Valve is sentenced in France for banning the resale of dematerialized games

For players yes but a huge loss for the devs

Really meaningless and just plain dumb case.

It's not a good analogy. You can resell clothes but not Steam games. The decision forces them to put a system in place to allow resale but not to implement a market place to advertise your second-hand games.
Maybe they could have a system where you can generate a code which you give to the person you sold the game to. When they activate it, the game is automatically transferred from your account to theirs.

They don't have to provide an actual marketplace or buy back games, but they should definitely provide a way to "detach" licenses so they can be transferred to other accounts (via tertiary market).

"What it might mean is that Valve could be forced to allow the sale of accounts, but I fail to see how someone would actually be able to resell a single title."

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That's my conclusion from it + bonus heading text as people are likely to overlook whats probably the most accurate take so far in pursuit of the less realistic (though far more interesting) hypotheticals.

It's about the right to compel another party to do something when looking back from either side. Valve can't compel you not to sell your own games without inhibiting your own basic rights of resale. Realistically though, there's no meaningful way do that selling with licences outside of selling your whole account, so it seems that's the only directly meaningful change.

This newly announced inability to contractually prohibit you from selling your licences is NOT the same as compelling Valve to make whatever means available by which you could sell off your library piecemeal.

I doubt it's as big a deal as it seems, since there's no obligation for Valve to provide the mechanism for reselling games. This would be similar to how a clothing store doesn't have an obligation to provide you a venue to resell your used clothes.

They don't have to provide a mechanism for the reselling but they will have to provide a way for users to remove games from their libraries and get the key back.
It's exactly like a store that sells you clothes... but leave an anti-theft device so you can't sell them or wear them anywhere else than preapproved places. They won't have to help you resell but they have to remove the device when asked.

I think that's why when you buy keys there is the inclusion of 'not for commercial purposes' and 'not for resale'. Renting out games you purchased would more than likely fall under commercial use.

Yea resale of digital goods is extremely problematic for the reason you listed. I've yet to hear a good proposal on how it could be done without causing serious issues.

I think the difference is that people generally have reasons for wanting a new copy of something physical when they can afford it. Cars and clothes wear out, library DVDs get scratched, books get beaten up. You can buy used phones, but you know they aren't likely to last as long as a new one, and they'll probably have a few cosmetic flaws.

With digital items, you can essentially sell something like new every time. That Steam copy of Borderlands will work as perfectly for the 100th person as it will for the first.

The way book publishing companies have gotten around this is with DRM. I can't lend the books on my Kindle to anyone else, just share my account with a limited group of people (like you can with your Steam account). And although I don't agree with this practice, library ebooks are generally far more expensive than normal and only last a limited time (generally two years) before libraries need to buy them again.

"This will also allow people to gather money in a group to buy one copy and then pass the digital item around throughout the entire group after each person is done with it. This sounds crazy now because we are not use to it, but this kind of thing is 100% legal with everything else in the world that isn't digital, so why not digital items as well?"

It's been possible to do that with DRM-free stuff for a long time now, and the world hasn't imploded yet.

Probably we will end up with services like netflix. You buy access to all games monthly. I dont see any other way. Sold quantities will drop huge.
Every company will have their launcher. The process even started. Only small studios will have to use game services like netflix/gameflix.

This sounds crazy now because we are not use to it, but this kind of thing is 100% legal with everything else in the world that isn't digital

Exactly. And with the grey market already taking its toll on the industry, I can see why it would be a big problem but at the same time... we got used to something that wasn't legal.

And by the way Steam also got away with other things that aren't exactly right if you think about it. Like if Steam ever decides to focus on something else or goes the way of the dodo like... Blockbuster, after some new technology comes along (I'm sure Google streaming games is not going to do that kind of damage but you never know)... What happens to all the games we bought? I'm pretty sure we won't get hard copies right?

So yeah it's nothing new either. But it's a big thing because it shifts the balance again.

Bethesda some of my fav games and also one of my worst games companies 😁🙄

Just because qa company states something in their EULA it doesn't automagically become legal and/or enforceable.

If you are US-American I might understand your confusion but in Europe laws matter, not the "rules" a company fabricates in their EULA.

EULA's are are just made up nonsense that companies try to force on product owners after purchase (on a product that normally cannot be returned no less). Any judge with any brains would understand that such a thing is, or should be, unenforceable.

• Usually the people making said policy and decisions aren't entirely familiar with the systems in place or how the work, so they tend to leave loopholes open, leave important subjects totally untouched, or totally overstep and apply unreasonable policy on non-issue matters.

This is very true. Additionally, it is impossible to design a rule or a system that doesn't have loopholes. I used to be in the loophole business. Closing a loophole often had unintended consequences (both good and bad), but in the end it just created a new loophole to the loophole

as the pricing considerations will end up adjusted accordingly (assuming the 'not for resale' aspect of digital purchases doesn't block this whole thing)

If they inflate prices because there's a possibility of resale, they'll just lose sales altogether so I don't think that's likely.
And "the 'not for resale' aspect of digital purchases" is illegal, that's the whole thing here. Now that it's been deemed illegal, there's not much for them to do.

I think that if they provide the infrastructure to sell "used" games, they could be asking for a percentage on the sales. It's how places where you can leave things you want to sale works...

I mean, quality has already gone down. Prices, too. And there's no shortage of screaming already...

The smaller indie scene may dry up, or convert to be entirely predatory grindy mobile-like form to pad out hollow addiction and playtime to slow circulation. It'd help vs big companies use of DLC, but would hurt small teams trying to boost their work / content.

Games that are primarily about telling a story that have little in the way of elaborate gameplay or branching choices will swap hands quickly, and I imagine there will be far far less of them. Games like Firewatch comes to mind. Though I disliked it personally, bigger and more ambitious ones like Hellblade : Senua's Sacrifice too.

Back when people freely traded or sold their copies of things, it was when there was no real reliable digital storefront, and to find copies you had to actually go out looking for them in stores or happen across someone in a limited listing in a newspaper or somesuch. With the internet and its widespread usage, fresh purchases that actually feed the devs will be lower in proportion. Oh god, will the publishers start eating bigger slices to try make up for it? It's a nice idea as a hypothetical but I just get a bad feeling about how this will all pan out.

Why would the quality of games go down? That is like saying the more expensive a game is, the better it is.

That's not gonna happen.
It would be rather like: "Buy one year license for THAT GAME"

Not necessarily. If you have DRM-free games, then you've acquired them from GOG or other, either through direct purchase, or key activation. If you were to sell a DRM-free game on one of those sites, you'd be selling your license to own it. The game still passes from your account to the other person's account, so you could only sell it once and lose your ability to download it. I wouldn't expect to be able to sell a DRM-free game from my Humble library though, or something acquired for free. Usually those are given as an extra along with a steam key.

Also... some Steam games are, in fact, DRM-free. You just don't know it til you try to run it without the client. =)

Now, I could see it working on Steam if they let us sell our games on the community market while taking a commission for themselves. It's not like Steam would really be losing all that much. In fact, it could be profitable enough. They would have to impose limits though on accounts selling a copy, then activating more copies to sell. Perhaps only allowing an account to activate another key after a reasonable amount of time has passed for then they might actually want to play it again.

I imagine it would work like gifting, only instead of from the storefront, you would tag someones username and the system would handle the process. If they tried to lean on Valve to the degree where they had to provide a key to any platform upon selling, there is going to be some serious cross-charging between companies, and I imagine they would all unanimously withdraw sales from France (and the EU if such a ruling is extended as such) until the policy is adjusted.

"A literal game changer" is right on the money...
...in that to adapt to the change in marketplace, the quality of games will likely drop, smaller indies will dry up, games without extensive replayability will become far less commonplace (goodbye story-oriented classic Telltales and Firewatch) and the golden age of bundles and severe sales will become a shadow of its former self.

Humble's "no trading policy" is already illegal so they should just be happy that they're not big in some countries like France lol

I honestly don't know if it's going to affect the small devs. Not any more than the grey market was already anyway.

If the law is saying digital items are the same as physical items, then a responsible game owner would have insurance for their digital games/items collection, and any theft of those items should be handled by the police. No different than if someone broke into your home and stole game discs off the shelf.

They have mobile authentication for a reason. I would imagine they implement a 7 day in between selling games as well.

I would think this the most likely outcome, surely. Steam and other digital stores just shut shop in France, forcing French players to buy from other countries. Of course, it would become a much bigger problem if more countries adopted this law, but that would I imagine, take a long time - and no guarantee that the court rulings would be the same.

what's funny and stupid about it?
Also it's not "the French government". Did you read the article? It's a customer group that sued Steam and got (legitimately) a justice decision in their favor. The European law also backs the decision. It's now jurisprudence so it's going to extend to other digital stores, and not just games, as well.

Aren't they already doing that? Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft are already doing this. But they still allow you to "buy" games.

lol Steam is not a country. They can't enforce a resale tax. The market will decide the price, just like any second hand good.

Its like what happens when they beam up someone in Star Trek :p

assume it is an odd translation of "already activated" keys

"Dématerialisé" in French means anything that is not on hard copy or physical. Like credit card is a form of payment but not actual currency.

Valve removes services from France, Valve rules

That's European law so if they plan on removing their service from all EU, they should just close their doors now.
Also they can't just sever ties with their already existing clients and their libraries just because the law makes them... you know... apply the law?