Steam now explicitly states you're not buying the game, just a license

[Arthurik_jan]

I want to say something as a response to Steam's statement, but I'm very certain the TechSpot mods would be less than happy with it.

So instead I will paint a mental image:
I'm holding up both of my hands with a particular finger on each fully extended.

@ Valve,
You don't have the right to make this decisions. Our rights to ownership of what we pay for, or receive gratis, is a protected right, one you don't get to revoke on a whim.


Exactly. Except that it is.

Zed, my man, I am not trying to be patronizing or disrespectful, so I apologize if it sounds like it. Every time you bought a game from a platform like Steam, Origin (EA Play), Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store or any other launcher except GoG, you basically gave them the right to, amongst many other things, disable your access to said game whenever the need should arise on their end.

GoG and a few others, like Itch.io iare the only ones who lets you download all the installation files and dlcs so you can install and play on any computer, even without an internet connection or without a launcher and even on multiple computers simultaneously and play with each other. Much like a pirated copy.

This has been the de facto standard since 2004. It's a disgusting practice, yes. I hate it. But Steam is now being upfront about it. That's a move in the right direction.

 

[ZedRM]

Zed, my man, I am not trying to be patronizing or disrespectful, so I apologize if it sounds like it.

Not a problem.

Every time you bought a game from a platform like Steam, Origin (EA Play), Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games Store or any other launcher except GoG, you basically gave them the right to, amongst many other things, disable your access to said game whenever the need should arise on their end.

Ah, but this is where the misunderstanding is. In the EU, USA, UK and a few other places, when a citizen purchases something, that single something belongs to them and can not LEGALLY be taken away, even if a contract(EULA) states it can be. Certain types of right are statutory, IE they can not be revoked by contract terms. The flip side of this is that a citizen has to act to protect their rights. Most people either can not be bothered with the effort or can not afford the legal expenses. Companies know this and count on the passive nature of the public to get away with the actions they envision.

GoG and a few others, like Itch.io iare the only ones who lets you download all the installation files and dlcs so you can install and play on any computer, even without an internet connection or without a launcher and even on multiple computers simultaneously and play with each other.

True and those companies are in harmony with both the letter of the law and the spirit of it.

Much like a pirated copy.

No. A pirated copy needs a crack and requires the user to break certain limitations to run the software. Games sold without DRM are specifically engineered to run freely with no alteration from the user. There's a huge difference there.

It's a disgusting practice, yes.

It certainly is.

I hate it.

You show me someone who likes it and I'll show you someone who thinks a screen door on a submarine is a good idea.

 

[DDG4005]

"A purchase of a digital product on GOG grants you its Offline Installers, which cannot be taken away from you."
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Steam...th-perfectly-sarcastic-response.900401.0.html

I love these guys.

Same here.

 

[Burty117]

Ah, but this is where the misunderstanding is. In the EU, USA, UK and a few other places, when a citizen purchases something, that single something belongs to them and can not LEGALLY be taken away, even if a contract(EULA) states it can be. Certain types of right are statutory, IE they can not be revoked by contract terms. The flip side of this is that a citizen has to act to protect their rights. Most people either can not be bothered with the effort or can not afford the legal expenses. Companies know this and count on the passive nature of the public to get away with the actions they envision.

That is false information, I purchased Overwatch, yet I no longer can play it, I purchased The Crew, yet I can no longer play it, I purchased Titanfall, yet I can no longer play it.

On top of that, you aren’t purchasing the game, you are purchasing a limited license which grants you the right to play the game for a certain period of time.

This is the misunderstanding here, as I said before, you are under some illusion you currently own your Steam Library, you don’t, you have a limited license to your steam library that can be revoked at anytime.

The language is being changed so this is better understood and to help remove the misunderstanding that you own anything.

 

[BecauseRallyCar]

My gripe is the fact corporations feel that we shouldn’t own anything or be able to use something we’ve paid money for past the period of time they consider relevant. While I hardly ever play multiplayer games anymore, the thought that a platform can barge into my machine and render a copy of software I paid for useless is quite egregious.

I get that we’re paying for a license and that servers can’t last forever, yet I think the younger generation has either not experienced or forgotten about the benefit of physical copies. Yeah, Valve might delete my digital copy of Half-Life from my Steam account if they so desire but they can’t go into my house and take the CD I bought in the late ‘90s, nor can they stop me from installing it and playing it on my old Win98 machine. While some people in this thread seem to want to excuse corporate malfeasance, even major corporations have limits on their power.

 

[waclark]

snip

Interesting it doesn’t include physical media though, if I buy a game on the PS Store, it’s a long term rented license, if I buy the physical version of the same game, I own it outright?

Nope, a physical copy of the game does not give you ownership rights.

 

[Gezzer]

Steam really had no choice in this.

Remember that Steam isn't a developer/publisher. It's a storefront, the fact that it was developed by a video game developer/publisher (Valve) doesn't change that fact. The problem is that selling other publisher's products imposes their licensing agreements on Steam as well.

Steam has stated that they wouldn't do anything to the games sold to you if they ever fail as a platform. But that's them, and only really applies to Steam and Valve. EA, Ubisoft, MS can do whatever they want according to the license they grant the end user.

So the disclaimer is really only to clarify the fact that by default all the other publishers are granting you a license not ownership, and that's beyond Steam's control.

 

[BogdanR]

Time to buy less from Steam and more from GOG.

 

[ZedRM]

That is false information

That is your opinion. You're welcome to it. Have fun being fleeced.

 

[ZedRM]

Nope, a physical copy of the game does not give you ownership rights.

Wrong, but we've been over this..

 

[Burty117]

That is your opinion. You're welcome to it. Have fun being fleeced.

It is not an opinion, it is a fact, I can't find a single article out there regarding this clarification being called an opinion.

It is a FACT, you already were purchasing a limited license that gave you access to a game.
It is a FACT, said third party could take this license away at any point in time.

Those are the facts and have been for 20 years now, the only thing changing is the law. The law now states, said third party's cannot claim you are "buying/purchasing" said game if it's a limited license, so Steam have updated the language used to make this abundantly clear.

And let me be clear here, I live in the UK, have all my life, and I'm all for movements like StopKillingGames, but the facts are facts, not opinions, you never had any rights to the games you purchased on Steam.

I already gave you a list of games I personally lost access to through this, I looked into what legally I could do (Overwatch 1 is a far superior game to Overwatch 2) and there is nothing, it's not about "the little guy" against goliath corporate entity, there's no opinions here, me (and you) buy limited licenses that (graciously) gives us access to a game, it does not give us the right to anything more and they are time limited, they can be withdrawn for practically any reason.

You can disagree with the above, you can say whatever you want to say, but above are the cold hard facts of the reality you (and me) live in right this very second.

What can we do about it? Well if everyone stopped buying games through these services, and solely relied on GoG, that would force publishers and stores to re-think this strategy. Movements like StopKillingGames getting more attention and more people contacting their local governments about it, make it a political issue, so laws are changed and force these companies to make the current arangements illigal moving forwards, or at the very least, when it comes to digital goods, if said company doesn't want to support the software anymore, they are required by law to give a final working state version of said software, give end users the server code in a usable state as an example, so users can host servers themselves, this used to be norm until one day, developers/publishers decided they'll host the servers themselves and now, games simply die when they decide.

BUT, you clearly have a bee in your bonnet about this, so tell me, have you had any games that have gone offline or been removed completely in your library? If so, what did you do to get them back? If not, what would you do if they decided to take away a game?

 

[waclark]

Wrong, but we've been over this..

You might want to read up on this. I'm not wrong for most SW titles. Here's what Legal Zoom has to say about it:

"If you're thinking about sharing or selling software you've bought, think again. If you buy a book or a CD, the 'first sale doctrine' allows you to sell, trade or give away what you've bought. Not so with most software."

Here's how I know you don't "own" the software just because you have a physical copy. While you may be able to sell that CD/DVD to someone else you cannot keep a copy for yourself. If you owned the SW, you could copy it as many times as you like and sell it. You could modify the SW and sell the modified program to anyone and everyone. But if you copy the disc or make digital copies and sell them, you will be in violation of US copyright law.

 

[waclark]

My gripe is the fact corporations feel that we shouldn’t own anything or be able to use something we’ve paid money for past the period of time they consider relevant. While I hardly ever play multiplayer games anymore, the thought that a platform can barge into my machine and render a copy of software I paid for useless is quite egregious.

I get that we’re paying for a license and that servers can’t last forever, yet I think the younger generation has either not experienced or forgotten about the benefit of physical copies. Yeah, Valve might delete my digital copy of Half-Life from my Steam account if they so desire but they can’t go into my house and take the CD I bought in the late ‘90s, nor can they stop me from installing it and playing it on my old Win98 machine. While some people in this thread seem to want to excuse corporate malfeasance, even major corporations have limits on their power.

I think this is less about "corporations" and more about copyright laws. In the case of gaming, many games are created by corporations, and they will utilize copyright laws to protect that intellectual property. But there are also indie games sometimes built by a single person who will also take advantage of copyright laws to prevent some big corporation from taking their idea and stealing it.

Regarding physical copies, it is possible to prevent you from using those physical copies but that would have to be built into the application with some code that might look at the OS and prevent installation on certain versions or it could prevent installation past a particular date etc. I don't know of anyone doing this, but it could be done. You can also do it by requiring an "account" with the publishing company and then monitoring that account for installs. Last but not least they could shut down all updates to the app/game which might not render it unplayable but might make it less desirable to play due to bugs or performance issues.

Copyright law is complex and, in my opinion, needing an overhaul to account for digital systems. There was a brief moment in time where companies would attempt to prevent you from making backup copies of physical media, but the courts fortunately ruled in favor of the purchaser.

 

[ZedRM]

I'm not going to type out a university essay to explain what you people are clearly missing. As I said earlier, this is an internet forum, it is not a venue of consequence. If you want to continue with your misunderstandings and letting companies bully you like they have, that's your choice. Good luck with that.

 

[Burty117]

I'm not going to type out a university essay to explain what you people are clearly missing. As I said earlier, this is an internet forum, it is not a venue of consequence. If you want to continue with your misunderstandings and letting companies bully you like they have, that's your choice. Good luck with that.

Not only have you been unable to tell us what we're missing, you've been unable to link anything to backup your claims, no links to any articles supporting your point of view and nothing to backup your opinion, no personal examples, nothing.

The only person here with a misunderstanding is you.

 

[waclark]

Not only have you been unable to tell us what we're missing, you've been unable to link anything to backup your claims, no links to any articles supporting your point of view and nothing to backup your opinion, no personal examples, nothing.

The only person here with a misunderstanding is you.

^^^Exactly this. This person has no clue what they are talking about. And I seriously doubt they've ever written a "university essay".

 

[ZedRM]

Not only have you been unable to tell us what we're missing, you've been unable to link anything to backup your claims, no links to any articles supporting your point of view and nothing to backup your opinion, no personal examples, nothing.

The only person here with a misunderstanding is you.

^^^Exactly this. This person has no clue what they are talking about. And I seriously doubt they've ever written a "university essay".

Yes, that must be it. I must the clueless one here. Moving on..

 

[waclark]

Yes, that must be it. I must the clueless one here. Moving on..

Unless you have a source, which I'm sure you don't, there's not much else to say. Since you seem to be misinformed, I'll show you one very good example from Blizzard's EULA.

It states:

"Your use of the Platform is licensed, not sold, to you, and you hereby acknowledge that no title or ownership with respect to the Platform or the Games is being transferred or assigned and this Agreement should not be construed as a sale of any rights."

The bold emphasis is mine, but it should be pretty clear that you do not own ANY Blizzard games regardless of where they were purchased or in what form.

 

[ZedRM]

Since you seem to be misinformed

Maybe. But at least I can follow a train of thought and understand context.

It states:

"Your use of the Platform is licensed, not sold, to you, and you hereby acknowledge that no title or ownership with respect to the Platform or the Games is being transferred or assigned and this Agreement should not be construed as a sale of any rights."

Very well highlighted. You got it spot on. Now what did you miss?

The bold emphasis is mine, but it should be pretty clear that you do not own ANY Blizzard games regardless of where they were purchased or in what form.

Something is very clear. You're missing it.