Up until now, the internet has basically been a wild wild west. Privacy, ownership, age of digital consent (being raised to 16 in the EU, which means Facebook can't register a 12 year old child anymore and data mine them), while heavily discussed, haven't been subject to much regulation.
It's normal that it seems like the hammer is coming down now, because it's been party without rules for decades.
Especially in the West, there's been extremely lax regulations online, consumer rights and privacy rights have been ignored in favor of corporate profits.
There's always been this laissez-faire attitude towards the internet. But that was before companies were making massive profits selling goods and mining private data.
Ah, that kinda explains this thread and a number of others you've made:
Americans who see regulation as evil and Europeans who see regulation as good trying to discuss the merits of regulation.
You beat me to it DMKano lol. My wife read the discussion cause I was shaking my head and she said they could just put blockers on international connections but then laughed saying no one would be able to access anything anywhere if it was outside their country.
International blockers (France) might actually happen. Only recently Belgium has won a case against Facebook because of FB breaking Belgium privacy laws (which are derived from EU laws I might add), and FB now blocks EVERY user (that's not logged in to FB) who visits to a FB page.
On the other hand, the 2 week refund policy added to Steam was because Germany sued Valve because the non-return policy was not in line with German (and once again EU) law. Valve obviously lost and now we (FINALLY) have a return policy on Steam.
...so you might never know what will happen when France will win this...
I hope they do for exactly this reason. Valve seems to want to use the same terms and conditions everywhere. If that means I get the same rights they do in France, that rocks. I have games I would love to give to my friends now that I have played through them.
So any country can change the law to whatever they want and then online companies have to comply to 100 different laws in 100 different countries.
Yeah I don't think so.
Seriously, I am not sure why you are making these comments when you clearly no clue how law works.
What you described is EXACTLY how the real world works. Why should valve be able not to comply with those laws but other companies have to? Is valve are somehow special? Trust me if valve got banned from a large market like France, there will be others who will happily fill in their shoes.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
If I ran Valve I'd just stop marketing in France, it's a small market and would send a message to other regulatory agencies considering overextending consumer "rights."
Look folks, the TOS is very clear, you don't like it don't buy from Steam, I don't.
So how is France a small market? Should they then stop serving the UK, Germany? That will lose them a huge market share and will give the opportunities to others to go into that space. Valve at the moment benefits massively from network effects. Weaken those and you can have new entrants.
Also bear in mind that certain things can be "implied" into a contract. And certain things can't be circumvented by explicitly excluding it in a contract. A simple example. If I give ou a contract saying that your wage will be $1 less than the national minimum wage, despite that you know what you are signing up for and you agree to it, the company is still NOT allowed to do it. It doesn't matter what it says in the contract.
I think Valve's current refund policy only came to be because in the EU there are strict laws that you should have a 7 day cooling off period on any online purchase.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
"Aucune décision de justice n’interdit la revente sur le marché de l’occasion de jeux achetés en ligne et que le juge européen a même posé explicitement le principe de la possible revente de logiciels, constituent une partie intégrante d’un jeu vidéo. "
I will translate:
No judicial decision forbids the reselling of games bought online, the principle of reselling games has been explicitly denoted as an integral part of a video game by a European judge.
The French should have the right to resell their game and the company should have the right to close anyone's account for any reason. Which pretty much trumps any value in reselling the game.
To play an online game, you agree to the terms of service. You CANNOT force a company to run the servers on a failing product indefinitely nor can you take away their ability to administrate their game. If a law passes that says you own your account, the end result is the French are not going to be able to play with us. Companies are going to block your market. Sorry. This law just isn't in line with anything practical or realistic.
If you have a business presence in that country (like an office, or you do payment processing in that country or authentication) - then YES - but if you don't have any of that and you are just a website that French citizens for example can access from France that runs in China - French laws do not apply.
No not really, it just becomes a bit harder to enforce the EU consumer rights... but they still apply. This is not me making this up, all you have to do is google EU consumer rights.
EU consumer right within EU - fine - outside of EU = does not apply
You cannot enforce local laws for online companies outside of your country period.
That's absurd - what EU is going to sue every online company outside of EU??
Let every Country in the world make up their own laws for online companies outside of them.... heh
So then every online business would have to follow several 1000 laws ..... great isn't it?
No you are wrong. If a company does its business in company X (e.g. US), how would a French citizen buy from them? There are many websites if you go to them, they don't allow you to access their content. Simple. I can't buy from those websites because they will detect my IP and will block my ability to purchase it. That's for online purchases. For shipping physical items, if the company offers the option to ship the item to me, then they can't hide.
There are many laws governing where a transaction is deemed to have taken place. THis is NOT always the place of where the company is. Actually there are many situations where the place of the transaction is the country of the buyer.
Have you ever studied any kind of law? Just curious.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
You can do online business in any country AND NOT HAVE LEGALLY BINDING BUSINESS presence there
false
You are required to abide by regulations of the country you do business in.
Wallmart can't sell me a gun in Europe just because it's legal in the US.
We are talking about Online Business here - more precisely Online video games.
Online, get it?
An Online video game in China that french players want to play on Chinese servers from a chinese company that doesn't have any assets or presence in France - FRENCH LAWS DO NOT APPLY
I mean this is absurd to even consider.
IF you don't want to abide by French laws, you don't let French citizens buy it by blocking their ability to purchase it. Many websites do this. For example there are many UK websites, where if you go and try to buy a digital game from there, it will tell you that you can't because you are not from the UK. How do they check it? IP checks and requiring UK form of payment (e.g. a UK credit card). If a company allows you to buy from them, they can't hide.
Now if the customer goes and "bypasses" those, then it's a different matter.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
If you have a business presence in that country (like an office, or you do payment processing in that country or authentication) - then YES - but if you don't have any of that and you are just a website that French citizens for example can access from France that runs in China - French laws do not apply.
No not really, it just becomes a bit harder to enforce the EU consumer rights... but they still apply. This is not me making this up, all you have to do is google EU consumer rights.
EU consumer right within EU - fine - outside of EU = does not apply
You cannot enforce local laws for online companies outside of your country period.
That's absurd - what EU is going to sue every online company outside of EU??
Let every Country in the world make up their own laws for online companies outside of them.... heh
So then every online business would have to follow several 1000 laws ..... great isn't it?
Wait, you don't think companies have to follow the laws of the countries they operate in? Valve is trying to sell licenses in each region FOR that region. You think they don't have to follow the laws of the region because they don't want to? You always have insider info so I am trying to stretch my understanding around what you are claiming, but right now it sounds like you think an international company doesn't have to follow any laws of any country.
I am reminded of how Facebook has been facing legal action around the world for their data collection. Facebook is serving consumers that are protected by privacy laws, seems the same here.
He doesn't have an insider info, he's just clueless about how law works. I wonder what he's background is.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
"Aucune décision de justice n’interdit la revente sur le marché de l’occasion de jeux achetés en ligne et que le juge européen a même posé explicitement le principe de la possible revente de logiciels, constituent une partie intégrante d’un jeu vidéo. "
I will translate:
No judicial decision forbids the reselling of games bought online, the principle of reselling games has been explicitly denoted as an integral part of a video game by a European judge.
What if it's an MMO/MMORPG - and you can't "buy" the game?
hmm?
I mean if you have a WoW account - that's all you have - you don't own WoW "the game" - you only have access to play on the server.
How can you resell something you don't own?
You own the account, like I said in the OP, this is not just about the games, it is about the accounts, and assets, too.
Under the law, you are allowed to sell your account, it is your property.
When this goes to court, Valve will have a hard time, because the law isn't on their side.
They literally just use it as a digital games market and Valve owns none of the rights of the titles unless Valve made it. So if they are trying to take Valve to court then they are attacking literally every developer who has a title on steam.
Literally Valve does not own the rights to the games they sell and since France would have to target every developer who has ever released a game on steam this is nothing but a big joke.
Literally Valve does not own the rights to the games they sell
Of course they don't own the rights to the games. All the more reason they aren't in any position to tell others they don't own what they just bought with real money.
"Aucune décision de justice n’interdit la revente sur le marché de l’occasion de jeux achetés en ligne et que le juge européen a même posé explicitement le principe de la possible revente de logiciels, constituent une partie intégrante d’un jeu vidéo. "
I will translate:
No judicial decision forbids the reselling of games bought online, the principle of reselling games has been explicitly denoted as an integral part of a video game by a European judge.
Thats not up to European law thats up to the rights holder for the IP of the game. Its in their terms of service of use that you do not own the game nor any of the Intellectual properties or assets of the game you are simply given the right to use them. The IP holder holds full rights to deny your usage as well.
"Aucune décision de justice n’interdit la revente sur le marché de l’occasion de jeux achetés en ligne et que le juge européen a même posé explicitement le principe de la possible revente de logiciels, constituent une partie intégrante d’un jeu vidéo. "
I will translate:
No judicial decision forbids the reselling of games bought online, the principle of reselling games has been explicitly denoted as an integral part of a video game by a European judge.
Thats not up to European law thats up to the rights holder for the IP of the game. Its in their terms of service of use that you do not own the game
You think developer EULA supersedes European law, how cute.
Thats not up to European law thats up to the rights holder for the IP of the game. Its in their terms of service of use that you do not own the game nor any of the Intellectual properties or assets of the game you are simply given the right to use them. The IP holder holds full rights to deny your usage as well.
What do you think defines the extend and limits of IP rights within Europe a) Magical fairies, or b) European laws?
How is this even a good thing? This just hurts game development, particularly smaller devs who make quality single player games. If this actually gets passed I imagine we'll see a lot more ads and p2w cash shop mechanics.
Thats not up to European law thats up to the rights holder for the IP of the game. Its in their terms of service of use that you do not own the game nor any of the Intellectual properties or assets of the game you are simply given the right to use them. The IP holder holds full rights to deny your usage as well.
What do you think defines the extend and limits of IP rights within Europe a) Magical fairies, or b) European laws?
Kind of ironic that have them as seperate things, thing have to remember is that its very hard to impose European laws outside of Europe, hence the court case i guess, besides, in 2016 UK will probably leave the EU, and at that point EU laws will have even less influence than ever.
If the cost (and risk) of doing business internationally on the internet becomes too high, every country will have its own set of "internet retailers", which will of course lead to much higher prices for everything, and a much smaller selection of goods offered.
But it's the price of "safety". Your consumer rights will be guaranteed for the handful of items you can affordably buy online in your own country. Buying anything outside your own country will probably be illegal.
Regulation can cut both ways. It can regulate what companies do on the internet, but it's a small step to extend that to what YOU are allowed to do on the internet. Just ask the Chinese how that works out for them...
There are many past examples of US-based MMO's using third-party "partners" to run their game services in the EU. Every single one of those examples showed that the EU players ended-up paying higher prices and often receiving inferior customer service. It's inevitable, the more links in the supply chain, the higher the eventual selling price will be.
They literally just use it as a digital games market and Valve owns none of the rights of the titles unless Valve made it. So if they are trying to take Valve to court then they are attacking literally every developer who has a title on steam.
Literally Valve does not own the rights to the games they sell and since France would have to target every developer who has ever released a game on steam this is nothing but a big joke.
Not true... In Europe, a seller is as responsible for the products sold as the creator of the product is. This means that WHEN (not IF, because EU /France law has to be enforced in the territory) Valve looses about reselling games it immediately applies to all parties selling their games through Steam.
If the cost (and risk) of doing business internationally on the internet becomes too high, every country will have its own set of "internet retailers", which will of course lead to much higher prices for everything, and a much smaller selection of goods offered.
But it's the price of "safety". Your consumer rights will be guaranteed for the handful of items you can affordably buy online in your own country. Buying anything outside your own country will probably be illegal.
Regulation can cut both ways. It can regulate what companies do on the internet, but it's a small step to extend that to what YOU are allowed to do on the internet. Just ask the Chinese how that works out for them...
There are many past examples of US-based MMO's using third-party "partners" to run their game services in the EU. Every single one of those examples showed that the EU players ended-up paying higher prices and often receiving inferior customer service. It's inevitable, the more links in the supply chain, the higher the eventual selling price will be.
QFT. Assuming that this french group manage to pass this law into practice, then it could mean that companies with an online presence are less likely to have a physical presence in countries like France, or support localisations, it would also likely mean that people in France incur additional costs for using online services not also based in France or have to agree to terms that include waiving their right to specific things covered by those laws, you could also get situations like this occurring;
GTA VI NA/USA 50$ UK £40 EU €150
I use the 3 values as its highly unlikely that the UK will be a member of the EU within the next year. As for the increased costs of games, companies rely on individual sales of games to generate revenue, if people in one area can resell games then the initial purchase cost will probably be used to offset future game sales losses. It will probably also mean that games will have on disc DRM and won't run unless the game disc is physically present not to mention, the games would also have to have a form of region locking. It would mean a huge backwards step for the games industry as a whole.
If the cost (and risk) of doing business internationally on the internet becomes too high, every country will have its own set of "internet retailers", which will of course lead to much higher prices for everything, and a much smaller selection of goods offered.
But it's the price of "safety". Your consumer rights will be guaranteed for the handful of items you can affordably buy online in your own country. Buying anything outside your own country will probably be illegal.
Regulation can cut both ways. It can regulate what companies do on the internet, but it's a small step to extend that to what YOU are allowed to do on the internet. Just ask the Chinese how that works out for them...
There are many past examples of US-based MMO's using third-party "partners" to run their game services in the EU. Every single one of those examples showed that the EU players ended-up paying higher prices and often receiving inferior customer service. It's inevitable, the more links in the supply chain, the higher the eventual selling price will be.
USA devs often license their game to EU operator just like Asian devs often license their games to USA/European operators. That operator often gives inferior service at higher prices, but that's not really about European laws being more restrictive than USA laws any more than USA laws aren't any more restrictive than South Korean laws.
It's a matter of how hard and costly it's to set up offices and run business in another continent yourself, no matter how lenient the laws might be.
Yea, and its for this reason that countries instead of enjoying the fruits and benefits of others labors, try to enforce something ridiculous that is not even about social justice, or criminal behavior but some definition that should fit their law, and can lose out on those benefits.
So why do they think owning the products any moer than they do makes a difference?
May be this has to do with steam accounts being the platform being used to access the games. Thats really a non issue considering the benefit and size/scope of steam.
Its more of an issue when other companies try to take from steams market share and create too many platforms that a person needs on their pc. For example origin,u-play etc but even so, for example its bad when you login to steam, then if a game is associated with u-play, you have to login to u-play as well. That is a problem. But only logging in to origin is not so bad, as its also small in size except for the fact that origin keeps on dling a 90 mb patch.
edit; i posted after being taken to not the first page and had a diffeent imperssion. Its about reselling digitial copies. So essentially allowing players to become a mini version of steam. Thats not so bad, and steam can tax it as well. Not sure how thats a bad thing. The title is misleading since its really just about reselling copies, and owndership ofc is the issue.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
How is this even a good thing? This just hurts game development, particularly smaller devs who make quality single player games. If this actually gets passed I imagine we'll see a lot more ads and p2w cash shop mechanics.
What a BS argument that it'll hurt developers. In the past we had PHYSICAL discs & cartridges (we still have for consoles) and sold them when we played through those games. Back then both developer and players were better off because of the option to trade/reselll PHYSICAL games.
Now with the digital age you can't resell your games when you're done, the games are insanely expensive AND most games come with only about 20 hours of gameplay before you're done.
Only because of this I'm no longer buying DIGITAL games because I think €60+ for a new game that I play through in 20 hours (or less) is just way over the top, only to never look at it ever again. If that same DIGITAL game can be resold I would consider buying it.
Comments
Americans who see regulation as evil and Europeans who see regulation as good trying to discuss the merits of regulation.
What you described is EXACTLY how the real world works. Why should valve be able not to comply with those laws but other companies have to? Is valve are somehow special? Trust me if valve got banned from a large market like France, there will be others who will happily fill in their shoes.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Also bear in mind that certain things can be "implied" into a contract. And certain things can't be circumvented by explicitly excluding it in a contract. A simple example. If I give ou a contract saying that your wage will be $1 less than the national minimum wage, despite that you know what you are signing up for and you agree to it, the company is still NOT allowed to do it. It doesn't matter what it says in the contract.
I think Valve's current refund policy only came to be because in the EU there are strict laws that you should have a 7 day cooling off period on any online purchase.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
http://www.quechoisir.org/telecom-multimedia/informatique/communique-plateforme-de-jeux-video-steam-l-ufc-que-choisir-assigne-la-societe-valve
"Aucune décision de justice n’interdit la revente sur le marché de l’occasion de jeux achetés en ligne et que le juge européen a même posé explicitement le principe de la possible revente de logiciels, constituent une partie intégrante d’un jeu vidéo. "
I will translate:
No judicial decision forbids the reselling of games bought online, the principle of reselling games has been explicitly denoted as an integral part of a video game by a European judge.
To play an online game, you agree to the terms of service. You CANNOT force a company to run the servers on a failing product indefinitely nor can you take away their ability to administrate their game. If a law passes that says you own your account, the end result is the French are not going to be able to play with us. Companies are going to block your market. Sorry. This law just isn't in line with anything practical or realistic.
There are many laws governing where a transaction is deemed to have taken place. THis is NOT always the place of where the company is. Actually there are many situations where the place of the transaction is the country of the buyer.
Have you ever studied any kind of law? Just curious.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
if they start targeting specific individuals, they will have a lot more legal issues to deal with than they have now
Now if the customer goes and "bypasses" those, then it's a different matter.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Under the law, you are allowed to sell your account, it is your property.
When this goes to court, Valve will have a hard time, because the law isn't on their side.
They literally just use it as a digital games market and Valve owns none of the rights of the titles unless Valve made it. So if they are trying to take Valve to court then they are attacking literally every developer who has a title on steam.
Literally Valve does not own the rights to the games they sell and since France would have to target every developer who has ever released a game on steam this is nothing but a big joke.
Thats not up to European law thats up to the rights holder for the IP of the game. Its in their terms of service of use that you do not own the game nor any of the Intellectual properties or assets of the game you are simply given the right to use them. The IP holder holds full rights to deny your usage as well.
a) Magical fairies, or
b) European laws?
But it's the price of "safety". Your consumer rights will be guaranteed for the handful of items you can affordably buy online in your own country. Buying anything outside your own country will probably be illegal.
Regulation can cut both ways. It can regulate what companies do on the internet, but it's a small step to extend that to what YOU are allowed to do on the internet. Just ask the Chinese how that works out for them...
There are many past examples of US-based MMO's using third-party "partners" to run their game services in the EU. Every single one of those examples showed that the EU players ended-up paying higher prices and often receiving inferior customer service. It's inevitable, the more links in the supply chain, the higher the eventual selling price will be.
Assuming that this french group manage to pass this law into practice, then it could mean that companies with an online presence are less likely to have a physical presence in countries like France, or support localisations, it would also likely mean that people in France incur additional costs for using online services not also based in France or have to agree to terms that include waiving their right to specific things covered by those laws, you could also get situations like this occurring;
GTA VI NA/USA 50$ UK £40 EU €150
I use the 3 values as its highly unlikely that the UK will be a member of the EU within the next year. As for the increased costs of games, companies rely on individual sales of games to generate revenue, if people in one area can resell games then the initial purchase cost will probably be used to offset future game sales losses. It will probably also mean that games will have on disc DRM and won't run unless the game disc is physically present not to mention, the games would also have to have a form of region locking. It would mean a huge backwards step for the games industry as a whole.
It's a matter of how hard and costly it's to set up offices and run business in another continent yourself, no matter how lenient the laws might be.
So why do they think owning the products any moer than they do makes a difference?
May be this has to do with steam accounts being the platform being used to access the games. Thats really a non issue considering the benefit and size/scope of steam.
Its more of an issue when other companies try to take from steams market share and create too many platforms that a person needs on their pc. For example origin,u-play etc but even so, for example its bad when you login to steam, then if a game is associated with u-play, you have to login to u-play as well. That is a problem. But only logging in to origin is not so bad, as its also small in size except for the fact that origin keeps on dling a 90 mb patch.
edit; i posted after being taken to not the first page and had a diffeent imperssion. Its about reselling digitial copies. So essentially allowing players to become a mini version of steam. Thats not so bad, and steam can tax it as well. Not sure how thats a bad thing. The title is misleading since its really just about reselling copies, and owndership ofc is the issue.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Now with the digital age you can't resell your games when you're done, the games are insanely expensive AND most games come with only about 20 hours of gameplay before you're done.
Only because of this I'm no longer buying DIGITAL games because I think €60+ for a new game that I play through in 20 hours (or less) is just way over the top, only to never look at it ever again. If that same DIGITAL game can be resold I would consider buying it.