to oppose the resale of that copy… The principle of exhaustion of the distribution right applies not only where the copyright holder markets copies of his software on a material medium (CD-ROM or DVD) but also where he distributes them by means of downloads from his website.”
This was a result of software developers Oracle taking German company UsedSoft to court for reselling licenses to Oracle products. However, after reaching the European Court, a surprise blow came against the big publisher. And it has massive implications for all of online purchases, including games bought from places such as Steam, Origin, GamersGate, etc. And even further implications for those publishers attempting to ban the far more commonplace reselling of boxed products too.
The specific rule seems to be that if a license is sold indefinitely – i.e. not a license for a year, or similar – that the rightholder “exhausts his exclusive distribution right”.
“Such a transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy.”
That sentence is a really massive deal. It’s the very first time there has been any official sense of ownership via digital distribution, and if it gets implemented by courts, it’s going to change a great deal. From our having the legal right to sell games in our Origin accounts, right down to surely taking away the ability for companies like Valve and EA to block customers’ access to their purchased games for other infractions.
Right now we have companies like Microsoft and Sony looking for ways to make reselling of their products impossible for their next generation of consoles, and presumably relying heavily on the perceived redundancy of the argument if those games were purchased online (as surely the next gen consoles will want to focus on). But pow, maybe not. With a ruling that states,
“The Court observes in particular that limiting the application of the principle of the exhaustion of the distribution right solely to copies of computer programs that are sold on a material medium would allow the copyright holder to control the resale of copies downloaded from the internet and to demand further remuneration on the occasion of each new sale, even though the first sale of the copy had already enabled the rightholder to obtain appropriate remuneration. Such a restriction of the resale of copies of computer programs downloaded from the internet would go beyond what is necessary to safeguard the specific subject-matter of the intellectual property concerned.”
this whole deal just got an awful lot more interesting. It appears to be directly stating that it is inappropriate for copyright holders to insist on the right to be remunerated with every re-sale, which could even have legal implications for the current systems various console publishers have introduced, forcing pre-owned customers to pay a tithe before the game will work properly.
The ruling also makes it clear that if someone does resell a digital copy of a product, they must remove their version of it from their computer – because at that point it does become a copyright violation, as it’s become a reproduction, not a resale. But fascinatingly, it adds, “However, the directive authorises any reproduction that is necessary for the use of the computer program by the lawful acquirer in accordance with its intended purpose. Such reproduction may not be prohibited by contract.” What does that mean for the current exploits publishers are using, too? Could they now be illegal?
How companies like Steam, EA, etc will react will be very interesting. Their current infrastructures certainly don’t support reselling, and they’d probably ban your account if they caught you trying to. This is a ruling whose implications could stretch a very long way. There are bound to be challenges to the ruling made, and we can assume this one will stay in courts for a good while longer.
03/07/2012 at 16:01 AmateurScience says:
Now if they will just compel Steam et al to build the functionality into their clients then we’re on to something.
Edit: alternatively could this cause more distributors like Steam/Origin down the netflix route of a monthly sub of £X for access to Y games? Thus completely sidestepping the ruling.
Edit Edit: Also, if people were able to freely trade games for prices that they set from £0 up, and that’s facilitated by robust client tools, direct sales from pub/dev will surely drop through the floor?
Edit Edit Edit (last one, promise): Anything stopping them just changing the EULA to state that you’re buying a 10 year lease to the software? (Apart from that being evil)
03/07/2012 at 16:28 Kdansky says:
Actually, I would love to have the option to give my friends my games for free, just like the olden days where you’d borrow a CD (or a book). Currently, I can either buy them a copy (that’s expensive!), encourage them to buy a copy (that’s a hard sell) or encourage them to pirate a copy (very suboptimal), but as usual, closest to the actual intent.
03/07/2012 at 17:12 AmateurScience says:
Man I would love the option to lock out my access to a game on steam for a week or two so a friend could have a go on it.
03/07/2012 at 17:53 Theory says:
Steam already does this (http://storefront.steampowered.com/v/?gpdata=gift,new,90) but it’s up to a developer to enable it.
03/07/2012 at 19:59 nearly says:
guest passes are a bit different. they function more as a trial or full game demo. you still retain all rights to the game, it’s just that you gave someone else 3 days of access, like with an MMO trial, etc.
04/07/2012 at 02:47 bansdvb says:
TSW just released their launch trailer today, to your information; I think it’d fit very well in to your article :)
Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yMIcKmsbzk&feature=youtu.be&hd=1
04/07/2012 at 03:37 stupid_mcgee says:
The comment above is spam.
03/07/2012 at 16:54 Baines says:
Seems like it would mostly compel digital distributions to switch to subscription services. You wouldn’t “buy” a game at all, but rather lease it for a number of years.
Alternatively, if it stands and places like Steam don’t try to dodge it, then I wonder what it would mean for stuff like Indie bundles and general Steam sales. Both work on the idea of short term discounts.
Edit: Indeed, being able to resell “used” digital games could destroy pricing. With physical copies, there is at least some degradation that makes the “used” copy less valuable. Online even makes transfers easy, compared to passing on physical copies.
And if people have a reasonably easy way to sell their own games, enough that resellers like Gamestop aren’t such a convenience, then there wouldn’t even be the resellers’ artificial price setting to keep prices high.
03/07/2012 at 17:08 AmateurScience says:
This is what happens when folk start trading in a resource that is effectively infinitely reproducible and has no intrinsic value whatsoever.
03/07/2012 at 17:20 LionsPhil says:
Steam already word your use of their service, including “buying” games on it, as a subscription—it’s just a one-off payment perpetual one.
Quite how the legalese for all this thrashes out, I don’t know, but presumably lots of people who are paid to know are currently trying to work it out.
03/07/2012 at 17:38 lionheart says:
For everyone without a legal education;
You can’t just add any terms you like to a contract, various pieces of legislation prohibit, for example limiting liability for serious injury. Freedom of contract is limited, especially for consumers, to prevent large companies from bullying them into giving up their rights.
Also, what you call something in a contract is irrelevant, the courts will always try to determine what it actually is, not just what you say it is. Hence calling something a “subscription” when you are granted rights in perpetuity for a one time payment, is irrelevant. A sale is a sale.
The only way around this would be to only sell games as a “real” subscription service, i.e. you rent access to the games, and if you stop paying then your rights of access eventually expire.
Also the ridiculous get-outs of charging £40 for the first payment and then a penny a year after that “subscription charge” will never fly either, the courts want the spirit of the law obeyed as well as the letter.
03/07/2012 at 17:50 Skabooga says:
Indeed, that irrelevance of wording was the crux of the recent ruling of U.S. Supreme Court on the Health Care Act.
03/07/2012 at 19:02 Whallaah says:
It actually also adds up to already existing laws: In the Netherlands, the supreme court ruled that software, including those with ‘limited rights’ and are still products, you have the right to demand security patches and basic support for.
All in all, within a few months, the legal system where I live suddenly redeemed it self as it comes down to modern technology.
03/07/2012 at 19:04 Tinus says:
Thanks, I didn’t actually know that. It’s very reassuring. :)
04/07/2012 at 05:55 Apolloin says:
This is all true HOWEVER companies like EA have already sidestepped this issue in practice by providing one-time activation keys to ‘free additional content’ for the initial purchasers.
In order to sidestep this legislation the industry will simply start providing the last two thirds of a game online and you will need to buy a key to activate it, which will activate it only on your account. The tranferable/saleable version of the game will, in effect, become a demo.
04/07/2012 at 12:45 DodgyG33za says:
Except that the law doesn’t work like that. As far a the law is concerned, you are buying access to that two thirds, so that would also be transferable unless it had a time limit,
Expect to see BF4 Premium as a yearly subscription…
04/07/2012 at 03:27 callmeclean says:
Although this could have bad effects on services like steam regarding pricing. I’m not sure it would be too bad. Well not for the smaller and cheaper games that are made by vulnerable indie developers anyway. It would have the same mentality as people who download games through torrents. So many people who do this and then really like the game, will see it for a reasonable price on steam and get it. And then urge their friends to get it so they can play together or just to support the developer. So if steam had a system that physically removed the copy from your hardrive automatically when you sold it off. Then that would be one incentive for another sale. As another copy would need to be bought for each person wanting to play together. Also as I said above I think lots of steam users would like to support developers and have all those games in their own library.
I think it will effect big AAA games more adversely. And I think that’s fair. Considering if I pay for an awesome $10 I don’t mind if someone in my own house has to buy it again on their account to play with me. But if I buy say an $80 or a $100 game. It should really have the ability to share it around a bit like the good old days. And if I really want to play MP with someone else then I guess I will have to buy another copy. And unless it’s a really fun MP game, people will just play it some and then pass it on to a friend or sell it off. Which could very well lose big publishers a lot of money, a good and a bad thing.
Personally I think this is going a bit too far. Maybe they should allow for passing on of licenses and large expensive titles to come with like a few or more individual licenses for multiple people. Allowing people to resell for whatever price they want might very well do more harm than good.
04/07/2012 at 06:17 Snargelfargen says:
Subscription based services are definitely part of the answer, but not all of it. Recurring fees will deter occasional gamers, and they are also a tough barrier for the most valuable customer of all: the impulse purchaser. Steam sales and the like are built around attractively discounted impulse purchases, and the amount of unplayed games in many gamers’ accounts shows that people are more than willing to buy things they don’t need and won’t use in the near future if the price is low enough.
Really the only conclusion i can (drunkenly) draw is that free to play/pay for goodies games are becoming an even more attractive proposition. You can resell a game, but you can never resell the emotional investment that comes from playing a particular character or account over time.
Basically more free games, more attention put into making the first several hours enjoyable (hooking or “catching” people), and more incentives to keep on playing the same old games for a longer period of time.
03/07/2012 at 17:35 Rusty says:
Worse: they’ll sell you a one-year license and you’ll have to renew annually at some small but non-zero cost. From the publisher’s point of view, this is a lovely opportunity: “We’d love to just sell you the game, but the Court won’t let us protect our interests, so now we’re forced to change from sales to subscriptions in order to comply with the terms of the decision.”
03/07/2012 at 17:44 lordcooper says:
Or they rent you a game for a hundred years at the same price they currently cost to buy.
03/07/2012 at 19:12 The Random One says:
Pretty sure the courts could rule a hundred-year lease is effectively the same thing as a sale, unless you are Nosferatu. Publishers risking losing their precious rights for your convenience? Pfft.
03/07/2012 at 19:39 Sheng-ji says:
It is a lovely opportunity for steam, origin et al; Right now I can guarantee that they don’t have second hand stores not because of anything to do with us, the consumers but to protect their relationships with publishers.
Why wouldn’t they, sell a game at a lower cost, but crucially. add their reseller fee and take the same money for the game as they would have for a new sale. The lower price comes because they don’t have to give any of that money to the publisher – obviously the seller will get what he asks for, but it will be a free market: to sell a copy, you would have to sell it cheaply enough to make it worth it for the buyer.
OK look, I’m not explaining this well at all but I bet the DD services start offering it with the excuse to the publishers that if they don’t, someone else will and at least they can regulate and control to a point the deletion of the copy from the sellers computer.
04/07/2012 at 06:03 Apolloin says:
There is one tiny flaw in your cunning scheme – it’s bollocks. Sorry, no offence, I just had to use the Blackadder quote.
Seriously though, the one tiny flaw in this consumer rights love-in is that it humps the leg of the people who actually bust their asses over a steaming hot digital anvil to make games. Most people don’t sell their games to interested third parties, they hand them over to Gamestop for a tenner off their next purchase (usually a second hand purchase) whilst Gamestop resells them at almost full retail price minus what they’d usually have to pass back to the people that actually made the thing.
This has very little to do with consumer rights and almost everything to do with propping up bricks and mortar.
04/07/2012 at 10:45 ix says:
You just reaffirmed that this is a good deal for everyone except the publishers, who don’t get to be paid twice for a copy that only one person is playing. I fail to see how that is not good for consumer rights.
Maybe gamestop is a horrible store (I wouldn’t know, I live in Europe), but that doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to make money of the used games market. The same applies to books, music and video (though they have the same problems when going digital).
tl;dr, there is no compelling reason to state that a publisher should make money on the same copy twice. That they worked really hard to make the game is not a valid reason.
03/07/2012 at 19:21 darkath says:
Anyway, the court decision is massively flawed in one major aspect.
There is no transfer of ownership of “a copy” because there is no ownership to begin with.
What Oracle, Valve, sell sell are Licences to use a product, not a product itself.
The court decision would actually make sense if it dealt with “transfer of licence of a copy”, and if it would allow Licence users to sell their own licence to use a product to a third party.
Now that’s just semantics, but in a Legal context it’s pretty much paramount.
03/07/2012 at 19:24 Brun says:
Read the ruling again. The whole premise of the case was that some company in Europe was selling used Oracle DB licenses secondhand, and Oracle sued them for infringement. The court ruled that first sale exhausted Oracle’s right to ownership since the software was sold with an indefinite license.
04/07/2012 at 06:04 Apolloin says:
So it’s a nail in the coffin of unlimited licenses then? Now every software license will be limited in duration, much like my Norton license is?
Thanks so much for standing up for my rights, EU Courts.
03/07/2012 at 20:36 Archonsod says:
Assuming they don’t get around it by the fact they already market it as a subscription rather than a software sale I doubt it would take much for Steam to handle it. Just make all of your purchases inventory items, that way people can sell/trade/gift them as they please. Or the GMG route of allowing you to trade in purchased games might work.
Don’t really see this having much effect to be honest, all they need to do is remove any text in their agreement to the effect that you may not resell games. There’s nothing in the directive that states they have to facilitate your ability to do so, merely that they cannot prevent you doing so.
04/07/2012 at 01:30 Commodore says:
In the end, what they call it does not matter – the courts want the spirit of the law to be followed as well as the letter. If they call it a subscription, but you have indefinite license, it’s a sale, and that’s that.
Charging full price and then a penny a year after that is out the window as well – that’s a sale trying to work a nonexistent loophole.
The only way to “get around” it would be to charge an actual subscription fee that removes your access after a time if you stop paying it.
03/07/2012 at 16:02 Theory says:
No more Steam sales in the EU, then.
Edit: actually, this has pissed me off enough to stick my head above the parapet. Here we go:
Reselling makes sense on two grounds:
# Products degrade with use. There is always a downside to buying second-hand.
# The value of a product is constant. A stool is not intrinsically more worth more after being resold.
Neither of the above apply to works of digital art because they are not products but consumable information. Their value is not in what they are – binary data that only a computer understands – but because of the ideas they put into our heads.
A database tool is just as useful the 50,000th time it is used as the first time, but we consume the value of an artwork into our minds every time we experienced it.
I saw this quote from George Bernard Shaw in Civ 5 which sums the concept up nicely:
Reselling a game reproduces its value into a second person’s head. It is unfair that developers don’t get anything for that.
(In defence of the ruling, it is about a software tool and may not have considered artworks at all.)
03/07/2012 at 16:05 sinister agent says:
I don’t see why not. Low prices make reselling pointless. If I buy a game for two quid, it’s really not worth the hassle to sell it for one measly quid. If I buy it for twenty though, it might be worth flogging on for a tenner.
03/07/2012 at 16:08 Xocrates says:
That logic might extend to the point that it could encourage game companies to lower game prices in the EU. Which would be very welcome.
Ending sales would be about the worst thing they could do short of stop selling games on EU altogether, since sales would become the easiest way to encourage buying direct instead of second hand.
03/07/2012 at 16:15 Berlot7 says:
It might also have the effect of raising prices to recoup investment costs as they won’t have as many purchased copies spread across many more people.
03/07/2012 at 16:51 idiotapocs says:
This, I believe :(
03/07/2012 at 19:25 Milky1985 says:
If they raise the price they will also lower sales, market forces as well will drive the price backdown, it has taken them a long time to get the price of a game in the uk to £50, and thers still pushback
04/07/2012 at 06:13 Apolloin says:
What are you talking about? AAA new game prices have been in the $40 to $60 range FOREVER. What’s causing the impression that game prices are rising is the increase in ‘special editions’ and DLC/Expansions.
03/07/2012 at 16:10 Slaadfax says:
Under these circumstances there will more than likely be a large number of individuals who buy mass quantities at the low sale price, then undercut when the price returns to its usual amount.
Although it begs the question; so they might be “capable” of reselling their games, but what sorcery will force the distributors to make easy tools to do so?
03/07/2012 at 16:13 Xocrates says:
Yes, the more likely outcome is that you can contact customer support to transfer a game, but no special infrastructure is in place.
The other likely outcome is that games start being rented for a determined and finite amount of time in order to circumvent this.
03/07/2012 at 16:21 JBantha says:
I was thinking about how usual are the 99 years period contracts are nowadays, anyway.
03/07/2012 at 16:27 klo3 says:
Well, paid personnel vs. an automated function (maybe an auction house) where Valve/EA takes a cut should be a pretty obvious case business wise…
03/07/2012 at 16:59 ArthurBarnhouse says:
Just because they are required to let you resell games does not mean they’re required to also sell you as many copies as you want to purchase. I don’t think you can even
But multiple copies of the same game in steam right now, except for bundles where you get to gift them to other people. Steam just won’t let you register multiple copies of the same game. If you’re selling a game, then your losing the copy you have connected to your account.
03/07/2012 at 17:44 Boothie says:
Yes however this doesnt change the fact that a resale effectively keeps the money out of the publishers hand, ie i play this game and finish it and then give/sell it to my friend, that is 60$ out of the publishers hand since my friend dont have to go and buy a copy for himself
03/07/2012 at 17:56 ArthurBarnhouse says:
I was responding to the idea that steam sales meant that you could capture huge quantities of on sale games then sell them back to people after the steam sale was over. I don’t know what impact used game sales would have with respect to publisher/developer profits. However, this is already basically occurring in console-land, and it seems to have not brought the walls of Jericho down.
03/07/2012 at 19:38 Kadayi says:
@Boothie
I would imagine that Valve and the publisher would add in some resale cut. Essentially. You could sell a title to a friend, but a % of that sale would somehow go to the digital distributor (after all it’s their service that’s hosting) and a % to the publisher.
04/07/2012 at 05:37 Wisq says:
Steam may prevent you buying multiple games on the same account, but doesn’t prevent you from making hundreds of accounts each with one or more games bought on sale.
If we’re going to continue to have these lovely sales, they’ll need to put some sort of conditions on them. Like having the buyer pay the difference if you sell them.
04/07/2012 at 07:03 ArthurBarnhouse says:
I guess that’s possible but I would say that it’s not extremely likely. That would be a lot of work and the profit would be margional at best, since you would have to sell the item higher than the sale price. Also valve could change the steam Eula to say that a person can only have one account, then block sales based on ip addresses or credit cards or something similar. Which would not be ideal, but it is theoretically possible if it was causing significant harm to the service,
I don’t know, you’re right, it could be a problem, but I just generally doubt it.
04/07/2012 at 09:02 Zakski says:
Doesn’t steam record what price you paid for a game anyway? surely they would use that
03/07/2012 at 17:17 kalelovil says:
edit: ArthurBarnhouse covered what I was about to say.
03/07/2012 at 16:10 Malcolm says:
Presumably steam could implement this by permitting you to “gift” games where you only have a single copy. Whether you accept payment in exchange for this gift is then entirely up to you.
03/07/2012 at 16:33 GreatGreyBeast says:
Yes, interestingly services like Steam might be particularly well set up for this, as they have the means to enforce the transfer (make sure you don’t keep a copy after the sale). Not that they WANT to – their entire business model is built around this not happening.
03/07/2012 at 16:40 Chris D says:
Valve may be able to profit like this if they could set up a digital equivalent of pre-owned sales in brick and mortar retailers. If they offered to buy back games themselves that would be far more convenient than trying to find a buyer yourself, then they could make a profit on the second sale too.
I’m not a lawyer or an economist but I suspect this is the point at which things get tricky.
03/07/2012 at 17:18 Khann says:
Or a system that gives Valve and the publisher of the game being sold a cut of each used sale.
03/07/2012 at 17:27 DiTH says:
I dont see how the publisher can get a cut being legal.Publisher gets his cut when the game is sold.Valve can argue that the cut they take on trades/resales is to pay for their costs of the trade/resale.
03/07/2012 at 17:34 Chris D says:
DiTH
I don’t think they could legally force you to give them a cut, but they could offer to buy it back from you themselves and then re-sell it. I suspect a lot of people would take them up on that for the convenience alone.
04/07/2012 at 03:48 stupid_mcgee says:
@ Chris D: That’s how Greenman Gaming handles their resale policy. You sell the game back to Greenman for a depreciated value, and then they sell it to someone else. (eg: you buy Civ5 for $40 and then sell it back for $20)
The real problem with this is that it actually undermines things like Steam’s great sales. Using the previous example, you could buy Civ5 for 75% off and then resell it for $20. That would mean that you would earn $10. So, in order for Steam to maintain such cheap sales, they would have to seriously diminish resell values to make sure they weren’t being screwed over by resellers.
I wholeheartedly agree with the intent of this, but I do worry about the actual implementation of it. I also wonder if Steam will just try and do this exclusively for EU, to comply with the ruling, and not for the NA and other territories.
This would actually be a great topic for Valve’s economist’s blog. (sorry, his name escapes me at the moment)
04/07/2012 at 14:13 Chris D says:
@stupid_mcgee
Yeah, I think it would mean we’d see a lot less sales. On the up side that would be counteracted somewhat by people being able to by cheap “used” games. I put down some thoughts on how it might work later in the thread.
Difficult to predict how this will play out but possibly we’d have games at similar prices but we’d get them through different mechanisms.
03/07/2012 at 16:34 Njordsk says:
You’ll see shittons of forum pages for exchanges in that case, i’m not sure they want to lose that much money.
I mean I can completly resell my whole steam library minus a few game I love replaying. I don’t think they want me to trade 80+ games against some other I could have paid.
03/07/2012 at 19:18 The Random One says:
Man, I’d love to be able to gift Steam games. Roughly half my library is games from one of the myriad indie bundles I tried once and didn’t like.
Conversely, indie bundles often let you have both a DRM-free copy and a Steam code. I can see that disappearing if anyone can keep the DRM free copy and trade the Steam version for hats.
04/07/2012 at 03:19 alinos says:
Simple actually.
If tomorrow steam has a sale on Max Payne 3. for 5 dollars. Before it returns to 50 for the next 6 months.
Provided I had the capital I could buy 50,000 keys for it. Hell maybe enough that they run out during the sales period.
Then for the next 6 months I can sell those copies for $10-15(200-300% markup) massively undercutting steam. And pocketing a pretty penny for myself.
Of course Steam could implement a system where you have to sell it back to steam itself to prevent something like that.
04/07/2012 at 03:31 alundra says:
It doesn’t has to be so complicated, all Valve needs to do is implement a buy back system, say, they pay you $1 in store credit for every game you want to part with.
Store credit, as in, money already spent on them,
03/07/2012 at 16:08 Shuck says:
Or skyrocketing prices and no sales, at least. (If you can buy it on sale and then resell it later for several times what you paid for it…)
03/07/2012 at 18:44 InternetBatman says:
If people buy it on sale and resell it for more, doesn’t that just make the sales more attractive and provide greater incentive for them to be offered more often?
It’s fairly hard to make a profit off of used digital products. I worked for a company that did just this, and it took a fair deal of math with one or two people editing it every day to make sure it stayed ahead of the game.
People will buy used if it saves them money, but if there’s money to be made on the internet you’ll have some fierce competition, which’ll drive down prices, making it harder to make money. After all, someone has to take the hit and buy new.
04/07/2012 at 00:46 Shuck says:
Right now those crazy one day Steam sales seem to drive sales even when prices return to normal. But when the normal prices are competing with used sales, it seems to screw up the dynamics that make those heavily reduced sales and bundles possible. And unlike physical copies that degrade and have limited resale potential, digital copies can be resold perpetually.
Clearly there’s only one rational response to this: all games will make their money off of free-to-play mechanics. ;)
03/07/2012 at 16:20 Unaco says:
What about Indie bundles? What about Indies in general? Implementing the necessary systems for allowing customers to resell their games, and everything else with this could hit them pretty hard.
03/07/2012 at 16:24 Havok9120 says:
The ruling doesn’t compel companies selling things to provide the functionality to allow a resale. It says that they cannot ban a resale and that the consumer has the right to resell what they buy.
Its a theoretical decision, not one that compels action (beyond the changing of EULA language).
03/07/2012 at 16:24 Xocrates says:
Depends, if their implementation is simply sending you a download link (like Humble Bundle does), then there’s nothing else they really need to do since all the seller would require is to forward said link.
03/07/2012 at 19:56 chuckles73 says:
Of course, forwarding the download link would force additional cost on the publisher (edit: ie bandwidth). I highly doubt they’d let you do that. Sure, you can resell your copy of the game, but they’re not going to deliver it for you.
03/07/2012 at 16:27 Chris D says:
I think so long as you don’t have DRM you’d be okay. You wouldn’t necessarily have to actively support re-sale, just not actively work to prevent it.
That is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish all by itself though.
03/07/2012 at 17:04 RobinOttens says:
So actually the best way to implement this is the indiebundle/gog.com model if you ask me: Games with no DRM, free to be copied infinitely, but with clear communication to the buyer that, to support the developer, the only way is to pay them directly. If a game is worth the money, people will pay.
03/07/2012 at 16:31 Unaco says:
@ All of the above
So… the reselling doesn’t have to be done by the original seller/owner of the DD service, or be implemented into their service? They just can’t object to the reselling? That probably works better, and won’t be so much of a problem.
03/07/2012 at 16:51 byteCrunch says:
The ruling simply means they cannot oppose the sale of software, regardless of EULA etc.
It does not mean companies have to offer the means to resell your software, for example you want to sell your copy of ME3, EA has to let you, previously they would claim this invalidates the EULA and that the license was nontransferable, this ruling simply means they cannot do this, if you wish to resell software there is nothing they can do.
This ruling should also apply to physical used games, it is not just digital download.
03/07/2012 at 17:21 xellfish says:
It has to be possible, though. That’s not the case with most services right now. You can’t just take your bytes and send them to someone, because the service has a mechanism in place that actively makes this impossible.
So they either have to remove that mechanism (DRM) entirely, or they have to provide a way to resell your game through their service. Everything else would be illegal.
03/07/2012 at 17:30 byteCrunch says:
No the ruling just states you can sell your software license and the publisher cannot stop you, it does not require publisher to provide you with the means to do so.
It is the same with physical used games, publishers do not provide the means to sell the game, a third-party does, all the ruling means is that publishers cannot stop you from selling the software.
03/07/2012 at 17:47 Llewyn says:
Except that in the case of Origin the publisher is stopping you from selling it by enforcing a mechanism that makes selling it impossible. You’re correct that they don’t have to facilitate your sale in any agency or brokering way, but it’s wrong to think that merely saying something is allowed is sufficient to actually allow it.
To present a less-than-ideal analogy: if a court rules that an agency is allowed access to my house and that I may not prevent them from gaining access, it is not sufficient for me to stand firmly behind my locked and barred door saying “Of course you can come in”.
03/07/2012 at 17:59 gwathdring says:
bytecrunch:
You’re missing the point–he’s not saying they need to necessarily provide the means. Rather, currently they are actively prohibiting a resale. The only way I could sell my steam games is to sell access to my entire account rather than the software licenses within it.
That in mind, in order to maintain the fundamental workings of steam (the steam DRM system) and allow resales, Steam would have to create a resale infrastructure. All other ways of allowing resale require at least temporarily letting games and licenses come out from under their control which would defeat the purpose of the steam DRM service.
03/07/2012 at 16:26 pkt-zer0 says:
Yeah, that’s the thing. I’m not sure if this will ultimately end up benefiting the customers. Digital products are rather different from physical ones.
03/07/2012 at 17:16 fenrif says:
Yeah, like if i buy a second hand painting, I can only see 20% of the picture because of degredation!
Or if I buy a second hand DVD or book or CD, well I mean, mayaswell just throw money away!
Everyone knows books and art aren’t as usefull the 50,000th time as the first time, that’s why all those museums and libraries only have digital stuff in them!
03/07/2012 at 20:02 JakobBloch says:
Bernard Shaws line there is flawed. While there if transferring an idea was perfect then yes, you would have two identical ideas, but this is not the case. The idea is filtered through the second persons personality, philosophies, belief and understanding not to mention mood. What you actually have will be 2 different ideas. Similar but not the same. The second idea will be the second idea will be the seconds persons and the first person will have no rights to it even though it was his idea that sparked the second one.
The thing about the game is more akin to having a painting on the wall. Every time you look at it the painter imparts some idea onto you. Depending on what you notice, your mood and so forth you get different things out of it. If you sell the painting you will no longer be able to receive the original idea but you will still have all the thoughts and ideas it spawned in you. Same with the game. If you sell it you will no longer be able to play it. You loose the right to experience it again.
It is sorta like the term “stealing an idea” when it comes to artistic endeavours. When you “steal an idea” you are nopt just copying it. You are taking it and making it your own, by putting your own touch on it.
03/07/2012 at 21:38 Theory says:
Para 1: Why does that matter?
Para 2: It would certainly take a long time to completely exhaust a work, but you can’t seriously be suggesting that there isn’t a difference between its value to the reseller (who is presumably bored of it) and to the buyer (who is presumably interested in it).
Paintings are a problematic choice of example BTW, since a lot of the time they are bought simply for decoration and as such are more like tools than works…
04/07/2012 at 06:48 Bent Wooden Spoon says:
They’re not selling ‘digital art’ though, are they? Publishers made the decision a good while ago that their consumers shall no longer buy games, they’ll purchase ‘licenses’ instead. A license is not simply an idea. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw:
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have a license key for Adobe Photoshop and I have a license for Adobe Photoshop and we exchange these licenses, then each of us will still have one license.”
04/07/2012 at 07:43 yhalothar says:
Reselling a game reproduces its value into a second person’s head. It is unfair that developers don’t get anything for that.
So it’s just like selling a book, then, and yet you don’t see many people cry fould about that.
03/07/2012 at 16:03 Chris D says:
Oh!
Well I guess this changes things….
03/07/2012 at 16:03 sinister agent says:
If anyone noticed a slight shift in the Earth’s gravity earlier today, that was the result of every lawyer in the industry jumping up to punch the air.
03/07/2012 at 16:04 tlarn says:
It’d be pretty cool to “sell back” games on my Steam account for Steam Wallet credit towards other games in their system. I’m sure Steam keeps track of how games are added to your library, but also how much you spent to add it to your account; can’t trade back Humble Bundle games back, only get a percentage back of what you put in, and stuff like that.
03/07/2012 at 16:10 evilbobthebob says:
That’s exactly the kind of thing I expect. It’d be much like selling used games to retailers for store credit. That doesn’t technically provide remuneration, of course, but it’s better than nothing and Steam certainly wouldn’t mind. Heck, Steam already has a trade system for gifts, they just have to extend that to games and make it an “at your own risk” thing.
03/07/2012 at 16:18 AmateurScience says:
Problem there is that, unlike selling a disc in a box to a bricks and mortar retailer, your digital game on steam has absolutely no value to Valve whatsover, there’s no reason for them to give you credit when the only cost of selling a digital copy is bandwidth and customer service, because they incur precisely the same cost selling a ‘new’ version as they would for your ‘used’ version.
I imagine if this is going to be something that Valve is involved in it’ll be strictly peer to peer with a transaction fee to Valve for facilitating the transfer of the licence and the distribution of the code.
03/07/2012 at 16:24 Koshinator says:
Unfortunately this doesn’t really cover the transfer of full right of ownership of the copy, as you can’t sell your copy to anyone, just trade it back into the store for credit. Unless steam itself wants to set up a digital auction house for resold games… which sort of sounds plausible.. the gamification of selling ‘second hand’ copies of digital games… weird
03/07/2012 at 16:04 noclip says:
Sanity prevails.
03/07/2012 at 16:19 Cinek says:
EXACTLY!
Nice to see something good going on comparing to TOTAL BS that is US&A “”LAW”".
In days like these I’m proud to live in EU!
03/07/2012 at 16:50 LTK says:
I disagree, this ruling is insane. It’s just insane in our (the customers’) favour.
03/07/2012 at 17:04 ArthurBarnhouse says:
Why is law in double quotation marks? Is it scarier that way? Also, we are not traditionally referred to as the “United States & America”.
03/07/2012 at 18:08 methodology says:
Although not traditional, I think we should change it to that permanently.
04/07/2012 at 07:07 ArthurBarnhouse says:
Shit, I’m on board. We need more inside jokes around here.
04/07/2012 at 13:01 DodgyG33za says:
And we are traditionally not referred to as “British”*, but that doesn’t stop most of your compatriots.
* The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island. Although most of us prefer to be referred to by our country – English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and often Yorkshire and Cornish.
04/07/2012 at 22:20 ArthurBarnhouse says:
I’ve seen worse arguments, but not many.
03/07/2012 at 16:04 epmode says:
Games as a sevice incoming.
03/07/2012 at 16:14 deejayem says:
That was my thought. If you can still prevent re-sale of software licensed for a limited period, the next big (eg Diablo 3-sized) release will probably have something in the EULA to say that the licence is only temporary.
03/07/2012 at 16:23 Shooop says:
Incoming? Where have you been the past 3 years?
03/07/2012 at 16:42 Chris D says:
True enough, but this might well see the move in that direction greatly accelerated.
03/07/2012 at 16:58 Brun says:
Doubt it will accelerate faster than it already has been. The easiest way around the ruling is to set the EULAs up as 99-year “temporary” licenses for copies bought in the EU. That circumvents the provisions of the ruling and requires minimal change to the publishers’ existing business model.
03/07/2012 at 17:58 mersault13 says:
Not really. Courts aren’t stupid. If publishers just changed all their language so that you are leasing a 99 year license on a game then the courts would probably hold that it’s a de facto permanent license. That it is technically not a “permanent” license doesn’t change the fact that whoever originally bought the 99 year license would be dead by the time lease ran out. If the price is the same, the consumer used the product for the same average amount of time, but they can’t sell their game because they’re just “renting” it for 99 years then it’s just a de facto permanent license.
If 99 year licenses were allowed, the publishers would just be able to circumvent the property right, which the EU courts just ruled gamers are entitled to, by couching the EULA language as a temporary license. I don’t know jack shit about EU laws, but in the good ol’ US of A there is a strong history of policy against limiting one’s property rights to the extent that once you have a property right you can do whatever the hell you want with it.
It will be interesting to see if this will have any effect on US law and the used game market. My guess is probably not because ‘Mericans don’t like to follow crazy European civil law.
Source: Me, attorney for two years, i.e., still a baby.
03/07/2012 at 18:23 Brun says:
I’m no attorney, but unless there is a clear definition of “indefinite” set up in EU law, I think that games companies would at least have a respectable case to challenge any injunction placed against them under that provision. They wouldn’t technically be taking the property right away. It would be against the spirit, but not the letter, of the law, and the letter is what counts.
Besides, it wouldn’t have to be 99 years – it could be 30, or 15. Publishers will probably want to take it as low as they can without setting off too much customer backlash. And if for once they wanted to be nice to their customers, the publishers could set the license duration to a relatively short period but then voluntarily decline to enforce expired licenses.
03/07/2012 at 20:11 mersault13 says:
Well in the US, sometimes the courts look at the letter of the law and sometimes the spirit in deciding a case. But in all cases, where someone is technically complying with the letter of the law, but their intent is to defeat the spirit of the law, the court will look at the legislative intent or court’s reasoning behind the law.
It’s one of the reasons why the racial segregation of schools failed even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. States were just redrawing school districts so that it just happened that all the black kids ended up in one school district and all the white kids in another. They were technically complying with the law, but their actual intent was to circumvent it.
03/07/2012 at 16:33 Zanchito says:
Games as a service is happening anyway, might at least try to get some of our rights back. Also, I’m so not getting into games as a service at full retail price! It’s not like there’s a shortage of alternative leisure options.
03/07/2012 at 16:38 Brise Bonbons says:
My first thought too. I am no lawyer, but it seems like this might just be another reason for publishers to make more F2P games (you never really own the game, just some items in it. Right? Or would this mean you can sell the hat you bought?), or to make more subscription services.
Of course, none of that concerns me until this gets tested in the US, and given how corporation-friendly our government is these days…
03/07/2012 at 16:41 kert says:
Arent all MMOs already game as a service anyway ?
03/07/2012 at 16:55 fionny says:
This will be tackled too im sure,
03/07/2012 at 16:04 Mike says:
I wonder if this will affect app sales also? That would … yeah.
03/07/2012 at 16:05 noclip says:
The case was about Oracle’s database software, so yeah.
03/07/2012 at 16:15 Optimaximal says:
I think Mike was referring to Apple’s App Store and its rivals, which currently only offer rebates on proven technical issues.
04/07/2012 at 13:16 Malibu Stacey says:
Welcome to the modern world where “app” is no longer short for “application” but apparently now means “anything I can download and run on a mobile device including games”.
Thanks for that Apple & co.
03/07/2012 at 16:05 Crimsoneer says:
Shame that until Publishers agree to it, it means absolutely diddly squat. Look at Green Man Gaming – they’ve had this funtionality for years, but mots of their catalogue doesn’t support it.
03/07/2012 at 16:09 Kodeen says:
I think this ruling would remove the publishers’ choice on the matter, that they would be compelled to allow their games to be resold. What might happen is an industry-wide adoption of Project $10.
03/07/2012 at 16:11 Kaira- says:
Yup, publishers don’t have anything to say. Either they conform or lose out on EU sales.
03/07/2012 at 16:47 Havok9120 says:
Yes, it forces publishers to allow resale. It does not force them to add that functionality to their distribution channels, nor does it compel distributors to do anything.
03/07/2012 at 16:13 Alexander Norris says:
This does mean they can be compelled under EU law, though! There’s now precedent if someone (e.g. a consumer rights group) wants to sue a publisher to allow reselling digital games in the EU.
03/07/2012 at 16:16 Crimsoneer says:
This doesn’t “compel” pubishers to do anything. It means, strictly speaking, you can resell your Steam account. It doesn’t mean publishers need to make DRM that allows you to sell products on. You’re allowed to do it, taht doesn’t mean publishers need to help you get it done.
03/07/2012 at 16:19 Kaira- says:
And what then when you can’t effectively transfer the license? Hm?
03/07/2012 at 16:22 Kodeen says:
I was under the impression you could sell individual games instead of (or as well as) entire accounts.
Anyway, while publishers might not be forced to actively do anything to allow you to resell your games, under the ruling they couldn’t do anything to prevent you from doing so either. I imagine things like limited-activation DRM schemes will run afoul of this ruling.
Think of retail. Games get resold all the time and the publishers have no say in the matter.
03/07/2012 at 16:35 Crimsoneer says:
I think you’re all massively over-estimating how much this changes things. Steam still ties all games to your account. That’s not them stopping you selling it, that’s added functionality. They’re in no way forced t o add functionality to untie games from your account by this.
03/07/2012 at 16:53 fionny says:
Did you not read the article?
03/07/2012 at 16:57 Crimsoneer says:
I did, but there’s a key difference between “You’re allowed to sell on your digital products” and “Publishers must design their products in a way that allows them to be sold on”. VALVE might not be able to tell you your steam account is purely “yours” anymore, but that doesn’t mean they have to allow you to sell it off piece-meal
03/07/2012 at 17:07 Mattressi says:
They don’t have to facilitate the sale, but the wording of the ruling looks to me to be saying that they also can’t limit the sale. That is, Steam (for example) don’t need to set up a second-hand store, but they aren’t allowed to prevent you from selling each of your games (not your whole library – each individual game). If their software currently prevents that (which it does), then they need to fix that, I guess. I’d assume that simply adding functionality that allows you to un-tie the game code from your account (so that it can be activated on someone else’s account) should be all that is needed.
03/07/2012 at 17:16 Crimsoneer says:
That’s one possibility, but without a legal expert, I wouldn’t say Steam is “forced” to do anything. Also, nothing is now stopping Steam from going “we don’t sell games, we sell a license to play the game from 100 hours” – which would put them completely clear legally, and then screw over the consumer completely.
Again, I’m not saying this isn’t great, but this is one legal ruling, which could result in a myriad of good or bad things.
04/07/2012 at 13:08 DodgyG33za says:
Maybe, but what about all the games I already have in my account. I can sell them since they never stated the 100 hour limit up front. So they are still fucked.
04/07/2012 at 13:09 dr-strangelove says:
“Also, nothing is now stopping Steam from going “we don’t sell games, we sell a license to play the game from 100 hours” – which would put them completely clear legally, and then screw over the consumer completely.”
Well they could do that, but Valve would be completely trashing their reputation if they did and I for one would never buy from them again.
03/07/2012 at 16:06 Jon says:
How does this affect subscription based services? Does this legalise the selling of accounts?
03/07/2012 at 16:08 noclip says:
The subscription thing is a loophole big enough to drive a cruise ship through and I suspect we’ll only be seeing more games and software sold on a subscription basis.
03/07/2012 at 16:11 golem09 says:
The specific rule seems to be that if a license is sold indefinitely – i.e. not a license for a year, or similar – that the rightholder “exhausts his exclusive distribution right”.
03/07/2012 at 16:16 Bauul says:
A subscription to a service is different from a physical product, as far as I’m aware. I’m not sure what the legal preceding are, but it’s not as straight forward as the right of first sale.
Does anyone else know what the situation is here? I imagine it would be akin to me offering to sell you the last 6 months worth of my Orange contract, or my gym membership or something else of that ilk.
03/07/2012 at 16:23 Jon says:
Thanks for clearing that up, looks like we will see more games moving to subscriptions then – even if they are £30 for a year to disrupt second hand selling.
03/07/2012 at 16:06 Leeroy says:
wow is this a consumer rights victory? I thought those days were dead!
03/07/2012 at 16:07 tumbleworld says:
Note how all game “sales” will be 100yr leases in European territories tomorrow. *cough*toxic industry*cough*.
03/07/2012 at 16:09 noclip says:
You should have that cough checked out. There’s no telling if it might have been caused by all the toxicity.
03/07/2012 at 16:08 fiddlesticks says:
Minor nitpick: Steam isn’t a company.
I’m interested to see how the major distribution platforms will react to this ruling. Maybe now I can finally rid myself of Gish.
03/07/2012 at 16:10 tlarn says:
I’d feel happier for the people who preordered Duke Nukem Forever or purchased it release-week.
03/07/2012 at 16:49 codename_bloodfist says:
I’m more interested in selling the copies of the games i have activated several times on my account.
03/07/2012 at 18:51 InternetBatman says:
Gish, Winter Voices, etc. There are quite a few games I wouldn’t mind getting rid of, but honestly it’s only about a fifth of my library.
03/07/2012 at 20:32 Terragot says:
Oh god, gish, how did that even get on my account? It annoys me being there, that and ‘and yet it moves’ are games I would pay to have removed.
03/07/2012 at 16:08 themayor says:
Anyone want to buy Diablo 3?
03/07/2012 at 16:36 Mr Labbes says:
That was the first thing that popped into my head as well.
03/07/2012 at 16:09 IDtenT says:
Oh shit.
The problem is that nobody seems to realise whether software is a product or a service. Some like it is as services, some like it as products. I really think someone should just grab the bull by the horns and a make a proper decision.
03/07/2012 at 16:29 Cinek says:
All the subscription-based and provider-server-side only (eg. browser-based) games are services, everything else is product. That’s simple enough IMHO. Sadly – it’s not for lawyers.
03/07/2012 at 16:36 The Sombrero Kid says:
The law is pretty clear, It’s a service & you’re allowed to sell your right to use it.
03/07/2012 at 16:09 mbp says:
I have vague memory that once upon a time Steam used to allow you to sell used games but there was a “handling fee” (around a tenner if I recall). This memory dates back to the Half Life 2 days when Steam was new and not being able to sell your games was one of the complaints made about it.
03/07/2012 at 16:09 kevmscotland says:
I’m reserving my joy.
The industry always finds a loophole to exploit.
03/07/2012 at 16:10 Kodeen says:
Note that this isn’t going to be just games, but ebooks, movies, etc…
Ah, if only the US legal system worked for the people. This will never happen here.
03/07/2012 at 16:26 Havok9120 says:
Yes, because those people making, manufacturing, and distributing the games have no moral right to the protection of the courts.
03/07/2012 at 16:38 The Sombrero Kid says:
I’d like the right to limit your right to breath.
EDIT: not really, but you get the point.
03/07/2012 at 16:51 Havok9120 says:
Actually….no. No I don’t.
03/07/2012 at 16:52 Kodeen says:
They should, but when weighed against the consumer, not automatically. We do have the first sale doctrine, after all. Only problem is, the first sale doctrine was established pre-Reagan, I doubt in today’s climate that we’ll see a similar spirit extended to digital sales.
03/07/2012 at 16:57 Chaz says:
I don’t think he mean’t that they don’t deserve fair justice too. But on the whole the justice system, especially in the US, is heavily stacked in favour of whoever has the biggest cash pile, ie the big businesses. Because you, as an individual, very unlikely have the funds to compete with them if you had to fight them in a legal battle. Is it fair? Hardly. Does the party in the right always win? Not if they can’t afford to go to court in the first place.
03/07/2012 at 17:55 SkittleDiddler says:
God help us when Valve, EA, Activision et al. decide to start lobbying the U.S. government.
03/07/2012 at 16:10 Kaira- says:
This is a good day for us customers.
03/07/2012 at 16:10 Vinraith says:
It seems pretty obvious that this will just drive the publishers/distributors to using time limited licenses and/or streaming services. In other words, things will only get worse.
03/07/2012 at 16:39 The Sombrero Kid says:
Except that no one is going to buy those.
03/07/2012 at 16:40 Vinraith says:
Sure they will, it’s not far from what they’re buying now. Steam was always essentially selling rentals, very few people seem to mind.
03/07/2012 at 17:57 SkittleDiddler says:
People are still willing to buy the latest XX.01 versions of Call of Duty and Battlefield. What makes you think they’ll stop to use their critical thinking skills when it comes to pure subscription-based services?
03/07/2012 at 19:06 InternetBatman says:
I think this will just leave bigger gaps for indies to fill. The publishing industry is losing (well, let go) a lot of genres to the indie movement. Who’s say there aren’t some indies that could be positioned to take some more?
04/07/2012 at 13:14 DodgyG33za says:
I think it will make things better. I have always hated how software, film and audio have played the you don’t own it but you are not paying for a subscription either to avoid a) allowing resale, and b) providing media replacements.
If this puts them firmly in one camp or another, great. And with a subscription service, either they offer something new or I won’t extend. And if it is too expensive I won’t buy in the first place.
03/07/2012 at 16:11 ScubaMonster says:
“The specific rule seems to be that if a license is sold indefinitely – i.e. not a license for a year, or similar – that the rightholder “exhausts his exclusive distribution right”.”
Well hopefully that doesn’t mean we’re going to start getting 1 year game rentals for $59.99 now instead of actual purchases of the product.
Also, if this does bode well, hopefully it will come to the US, but I doubt it.
03/07/2012 at 16:13 noclip says:
OnLive, anyone?
03/07/2012 at 16:12 Optimaximal says:
I can see Valve being quite proactive with this, possibly implementing *some* form of trading system for selling games for a modicum amount of Steam credit, ideally with the value being based on the age-of-purchase-derived portion of the average selling price for the last year i.e. if its been constantly on sale for £1.99 then it’ll be a lot cheaper than, say, Call of Duty: Man Killer which constantly sells at £95.
Then again, they could just say ‘FU EU’ and not follow, seeing as they are a US company. I predict EA will take that step, because they’re c*nts.
03/07/2012 at 16:15 golem09 says:
1. Once the user has the ownership of the game, steam couldn’t dictate the selling price.
2. They are from the US, but they are selling stuff in the EU. Either stop selling there, or abide the laws. You know, like steam has to censor game for germany whether they want to or not.
03/07/2012 at 16:22 SurprisedMan says:
Have a feeling they’d be able to get around this in a few ways. Steam after all still host the game downloads, and it’s their bandwidth you use when you download it, and their service wrapper/updater/achievements you use while playing the game, so arguably they are providing added value above the game itself.
03/07/2012 at 16:13 golem09 says:
Have fun living outside europe
03/07/2012 at 16:30 Vinraith says:
Have fun paying $60 for a 1 year rental.
03/07/2012 at 19:35 Milky1985 says:
Have fun pulling wild numbers from where the sun doesn’t shine (why the hell are we in Europe going to spend 60 DOLLARS on a game when we don’t trade in US dollars? Also any company that tries to pull that off will be slapped in the face quickly, unless it activision with cod in which case they will be slapped in the face in a years time)
03/07/2012 at 16:14 Unaco says:
If this is going to be ‘a thing’, I can imagine it causing quite a stir. Yes, for Steam and Origin etc. it’s going to cause quite the changes, but I’d reckon they’ll be able to survive all of that. What about Indies though? I can imagine something like this hitting them quite hard possibly… setting up the system(s) required for reselling, lost revenue etc. What about reselling 5 or 6 games I pick up for $0.50 from a bundle at $2 each? Who’s going to determine the price I can resell for anyway?
03/07/2012 at 16:21 TechnicalBen says:
In the specific court case commented on, I think it was a separate company doing the reselling. It did not cost Oracle anything to setup the reselling, as the customers/separate company covered the entire costs of this.
So Indies will be ok, providing this is not an encouragement to not purchase indies or to pirate more.
Frankly, more people getting free copies of individual games from the Humble bundle would encourage more purchases IMO (half from those not worrying about duplicates because they are happy to gift them away, the other half wanting to buy the full bundle because liked the gifted of a single game).
03/07/2012 at 16:28 Zelos says:
This thing called “market value” will.
03/07/2012 at 16:29 Salt says:
The price you can charge when reselling your games will be determined entirely by how much someone is willing to pay you. There’s no reason for the game’s publisher to have a say in it.
If an indie (or anyone else) is selling DRM-free games then there’s no additional cost to them to comply with this. The judgement appears to be “you must not prevent someone reselling your digital product” rather than “you have an obligation to make a nice store for them to sell it in”.
If a developer has invested in DRM then they’re likely to be facing either needing to remove the DRM or add functionality that allows the transfer of rights between users.
04/07/2012 at 13:23 dr-strangelove says:
I think that’s the most likely outcome. From now on games can only include DRM if that DRM somehow facilitates reselling of the game.
So companies will have to weigh the perceived value of including DRM in a game against the cost of implementing a system to allow resales
03/07/2012 at 16:29 Vinraith says:
The ruling doesn’t say you have to facilitate reselling, it just says you can’t actively prevent it.
03/07/2012 at 16:34 Unaco says:
I get that now… But, with some of the current services, there will HAVE to be some sort of implementation for the reselling, surely. I’m not familiar with Desura, say (I assume it’s somewhat similar to Steam), but if I own/have a game on it, and resell it to my friend, how will it get from my account to theirs, unless Desura itself has something implemented to allow that?
03/07/2012 at 16:37 Salt says:
Yeah, if this is going to be “taken seriously” then a lot of DRM providers are going to have to make extensions to their systems to allow users to transfer licences.
03/07/2012 at 16:50 Havok9120 says:
Not until a court or legislature compels them to do so. Until then, this is just the courts saying “change the EULA to reflect that resale is legally permissible.”
The ruling has no scope and no teeth.
03/07/2012 at 16:14 Zinic says:
… EA must be kicking themselves now.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-02-ea-is-going-to-be-a-100-percent-digital-company-period-says-gibeau
03/07/2012 at 16:15 SurprisedMan says:
It seems like there are so many ways this can go. It could just be used as an excuse to do even more anti-consumer things, or it could be used as an opportunity to make a genuinely positive change. I think the first company who takes this ruling in a pro-consumer direction will see benefits. I have dozens of Steam Games I’ll either never play again or never play at all, from bundles. I KNOW I’m not alone… wonder how they’ll deal with it.
03/07/2012 at 16:17 Flint says:
Finally a future for all those unwanted bundle parts.
03/07/2012 at 16:22 AmateurScience says:
Aye if this becomes a thing the USP of a bundle is dead in the water and no mistake.
03/07/2012 at 16:17 frymaster says:
two issues:
1) let’s say steam enables game transferral. There’s already a huge issue with people getting their accounts compromised and people trying to sell them on (or sell their tf2 hats, or whatever). This will just make it easier for phishers to get money out of compromised accounts. Sure, I expect the original victim will get their games restored, but that just leaves the poor sod who bought the games from the phisher out of pocket.
2) even if steam does enable game transferral, that still leaves issues with games using third-party cdkey systems. They’d have problems playing c&c3 online, for example, because the multiplayer key is already tied to my EA account. Even for non-login-based key systems – cod4, for example – that would still mean I could install the retail copy of cod4 that my mate has, but input the cdkey I had from my steam copy.
All that being said…. this is interesting news, but implementation will be a bitch
03/07/2012 at 17:14 Zakski says:
on 2) they could just deactivate your key, and generate a new key for the buyer
03/07/2012 at 18:13 frymaster says:
my issue there is the word “just” – it would be a different procedure for every single game under the sun, from Quake3 to Cod4 to C&C3 to Dragon Age:Origins, to….
They’d also need to be able to reverse the procedure in case of the scenario in 1) happening.
03/07/2012 at 20:08 Kadayi says:
Indeed implementation would be pretty much unfeasible and unenforceable. Given this judgement is about any form of software licence and it effectively goes against the grain of how things presently work.
In essence it would generate a money vacuum (in the same way that second hand console sales do) in which case publishers and developers would have to find ways to increase profitability.
04/07/2012 at 10:57 ix says:
Regarding 1): if you buy stolen (material) goods, and the cops trace them to you, they will seize them without excuses and you will also be out of pocket. If they catch the seller of course, you might be able to get money back from him. Basically, theft has two victims: the person who got stolen from and the person who buys the goods. A reason to crack down on theft, but not a reason to completely forbid all possible forms of resale.
03/07/2012 at 16:17 JBantha says:
Does this apply for other forms of downloaded media like… Adobe programs, or it is restricted to JUST video games?
03/07/2012 at 16:23 TechnicalBen says:
The court case is based on other programs. So this article is already expanding it to include “gaming programs”. :D
03/07/2012 at 20:13 Kadayi says:
In other words John jumping to a conclusion and running with it.
04/07/2012 at 09:11 Zakski says:
programs are programs, it doesn’t matter what they actually do – trust me, I know C
04/07/2012 at 11:04 Kaira- says:
Games are most certainly not a special snowflake in the world of software. This concerns games as much as server software licenses.
03/07/2012 at 16:18 Calabi says:
Maybe it’ll force companies like steam to implement a subscription, they’ll have to market it like a service and require customers to pay for it as such.
03/07/2012 at 16:19 Zarunil says:
This is good news, but I’m not holding my breath.
03/07/2012 at 16:20 Scatterbrainpaul says:
I’d be happy for valve to take a percentage of any games that I sell on. I have about 90 games that are sitting there doing nothing, never to be played again. Valve could make a bit of money out of this
I think to avoid sales drops there should be a rule saying you can’t sell a game until 6 months after it’s release date or something
04/07/2012 at 13:23 DodgyG33za says:
So I guess you are happy to have a clause in a new car purchase, or phone or whatever, that says you can’t resell within a certain period of time because you might stop the manufacturer making money?
Makes no sense. If you own something, it is yours to do what you will with it, period.
03/07/2012 at 16:22 misterT0AST says:
freude schöner götterfunken!
Take THAT eulas!
03/07/2012 at 16:25 Mosh says:
Sidestepping games for a moment, how does this affect Microsoft’s licensing of Windows? Since XP, it’s been “this copy goes with this machine – if you scrap the machine, you must also scrap the Windows license that goes with it”, which has also caused headaches for upgraders when the OS has decided that it’s on a system so different from that on which it was originally installed that it needs a new license.
I’m also curious to know how you’d go about policing the resale of downloaded titles. As the new laws state, you can sell on the game (I’d guess by emailing the installation file? Or via some online method yet to be devised) but how do they ensure you remove the original from your machine?
The best machanism I can see would be to tie the resale market into the one you used for purchase e.g. Steam. When you sell the title on through a Steam second hand market, it forces removal from your PC library.
Thing is, as soon as a game is a couple of weeks old, this is going to make the first-hand market a nightmare. When you buy second hand elsewhere, you rely on a shop picking a price point based on popularity. You also have to look out for the condition of the media. This isn’t an issue with electronic copies, so their value should remain high. There’s absolutely no difference between a 1st hand or a 2nd hand copy except for when you can get hold of them.
Overall, I don’t know if this is a good thing or not. Certainly I’m all for it with physical copies which means it should be the same for digital, but it’s simply going to be bloody hard to create a working, reliable and easily-policed system.
04/07/2012 at 13:27 DodgyG33za says:
But digital media do have a value that decreases over time. Diablo 3 had a higher demand at release than a month later once the hype wore off and the problems were uncovered.
Companies are going to have to adapt.
This is going to be interesting…
*gets popcorn and pulls chair closer*
03/07/2012 at 16:25 Ultra-Humanite says:
Don’t start the celebrations yet. None of you have any clue what the result of this will be. Respect your ignorance for once.
03/07/2012 at 16:27 G_Man_007 says:
Amen.
03/07/2012 at 16:34 Havok9120 says:
This. The ruling wasn’t about games, nor does it compel any kind of immediate action beyond reworking the EULA. What’s more, it may have just destabilized the entire non-gaming software industry, particularly Operating Systems.
This ruling makes me say “yikes” more than “yipee” at the moment.
03/07/2012 at 16:47 Chris D says:
Yeah, I think this is going to be big and the consequences will take a while to settle and won’t be easily predictable.
03/07/2012 at 20:22 Kadayi says:
Indeed.
” The Court Of Justice of the European Union has just ruled that people should be able to resell downloaded games.”
Nothing in there about games at all.
A more measured take on things can be found at Gamerlaw: -
http://www.gamerlaw.co.uk/2012/07/legality-of-second-hand-sales-in-eu.html
This judgement seems to have such a wide reaching impact for all software companies across the board with zero regard to implementation or enforcement (in effect I should be able to sell you that ringtone/MP3 I just bought) that I suspect it will overturned/amended in short order by the big boys like Apple.
03/07/2012 at 16:26 derf says:
No more crap series-rinsing releases from large companies.
Kill the large companies producing rubbish and selling it for £40.
We’re perfectly happy with what will remain.
03/07/2012 at 16:27 G_Man_007 says:
I hope I’m wrong, but I can see a future where games are just offered as a stream from a cloud-based service under a licence, so that ownership is removed and you don’t own it anymore. Cloud gaming is already here, this, though good in theory, seems to me to be something which will send publishers further down that route. Consider Sony’s purchase of Gaikai. Forward thinking for the future? I don’t see good developments on the horizon…
03/07/2012 at 16:27 jkz says:
I bet the President of EA was just sick in his cornflakes.
One thing is with discs, there was some encouragement to buy new ones as second hand discs might be scratched etc, with digital there is no degradation of quality. If trading was introduced to Steam for instance, their sales of older titles would be reduced. They might still make money from fees, but not great for the developers of the games.
Then again, it has been said before that being able to trade older games in may encourage people to buy more new games.
Imagine if you had seen the popularity of DayZ coming and bought up the market of Arma2:CO second hand copies, could of made a killing heh.
03/07/2012 at 16:30 SIDD says:
Personally, I don’t care about the reselling.
However …
“right down to surely taking away the ability for companies like Valve and EA to block customers’ access to their purchased games for other infractions.” <– THIS!!
Here's hoping for that one sticking without EA/Activision/Valve/whomever slime their way out of it!
03/07/2012 at 16:30 HisMastersVoice says:
Well, it appears we’ll be getting 100 year licenses in Europe. Which might turn this victory into a rather nasty backstab…
03/07/2012 at 16:33 AmateurScience says:
Dagger of lawyers +5 to the kidney. Ouch.
03/07/2012 at 16:36 jkz says:
Presumably if you have a 100 year licence and you use it for 5 years, you could resell the other 95 years however.
The copy you buy now is a licence really.
03/07/2012 at 16:41 HisMastersVoice says:
The ruling mentions indefinite licenses, not timed one.
03/07/2012 at 16:53 jkz says:
Indeed it does.
03/07/2012 at 17:17 Koozer says:
Is there no legal definition for ‘indefinite?’ If not, this seems like an incredibly easy loophole.
03/07/2012 at 19:03 Jorum says:
I imagine it would be “is there a clearly defined length of time, or termination date?” if there isn’t it’s indefinite.
It’s worth noting that courts can (and will) rule on what a contract actually really is in effect, not what buyer and seller may say it is.
So court could rule that a one-off -payment 100-year non-revocable licence/subscription is in practice a sale regardless of what EA call it.
03/07/2012 at 16:30 Lobster9 says:
That’s okay, everything will just go Free-2-Play and rake in the cash from crappy $100 vanity item bundles. Why put time, money and effort into a long-term singular release you won’t be able to sell? When you can secure your families future by selling Hats, Bats and Non-Combat Cats until the heat death of the universe.
03/07/2012 at 16:41 Ateius says:
Just like how the film industry gives away DVDs for free, then rakes in the profits by letting you buy optional extra title screen backgrounds! After all, no point in doing it any other way when anyone can go and re-sell their copy of Titanic whenever they please.
Oh, no, wait, they’re still selling things like a normal producer of goods. And all their children and families haven’t starved to death.
03/07/2012 at 16:43 HisMastersVoice says:
You might have noticed that buying a digital download copy of a movie is rather hard in many places. By design I’m sure.
03/07/2012 at 16:52 Ateius says:
And that affects my point how? The dedicated pirate can easily strip a movie from its DVD and distribute it digitally far and wide for all. Film industry still sells the things as a product and not a service or blank slate you need to pay extra to draw things on.
03/07/2012 at 17:23 Lobster9 says:
My point is that any big company is going to take the easiest option to making as much money as possible. While they -could- make a decent living by following the consumer ideal, the safer and more affluent path is going to be far more attractive to them.
If the movie industry could get away with something akin to universal F2P, they would do so in a second. We have already seen a decline in big landmark singleplayer titles in recent years, and a lot of companies declaring themselves multiplayer only. I worry that if backed into a corner, the Triple-A side of the industry will abandon traditional single-release titles entirely.
We may hate it when a game like Diablo 3 restricts itself to being a cynical always-online money grinder, but even if we shout until we are blue in the face, and swear never to buy their games again! It won’t stop other companies from seeking similar paths to ensure they are maximising their profits.
03/07/2012 at 18:40 HisMastersVoice says:
We’re talking about legal reselling here. It’s easier to resell a digital product from the comfort of your home than a physical one you need to ship out.
04/07/2012 at 13:33 DodgyG33za says:
I think if you read that stuff that scrolls up really fast on your DVD* you will find that this is not the case. It is neither a product or a service, but something in between just to suit them. For example. You can buy a new car, and put it in your front garden and charge people to come and see it. You can’t do that with your DVD.
*At least that is what I remember. I opted out of physical media when I realised you could avoid the whole FBI warning message and forced credits thing, and as a bonus you got it for free.
03/07/2012 at 16:32 Fiohnel says:
I wonder how this apply to online games. They’re providing “service” instead of product (like membership to golf club) and if you misbehave they can always pull the plug.
With that logic, creating single player, offline game which is more like “product” anyone can resell is far less profitable compared to online game which is continuous “service”. I’m not sure I can call the death of single player game as consumer rights victory.
03/07/2012 at 16:45 Fiohnel says:
I can imagine platform like Steam using this opportunity to enable resell feature, but they’ll always have some cut from each transaction. Even fixed 1USD per resell which is split between Valve and original developer would be LOTS of dosh.
04/07/2012 at 13:35 DodgyG33za says:
But if it is something that you own, that they are facilitating access to, they have NO right to charge you for selling it.
03/07/2012 at 16:34 MortalWombat says:
I sure hope this is going into an anti-DRM direction (so being able to download my Steam-purchased games DRM-free) rather than the way of “How can we best integrate the ability to transfer games through our otherwise locked-down system?”.
I want to trade games again, just like in the old days… when will the markets learn to base their strategies on trust and quality and not on paternalism?
03/07/2012 at 16:34 The Sombrero Kid says:
Does anyone want to buy floras fruit farm?
03/07/2012 at 18:05 SkittleDiddler says:
Someone take my copy too, please.
I’ve also got a copy of Conflict: Denied Ops that I would love to be rid of.
03/07/2012 at 16:34 zhivik says:
Here is a link to the ruling:
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/P_89099/
The ruling applies to all sort of computer software, regardless whether it is a game, an Adobe program, or an operating system. It originated from a lawsuit filed by Oracle against a German online distributor. According to the ruling, once you have paid for a licence, you have full rights to transfer it. It does pose questions, though, for services like Steam, but also for smartphone apps, no matter if they are for iOS or Android.
The main trick is implementation. According to the ruling, for example, if you have an iPhone game, you have the right to sell it someone else, as long as you no longer have it on your phone after the sale. However, this doesn’t force you to sell your entire account, you can keep everything else you have purchased. I don’t know, I think the only cloud-based services may survive if they go the Netflix route, requiring a monthly/annual subscription.
The only type of digital retailers I see that currently abide the ruling are these that sell you installation files, GOG.com being the obvious example here. Yet, there are quite a few software developers/retailers who do the same, for example the Nero CD/DVD/BR burning software is offered this way. My point is that this is probably the only way to go, in order to make sure a distributor won’t be liable in the future, which provides full control over the product for consumers. Of course, publishers will be probably unhappy, because this will reduce control considerably, which makes me think they would rather go the subscription route, or with 10/20/50/100-year licences. Nowadays, a 10-year licence may be enough to make sure you won’t be able to use your copy too long, given how quickly hardware and OS change …
03/07/2012 at 16:35 Innovacious says:
I don’t really see this as good news. Its going to have to completely change the way downloading games are handled. I can see it as opening the floodgates for all new levels of crazy DRM to make sure the game is completely gone from your system before you try and sell it on. Or perhaps just changing every game into a “service” where you aren’t buying the game, you’re buying a subscription or simply a license that allows you to play the game and not actually own it (some people argue that’s already how it works).
Technically, there isn’t really a big difference between buying second hand games and pirating. If you pirate something: you get the product, the devs don’t get the money. If you buy something used: you get the product, the devs don’t get the money. But of course, if that was actually illegal, society would be a very different place. Buying and selling is a massive part of the way the world works and has always worked. Its weird how laws can technically contradict themselves but still somehow work. Well… how well laws “work” is debatable, but you catch my drift.
03/07/2012 at 17:10 SanguineAngel says:
Windows was my first thought when I read this. Their licence rules are banal, ridiculous and, above all, prohibitively expensive. I hope this gets things in order
03/07/2012 at 16:35 Issus says:
It’s got a bit of a double edged sword feel to it.
On the one hand it’s a consumer rights victory, and will hopefully prompt companies to be a bit more thorough with their QA testing, and might result in better games overall.
On the other hand it could rush the industry wholeheartedly into the “games as a service” model (which I personally dislike), and those companies that can’t adapt to it quickly enough could suffer losses (in the same way that resale of boxed products causes reduced profits for the devs/pubs).
03/07/2012 at 17:12 SanguineAngel says:
If the game industry does turn that corner and manage to make games a service entirely, that will be the day I stop gaming altogether.
03/07/2012 at 18:29 InternetBatman says:
I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. If this pushes them into the games a service model, we’ll see a greater evolution in the games as a service model. More importantly, it will create a hole in the market that will eventually be filled by a company operating on better business practices.
03/07/2012 at 16:36 best_jeppe says:
As many probably have said I can imagine a sort of Steam Marketplace in the future where you can put up your games for sale and as soon as someone buys it dissapears from your steam library and you get money to spend on steam or something. Could be very interesting.
03/07/2012 at 16:36 AlexiValerii says:
And now the EU has managed to knock the planet out of its normal orbit around the sun and we will eventully drift into space because off the combined lawyer armies of Valve, EA, and many more companies jumping up and down in rage….
but as a more serious thing… maybe the Ship EU will do some good for the common people before sinking… and yes this is a very good thing but it will be challenged by companies with a lot of money to spend on Court bills… so this is a first victory in a very long series of court battles me thinks
03/07/2012 at 16:37 Misnomer says:
As Valve, why would I see this as anything other than me being required to provide services to someone who didn’t pay for them? I guess you can say that the seller is selling the redownload, steamcloud…. services they bought from Steam, but I think Valve looks at this and says we are pretty much guaranteed 2 downloads for a single game purchase now instead of 1 for some percentage of sales. That increases the cost of our provided service so we must up our charge to developers (think back to DLC store policy change).
Now developers don’t put things on as deep of a sale anymore because Valve must take a higher cut, other problems emerge because of resale undermining sales and cost of labor, and boom… no more Steam as the consumer haven it used to be.
I just can’t see the U.S. companies going along with this… doing business in the EU will be like doing business in Asia games wise. Maybe worse.
03/07/2012 at 16:44 MortalWombat says:
Valve could simply charge you once for the game (DRM-Free CD-Key-Thingy, whatever…) and a little extra for downloaded bandwidth.
03/07/2012 at 16:48 Misnomer says:
Thus punishing gamers who purchase after patching? Or discouraging developers from large content patches and killing free dlc from here on out? Or maybe that balances out in a project 10 dollar sense for used sales? You see the knock on effects it has though. If you thought monetization was getting crazy already… if this ruling holds it may get even weirder and less consumer friendly.
03/07/2012 at 16:50 Chris D says:
I suspect Valve will see this as an opportunity. There’s now a digital pre-owned market and no-one is in a better position to take advantage of it than Valve.
03/07/2012 at 16:52 Brun says:
This. Set up a “used game auction house” and take a 20-30% cut of the transaction.
03/07/2012 at 16:37 Brun says:
As many have already pointed out there are two huge loopholes in this ruling:
1) EULAs could easily be revised to grant a license for some time approaching infinity, like 100 years.
2) Subscription services would likely be completely exempt. In this sense, the ruling is BAD because it will drive companies toward the utilization of the subscription model.
Plus, this is just a preliminary ruling, which I assume means it’s open to appeal. Oh, and it doesn’t apply in the US.
03/07/2012 at 16:39 BatmanBaggins says:
There’s currently no practical way to resell a digital game as this ruling intends. Either it simply won’t work at all (non-transferable keys/licenses/installers), or it’ll basically be a pay-to-pirate transaction (“Give me some money and I’ll copy the files over. Then I’ll delete my own copy and never user it again, I swear!”).
If the precedent set by the ruling actually forces any change down the road, it will be slow and painful, for consumers as well as the distributors.
Yeah, kinda pessimistic, but I just don’t think that it’s time to throw a party or anything.
03/07/2012 at 16:47 Salt says:
The “pay to pirate” option is how CD and DVD sales have been for quite some time. I can buy a CD, copy the music off it (possibly needing to bypass some DRM), then sell the CD second-hand.
No different to doing the same with a purely digital product.
03/07/2012 at 16:39 Gap Gen says:
Yes, I suspect that it’ll mean more money is poured into F2P or subscription games, since at this point it doesn’t really matter who owns a copy of the executable. It’s not going to kill the pay-up-front model, but the balance of power will shift a little.
03/07/2012 at 16:42 SirKicksalot says:
From your article: The specific rule seems to be that if a license is sold indefinitely – i.e. not a license for a year, or similar – that the rightholder “exhausts his exclusive distribution right”.
Well, this is not what Steam does according to the Subscriber Agreement: Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a limited, terminable, non-exclusive license and right to use
03/07/2012 at 16:46 Havok9120 says:
Here’s the thing. I’ve never delved into the whole EULA mess, but isn’t the argument against Steam that all the rabid anti-DRM people use that they are effectively renting the games out on a “however long we feel like letting you” basis?
03/07/2012 at 17:40 codename_bloodfist says:
Doesn’t matter what it says. If it gives the customer the impression that they’re buying a product, they’re buying a product. Governamental customer protection comes before whatever agreement the businesses can think up.
03/07/2012 at 16:42 Universal Quitter says:
I take back every other negative thing I’ve ever said about Europeans. You guys are alright. Sorry about that whole ‘War on Terror’ mess.
03/07/2012 at 16:53 G_Man_007 says:
De nada.
03/07/2012 at 17:04 Universal Quitter says:
And what about music and videos? Aren’t those essentially a pile of code, when distributed digitally?
04/07/2012 at 09:17 Zakski says:
no, they are not executable
03/07/2012 at 16:48 MFToast says:
USA! US-…. I mean EU! EU! EU!
03/07/2012 at 16:51 Gap Gen says:
*fires up the Ode to Joy*
03/07/2012 at 19:56 Hoaxfish says:
EU la EU la EU la
03/07/2012 at 16:49 jkz says:
From the ruling…
“Therefore the new acquirer of the user licence, such as a customer of UsedSoft, may, as a
lawful acquirer of the corrected and updated copy of the computer program concerned,
download that copy from the copyright holder’s website”
03/07/2012 at 17:08 HisMastersVoice says:
this is problematic, as it incurs additional costs on the first sale party, be it the producer of the content or just the original distribution platform.
03/07/2012 at 17:23 Koozer says:
It is the publisher’s fault though. They provide this service to license holders of their software, therefore if ownership is transferred the new person has exactly the same available to them.
04/07/2012 at 13:43 DodgyG33za says:
And if I buy a used car, and the car has a recall, the manufacturer has to fix it regardless of whether I paid him.
Really it is very simple. Software sells 1 million copies. Software seller maintains 1 million copies. If all of them get resold the seller has no more or less burden unless they have assumed that a % might not be used after x time.
03/07/2012 at 16:56 Rhandom911 says:
Great- all this will do is compel distributers to put time limits in their EULAs and force us to buy time ongoing.
Anyone who thinks this will help the gamers is sorely mistaken.
03/07/2012 at 17:07 Universal Quitter says:
You think you’re the only person that realizes that? No one is saying that we can all just hang up our hats and quit protecting internet freedom. What’s wrong with celebrating a victory?
03/07/2012 at 17:11 Rhandom911 says:
Perhaps because I cannot see this as a victory. All it does is highlight ways for publishers to tighten their grip.
03/07/2012 at 16:59 Jengaman says:
i hope i can still sell my games for more hats
03/07/2012 at 17:01 mr.ioes says:
Nothing will change. Your games are linked to your account and therefore you can’t sell games. How is this newsworthy again?
edit: It won’t even make selling a whole account legal, right? Then nothing will change indeed.
03/07/2012 at 17:06 D3xter says:
Err… wait till someone takes them to court over it for not allowing such a thing now that there is a precedent and they have to pay large fines.
03/07/2012 at 17:09 Universal Quitter says:
Skepticism is a virtue, but cynicism just turn you into a useless defeatist. Obviously, we will all have to keep fighting the good fight. Most of just don’t feel the need to say it and would like to enjoy these rare victories for sanity and logic.
03/07/2012 at 18:44 fish99 says:
You might want to read the ruling, it specifically states users can sell an individual piece of software from an account while retaining the account and the rest of their library. And if Steam etc don’t implement this, they’ll probably be in line for massive EU fines.
04/07/2012 at 08:27 mr.ioes says:
replace “can” with “are allowed to” and you’ll see the problem of this ruling. It doesn’t affect steam/origin/etc. in any form, as it doesn’t force them to create the ablitiy to users to resell their games. Users are allowed to resell them, but they can’t. And the digital distributor isn’t forced to change that. A minor detail overseen by many, but in the end you’ll see that that’s the truth. I appreciate the ruling ofc, just like any other. Maybe in the next step we’ll see a law that force them to offer us the possibility of reselling old games.
03/07/2012 at 17:03 D3xter says:
Now we just need them to uphold the rights on a purchase made not allowed to be taken away under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES (no matter if it is cheating, a wrong payment, violation against the ToS or anything else) and being allowed to play a product Offline at all times as long as it isn’t a Multiplayer game (effectively banning Always Online DRM), but someone always needs to take them to court first and wait/fight several years for a decision on these matters and they’re always doing their best to settle…
03/07/2012 at 17:04 whoCares says:
Really dont like this.
My 2 cents:
1 I really hope that this will not undercut the sales-system. One way to deal with this would be to set the maximum resell-price at the price for which you bought the game.
2 What about reselling games to someone you know and then buying it back when you want to play it again. Basicly reselling your steam-games enables you to let everybody play the game when you dont play it yourself and then buy it back when you want to play it again.
03/07/2012 at 17:13 Universal Quitter says:
Yeah, what about those poor companies that stifle innovation and give people the vidja-game equivalent of Transformers movies? Whatever will we do if the AAA publishers go under and clear the way for a new cycle in gaming?
Oh wait, people will pay whatever they charge for Call of Duty 12 and Madden 2112.
03/07/2012 at 17:21 Salt says:
1 – In a free market no one is in a position to prevent you selling on your possessions for more than you originally paid for them (some people make a career of doing just that). Steam attempting to limit how second hand games can be sold would go against this ruling, and probably against a bunch of anti-competition stuff.
2 – Wouldn’t even need to “sell” it to your friend, you should have the right to just transfer the licence. However I suspect that we’ll end up in a situation where transferring the licence for a DRM-laden piece of software will allow the DRM provider to charge you a small administrative fee for doing so which will discourage the rapid swapping back and forth of licences.
03/07/2012 at 17:58 whoCares says:
1 My problem is that I do not want to resell games but I like the sales. The possibility of reselling cheap things at a high price opens the possibility to buy them cheap in big quantities and sell them later at for half the full prize when the sale is over. This means that publishers will probably not like to do these deal anymore. worst case scenario for the publisher is that one deal (e.g. 75%) will then last forever because some company decided to constantly buy licenses for the time the deal lasts.
Real-life can not be compared here because those gaming licenses are produced within milliseconds and that is why this can be exploited quite easily.
The consequence for the publisher is that these deals are a big risk.
So I loose the advantage of buying games for a tenner after 2 or three months for gaining the advantage to resell them for a tenner after I bought them full-price.
This I really do not like.
03/07/2012 at 18:29 Salt says:
I bet digital sellers will put in place some kind of “you can buy a maximum of 10 copies” rule which will reduce the impact.
But yeah, assuming this leads to second hand sales of digital games becoming easy (which in its current state it should do) it will do interesting stuff to the market. Worrying especially is that people who would currently buy cut-price games in sales will instead in the future buy second hand, which gives no money at all to the developer.
03/07/2012 at 18:33 InternetBatman says:
The idea of manually transferring licenses back and forth to a friend is not really a problem. People want hassle free games, and they’re willing to pay more to make that work. Just look at consoles.
The real problem I forsee with this system is a download service that transfers the license to you when you want to play the game, and then to someone else around the world when you’re sleeping / etc. But even this comes with the huge hurdle of not being able to keep a physical copy of the game on drive.
04/07/2012 at 13:49 DodgyG33za says:
For fucks sake don’t you get it yet? It isn’t “a licence to use”. You have bought it. It is yours. A possession.
04/07/2012 at 13:48 DodgyG33za says:
1. Yes, just like the real world. If something that I own goes up in value why the fuck shouldn’t I be able to profit.
2. Why not? If I have a book I can give it to my missus to read, and she gets half way though and gives it to me to finish.
Really, I do wonder about the intellectual prowess of some of the posters here. Think people. Think before you post. But above all, think things through before you do anything.
03/07/2012 at 17:06 Chris D says:
A prediction (Okay, a guess):
In the future Steam sales will not be nearly as ubiquitous as they are right now. Instead you will have a re-sell button next to every game in your library, along with the price you’d get. Rather than buying a game new you could then buy a discounted used copy, so long as enough people had re-sold that game. Customers do it because it’s convenient, Valve get a profit twice.
Where it would get tricky would be in ensuring Valve weren’t messing with the figures to artificially inflate demand seeing how it’s all just data anyway, I guess you’d have to have independent audits or something.
03/07/2012 at 17:14 Universal Quitter says:
It would probably be much like Gamestop. Brand new $60 games will be sold used for $55. The difference being that your online copy won’t be scratched.
04/07/2012 at 13:53 DodgyG33za says:
Property is property. Why should the original seller of that property get to set the price you can on-sell at?
04/07/2012 at 14:03 Chris D says:
They shouldn’t. But they can make you an offer. No one has to take them up on it if they can get a better deal elsewhere. I suspect a lot of people would take them up on it just for the convenience, though.
03/07/2012 at 17:10 Chmilz says:
Good games will always sell. Devs/Pubs won’t have any problem raking in the big $ if they make good product. However, CoD/clone sales will likely plummet.
03/07/2012 at 17:11 DiamondDog says:
You know, I don’t think I’m going to put my party hat on just yet.
03/07/2012 at 17:14 StranaMente says:
I will link to this article anytime anyone try to say “EULAs are binding, they have lawyers and they knew what they were doing for sure.”
I’m a lawyer too, and their lawyer make plenty of things against the law. (I’m still looking at you Origin)
03/07/2012 at 17:19 Roshin says:
Interesting, but I honestly can’t see the industry even trying to side with the customer here. If they can’t snake their way around this ruling, they will push hard as fuck for subscription “services” and streamed rental games.
Potentially good for us, but most likely very bad.
03/07/2012 at 17:26 Koozer says:
Surely digital distributors can fix this by offering transfers, but with a 10% administration fee, say. They can’t afford to just ignore it and push it into a black market. see: Diablo III and the RMAH.
03/07/2012 at 17:30 VeliV says:
We’ll end up with F2P and RMAH games!
03/07/2012 at 17:32 HisMastersVoice says:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Valve can impose a prohibitively high fee on a person trying to add a used game to their account, right? It does not violate the right to sell the game, as no fee is imposed here, but since it’s a Steam game, they can most likely stipulate you need a Steam account to use it (as they do now). You bought the game, sure. You own it, sure. Can they ask you to cough up 30$ to activate it on your account?
03/07/2012 at 17:44 The V Man says:
I have to wonder what this means for companies that use unified account systems (say, for instance, Blizzard). The ruling specifically says you can re-sell games, but what if the game requires an account? What if you can only get an account by buying the game? Will there be any concessions there, or will it fall into a gray area where they can’t enforce your ability to buy the game second-hand (and in this case NOT the account, presuming that’s not allowed) but not use it?
And if this ruling were to extend to accounts, if it doesn’t already, then what happens when someone makes an account and buys a bunch of games on sale, only to re-sell them afterwards? Or in the direct case of Blizzard – where your account holds a number of games, including MMOs, all of which have character data – setting up an account, power leveling it and then selling it for profit?
There are a huge number of unanswered questions here and I’m a bit afraid that, as in previous cases of digital litigation and policy making, the people making these calls may not necessarily completely understand the full implications – for better or worse – of what they’re really saying.
03/07/2012 at 17:44 cpy says:
What about world of warcraft account and other mmo games?
03/07/2012 at 17:47 HisMastersVoice says:
This entitles you to sell the license to the program, not the account it’s tied to.
03/07/2012 at 17:51 PaulMorel says:
Maybe this is a side-effect of convincing people that piracy is the same as stealing? For years, media companies have confused the general public into thinking that piracy is stealing, when, as we all know, it is different in some fundamental ways. I’d like to think that this ruling is comeuppance for the media companies.
“If piracy is stealing, then shouldn’t people be able to trade these goods after purchase?!” … etc
None of this really makes sense if you just realize that digital goods are fundamentally different from real-world goods.
03/07/2012 at 17:53 Gothnak says:
Sadly this will bad for everyone. Initially, it will hit developers, publishers and online download retailers hard, as the current way of distributing games to customers will suddenly be completely unprofitable. This will be great for consumers who for a year, or maybe months are free to trade their downloads at will. In this time, some smaller developers will go bust as they lose most of their revenue.
Meanwhile the big publishers will work out new ways to release games to the public, probably along the lines of:
Game X is free, but you buy a licence to play it for Y hours. You are free to sell on the hours you have left to anyone else. That’s great for crap games, as you might want to get rid of them in 30 mins, but for awesome games, you’d have to keep topping it up every week to keep playing.
Game Y can be bought with access to a single save game slot. If you want to start a new game (or sell to someone else to play it) you have to pay for another save slot. This has already happened with a 3DS game hasn’t it?
All this ruling will do, is make it much more annoying for you to play the games you have paid for as a first party, it won’t allow you to trade games forever in the future, publishers will simply change the rules.
Sigh….
03/07/2012 at 17:55 Jason Moyer says:
Looking at some of the crap in my Steam collection, I wish Valve would just give us the option to trade stuff back in for a small amount of credit just to get it out of my account.
03/07/2012 at 18:12 SkittleDiddler says:
You mean like Green Man Gaming? In theory it’s a great idea; in practice it barely works, simply because the publishers have final say.
03/07/2012 at 17:55 Kefren says:
Wow! This would be really interesting. However it could only apply to games with DRM. It would be ridiculous to say you could resell a game of which you could make infinite copies. Therefore it could lead to the really exciting prospect that more games get released without DRM, since then you can’t resell them, meaning both the customer AND the developer win! I am now full of exciting fantasies of a better world. Thanks RPS, made me feel good even if it somehow falls apart later.
03/07/2012 at 18:22 Salt says:
It absolutely does apply to games without DRM. It just means that the original purchaser has to be trusted to delete their copy of the game when selling it. Just as they’re currently trusted not to redistribute their DRM-free copies.
In both cases it’s very easy for the customer to infringe copyright if they want to. But ease of committing a crime doesn’t have much impact on the fact of it being a crime or not.
03/07/2012 at 18:15 Joof says:
There is no way in which this leads to a system that benefits us in the long run. =/
03/07/2012 at 18:40 InternetBatman says:
Yes there is. If it is the first step in a systematic legal and judicial attempt to define and protect the rights of digital consumers. The laws right now are broken. If we don’t even take small steps to fix them because of potentially painful consequences they will just get worse.
03/07/2012 at 20:31 Kadayi says:
“The laws right now are broken.”
How? Plain truth of the matter is the games industry is reliant on first party software sales in order to finance making more games. Creating a massive money vaccuum where in those sales drop off significantly benefits no one in the long term.
04/07/2012 at 04:59 InternetBatman says:
Changing the market to make it easier to understand and more just is not the same as harming it. We can’t just assume things about the future and legislate against possibilities, we have to make just laws now and hope that they can be adapted to meet the needs of the future.
Do we know the used digital market will take off or will even compete in the same space as the new digital market, especially given the long-tail nature of digital sales? Maybe the increased respect for property rights will draw pirates back into the legitimate customer fold, and encourage physical customers to enter. Maybe the competition will drive prices down, allowing more people to buy games. Maybe the difference in cost will be too low for a large used digital industry to take off. The point is, we don’t know what will happen.
In other news, book publishers are still making books even though used books have been around for a century.
04/07/2012 at 14:00 DodgyG33za says:
Just look at the huge EULA that is present in every game. If we could get rid of that we could save the industry millions in wasted lawyers fees.
04/07/2012 at 15:16 puck says:
Speaking as a lawyer I’d like to emphasise that there’s no such thing as wasted lawyers’ fees :D
Oh, and that any further attempts to slander our profession will be met with an injunction faster than you can say “equitable remedy”.
Source: My obscene billable hours target.
03/07/2012 at 18:38 InternetBatman says:
I think this is a good thing. Our rights to property have not properly translated into the digital era. This is the first step in what is going to be a major struggle for our generation: establishing and protecting digital consumer rights.
03/07/2012 at 19:00 greenbananas says:
Why try to come up with my own words when you put it so succinctly? +1
04/07/2012 at 04:56 savagerose says:
Quite so. Digital goods are certainly different (if only by virtue of being far more convenient) from physical ones. But I don’t see how it makes sense, for instance, that you can’t put your music or games collection in your will just because it’s made of bits instead of plastic.
Not sure why people are upset about this ruling. Sure, the economics might change, but we’ll still be buying games and so there will still be people making them. Except now, we’ll actually be able to share the things we love instead of being buried with them.
04/07/2012 at 14:02 DodgyG33za says:
+1 for first mention of a will. As gamers get older why can’t you leave your steam account to a favoured relative that shared you love of gaming.
Love it, and next time I update my will I am going to add my steam username and password!
03/07/2012 at 18:59 WrongThinker says:
Congratulations PC gamers! You’ve just disincentivized publishers and developers from bringing games to the PC! If you thought the quality and quantity of PC ports was bad BEFORE this ruling, just wait a few years and you’ll remember how good life was.
This is a huge, huge blow to PC gaming. If people can resell a product that suffers no degradation with use (a distinction between digital products and physical products), it’s absolutely going to cut in to sales that benefit publishers/developers. While it’s true publishers aren’t mandated to supply a means, I’m certain people will figure out a way to do it.
This also sets a precedent that digital contracts are valueless, since this voids things you digitally sign (by saying “it doesn’t matter what is in the license agreement”).
03/07/2012 at 19:11 greenbananas says:
If all we miss out on are, like Universal Quitter puts it above, are “…vidja-game equivalent of Transformers movies…”, then, thank you, but I think I’ll pass. Much rather have my rights as a consumer protected and run the risk of missing out on such garbage than the other way around. I say let the big companies be disincentivized. Let them ignore a huge market, so they’ll make space for another company that’s willing to get people what they want within the confines of a system designed to protect the consumer.
03/07/2012 at 20:03 WrongThinker says:
This will hurt little companies as well as the big ones. I don’t understand why people say “let’s protect consumer rights” in circumstances where what is really happening is “let’s protect stupid and/or lazy idiots who gave up their rights on a given product because they didn’t read **** that they agreed to. Further, let’s protect these dolts at the expense of quality products!”
To put it a bit more simply: you gave up your own rights. That’s what license agreements ARE. They are you agreeing to restricted rights in return for using a product that doesn’t suffer wear and tear.
Don’t you understand that this “protection” is going to result in worse games for everyone? You can talk about how big the PC market is all you want… BUT THIS WILL MAKE IT MUCH SMALLER! The market isn’t as big as “people who own computers” the market is as big as “people who own computers and BUY NEW GAMES FOR IT.”
This certainly is an issue for console games, as well, but not as much since there is physicality to most console games (which limits the ease with which someone can resell).
I feel like everybody looks at issues like piracy and used-game sales and see some kind of bizarre moral struggle. You aren’t wronged if you have a choice and you CHOOSE to give up your rights. It’s one thing to want protection from others, but if you want protection from yourself the best way to do that is to check in to the nearest psych ward rather than hurting the industry you claim to love.
03/07/2012 at 20:11 Brun says:
If the companies are smart they will see this as an opportunity to profit off of used game sales on PC. A platform for used game sales does not exist yet, which means they can make the necessary agreements and inputs into its creation to ensure that they’ll receive some kind of compensation. Contrast that with the retail world, in which they didn’t realize the threat (or opportunity) of used games until they were already locked out of those profits by the retailers.
Also, the reason people still have a problem with “consumer rights,” despite technically giving them up when signing a EULA (an agreement which has yet to be legally tested) is that they believe that they shouldn’t have to give up the rights the EULA is asking for. Rights like the right to sell your game to someone else when you’re done with it.
03/07/2012 at 22:50 WrongThinker says:
There are advantages to a used game model… for example, if the new user has to purchase DLC to have access to it you could release a game for free and then only charge people for DLC. But then again, if the DLC falls under the same rules as the initial software, that’s a problem. It’s possible that the result of this will be that all EULAs will change and contain far more restrictions than they currently do.
I respect that you’ve got a bit of a thought process behind your opinion and therefor shall ask: why opportunities do you perceive for developers in the used game markets?
03/07/2012 at 20:12 RobF says:
You know, I’ll never work out the sort of mentality it takes to put the wants of a company before the needs of an individual.
03/07/2012 at 23:05 WrongThinker says:
Me neither. People who put corporations as entities above individuals baffle me. This isn’t that situation, though… and that’s the problem. Some people mistakenly think it is.
1.) Developers and Publishers are comprised of good, hard-working people. If you want their product, you should be paying those good hard-working people for it. I can’t understand the mentality of people who put their own petty desires above the jobs of those working hard to fulfill their wants (we call this “biting the hand that feeds”).
2.) When Developers and Publishers make money, they spend that money on making more games. All gamers benefit from this. This also allows developers to take more risks (make more interesting games). Sure, cheaper games would be nice… but I’ll take more expensive, good games over crappy, derivative games any day of the week. I don’t understand the mentality of those who would jeopardize the product they like so they can get it slightly cheaper.
3.) Companies aren’t stealing the rights of individuals. Individuals are giving their rights away to use a product. They are agreeing to a contract willingly. If games were a NEED rather than a WANT, I might change my tune, but we’re talking about a luxury item that NO ONE has a monopoly on. So, people do have a choice. I’ll never understand the mentality of people who feel they are entitled to luxuries.
04/07/2012 at 01:11 RobF says:
“1.) Developers and Publishers are comprised of good, hard-working people. If you want their product, you should be paying those good hard-working people for it.”
Well, they’re not necessarily good or hard working, really. They could be lazy sods, they could be bored cogs in a corporate machine, they could be working there for the summer and flicking bogies until they go back to college. They could be funneling all their money into any myriad of anti-rights movements, they might be anti-gay marraige, they might be neo nazis. They might be tea party fuckwits. But y’know, given the developers are often wage slaves and the cream of the money gets skimmed off by management and shareholders, let’s not play that particular ideological game anyway.
There’s enough money in EA to pay developers two or three times over what they currently earn and to invest more in games than they currently do. It’s only the attempts to maximise profits for shareholders and the board that stops that from happening. Evolving the business model isn’t impossible, it’s just undesirable to most gone-public corporations under our current capitalist model which favours investors and shareholders over the workers.
And as an indie, I’m agile enough to adapt. So I’ll be fine.
But regardless, if someone has already paid for an item, no longer has a use for it and someone else might value it, why not sell it on? I mean, let’s face it, in this industry, you’ll be lucky if the majority of the staff that made the software before it shipped are still even employed so that kinda falls apart a bit, doesn’t it? Or the mess that is ownership and rights in this industry, where those that worked on the game may not even have any interests left in it due to the shitty contracts our industry is known for.
“2.) When Developers and Publishers make money, they spend that money on making more games”
And they’ll still retain a revenue stream from this. Someone has to make the first sale somewhere. If they need sales from one copy for all eternity, then it’s highly likely their business model is fucked to begin with. If, as would be likely to happen, they still get a percentage by setting up their own trading systems, then what’s the problem here? Aside from spouting patronising ideological nonsense at me as if it’s an argument.
“Sure, cheaper games would be nice… but I’ll take more expensive, good games over crappy, derivative games any day of the week.”
Funny how under our current model, that kinda doesn’t work out though, isn’t it? Instead you get crappy, derivative games that cost a fortune to make and cost a fortune to buy with pretty scant exception in the mainstream, outside of indie developers and smaller studios, obviously. Both of whom rarely go for “expensive” anyway and I’m sure would be able to adjust accordingly and rapidly due to not employing xHundred people.
“3.) Companies aren’t stealing the rights of individuals. Individuals are giving their rights away to use a product.”
Now I know you’re taking the piss. Behave.
03/07/2012 at 23:11 greenbananas says:
The little companies? Why, look at Double Fine or Inxile- both already turning a profit even before they even started production, all because they gambled on providing the consumers with a type of product that majors deemed “too niche” and in subscribing to an alternate funding method, one who renders publishers irrelevant, as they should be, in an environment that almost entirely does without brick and mortar sales. This is what good companies do, know what markets are unexplored, plan ahead, adapt. What bad companies do is stick to the same exhausted bussiness model and focus on money-lending, pointless spending on PR, repetitive “safe” products and at the extreme, trying to exhert political influence as to be allowed to maintain a stranglehold on distribution at the expense of your individual rights as a citizen and a lack of control over practices relating to this relatively new “digital world” we’re all part of. This is exactly what you’re protecting under that ridiculous anti-social generalization/assumption, when you accuse people who may or may not have been taken advantage of, of being “stupid and/or lazy idiots who gave up their rights”, as if they could waive their rights in favor of the whims of a private entity, just because they were asked to do so.
Think for a second. Is the hatred you bear these people, the ones you accuse of having duped the system, so big, that you’ll waive rights you’ve acquired (or that your ancestors acquired in your stead) just so they can’t take advantage of someone else’s bussiness, regardless of how many, including possibly yourself, benefit from them? To me, like RobF says, it’s hard to fathom “putting the wants of a company before the needs of an individual.”. You must really dislike your neighbours.
04/07/2012 at 01:04 WrongThinker says:
So, you’ve made one assumption on which to base most of your arguments and it’s this single assumption that most people incorrectly make that frame their entire argument. You reveal this assumption by saying that my ancestors earned certain rights…. my ancestors weren’t around in the digital age.
Physical products NEED to be treated differently than digital products. This is a new issue that has cropped up in the last 30 years or so.
Selling a used product at a lower cost is valid only because the product depreciates in value. Videogames don’t depreciate because they are digital. They don’t suffer wear and tear. This means that if a used product is available the ONLY incentive to purchase new is that you want to support the medium. Unfortunately, most people don’t care about this.
Once you understand the distinction between physical and digital, you can start to understand just why used sales are so detrimental to the industry. You can also start to understand why EULAs exist for software and not physical products.
Secondarily, even if used sales weren’t so detrimental to the industry, people do sign a digital contract. Digital contracts are long and do frequently use legal language, but they’re fairly easy for an adult to understand. If you don’t understand what something says, get a parent to read the agreement with you. For the most part, there really aren’t any tricks.
Invalildating EULAs seriously jeopardizes the profitability of the entire software industry, not just games. If you hate games, you should be happy with this ruling.
You DO have the right to give up your rights and you DO have the right to complain that you gave up your rights. But if you think you have some magical right that supersede the necessity for you to read the **** you sign, you are sorely mistaken. If you are seriously think this in any way benefits the game’s industry, you need a lesson in economics.
04/07/2012 at 01:17 RobF says:
“They don’t suffer wear and tear.”
But technology does march on and age them, the speed of movement of technology can make games obsolescent in the current market overnight. It is, to a great degree, the equivalent of wear and tear. An old ragged game that barely runs on modern machines without work to repair it and so on…
Is a game without dedicated servers and the online portion now inaccessible worth as much as one without? Is a game where desired DLC cannot be accessed worth as much as one where it can? Is a game that runs on archaic hardware worth as much as one that doesn’t? There’s many, many factors that you can judge this on. Stop pretending there aren’t.
And given most EULAs are presented post-purchase, you know they’re on dodgy and contestable ground, right? You know that even if you click to accept one, they’re still overridden by consumer law.
Honestly man, you’re reaching and then some if you think that overriding EULAs is the death of the industry.
The AAA publishers are doing the grandest job of shooting themselves in the cock as it is. Have you seen how much money they keep pumping into stuff that flops? It’s unsustainable and they’re discovering this with EULAs to protect them, with thousands in lobbying money and pushes from entertainment groups to protect their business models.
And you know what? If they all die out tomorrow, it’s OK. Something will come along to replace them. Because this isn’t the only way things get done, no matter how much -you- convince yourself it is. Because clearly, your lesson in economics is failing hard in a lot of cases.
04/07/2012 at 01:42 WrongThinker says:
I admit that perceiving time as wear and tear is an argument I haven’t really heard before, so I give you props for that.
However, I would argue that time doesn’t actually *decrease* the quality of game. The evolution of the games industry (in terms of design theory and graphics) certainly evolves, but Super Mario Bros is still just as good now as it was when it was released. The game hasn’t changed, only the perspective of the game. It’s sort of like arguing the Mona Lisa is outdated because new painter techniques have appeared and new tools have been developed.
I do actually agree with you that EULAs should either be viewable prior to purchase of a game OR, at the very least, if the player declines the EULA they should receive a full refund.
Also, to clarify: I don’t believe that overriding EULAs is going to be the death of anything, but it’s certainly going to be bad for it. It’s going to prevent developers from protecting their work in the ways they want to protect it. The thing that’s really bad about it is it let’s people sell digitally used products.
For example, if I bought an apple and ate it and it and then could sell it someone as though it had never been eaten, all the apple farms would go out of business pretty quickly (though we’d cure world hunger, so I admit that would be worth it). Games are a consumable, like food. You use them until they’re used up. But unlike food, they can be re-used by an infinite number of people at the same value as their initial use. That’s what makes used sales (especially 100% digital ones) so dangerous to the industry.
04/07/2012 at 02:03 RobF says:
Call me when used sales are as big a danger to the industry as the decision makers who put profit before the welfare of their employees thus causing massive churn, call me when used sales are as big a danger to the industry as the decision makers pumping millions into games entirely uncertain as to whether they’ll reach profitability, call me when used sales are as big a danger to the industry as the Curt Schilling’s of this world, call me when they’re as big a danger as megapublishers setting unsustainable milestones, call me when it’s a big a danger as the handing out of projects that are destined to not make the sales milestones they’re required whilst being fully aware of that when dishing out the projects to studios then shuttering them when the inevitable happens causing job losses on a massive scale or when platform holders or publishers hand out one sided contracts that screw people over and end up driving talent away.
Then we’ll talk about the danger. Once you’ve got it into some sort of perspective.
04/07/2012 at 02:52 WrongThinker says:
“Call me when used sales are as big a danger to the industry as the decision makers who put profit before the welfare of their employees.”
Why defend a bad decision with another bad decision? I agree this is a problem, but it’s not going to get any better because of this terrible court ruling. In fact, it might get worse (more on that momentarily).
“Call me when used sales are as big a danger to the industry as the decision makers pumping millions into games entirely uncertain as to whether they’ll reach profitability.”
I’m actually not sure what you’re getting at with this one. Would you rather “decision makers” only pump games in to sure things? How many Call of Duty’s can you possibly want? That’s a serious problem with the industry that the selling of used games promotes because it makes it harder for a game to be profitable.
“Call me when used sales are as big a danger to the industry as the Curt Schilling’s of this world.”
The people who ask for money to fund stupid things aren’t dangerous at all, it’s the people who fund those stupid things with other people’s money that are the danger.
“Call me when they’re as big a danger as megapublishers setting unsustainable milestones.”
A bit redundant with your first point… but as I said, I admit that’s a problem. Unfortunately, the sale of used games makes this worse by eating into the sale of new games. This is one of my biggest arguments AGAINST your point of view, so I’m not sure why you made it here.
“Call me when it’s a big a danger as the handing out of projects that are destined to not make the sales milestones they’re required whilst being fully aware of that when dishing out the projects to studios then shuttering them when the inevitable happens causing job losses on a massive scale or when platform holders or publishers hand out one sided contracts that screw people over and end up driving talent away.”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are you suggesting publishers (that you admit are driven by profits) are deliberately losing tons of money to cause job losses? If this is what you are suggesting, then this conversation is officially over. If this is not what you are suggesting, can you please clarify?
04/07/2012 at 03:32 RobF says:
“Why defend a bad decision with another bad decision?”
I’m not. I’m pointing out that the worries about used games are massively eclipsed by the idiocy that the industry inflicts on itself both financially and in respect to being an industry that struggles to retain workers. The damage (if any) that used games can do to the industry is a blip monetarily compared to this. Hence *perspective*.
You’re running into conversations screaming how bad this is for the industry over and over, adamant that it’s going to be cataclysmic when the industry is repeatedly shooting itself in the cock in far worse and far more dangerous *to the industry* ways. *That* is my point.
Blaming anything consumer side for the woes of the industry is frankly fucking laughable when the industry is actively antagonistic to consumers on pretty much all fronts (which when you want people to buy your games in the first place is problematic, right?) and rightly consumers should value their rights above those of the industry regardless of concerns over future content or job losses – that’s the industries problem to solve not the consumers.
Huge swathes of the industry treats its workers badly far more often than it treats them well which is a larger problem for when you want the content created in the first place. You can’t have the content if you drive people to other industries because you’ve crunched them too hard, you’ve hired and fired them so often they can’t be arsed anymore or they’re just sick of their boss driving to work in a different car every day whilst they struggle to make rent. These are more pressing realities that the industry needs to deal with rather than deflecting their issues onto the consumer.
ALL of these things are massively more likely to have negative effects on the industry than used sales and any contributory factors from used sales will be so negligible as to not be worth pissing on.
“That’s a serious problem with the industry that the selling of used games promotes because it makes it harder for a game to be profitable.”
Bollocks. Unsustainable large budgets chasing unsuitably large projects that fall into the middle of the road is what eats into the profits not used game sales. If you stop pumping xMillion into trying to be Activison:Activision Harder, you’ll have saved more than used games would cost.
The current industry model is a flawed model and one that’s been increasingly showing itself as such since the 90′s to even the most casual of observers. There are only a few studios and publishers who can afford to sustain the development scale and budgets that is the industry norm yet it remains the norm and it’s not working out so good.
“it’s the people who fund those stupid things with other people’s money that are the danger. ”
Tell that to everyone who lost their jobs, had no insurance paid and found themselves having to pay out for a house they believed they no longer had to pay out for due to relocation. Tell them that and then tell them those who funded Schilling were at fault. Go on. Do it now. Find one and say that. To their face, preferably. See how far your pass the buck rhetoric gets you there.
“…Unfortunately, the sale of used games makes this worse by eating into the sale of new games.”
How does the sales of used games make ridiculous and abusive milestones set by publishers worse? How does that even work? Or are you just playing pin the tail on the donkey now and hoping no-one notices it’s an elephant?
“I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are you suggesting publishers (that you admit are driven by profits) are deliberately losing tons of money to cause job losses?”
I’m saying precisely what I said in the quote. I am saying that publishers will and do hand off projects to studios and set sales milestones for payouts to the studios that they know will be difficult if not near impossible to achieve, especially without advertising support and when the studios fail to meet these milestones for payouts, they either can no longer afford to run as independents and either have to sell or close or if they’re first party, they get shuttered.
I’m saying that it’s not unusual for contracts to be weighted against the developer or studio and payouts not to be met or delayed until the developer or studio is on its knees.
If you wish to close down the conversation because of this, then that’s fine. You’re welcome to. But if you think that this sort of thing doesn’t take place then you’re incredibly naive. And yes, some publishers will write off x amount if it makes it easier for them to save y amount in the long run. That’s our capitalism for you, it’s brutal and unforgiving in the name of profiting harder.
If you can explain to me without resorting to some sort of insane ideological ranting how used game sales can be any more detrimental than any of these things or contribute on a major enough scale to these things to make them absolutely as cataclysmic as you seem to be want to prove, I’m all ears.
In the meantime, I’ll stick with the reality of things rather than the histrionic fantasy world you seem to have established.
04/07/2012 at 14:13 Emeraude says:
let’s protect stupid and/or lazy idiots who gave up their rights on a given product because they didn’t read **** that they agreed to. Further, let’s protect these dolts at the expense of quality products!”
Isn’t that partly what laws are supposed to be for, though ? To protect people too weak – or in your words too idiot – too constrained by time – or in you words too lazy – to protect themselves ?
Surely I would hope one sees the many cases where the law fails to do this to be a systemic defect, and not business as usual. Especially if the offered counterpart to not protecting those people happens to be nothing but a (debatable) lowering of the quality of entertainment products.
And remember, one day, sooner or later, *you* will be the idiot.
03/07/2012 at 19:11 Salt says:
I see no reason why this would apply to PC games but not to console games.
While I’m here:
- PC gamers didn’t do this. The European courts did this when ruling on a case about commercial software.
- It doesn’t destroy the legitimacy of digitally signed agreements. It certainly brings into question agreements that try to prevent customers reselling digital products, but that’s nothing to do with the fact that the agreement itself is signed digitally.
04/07/2012 at 03:02 WrongThinker says:
Agreed that PC gamers didn’t directly cause this. Poor choice of words.
That said, allowing people to resell digital games will be disastrous for the industry. Read some of my other comments on this same thread above for a clearer picture of why (there’s a particularly long conversation above, where there is quite a bit of detail). :)
03/07/2012 at 19:42 Milky1985 says:
I think your name is quite appropriate for this.
“Congratulations PC gamers! You’ve just disincentivized publishers and developers from bringing games to the PC!”
1. its not just PC games, its software in general, this also includes console games and things like XBLA (with its all sales are final etc)
2. PC gamers had sod all to do with this ruling, it all came about with relation to oracle, a database company.
3.Why would it just effect PC games when it effects all software, how does it make any difference to how the PC is already treated
4. You are just wrong.
04/07/2012 at 01:46 WrongThinker says:
Certainly, PC gamers had nothing to do with this. I worded my post as I did since this was a PC gaming website. That may have been a mistake since people seem to have taken the defensive purely because they feel personally attacked by my argument. This was not my intent.
That said, I am aware it is software in general this hurts, not just PC games. It’s bad for EVERYONE. Again, I focused on games because of the nature of this website.
Can you present any reason why I am wrong in my assumption that this will hurt the PC games industry? If yes, please share. If no, feel free to read another conversation I’ve been having with a bloke in another part of this same thread I started, he makes some good points but I feel I do as well. Read up, then respond if you feel the need. :)
04/07/2012 at 16:14 puck says:
I agree with Milky; having made an unsupportable and borderline-hysterical statement in his initial post, WrongThinker has spent the last few thousand words conclusively (and patronisingly) earning his name.
Even a basic understanding of contract law (which you clearly lack) would have told you that in no way does this ruling affect the validity of contracts concluded via electronic means. One of the many things you’re failing to understand is the difference between contractual terms expressed by the parties, and those implied by statute. This ruling doesn’t change that relationship.
This failure also lies at the heart of the trouble you’re experiencing in grasping the nature of EULAs. Your assertion that EULAs somehow universally involve the consumer waiving their rights, as in “Individuals are giving their rights away to use a product”[sic], is nonsense. Express contract terms will not, generally, override terms implied under statute (such as consumer rights); that’s the whole idea. This is particularly true when those statutory rights arise out of the conduct of business within the EU: EU legislation has a thriving trade in striking out or otherwise rendering ineffective bits, or sometimes all of, your contract.
That last point leads me nicely onto another issue some seemed to be having earlier in the discussion. Valve (or anyone else) being ‘a US company’ doesn’t affect the applicability of EU legislation to their business activities within the EU. As a general rule, if you sell products into the EU you have to play by the EU’s rules.
Incidentally, the ECJ has historically shown an admirable enthusiasm for robust judgments and the points made elsewhere about undertakings using (for example) 100-year licences to ‘get round’ this decision show a pronounced lack of respect for the judicial abilities of the Court. The ECJ has applied and will continue to apply a purposive interpretation to the law, with a focus on the actual effect. They’re not stupid, folks.
Finally, the concept of exhaustion of rights is not a new one to the ECJ, nor to EU-practising IP lawyers (see for example the famous Levi Strauss v Tesco case). I’d be very surprised if counsel at the various major players hadn’t been anticipating this, or something like it, for some time and didn’t have a commercial response worked out for whenever it eventually came before a court.
Oh, and applying free-market pricing to software is a Good Thing. WrongThinker’s limited understanding of commerce (or anything, really) is nicely summarised in his comment, “When Developers and Publishers make money, they spend that money on making more games.” No they don’t. Market players are in the business of making money, not making games. Like any other commercial entity they seek a return for their investors. To believe otherwise is naive.
03/07/2012 at 21:59 SkittleDiddler says:
AAA publishers are already offering new games at huge discounts after release, sometimes in a mere matter of hours or days. They are recognizing that consumers (especially PC gamers) are willing to take the time and effort to find the best deal. I’ve been arguing for months now that new-release discounts are going to become the norm as time goes on, simply because publishers are smart enough to realize that a good percentage of consumers are unwilling to pay full price for Day One products.
I won’t bother to get into the whole indie bundle craze.
Exactly how is giving consumers more rights in the digital sales realm going to hurt publisher/developer profit margins? If anything, you’d think they’re already doing it to themselves, but that would mean that these companies are engaging in business practices that are losing them money. We all know that’s not the case.
04/07/2012 at 02:22 WrongThinker says:
Good question, mate. While it’s true that discounting new prices cuts into to individual profit margins, the benefit is that you sell to a wider base (more copies are sold by hitting a lower price point). The problem with allowing software licence holders to sell used software is that the value of a used product is EXACTLY EQUAL to the value of that same product sold new to the person whose buying it and radically less to the seller.
This means I can buy a game, beat it, and sell it at a huge discount (say 30% of what I bought it for) at no loss to myself. I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of it. However, the purchaser gets 100% of the value out of that game at 30% of the price. So, yes, consumers are savvy (or at least thrifty), that’s part of the problem. The consumer wants to pay less for the full value and if digital used sales are allowed, many people will wait and ONLY purchase games this way.
In all such sales, developers and publishers get squat. While this benefits the consumer in the short term, it means the people involved in the products creation will suffer financially, which means fewer games and fewer risks. That’s extremely bad for developers, publishers, AND consumers.
Does that answer you question sufficiently? :)
03/07/2012 at 23:14 D3xter says:
“This also sets a precedent that digital contracts are valueless, since this voids things you digitally sign (by saying “it doesn’t matter what is in the license agreement”).”
It never mattered what you signed in a “license agreement”, they could put in there that they legally own your first-born child and it wouldn’t change much. EULAs aren’t valid in large parts of Europe, especially if they a) weren’t shown to you in full length at the time and place of purchase and – in that case they become void or b) are going against applicable law – in which case they become void too.
The issue was only that they weren’t sufficiently tested legally, now we know for sure and need further legal rulings to give us our rights as consumers back.
04/07/2012 at 01:48 WrongThinker says:
Quite right that EULAs are borderline valueless because they aren’t presented at time of purchase. I agree this needs to change. I don’t think this has a direct influence on the fact this ruling is still going to damage the industry, however, since it specifically allows the sale of “used” digital games.
If you’re curious as to why this is such an issue, please consult some other branches of this thread as I’ve been discussing it with others there (and you’ll see a lot of points have already been discussed).
03/07/2012 at 19:06 alkonaut says:
In my work my company sells software. We absolutely will not, ever, allow a resale of a license. A license is a time limited right to use the software for a particular individual or company. We would never even allow someone who stopped paying to continue using the software.
I don’t see how the games industry is different from other parts of the software industry? The fact that games *used* to be bought from shelves and swapped in garages doesn’t make them any different from a license of SAP or Oracles most expensive packages?
From my point of view the practice of licensing software (which is not selling) is old, and games have incorrectly been viewed as “things” because they once came in cartridges and boxes. The industry will charge what it takes, and more sales of used games means higher prices for new ones.
03/07/2012 at 19:48 HisMastersVoice says:
If your company is selling time limited licenses, then it’s not affected by this ruling in any was, shape or form.
03/07/2012 at 20:07 alkonaut says:
So will we see a market for “used” downloads, or just new license terms (support, patches, dlc for a limited period)? There is no way we will see downloads re-sold, unless the buyer is the original store (I.e incentives for buying new games).
04/07/2012 at 11:56 JD Jackson says:
You should read the actual court ruling. It’s not even about games, RPS is just reporting on it that way because it also applies to games. In fact, the ruling is about Oracle’s licenses. They sold them as non-transferrable, another company bought them and re-sold them, Oracle sued that company, the court replied to Oracle with “sorry, you can’t forbid the transfer of a license.”
03/07/2012 at 19:24 Jorum says:
OK think I have found a way they can get round this by sabotaging resales.
State that patches (and even DLC) are part of a seperate, ongoing service & support agreement tied to customer, and not tied to actual piece of software.
They then are not obligated to make available any software patches or DLC to resale customers, as the service agreement is not transferred with digital product.
An example:
I sell copy of Crusader Kings 2, but the patches DLC etc are covered by a separate non-transferable contract between Paradox and I.
So whoever buys my copy of CK2 has release version of the game (say v1.0), but does not have any way to access any of it’s patches or DLC.
They are stuck with v1.0 for ever unless they decide to enter a service contract of their own with Paradox.
And if I were an unscrupulous developer, I could of course make sure my games just happen to be released in such rubbish, buggy, or sparse version that an unpatched/no-DLC copy is very very undesirable.
03/07/2012 at 19:25 EvilSpaceOrc says:
Great, PC games will jump from £35 to £50+ sooner than we might have expected.
And what about DRM-free digital games, like the ones from GOG? Does that mean you buy one copy and then… basically re-distribute? Because surely someone will/can check if you removed your copy…
Horrible idea. I preferred PC gaming mainly because I buy few games, but I play them longer – and I don’t have to spend as much as on a console game to do that. Now I’m afraid it will go away :/
03/07/2012 at 19:45 Milky1985 says:
If they raise prices that much PC games will go away because people will stop buying them.
Shareholders will get annoyed cause games are not selling as much any more because the PC market dried up (even if its small, shareholders expect growth), pull there money and the company goes under because they made a stupid business decision.
Thats how the market works.
03/07/2012 at 19:31 Carra says:
If they do this in the US & UK I can finally buy my steam games from them for a dollar price, not a EU price.
03/07/2012 at 19:36 Post-Internet Syndrome says:
Steam is eminently positioned to turn this into a feature. The steam trading infrastructure is already in place, and making it possible to trade actual games within the same system should not pose a great technical challenge. Also, they would naturally promote using the steam wallet for the monetary part of the transaction, encouraging the sellers of “used” games to buy new games with the money instead of putting it in their mattress. If they act fast they can harvest huge amounts of goodwill, while EA and the like will be squirming and bitching about it for years to come.
03/07/2012 at 19:46 Clavus says:
A lot of noise about nothing. The EU ruling just said that users are ALLOWED to sell their software license (because Oracle was trying to stop a 2nd hand software reseller), companies do not have to FACILITATE selling used copies. Steam and Origin are just fine as they are in the light of this ruling.
03/07/2012 at 20:17 alkonaut says:
This won’t be interesting until someone actually tries it. This would mean moving an install of a downloaded game to another computer (the buyers computer), and then demanding that valve or origin transfer the license to the buyer. The court would have to decide what the minimum level of facilitating this is (allowing it must mean somehow facilitating it too otherwise all online shops are off the hook and the law would be useless). Could be e.g manually transferring licenses between account on the request of the licensee. If a EU court would fine valve or ea one zillion for failing to comply with such requests *then* we would have an interesting turn of events. Not before that.
03/07/2012 at 19:58 Hoaxfish says:
Slightly different question, how does this affect something like OnLive (and maybe Gaikai) which is even more divorced from the concepts of distinct physical objects than Steam et al.
03/07/2012 at 22:04 Post-Internet Syndrome says:
Well in those cases you quite obviously do not own the actual game, just the opportunity to play it on the onlive server, so they would not be affected by this ruling. At least that’s my take on it.
03/07/2012 at 20:11 sejm says:
Suggests this could apply to mobile phone apps too?
Sell on your Angry Birds when you’re done with it. This could have implications for tying people to their mobile phones as they don’t want to ‘waste’ the money spent on apps.
Freedom for the consumer but potentially bad for innovation.
03/07/2012 at 20:50 Cinek says:
More like: Bad for crap-developers.
If people find product good – they will want to keep it.
If they’ll find it total one-time-play-fail then they’ll resale it, just like I did with Crysis 2 or Homefront bullshit
gamesinteractive movies.03/07/2012 at 20:18 DrozzRith says:
I’m actually against this. The whole point of buying a used game is to be willing to pay a lower price for a used and probably slightly deteriorated product.
There is no way of deteriorating a digital game, so basically it’s the same as buying it new, only cheaper, wich is precisely what the constant Steam sales do (don’t know about Origin, never used it).
Giving games away to your friends is actually reasonable, but developers won’t take that risk.
04/07/2012 at 14:14 DodgyG33za says:
A game deteriorates because its tech ages.
But regardless of that, if you have bought it, it is yours to sell as you wish. Like anything else you bought.
03/07/2012 at 20:22 Kuraudo says:
Why are people happy about this? This sounds like the onset of subscription/free to play hell. Also, what’s stopping me from keeping a “back-up” copy of drm free games? This only means the drm will get worse if this applies to videogames.
03/07/2012 at 20:32 Artificial says:
I honestly think this could possibly do more harm than good. If Steam changed to a Netflix type service, I’d simply stop using it.
Allowing functionality for users to openly trade their games would just destroy the market too, and would be open to all kinds of abuse.
If users were allowed to sell back, their games for a price after they had played them surely that would take out an absolutely huge chunk of Steams profits. Which would result in increased prices, and probably worse / sales too.
Sometimes I do regret buying games, but I just put up with it and live with it. I like the system we have in place now, and I’ve never really wanted it to change.
Also, with used goods, surely there has to be some sort of penalty for buying used, otherwise everyone will just buy used.
03/07/2012 at 20:41 Kadayi says:
Given this is not actually a judgement about games, but software overall (Oracle don’t make games) and therefore impacts everything from MP3s and operating systems through to industrial/professional applications I expect it will either be revoked or rescinded under challenge because it’s impact on the software industry would be frankly catastrophic.
Also I do find it slightly hilarious that John is championing about this as the only way to enforce it is actually through massively increased DRM.
Still if you think Apple are going to allow people to sell their itunes purchases to their friends, you’re much mistaken.
03/07/2012 at 20:46 trjp says:
Worth bearing in mind this only applies to retail/consumer sales.
Business to Business stuff wouldn’t be covered – so Oracle can continue to charge far too much fucking money for their frankly half-finished crap.
04/07/2012 at 02:08 Kadayi says:
It’s a general judgement at this stage. In terms of detail I fully expect a distinction to be made between commercial software (Photoshop, lightroom, Autocad, Quicken, etc, etc) Vs creative software (MP3s, movies, games) and different rules to be drawn up for both given that there’s a world of difference between production tools Vs entertainment (where you are paying for an experience).
03/07/2012 at 20:45 trjp says:
I’m also in the “things are better as they are” basket.
For years we’ve been saying that games need to be cheaper – then the issue of pre-owned doesn’t matter because it’s not worth bothering.
The PC was moving towards that and this could derail things.
That said, I reckon Steam are looking at a game trading system already – it just seems like the sort of thing they’d consider…
03/07/2012 at 20:48 trjp says:
Also – there’s a simply way around it, which is to switch to selling using virtual currency.
You buy £20 SteamDollars and then buy games with that. Consumer Law would only apply to the purchase of SteamDollars and as it’s a virtual currency (and not a consumer product) then consumer laws wouldn’t apply.
Anything bought with SteamDollars wouldn’t be covered because it’s not real money – solution GET!
03/07/2012 at 20:52 Cinek says:
It doesn’t apply to PC gaming only. Consoles are probably in the most troubled situation now as out there developers did EVERYTHING to block re-sales. PC market was never that harsh towards reselling.
04/07/2012 at 12:28 trjp says:
erm – resale of physical games is easy and apart from ‘online play passports’ there’s nothing to stop you reselling 360/PS3 games.
The few PC physical games are, on the other hand, are almost all ‘Steam keys’ or similar and thus unresellable.
Most PC games are digital and digital games are pretty much unresaleable. You could sell the keys you get from people like Gamersgate if you really wanted to – hell you could sell your Steam account if you really wanted to – but would anyone really want to buy that??
03/07/2012 at 21:29 wodin says:
I’ve been waiting for someone to take the software companies and publishers to court over draconian DRM etc and this is the start great news. Once the court says you can do what you want with YOUR copy and have right to access of your COPY then this online only nonsence will also go out of the window.
Once the EU court passes a ruling, thats it.
03/07/2012 at 21:53 Kadayi says:
“I’ve been waiting for someone to take the software companies and publishers to court over draconian DRM etc and this is the start great news.”
Actually if implemented this would massively increase DRM across the board, because effectively it would be required to ensure that purchasers who could potentially resell their software abide by the ruling in that they wouldn’t be replicating their software. Think permanently online account based hardware specific/tied software.
04/07/2012 at 11:56 fish99 says:
Yup, you can potentially expect Diablo 3 style always-on in every game now.
03/07/2012 at 21:31 wodin says:
Also people saying everyone will just buy secondhand is rubbish cos if that as the case no one would buy them first hand.
Just expect more pre oder goodies.
03/07/2012 at 22:01 evilhippo says:
Cool, I am going to photocopy all the books I own and sell them too.
03/07/2012 at 23:37 Johnny Lizard says:
Don’t forget to destroy the originals or you will be breaking the law.
03/07/2012 at 22:22 HisMastersVoice says:
Hah, just took a brief look at Steam ToS. “Subscription to access XYZ” reads a little different to “license”, eh?
Guess this ruling might not have any effect on how Steam operates after all.
03/07/2012 at 23:48 harith says:
the thing is with trade agreement you might call it sub to a game in the trade agreement, but the judge might say this is a licence so then it is a licence and shuld be held by those laws. this hold especially true for consumer – company sales where the goverment dose it’s best to protect the consumer.
also sub is also known as a limited time licence and in the case the they used for this ruling i belive it beaing a company based licence they where timed so it is directly applybal anyhow.
a licence is a licence you might limit the time you can use it but when you have sold it the consumer can do whatever they want with it even reselling it.
think like this you can sell your WoW account without time on the person needs to buy his own limited time licence but he dosen’t need to give activison blizzard the front up change for the intially softwear cost
04/07/2012 at 00:47 HisMastersVoice says:
The ruling only concerns lifetime licenses, not timed ones. That’s all the companies like Valve need to make this a non issue.
There are also some fine print differences between a subscription to a service and a purchase of a license, even if both are described as lifetime.
Also, I haven’t read the ToS for Blizz accounts lately, but if they’re anything like the Steam ones, then no, you cannot sell it legally even with this ruling in mind.
04/07/2012 at 00:40 manveruppd says:
There’s a dangerous flipside to this: that some distribution services might start offering only time-limited licenses for games, which will expire either after a set period or once you’ve finished the game. That way they’ll circumvent the ruling, and you won’t be able to re-sell.
It would make financial sense, as they’d be able to sell games more cheaply (as it’d basically be a very long rental rather than a full purchase), but it’d be pretty dastardly, and I wouldn’t buy from a service that did that. I don’t for moment think that a company like GOG would stoop so low, for instance, and I doubt Steam would either (mainly because, with the gifting mechanic and currency transactions for their f2p games having been already introduced, I seriously suspect they’ve already been moving towards allowing people to resell their Steam games even before this ruling – possibly on their own marketplace with them taking a cut).
04/07/2012 at 01:06 Byron_Black says:
So basically all game liscences are going to include “Rented for X years” and x is gonna be some time after your dead so you can’t resell it.
04/07/2012 at 01:29 kud13 says:
does that mean the license will automatically pass on to your descendants? or will it revert back to the publishers upon the “buyer’s” death?
04/07/2012 at 01:23 kud13 says:
hrrm
On the first glance, this is a great statement, because:
a) it is pro-consumer rights, which is good by default.
b) it labels software as “product”, challenging the abhorrent “software is a service” BS that publishers have been insisting we swallow for the last 15 years.
on the second glance, this raises a million of questions. This will undoubtedly spark further legal debates, with the direct intent to define just what is “a license”.
Since the UN and its child-branch WIPO have decided that “software is literature” when it comes to IP, we’ve been trying to hammer software IP laws into the centuries-old literature-shaped hole for ages. if nothing else, this decision is a clear sign that the law as it is today is hopelessly obsolete and requires a major overhaul.
I’m fairly confident that this decision is gonna be one of those decisions that “decide nothing, but change everything”–i.e., there’s gonna be a ton of decisions following this in order to clarify the fundamental changes we have had thrust upon us.
This is certainly a major setback for the idea of a unified IP law, since I have enormous doubts that such a model is gonna be accepted in North America.
As for the applications to the game industry, I too, feel that most likely course of action for publishers will be try their hardest to make games more “service-like”–subscriptions, F2P, and various other methods, to pigeonhole games into the limits of the legal test for a “service” , whatever those may become. Ultimately, the only way we could get something good out of this is a return to a cd-key based DRM. This is how I could see the re-sale model working easily for DRM-free distributors such as GOG. Given that these are such a small fraction of the market, when compared to GaFWL, Steam, Origin and Uplay, this utopian solution sadly seems highly unlikely.
I’m not even gonna try to speculate about the economic implications of this.
04/07/2012 at 14:02 Emeraude says:
Since the UN and its child-branch WIPO have decided that “software is literature” when it comes to IP, we’ve been trying to hammer software IP laws into the centuries-old literature-shaped hole for ages.
That or try to be allowed to mix the best world of patent laws and copyright laws into a terrifying mix.
But yeah, this is tremendous not so much in itself but in its ramifications. Going to be fascinating to observe how things go, if anything.
04/07/2012 at 03:16 theswordandthefail says:
Now if only this would come to america!
04/07/2012 at 06:06 wuwul says:
What happens if I attempt to resell an account that has been permanently banned? (e.g. World of Warcraft account, for instance)
Assuming it has to be unbanned, won’t this make anti-botting measures completely ineffective, since you can just sell keys once they are banned?
04/07/2012 at 06:12 Akael says:
Well that new economist Valve hired should come in handy about now.
04/07/2012 at 07:20 Sureiya says:
in the future:
Resell used cinema tickets.
04/07/2012 at 07:47 theallmightybob says:
Couldent a service like steam change its EULA for all its new sign ups to simply say that every key you buy is an extention to your steam licence, not an individual licence? hence just making it so that all you can do is sell your steam licence, not one piece of it.? pretty much making this moot?
04/07/2012 at 08:21 Kadayi says:
“The Court Of Justice of the European Union has just ruled that people should be able to resell downloaded games.
No they didn’t. They made a broad judgement regarding a specific case between a company that sells databases and another company that was selling used licences to the formers products. Until full legislation is drawn up it’s foolish to jump to any such conclusions regarding games. There’s gulf of difference between business software like Oracle sell and entertainment software in terms of usage and consumption and any legislation will undoubtedly factor that in.
04/07/2012 at 08:57 MadTinkerer says:
While I respect the ability of other people to resell their games in theory, because it means my personal collection of reference materials (be they on disc or cartridge) will be larger for the same amount of money… Seriously I don’t get why people willingly resell their games.
If it’s a space issue, all right then. I had to make some hard choices to preserve my collection when I moved out, and if your game collection is your hard choice, then that’s fine.
If your granny got you a game you didn’t want or already had, all right then. It’s happened to me a few times.
If your Mom or Dad makes you get rid of part of your collection, all right then. I mean, move out. Because that is not all right.
If you need money to get the latest-super-awesome-console-shooter, NO! You dopes, just wait for a sale! There are more sales than ever! Or wait for someone to trade their game in for the reasons above! Also, (almost) ALL CONSOLE SHOOTERS SUCK!*
If you want to salvage some of the value of your copy because you plan to pirate it after you trade it back in, you are vermin and deserve to be exterminated.
In my opinion, the trade-in or resale value of a copy isn’t ever remotely close to the value of having a game right there for you to play if you need it. Especially on the occasion when you’re paying attention to which games get limited releases, you snap it up at the perfect price, and then months later it’s not available anywhere for less than $100! Good luck getting a cheap copy ever again after you traded that one in!
Buying games at full price, only to trade them in when you’re “done”? Ugh. You are never done with a game, you only stop for a time. And if I end up with your copy at a bargain price and you have seller’s remorse but refuse to pay hundreds to get it back again, you deserve what you get: nothing.
(Or even worse: you buy a game at full price, trade it back in the next week for $7, then months later it’s in the $7 bin. If you win the lottery, don’t ever try to invest your own money in anything. Get someone else to do it for you. Even if they con you out of all your riches, at least it will have been them and not you.)
I have so many games. Most of which I paid half or less. Some of which I plucked out of the bargain bin just because that one is worth precisely $5 and no more. Some of which I paid a little extra because I really did want the collector’s edition. Quite a few of which are now a pain to get at any price, but I never paid more than full price: I just never traded them back.
In the long run, it pays to never, ever trade or sell your games.
*All console shooters suck except for ones on the N64 and Gamecube. I still don’t quite know how Goldeneye/Perfect Dark and the Metroid Prime teams did it, but those games somehow just work. But Xbox Halo &etc. are unplayable. Absolutely atrocious. Real friends don’t let friends play shooters on XBox Live.
04/07/2012 at 11:54 fish99 says:
What if the game sucks, or it isn’t for you, or you bought it on a whim, but it’s still new enough that someone will pay you a decent amount of money for it? I’d say that’s a good reason to sell a digital game.
Maybe you’re one of the those people that buys a game on release day, plays it like mad until completion (or boredom) and then would like to redeem 60-70% of that investment a week later. People already do this with console games, trade them after a week. Again another good reason to sell a digital game.
04/07/2012 at 12:25 trjp says:
This is the 21st century, no-one should be buying games without knowing a great deal about them.
The only people who will be buying full price PC titles and discovering they don’t like them are kids – and their parents simply need to learn to not indulge their bratty offspring.
Anyone who’s remotely grown-up will have read a load of previews/reviews/forum comments – watched videos and probably played some sort of demo or BETA of pretty much anything which costs over £10…
04/07/2012 at 13:57 Emeraude says:
You mean like all those serious “grown ups” who carefully read Dragon Age 2 reviews, thought it was OK to buy, and immediately regretted doing so ?
Don’t tell me… it’s their fault for showing enthusiasm and wanting to be early adopters, but not having enough investment in the medium to have seen the signs that the game wouldn’t be good on could see before release ?
Seriously I don’t get why people willingly resell their games.
Because they don’t see a point in keeping some of them ? Simple as that. You buy a game, enjoy it on the moment, think it’s a keeper. And then time passes and you realize it only was anecdotic to you and you could as well get some money back out of it ?
Or you need the money. Simple as that. Maybe not for gaming related reasons. And if so, maybe even sales aren’t enough to guarantee you will be able to get the games you want at the time you want/can play them.
Personally never sell my games, I’m a collector… but the ability to gift them back after playing them – or lend them ? Yeah, that I pretty much want.
04/07/2012 at 18:40 fish99 says:
Even if you were this perfect person you paint yourself out to be (which I don’t believe for one second btw), who never regretted a single penny spent on gaming, who never got sucked in by hype, who never bought a game in a new genre to try it out only to find out it wasn’t for you, who was never tricked by paid-for-reviews, that still doesn’t account for people who want to sell a game simply because they finished it.
To say that there’s no circumstance under which someone would ever want to sell a digital game is a ridiculous statement. People sell things all the time, and for peanuts.
04/07/2012 at 14:23 DodgyG33za says:
Okay smartarse: Bundles when I already have some of them.
05/07/2012 at 13:00 Xtinction says:
I play all my singleplayer pc-shooters on my tv with a controller, also, Halo is one of my favourite shooters of all time, just because of the music, AI and split-screen MP. U mad bro? ;)
Also: I’d want to sell 80% of the games I finish. I am an adult now, and realise that I will never have the time to replay any of the good games. Or i would at least rather play a new game than reexperience an old one (well except baldur’s gate, duh). I guess I’m not emotionally attached to that many games.
Example: I just sold Dark souls for 15 euros and bought AssRevelations for 13,50 new. Sure DS is better than AR, but i’ve finished it, and dont intend to replay… well not the Xbox version anyway :P
04/07/2012 at 15:22 Cockles says:
I don’t really see why everyone is jumping to massive conclusions from this ruling, we don’t know how the specifics of this are going to iron out. The bottom line is, a ruling has been made that recognises a little more consumer rights in a relatively modern medium that has been dictated as pretty much a one-way relationship by the providers of software thus far. Those providers haven’t exactly been mindful of consumer rights as of yet and, especially in the world of computer games, seem to be doing their utmost to screw us over out a basic principle that we hand over money and we get something.
I fail to see how this is a good thing, the practical implementations of this may be hurtful in the short to medium term but the bottom line is this: LOTS of people want to play games on their computers and most of these people are willing to pay money to do so. Whomever provides the best service and puts in a lot of work to respect and provide consumers with this will make a lot of money.
In the UK (and most countries), if you want money, you have to go to a bank and get it from them, they have a near-monopoly on money creation and fuck us all over for it. You don’t own your money, the bank does and they invest in things you may not agree with and promise to give you an amount of it back should you ever request it (I’m getting sidetracked but the point is it’s a monopoly and you have no choice, it’s also an important issue that the UK government ignore or are ignorant of for whatever reason). In a field such as games, if valve, origin and all the major digital distributors go to a Netflix-style subscription model then some bright spark will move in to fill the gap and offer people the chance to own and trade their games. Publishers may not like this but if they can see that money can be made from this model then they WILL go for it. You have the desire to play games and want to own them, if someone meets that desire with a good service then they will likely become a market leader. Maybe.
We may be used to crap systems that game publishers force on us but that doesn’t make them right and they certainly don’t need lamenting when a court challenges the principle of them. This just pushes the argument along, where it goes is not worth crying over yet, a positive step has been made in helping to guide an utterly confusing issue as to whether you own this digital stuff or not.
06/07/2012 at 09:09 Furtled says:
Fantastic news.
EA’s legal department’s response when I asked them about how this applied to certain sections of their EULA was “EA’s position with respect to the terms of the EULA remains unchanged.” so looks like someone will have to push the issue there.