If they actually cared, they'd be like Humble and strictly limit purchases, instead of selling reseller-friendly 20 packs at a massive discount.
Since the blog doesn't say "We're discontinuing all happy hours", they don't actually care and are just pretending to do something to shut people up. That's also why they say "we can't make people use this" so many times - literally zero shady sites are going to use it, because there's no profit in it.
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+1
We don’t condone the situation, as our terms stipulate that keys acquired from our platform are for personal use only.
.
It is not possible to buy more than 40 bundle gifts for each bundle.
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Is it so bad what those resellers do? Like, they buy the game legitimately when a dev wants to bundle or sell it at a discount, then find some idiot whose willing to pay a higher price for it (which i don't get, since it'd be so easy to find that lower price from a legit retail seller.)
Of course this is discounting the possibility that they buy them with stolen credit card information, those naughty little buggers.
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Some people might be surprised by my stance on this, as I've previously said bad things about the grey market platforms, but no, I personally don't think it's "bad" to re-sell a key, as long as you've legally obtained it and not done anything shady to get it (and everyone got payed along the way). It's their right to sell a product that they've previously purchased (and this is a right I don't want infringed further upon!). It can be a problem though, for us non-resellers, as the grey market pushes away the games that we actually want from the lower bundle tiers, due to developers/publishers fearing resellers (and thus it will mainly be the devs who are desperate to get into a bundle to get some exposure or heck, even some sales, will be fine with being in a lower bundle-tier).
The grey market, and it's (potential) pros & cons are a complicated thing to talk about :(
In theory, I'm for the grey market, in its current incarnation, I'm against it.
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+1 - I do not like the grey market - but people should be aware that their argument is a little odd - as personal use means that if I purchase a key - legally - and then I choose to sell it - or even give it away - then that is me personally choosing to do so and is thus personal use (people should always bear that in mind because technically gifting on SG might, to some, seem like not personal use in their eyes - please note I would not resell my keys, this is just a statement noting that even their TOS regarding 'personal use' is open to as much interpretation as the grey market issue
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Hi Fnord :D. EU laws allow software purchasers to re-sell their products but the laws in America do not.
That said - according to the blog post:
"A publisher (with whom we have a distribution contract) will contact us, upset that keys provided for distribution through IndieGala are now available on a grey market platform at an irregular price point. At this point, our day pauses."
If those keys were obtained through LEGAL manners and the publisher was paid for the product and now that product is being sold by its owner at a discount then the publisher really has no right to get upset. It kind of reminds me of the gamestop trade program that publishers were so pissed off about because they didn't get a part of the profit that gamestop received for selling used games..... as if they had a right to proceeds from used sales to begin with!
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I know about the difference in laws between US & EU. And that's why the resellers tend to be based in the EU (Poland in the case of G2A, even though they're registered in Hong Kong). I was really glad when the EU law about reselling digital goods and the ownership rights was passed, as it's something that I've always viewed as a basic consumer right. I also think it's within Valve's right to not make the transfer of a licence as easy as possible, to put up hurdles like not being able to re-sell an already "used" licence from your account (as much as I would love to be able to re-sell my already activated steam games).
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It's like physical stuff in second hand.. You can buy a PS4, and sell it. You can buy a GPU, and sell it. You can buy a physical game for console, and sell it.
Since it's not stolen of course. Same for digital goods.
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+1 If it were just people legitimately buying and selling keys I'd be all for it. The fact that there have been numerous reports from bundle sellers and devs of large numbers of games being sold and then charged back because the buyer used a stolen credit card is what puts me off. I want the devs that make the games I love to be able to go on to make many more games I'll love, and the only thing that kind of behavior does is make sure they have to work for big publishers who insist on horrible practices like always online DRM or microtransactions just to stay afloat.
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Yeah, those are the issues that make me not like the grey market sites as well. They really need to take a harder stance on things like this (and it sounds like G2A have actually started doing that, from the reports about not being allowed to mass-sell games without providing a photo ID and other means that makes it hard to just create a new account after the games you've sold got revoked 4 months after sale and you got a lot of negative feedback). Who knows, if they continue to improve, I might actually not mind G2A in the future ;)
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The point is not if it is bad or good. The point is if that is illegal or not. Let judges decide that (you are going against dev's ToS and store's ToS).
Also you are not buying a game, you are buying a license that lets you download the game from Steam (or whatever the platform is) and play it.
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Is it so bad what those resellers do?
Commercial resale in breach of listed purchasing contract is illegal [in the states]. Consumer resale in such a manner is inherently legal, though the insane laws the US has allowed corporations to push specifically for digital products has made that a bit murkier.
The question of where the line between the two is, is murky as well- though I believe the official definition of a commercial reseller is anyone that purchases with the initial intent to resell for profit. Notably, as I recall the legalities, a commercial reseller is excepted from consumer protection laws, such as the right of first sale- hence, they don't have access to the laws that allows a consumer to freely resell their purchase as they wish.
Well, whatever the legalities are, "bad" as it relates to ethics ends up being an entirely different topic.
Like Fnord, I'm against the markets themselves (which are designed to be disfavorable to both developers and consumers, and favor the grey market sites by allowing them to engage in scammy practices and avoid the usual obligations that legitimate market sites [such as ebay] utilize), but not against the [legitimate, non-scammer] resellers (regardless of what the legal perspective on their actions is).
Any time we, as consumers, favor something that hinders our freedoms or reliablity of purchase, we only sabotage ourselves moving forward. That's never desirable, no matter what the immediate benefits are.
In other words, if sites like G2A were to conduct themselves as professionally as legitimate sites do, the source of their listings wouldn't really be of any concern to us consumers.
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Well I did toy with the idea of running 40 ASF bots at one point. There are some bundles where it would be worth it and that would be personal use.
I didn't do it in the end, and the number of people doing that compared to the number of people reselling must be tiny. So yep, I agree with you.
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Tremorgames usually put up more then 40 copies on indiegala bundles.
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I guess publishers want to control distribution, so want rules like "Keys are for personal use only".
But why make rules you cannot enforce?
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Yeah, Valve disabled the auto-activation due to security issues.
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I do agree but there need to be ONE exception for your third rule for charge back.
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two copys would be nice. sometimes there are coop/multiplayer-games that I would like to give to a friend
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this would be more or less the end of Steamgifts
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what slyfox said
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Actually they let nVidia use it for the games bundled with GPUs for a long time after bundle sites had to stop with it, so the functionality remained, but was limited to select sites.
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"Don't show the keys to the buyer at all, but only a button which activates it on their Steam acc. (this was sadly disabled by Steam right?)"
This easily damages the overall games industry. That means you would never be able to purchase a game for a friend or family member. No more birthday game gifts johnny!
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If I was your Uncle and I wanted to buy you a video game for your birthday - I am not going to buy it and have it activated to my steam account - obviously - therefor the instant activation at purchase does not support my consumer habits (in the case proposed) and thus alienates and removes me from being a possible purchase - IE damaging the industry.
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"According to the EU Court of Justice, once a software company sells a copy of its program, it loses its exclusive rights to distribution. This legitimizes the market for some resellers."
Err... Um.. if that is the case... anyone who buys a single copy can then sell multiple copies of it elsewhere... which we all know is piracy... Either Indiegala is wrong or The EU Court of Justice is going to have a VERY big problem...
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omg... you know I was just reading the judgment based on that ruling, and you know what? If I'm reading that correctly, Steam is gunna face a shit storm too... That ruling effectively give the right of the account owner/software purchaser to resell any software they have purchased irrespective of steams User Terms and Conditions.
"Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy – tangible or intangible
– and at the same time concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a licence agreement
granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder
sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right. Such a
transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy. Therefore, even if the licence
agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of
that copy. "
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The ruling is 4 years old and steam changed nothing so without an army of good lawyers fighting for that stuff I don't think anything will change.
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Steam is an American company. The American laws are quite clear on re-sale of digital software. In America, we purchase a license to the software and not the software itself - the developer owns every copy of the game that has been sold and you have no legal right to re-sale.
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It's kind of BS, but it might help keep prices low.
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agreed about steam - but indiegala is an EU company and thus subject to the sale of items with regard to EU law - which affords the resale of keys (I do not condone grey markets, but the sale and resale of keys in this instance is legal as they are not part of steam until activated)
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Except that, when operating in Europe, Steam needs to follow EU law
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Does it? Or by accessing an American companies website as an international consumer - do you as the consumer have to follow USA law?
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If they accept payment from a european source, while that source is in europe, they're subject to european laws.
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So you are conjecturing that if I owned a business in the USA that sells .... printer paper. You go on my website and order some printer paper to have it shipped to the EU. I charge your EU credit card and ship the paper to the EU.... you think your EU laws have any jurisdiction over my USA based printer paper selling company that is owned and operated out of the USA? Because I assure you that your laws can and will do nothing.
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<--- actual lawyer
inter-jurisdictional transactions can get tricky. In the case you mentioned, there are a few questions:
1) does the US based business have a "presence " in europe?
2) does the US based business do any kind of marketing or advertising in europe? (or in any other way reaches out to the client?)
3) does the US based business have choice-of-law provisions in their contract/TOS?
---- separate issue----
4) Is the nature of the transaction one that under EU law could result in a chargeback?
5) does the credit card issuer have a presence in both the EU and the US?
this is important because the user could sue the credit card company in europe, and any judgment entered in europe could then be used by the credit card company in a lawsuit in the US
*note that I'm using the term "europe" to stand in for whichever country's laws actually apply, if appropriate
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if you are an actual lawyer then tell me how UFC Que Choisir v. Valve Corporation worked out for EU consumers.
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no idea. I don't follow french law, nor do I know how to research cases there, other than through Westlaw, which charges a fee per search... and I don't plan on spending a shitload of money to win an internet argument
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He is right - I know that a lot of companies refuse to sell stuff in Australia as well because under Australian Law, ANY item that runs on batteries or AC power is required to have a minimum 1 year warranty against defects - from the $0.20 ball that flashes an LED to a $450K Ferrari.
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That idea was going around for a while, but nothing came of it yet.
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Actually, in its current form, Steam is alright. Nothing says that Valve needs to make your sale easier. The EU ruling means that you can sell your steam account, or give it to someone, if you want to, and there's nothing Valve can do about it. When the ruling came into play, the doomsayers were talking about how we would now have a lot of single-game accounts that just make the rounds, once we're done with the game, we'll just sell the account, but that has obviously not happened. It's allowed, but it has not happened.
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From what I read, I was conjecturing that; I buy a game and it's added to my account. I don't really want/like it/get sick of it. I contact steam, say I want to sell it and they would have to either place it in my inventory or put it in the community market for me to reprice and resell it to another user.
Of course this only works if I live in the EU, but technically I think that my interpretation would be considered legit.
Anyone with EU Law able to weigh in?
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I'm sure the resell is limited to just the one copy you own.
So you have the right to resell but not to reproduce.
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on one hand:
According to the EU Court of Justice, once a software company sells a copy of its program,
it loses its exclusive rights to distribution. This legitimizes the market for some resellers.
on the other:
We don’t condone the situation, as our terms stipulate that keys
acquired from our platform are for personal use only.
The way Humble used to protect/redeem the Keys with OAuth seemed the easiest solution to me ...
http://www.blog.humblebundle.com/post/107906804069/changes-in-steam-key-redemption
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yes and no. Sometime you already own some of the games in the bundle but still buy for the rest.
if games are auto redeemed on your account then you can't gift games you already own to your friend(there is a reason why humble have a gift link to friend feature).
Plus the buyer isn't always the steam owner(a parent who buy the bundle for his child for example) which also break the ToS then.
I do believe Humble already have a decent solution by allowing a very limited amount of purchased bundle per account(maybe they should do per credit card if they don't already have that) .
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I think they could "solve" (not that it'd benefit me as cheaper games is better for me) it by having the bundle keys only be usable for a limited time would allow them to continue selling bundles, and keep the perceived value of games permanently lowering after the bundle ends. It would also kill resellers and if you got a bundle with games you didn't want you'd have 1 to 3 months to use the keys.
For me, it works fine as it stands, unless it's keeping some devs from selling their games in bundles.
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I buy bundles in a group and we share the price of 40 copies :/
BTW, G2A term not allow bundle keys (or charity keys i think), so is just talk to them verify automatically with the indiegala API, they are open to discuss everything (since they earning a lot in there xD).
The grey market is in there because people buy in there, most of times people prefer and buy a lot in there in a expensive price (i still don't understand so much why XD), but the developer sold the keys and already earned the ammount expected, maybe next time he can limit the keys sold, but complain after all is a bullshit, G2A allow developers or publishers sold in special prices in there (that i think that not worth at all too XD, since they rip off every seller)
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I don't understand why it's called trading if it happens here (and it's sacred), but grey market if it happens on a commercial website (and it's shady and dirty). It's not noble and it's not shameful: it's finance. Buy low, sell high.
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If I buy it, it's mine to do whatever I want with it. If you don't like it, don't take my money. Devs cannot be stupid enough to believe that some bundle keys don't end up in the grey market. If they are really worried about it, they shouldn't be in a bundle to begin with, let alone a IG one. This is devs/publishers trying to have their cake and eat it too.
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Yes and no. Devs (publishers, actually) get pennies for including their games in bundles (apart from the successful Humble ones), so it's understandable that they don't want the "bundle" price to become the new street price for a game. It's all interconnected and key reselling is certainly one reason for the decline of quality in bundles (another is that there are just too many).
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I agree, they should not sell through IG in first place... if they don't want to be bundled.
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"Our policies prohibit reselling"
If Indigala is an EU company (operated out of Italy) then how can their policies violate the EU re-sale laws? Seems like this API check and the resulting re-sale loss because of it will be operating in complete disregard for EU software law.
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this. they can write what they want. as long as i dotn see it otherwise eu says it IS allowed.
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They probably operate in a "wherever it's legal" mindset and no one challenges these policies, anyway.
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Yet they're adding EU taxes all the time. Double standards!
We don’t condone the situation, as our terms stipulate that keys acquired from our platform are for personal use only.
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Not really, but it might depend on what you mean.
They sell Steam keys that game devs emit and give to them.
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No, at least as far as I know.
They work in the same way GMG and other retailers do when it comes to codes/keys. It's like a bookstore, they get them for free and pay devs based on what is sold (obviating the return of excess inventory as it's all digital).
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You can safely trade any game you buy on indiegala. It on the store front page. Indiegala breaks there own TOS by allowing that.
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I actually wanted to read the post, I really did. I tried my best but after the first line I had to stop.
It’s hard for a small team like ours to deliver interesting deals everyday for such a vibrant and demanding user-base.
Oh, the irony.
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tl;dr: We hope this will shut the devs/publishers up because we are tired of getting yelled at. Devs are shocked to see that games from cheap bundles like IG are being resold in the grey market and think IG can do something to stop it.
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I'm more surprised at the idea that they believe IG bundle games are worth anything on the grey market. There is a reason why most of them are under a $1 :P.
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I would actually want to see one of those self-proclaimed devs' outcry about this, because they should be glad to make any money off of what they do. :D
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Blog link: http://blog.indiegala.com/post/150116729759/the-question-of-grey-market-resellers
In case anyone is interested.
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