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France sues Steam, argues you own your account and game, not Valve.
Kiyoris
Member RarePosts: 2,130
The French consumer association is taking Valve to court. They argue that according to EU law (not just French), you own the game when you buy it, including any assets, accounts or other things you create.
And, since you own the games and account, regardless if it is digital or not, you have a right to resell it.
100% agree. If you buy something, it should be your property. This is how it used to work, until these corporate bloodsuckers changed it.
http://www.vg247.com/2015/12/18/valve-sued-by-a-french-consumer-association-over-steams-subscriber-agreement/
And, since you own the games and account, regardless if it is digital or not, you have a right to resell it.
100% agree. If you buy something, it should be your property. This is how it used to work, until these corporate bloodsuckers changed it.
http://www.vg247.com/2015/12/18/valve-sued-by-a-french-consumer-association-over-steams-subscriber-agreement/
Comments
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
While some companies try to find loopholes, like Google claiming they don't need to abide by local regulations because they have a main office is another EU country. Those are loopholes that are quickly being shut down.
So yes, it is how it works, pumpkin. A company has to abide by the regulations of the country they do business in, that's not something new or shocking, it's how the world works.
If you want to do business in said country..................
Anyway, I suppose we will see "how it works" soon enough.
Look folks, the TOS is very clear, you don't like it don't buy from Steam, I don't.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
They run this website:
http://www.quechoisir.org/
So it seems it's "almost" like an activist version of "Consumer Reports".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Longer analysis here: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/106943/franse-consumentenbond-klaagt-valve-aan-wegens-verbod-op-doorverkoop-op-steam.html
The interesting part is this:
"even though according to European law, reselling of games is permitted"
If Valve loses this battle, it might set a precedent for every EU nation.
After all, laws should be changed to benefit the people not the rich companies. If you pay for it, its yours... games used to be like that.
So if a game releases through a platform and only through that just get it from a torrent and that is it... eventually they will learn and do what the consumers want as long as the consumer stands his ground.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
But secondly, in France, almost everything is dubbed. That's not the case in every European nation. If you turn on a French or German channel, English is dubbed with voice actors, in other European nations you usually see subtitles.
Like...you can find a French dubbed version of Friends...but you'll have a hard time finding it in Italian or Dutch, but you will find a subbed version of those languages. It's partly cultural, but also partly the size of the countries.
(and not to judge here, but this is why some French and German peeps, have rather shoddy English skill compared to some other EU countries, I'm perfectly bilingual, but many people are not)
Valve (and other platforms) should consider that we own the games and that we should be able to re-sell a game (hell they can even get a percentage of it). I felt the same on refunds, yes you'll have people abusing a system but why should the majority be punished for it.
In the end it would give us consumers a better deal and a company like Valve doesn't need our defending or us consumers shooting in our own foot.
Don't think I would use it, but it has always bugged me that we had lesser rights on digital games than we had with physical copies.
Some sort of compromise would already be great. For ex. not for online/account based games (which I'm pretty sure would happen if something changes).
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
And what does it mean for things to be sellable? Would it mean that MMORPGs can't do anything to stop gold spammers? Would it prohibit games from making items that are bind on pickup, bind on equip, or otherwise no longer sellable? What if game balance changes make previously sellable items now worthless? Could a company be sued for that? If not, then where do you draw the line?
In fact, there are several laws like that.
One is the Cookie Law. If your site gets accessed in Europe, you need to tell users that you use cookies, and they need to give consent, if you don't, you can get sued.
All larger sites abide by this, and most web developers know this. Every large site I go to, has an agreement box, including all major foreign sites. This isn't the case in the US, I know because I have family in the US and they don't have the cookie box, even though they use the same site.
https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/
official EU site:
http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
It's the same with the cookie law, if you allow your site to cross international borders, it has to abide by local regulations, especially when it comes to privacy.
And by extension all of the EU ...... bigger market than the US remember.
In addition the EU Supreme court has been very clear on TOSs: they cannot override the law of the land. Which - if you stop and think about it - not only makes sense but is no different from e.g. shops having signs saying if what you buy is broken its not our fault. And a host of other attempts over the years to let companies ignore laws.
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.
It should indeed more correctly say that it is the French body tasked with protecting consumers.
However I would caution that whilst this is the French body what typically happens is that one country's consumer organisation takes the lead on an issue. As happened just over a year ago when the UK Office of Fair Trading investigated f2p games with a closer look at advertising to children; they reported and what they reported was adopted across the EU. Saves money and allows a single body to focus greater resources.
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.