Gaming

not very useful for something to be legal if they're allowed to make it impossible to do.

Whatever happened to that ruling? It's from 11 years ago. How would I go about selling my Steam games?

From reading the law, reselling of licenses is permitted but there's nothing forcing software platforms to provide tools facilitating the process.

~~IANAL but I think this would make reselling a Steam account within the EU perfectly legal, regardless of Steam's TOS, but otherwise they're unaffected.~~

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Edit: Looking at some of the actual law cases which followed this ruling, user accounts and video games (along with basically any creative work) are not covered in any way.

Folks, this article was last updated July 2012. So for those of you moaning at people for pointing out you still cant because you can only do so by selling your account which steam does not allow...its been 11 years. When do the changes go into effect to allow you your high ground?

Anyone going to mention this was an article from 2012 ?

thank god for the EU

EU is the only bros defending worldwide tech rights.

Could I legally leave my Steam account to my son via a will? So that when I die it becomes his.

Really curious what the EU would say about something like Overwatch 1.

People bought a game, they then changed the game, made it free and shut down the systems for it and changed it to Overwatch 2.

Now the game I bought doesn't exist anymore. I don't own anything of what I had purchased.

This law was already overruled by other court decisions. EU Law is just a pain but basically you can't.

That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

fuck steam

Yeah, this is a law Steam breaks since foundation, nobod really cares unfortunetly. They even have a fucking platform for it. Probably it’s built in a way this could be implemented in a week, whenever authorities would start annoying Valve with it.

Bunch of comedians.

Good guy valve about to change its tos to disallow this from happening.

Old news.

You just can't sell them, but that's not part of that ruling.

And its problematic. They could allow transfer on steam + steam wallet for payments.

But does steam get a cut? What about the publisher(who may sue steam for benefiting from their game)?

Trading outside will be 90% scams and chargebacks.

ok

now do movies, tv shows and music too please.

and while you on it, sold digital content should not be allowed to be removed from my account without offering a download option before!

Edit:

The Court said the exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program covered by the license is "exhausted on its first sale".

The ruling means that gamers in European Union member states are free to sell their downloaded games, whether they're from Steam, Origin or another digital platform - no matter what End User License Agreement has been signed.

Does this mean Steam has now to offer me the option to can resell my already used steam keys?

They cant stop you but there is not mechanism to transfer a game to someone else. They need to pas an U law forcing companies to put this in place because they will not on their own.

"Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy - tangible or intangible - and at the same time concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a licence agreement granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right. Such a transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy. Therefore, even if the licence prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy."

About to be perma renting games and not having unlimited licenses. If it’s all rentals this is null and void it seems. Besides not making companies offer this service but there’s no way they are going to manage a system for those transfer (basically just selling an account is legal now) and host fresh repeated key downloads for every transfer since that costs them money.

Does everyone not realize this article is 12 years old? Why did OP just repost it?

If only there was a good platform in which to do this.

Wow its like they have consumers protections over there or something

Devil's advocate/some problems I see with this.

• If this applies to video games, what differentiates games vs other software?

• If base software licenses become transferable, will this effectively just force developers to go with subscription elements?

I hope we don't get hit by the law of unintended consequences here and everything becomes "F2P" with a useless base license and subscription to do anything useful.

What about accounts on online games? The Genshin Inpact ToS says even sharing an account with someone else is against the ToS.

+1 example of good Big Government.

Make them do it worldwide and ban from the EU market if they don’t.

This Op is a damn karma farming… the article is 12 years old

Lots of fantasizing about the power of EU law...Why don't you Europeans contact Steam and tell them you bought the account from someone and see what happens...? lol

Either make all DL games much cheaper (no physical products to print and millions of copies to ship around the world plus all the advertising in store needed.)

Or let us resell and even if we get steam wallet funds at least we can piss off all the games we bought and never played or played <2 hours. Even 'tax' us a little idk

EU once again not understanding how technology and licensing works. Good job, geezers!

Some day Lord Gaben will sell Steam and retire. The new owner will start to push a subscription. You know it´s coming.

published in 2012

lmao

The date on that article is 2012?

I read this like it's news but the Eurogamer article is from 2012? Old sauce

You will now see “limited” Licenses instead of unlimited ones. ie we lease this game to you for 100 years.

It's crazy how much Americans shit on Europe for all of the socialism, when it reaps so many benefits for the consumer. Americans love hating themselves and worshipping corporations and billionaires.

12 year old article, EZ karma. I respect it!!

OP Necroing a 11-year-old news article LMFAO

I always said that Gamestop had the golden opportunity when a bunch of amateur stock broker wannabes inflated their valuation to open a digital storefront where you can buy and sell used games. But now they're going to continue going the way of the blockbuster and we have to pray one of the big 2 do it instead (fat chance)

This is a 2012 article. Why is it being posted like it's new news?

So you're telling me that my offspring or a friend can't legally inherit my Steam account as per their ToS but I could sell it to who I want for whatever (low) price I want?

This article is from 12 years ago ffs.

This is so incredibly stupid but I don't expect gamers to get it

What a time to live in England... 😔 Congrats EU bros.

shit like this is why i buy as little as possible from Steam and try to do most of my purchases in GoG. I can do whatever the fuck i want with the game files, give them to whoever I want.

Account based DRM like steam was a bad idea from day one but everyone ate this fecal meal up because... convenience...

If only I lived in the EU.

“Updated on 3 Jul 2012”

WHY is this article posted here as news when it’s over 11 years old?

unfortunately this didn't seem to stand up to court back in 2013 :(

People not reading the article and not noticing it is 11 years old...

“Updated on 3 Jul 2012”

Why is this being upvoted?