German group sues Valve

Wouldn't mind being able to buy a game second hand off steam. There are plenty of games, I finished playing and would like to sell myself. But, how would Steam factor this in? I think the real problem is keeping track of all that. Unless Steam gets some of the profits from selling.

Technically, you can sell your account. Therefore you can sell the digital goods.

This is just bullying of the nature of digital distribution.

Someone should sue Valve for not releasing Half-Life 3.

steam invented drm.

remember installing half life 2 for the first time?

@%#@$%&!!!!

steam offers crazy sales for older games (the games people would buy and sell 2cnd hand) I wouldn't expect to buy a game half price on the first day it comes out. The whole idea of digital is you own the rights to a COPY of an original. you can play the game but can't do much else with it.

Also steam pays for the bandwidth to supply millions of people with the game. I would never buy a 2cnd hand game from steam.

Folks buy used PC games? Been playing on the pc since 1987 and have never seen this.

What if the user could only sell for the value they bought it? So if they bought it for £7 then they shouldnt be able to sell it for more than 10% of its purchase price

Same issue with any digital content service. The tricky part, especially with Steam, is how to know if someone payed full price for a game or not. They put out a lot of discounts throughout the year, I'd say buying a game with 75% off is a fair trade off for not being able to re-sell it afterwards.

Also selling accounts/games opens up a lot of risks for piracy. How would Steam be able to tell if you kept a backup of the games' files on a separate media after you sold it?

Building an auction house is not that easy, why would Valve put a lot of money and efforts into making this if it would actually decrease the sales of their full priced games?

I know I and a lot of others would simply just play through games, then sell it immediately after finishing it.

This "problem" is not Steam specific - If you buy a game on a platform that SPECIFICALLY does not allow you to re-sell the game after you bought it (it's clearly stated in the EULA), but you plan on re-selling the game when you're done playing it, then DON'T BUY IT on that platform.

If your only reason to do that is because the game is too expensive, then wait for a sale, it takes about 6 to 12 months after a games release for it to drop -50% to -75% in price and buying a game for around 7,50 EUR to 15 EUR does not make me want to re-sell it anytime anyways. (even if I don't like it or have no use for it anymore)

I don't see a problem Valve specific here and that group could redirect their lawsuit towards the entirety of the gaming industry perhaps, because every account-bound game you buy which requires online activation (aka "Online DRM") must not be re-sold. (if that's in the EULA)

Lawsuits like this should be fun in combination with EA's, UbiSoft's and other's plans of "gaming as a service", where all you "buy" (full price) is just a usage permission which can be revoked at any time for any reason, locking you out of all your games. (best example EA's "Origin" platform - one bad forum post, caught cheating in any game or just being randomly accused of anything and access to all your bought games is denied)

Please, by all means, extend that lawsuit on the entirety of the gaming industry, because by Mr. Elbrecht's logic : "If I pay full price for SimCity (2013) why am I not allowed to do with it what I want" (play it offline, mod it, etc.) -> Because it's still their product and you have to follow their rules if you want to use it.

It would be nice to have a "thing" on steam where the users can put what they want to sell from their account and let it there with a price set. Everybody should be able to see the prices and the games offered. When someone pays for your game they would use steam wallet. This should be done automatically. When you receive the money in your steam wallet your game should disappear from your Library. This will not make Valve weak because people will use those steam wallets to buy from them further. Maybe to make things good to valve a tax of 1% 2% 3% of the received price should go to them for hosting their service. In the old days your paid for a game, played it, sold it. Now you pay 50 bucks for games that are account bound and after a while they just "sit there gathering dust."

Oh really? And how many copies can I sell of the files that I own?

i do think they have a point. It's not like that the system couldn't be implemented, you should be able to re-sell your game, and after that you would no longer have access to it on your account. The only problem I see is how do you regulate the prices, since it is user-based. The issue of not having this implemented is with the game companies themselves, since they are not making money on used-game sales , I do not think they are quite keen on the idea of having digitally distributed games resalable.

I think people should be able to trade games on steam any way they want but re-selling digital content sounds ridiculous.

If this German organization wants to find fault with consumer's inability to resell games, they'd have to go against the whole industry....not just Valve. Even if Valve somehow manages to allow consumers to resell their games, many publishers still do not make such a thing possible. Almost all PC games nowadays require users to register their cd key to either a Steam, Blizzard or Origin etc. account. Selling the physical copy means squat if the cd key is tied to the original user's account. And unless the resale of a game has a contractual clause implying the transfer of cd-key, there's nothing much anyone can do. The industry as a whole has made attempts to deliberately prevent people from reselling games. No single company or network is solely responsible for it.

I don't mind steam. I only buy games when they are EXTREMELY cheap. Even still, I would love to see a site/service like GoG with more new releases and such. GoG's system is absolutely amazing, and respectful to their customers. I've gotten a few free games from them, like the old fallout and stuff. all DRM free. I buy anything i want from them and dont feel bad about doing.

=-==

On a side note, in the past year i have bought so many "humblebundle" like packages its insane, and i like getting to decide how the money is split too.. The deals are nuts for some of those packages, and in the end, every body wins, a charity, the devs, the hosting site, everyone.

I understand being upset that, when purchasing a game from Steam, we'll get the "you're paying for service, you don't own this" thing, but how the heck are you supposed to sell "used" data without it being in a physical form?

I'd totally understand being able to sell the game back to Steam when you're done playing for credit toward a new one, if that's what this group wants.

Here's the thing: it shouldn't be up to Valve to create the means for games sold through Steam to be resold. If you buy something, finding a way to sell it to someone else is your own responsibility, not the responsibility of the original seller. If I buy a new camera from Amazon.com and decide after a period of time that I no longer want it, Amazon.com isn't required to provide a platform from which I can sell it again. If I buy a bag of chips from Wal-Mart and want to sell it to somebody else, I can't go to Wal-Mart and say, "Hey, provide me with a means of transferring the ownership of this bag of chips to this other guy." That's because it's my property now, and if I bought it from a particular seller with the knowledge that I wouldn't be able to use their services to sell it again, it's not the seller's duty to retroactively give me a way to do so. If you want to be able to resell something you purchase, purchase it in a form that you yourself will be able to sell it in.

wow, just some people trying to make some quick cash by suing a successful company this world is getting pitiful

Considering MMORPGs are exploiting these gullible PC gamers, I'm not surprised they would fall victim to overrated Steam.

Yeah, well...WELCOME TO THE WORLD of DLC and digital games! Things work a bit differently in this new generation of gaming...some stuff isn't what it seems. LEARN THIS LESSON!

They should rather sue Sony and Microsoft who are developing systems to literally stop second hand gaming in the next generation. Those are the guys who sell everything for full price even many years later.

**** Valve. **** Steam. **** Newel.

I haven't bought a steam game and neither did friends, because of their stupid digital prices and schemes (except for dirt cheap sales).

In truth, this is like for piracy: piracy brings in more money than ever to game industrials, except indie are also beneficing from it. Well they also beneficed from second hand game selling.

Imagine if steam directly allowed you to buy the games you bought at a starting lower price, to other users, except they are charing a transfer fee on the way, like paypal or kickstarter do ?

Except, it's all about control: they want to lock users into more and more greedy closed schemes and milking even though they don't realize they are loosing customers and promoting hacking.

Then they shoulda bought it from a retailer instead of steam.

Idiots.

Even if they win this, the only real change is Valve's departure from anything German. No one wins in this situation.

I don't know why Valve didn't move to head this off. maybe they think they can't loose? What Valve should have done was offered online trade-back, that way they don't have 'second-hand' games being sold, but users can get something back when they've finished playing a game, which can be put towards new games.

@funktail007 @d12dotcom @fanirama Because someone else is buying the game on their service idiot?