Valve has until October 10 to resolve EULA dispute in Germany

[Shawn Knight]

Valve is facing legal action from the Federation of German Consumer Organizations regarding recent changes made to their end-user license agreement (EULA). A representative for the organization says the developer has until October 10 to respond to their desist order before seeking to resolve the dispute in court.

As Cinema Blend points out, the organization is essentially an umbrella group comprised of multiple consumer rights advocates that aim to resolve matters deemed unfair to consumers. They are targeting Valve due to recent changes in their EULA that would protect them from an EU ruling on the resale of digital content.

That EU ruling says a software author cannot oppose the resale of a used license for the use of their program since exclusive right or distribution of computer software covered by such a license is exhausted on its first sale. This essentially means that gamers can resell digital game licenses to other players once they are bored with a title.

The consumer rights group has also taken issue with other aspects of the new EULA including the right for Valve to lock a customer out of their account if they didn’t agree to the new terms. Many feel this is unfair as users who don’t agree with the new terms would no longer have access to any games they had previously purchased through the platform. It’s a situation that sounds eerily similar to the type of problems that Steve Wozniak predicted would happen with cloud storage.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/50282-valve-has-until-october-10-to-resolve-eula-dispute-in-germany.html

 

[Scavengers]

"See Junior. There are still some governments that work for its people.
You simply have to look beyond our borders".

Dave

 

[Guest]

I have to say that on a personal level Steam has been nothing but great for me, cheap games and very convenient, but I've always had pretty disturbing reservations at the back of my mind about how it operates exactly, and how Valve feel free to behave however they like want with regard to things like locking people out of Steam accounts on flimsy pretences, changing the EULA, trying to prevent people selling their accounts etc. None of those things have any legal basis internationally, and it's time they were challenged and proper guidelines were put in place regarding them rather than Valve just deciding things on an ad hoc basis.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Yes Valve does a lot of good things but this is something that the whole industry is culpable for. They attack consumers for the illegal things done. Fine. But they then attack consumer rights hoping to make more money. Not fine.

 

[howzz1854]

That law needs to cross the boarder. for the reason that I am now stuck with certain shitty games that I just don't enjoy, while I know others find it entertaining.

 

[Novulux]

So they are requiring them to add a feature in order to sell games which would take time and money to do?
I also hope this doesn't make game devs do things like selling limited licenses (1-2 years). At the very least, keep lifetime licenses unsellable and offer those as well

 

[Guest]

It's not clear if the EU ruling dictates Valve have to somehow enable the reselling of titles, only that they can't opposite (e.g. banning accounts that have been resold, as they've done in the past).

Game publishers (developers don't make these kind of decisions) should be shooting themselves in the foot if they were to offer limited licenses, and frankly very stupid as most games make the vast majority of their sales and profits within the first few months of release.

I've always though publishers were being stupidly greedy by trying to combat the second hand market when what they should have been doing is investing in the quality of their games so people want to hold onto them for longer. Reselling only really hurts profits when it's within the initial sales times period, for instance someone buying a game on release day, completing it within 48 hours, deciding not to keep it and so going back to the store and trading it in. That's a problem because that second hand copy is now competing with new sales, so multiply that by a large number of consumers and you have a large number of lost sales. However if you make your game decent enough that people hold onto it for say, six months, then there are no second hand copies available during the initial sale period because no-one is prepared to part with their copy yet. By the time people do decide to trade in the game it's already dropped in price and has limited demand, so it's not really any issue anymore.

TL;DR: if you churn out crap games with limited replayability then expect second hand sales to cut into your profits, make engaging games that hold people's attention and second hand sales won't be an issue.

 

[Burty117]

Everyone here who says that making a great game won't get resold (or at least, won't hurt profits) are correct.

When I buy a game, I like to buy brand new, if its crap, I'll try to take it back, if its pretty good (Crysis, Guild Wars 2, Mass Effect 2, Battlefield 3) then I will keep it, hell I've still got the original Half-Life and Unreal tournament on CD's because they are great games.

Main point is, make a memorable game, a game I want to re-visit, then I'm not going to re-sell it. Make a game like BRINK for instance then I'm going to trade it in.

 

[gamoniac]

Everyone here who says that making a great game won't get resold (or at least, won't hurt profits) are correct.

When I buy a game, I like to buy brand new, if its crap, I'll try to take it back, if its pretty good (Crysis, Guild Wars 2, Mass Effect 2, Battlefield 3) then I will keep it, hell I've still got the original Half-Life and Unreal tournament on CD's because they are great games.

Main point is, make a memorable game, a game I want to re-visit, then I'm not going to re-sell it. Make a game like BRINK for instance then I'm going to trade it in.

Game developement is not easy and it is expensive. Game companies lose a lot of money on games that do not hit it big. Of course they want to make every game big and sell millions of them. To say that it is their fault for not making good game is absurd, punishing them for trying something new instead of going with something safe. Besides, many great games don't make it big because they have a smaller targeted clientele.

When you buy a game, you buy the license to use it. Whether you can resell it is entirely up to the maker. Take an example, can you resell your anti-virus software, or operating system, if after opening the box, you decided that you don't like it? Why should we treat games differently? I am with the game companies on this one.

Don't get me wrong. I like to sell my old games, too. But just because it is good for us does not mean it is good for the industry. Quite a few game companies have gone out of business or in financial distress in recent years. It's a cut throat and unforgiving industry.

 

[Burty117]

Everyone here who says that making a great game won't get resold (or at least, won't hurt profits) are correct.

When I buy a game, I like to buy brand new, if its crap, I'll try to take it back, if its pretty good (Crysis, Guild Wars 2, Mass Effect 2, Battlefield 3) then I will keep it, hell I've still got the original Half-Life and Unreal tournament on CD's because they are great games.

Main point is, make a memorable game, a game I want to re-visit, then I'm not going to re-sell it. Make a game like BRINK for instance then I'm going to trade it in.

Game developement is not easy and it is expensive. Game companies lose a lot of money on games that do not hit it big. Of course they want to make every game big and sell millions of them. To say that it is their fault for not making good game is absurd, punishing them for trying something new instead of going with something safe. Besides, many great games don't make it big because they have a smaller targeted clientele.

When you buy a game, you buy the license to use it. Whether you can resell it is entirely up to the maker. Take an example, can you resell your anti-virus software, or operating system, if after opening the box, you decided that you don't like it? Why should we treat games differently? I am with the game companies on this one.

Don't get me wrong. I like to sell my old games, too. But just because it is good for us does not mean it is good for the industry. Quite a few game companies have gone out of business or in financial distress in recent years. It's a cut throat and unforgiving industry.

I disagree entirely, the only reason I have ever got rid of a game is because I didn't enjoy it or didn't have any reply value, That is down to the quality of the game.

The reason you should be able to sell your game "License" as it were, is because the console crowd can do it, why can't the PC crowd?

I agree making a game is big and expensive and I'm not saying to try something risky every single title they make, I like story continuation in fact, But Crysis is a good example of a game series which was rubbish since Crysis 2, They spent loads of money optimizing the engine etc... but forgot about what people liked about the original, again this game was one which I saw a lot of pre-owned copies in my local game shops.

True you cannot blame the entire pre-owned "Financial issue" purely based on game quality alone, you can at least blame low game quality as a partial reason for it becoming an issue.

 

[Guest]

When you buy a game, you buy the license to use it. Whether you can resell it is entirely up to the maker. Take an example, can you resell your anti-virus software, or operating system, if after opening the box, you decided that you don't like it? Why should we treat games differently? I am with the game companies on this one.

You've missed the point of the EU's ruling entirely. It's not at all up to the maker whether you can resell it or not, and yes this applies to antivirus software and operating systems as well as games. Did you even read this article, it explicitly states this.

That EU Ruling says a software author cannot oppose the resale of a used license for the use of their program since exclusive right or distribution of computer software covered by such a license is exhausted on its first sale.

 

[SirDigby]

I don't think they you should be able to resell digital copies of games, if you have reselling in mind, buy a physical copy. Digital copies can be easily copied and pasted making torrenting that much easier.

 

[Guest]

Real easy, Valve should charge fee for transfer & share some with other parties.

 

[Guest]

What has torrenting got to do with reselling, ETF Soldier? Also, that only applies to DRM-free digital copies, and even then the difference between that and ripping from a physical copy is trivial. Digital copies tied to accounts like Steam are in fact more difficult to distribute illegally than physical copies.