In a case that could set precedents across Europe, the High Court of Paris has ordered Valve to allow users to resell digital games bought on Steam, citing an EU law.
The “Tribunal de grande instance de Paris” has ruled that the inability of users to resell digital games contravenes European Union laws on the free movement of goods and has given Valve three months to comply, whereafter they will be fined the paltry sum of €3,000 for each day in which it is in violation of the ruling.
However, it is likely that Valve will appeal against the court’s decision, meaning that it may take some time before a legitimate second-hand Steam market emerges.
Valve was found to have violated Directive 2009/24/EC on the legal protection of computer programs and Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society.
Much of the case appears to have revolved around the fact that games bought on Steam constitute a “purchase” rather than a subscription, meaning that users have the right to resell digital games in the same way they can resell physical ones.
A total of fourteen clauses in the contract that Valve “imposes” on its users were deemed to be illegal, including a clause that allows Valve to claim ownership of user-created content such as mods.
Although the ruling only applies to France, the fact that EU laws were cited means that the 27 other countries currently in the EU could theoretically force Valve to allow reselling.
@SankakuComplex Staff, I just wanted to say excellent job on your news articles, I have been very surprised how fast you get the news out. I seen you beat “Jim Sterling” & “Yong Yea” & “Layman Gaming” when it comes to the latest news! I usually read it here first before other publications start talking about it.
Those guys need to add 20 minutes of fluff to each need piece. Ignore them. Aldo never trust fat people.
Sterling in particular is an asshat. He lost me after he called BOTW an Assassin’s Creed ripoff.
Sterling hates video games. Anything that is not a 2D platformer or doesn’t have dicks on women, he hates.
YongYea adding 20 minutes of fluff? call him what you want but he is straight to point in every video I’ve seen of his… also anyone who is butthurt at that guy below calling it like it is that Sankaku is a site that just follows other news sites and just publishes anything relevent is a self righteous faggot.
A faggot gay fat on top of that.. Jim sterling is a sjw in disguise.
Why you following those dickheads ? Jim sterling advocate cancel culture the moment he feels threaten, also he’s a fat faggot. Laymen bros ate pure white knights to the mainstream media who will kiss the feet of devs to get extra coverage and YongYea is somewhat the better of the two.
LOL
SanCom Staff take their ‘news’ from other sources, add a bunch of faggotry and then publish it. They aren’t doing an excellent job, they are literally copy pasting and then adding a few lines. A kid with downs could run Sankaku. Oh wait, one already does.
nice trolling
What’s this..? Hoping for moderator status or something?
How many articles are riddled with s♥♥t, or show up weeks after the things happen.
Based on that, I have no idea how would you end up so elated here lol fgt
I’ve heard the news about France vs Valve and Epic Control deal several days ago.
Quality journalism? On SC? Am I on bizzaro-internet?
I haven’t checked here in a while but they often make significant factual errors and never, afaik, update articles to amend errors.
Now what would be interesting is being able to sell the microtransactions you purchased back to the game companies, let’s see how many would sink because of that.
Good. It would kill off microtransactions as a trend.
Mmmyeah.. that wouldn’t happen. They’d have to attach value onto those and if lootboxes are any indication, many of them will not count by design so as to avoid further fines.
Oh dear. After reading a bit more on the law on ‘purchase’ vs ‘subscription’, I have a terrible sickly feeling that rather than opening up a second hand market, cases like this will kill game ‘purchases’, and all games will have to be bought via subscription services.
Vote with your wallet.. just like micro’s… Subscriptions are already here so you cant blame this ruling for that.
Yeah…. Here’s the problem with that: this ruling will promote subscription-based games as THE solution. No messy fines for not being able to resell, more money on a monthly basis.
It won’t matter whether you purchase a game, there won’t be any if that became the reality.
Write the law making what is clearly subscription services illegal.
The EU wants to jump on the multi billion industry and get a slice of the pie. France taking the first step looking like they are doing it for consumer rights when in fact it will ensure gaming will become government regulated and i predict the woke soyfilled globohomo agenda that’s been infiltrating gaming will go full throttle with the EU’s blessing.
I agree, these retards don’t understand that regulation from the parasites begets even more regulation from the parasites.
Unfortunately regulations will exist until the creators will have enough resources to have a military of their own to protect themselves and got toe-to-toe with a government army if needed. If you don’t have enough resources to fully protect yourself from physical violence then people who do have those resources will be in the position to make any demands, including imposing all sorts of regulations on you. Currently it seems impossible to be truly independent, but maybe in the future manufacturing will become so advanced that a factory owner that produces regular goods will be able to easily change his production to military drones to defend himself from the parasites.
It’s €3000 a day for up to 6 months, which amounts to a paltry 550k USD which is nothing to Valve, I don’t expect Valve will do jack s♥♥t.
but the real question is that WILL THIS FORCE THEM TO GIVE US CUSTOMERS THE SAME REFUND TREATMENT?