Steam - guilty! A groundbreaking verdict in France - the platform is expected to allow the resale of games!
The French consumer group, UFC-Que Choisir, won the three-year lawsuit against Valve. Thus, the association annulled several clauses from the Steam platform regulations, including the one that prohibited the resale of copies of games purchased on the site. The judgment was issued on September 17, 2019 by the Paris Regional Court.
Most of you are probably well aware that Valve strictly prohibits re-selling games purchased on Steam. This is due to the fact that the customer paying for a specific production does not receive a physical medium, but only access to it through the platform. The whole works like paid subscriptions - Valve provides the customer with an indefinite period of time. However, as it turns out, all this is against European law. The clause described in the previous paragraph was rejected by the French court on the basis of two European Directives - 2001/29 / EC and 2009/24 / EC - and by the case law of the European Court of Justice. According to both documents, which recognize the principle of "exhausting the law", after selling the work with the author's authorization (in this case the game) the creator no longer has control over its subsequent resale. This provision applies to physical copies, but the court considered that this could also be attributed to virtual copies or, in other words, to download and install the software on the user's computer.
Valve knew this very well and for several years the company has been defending that the games on its platform are not bought at all, but only rented indefinitely as part of a paid subscription. However, the court quickly noticed that it made no sense. The term "subscription" is used for a predetermined period of time, and is incorrect in the context given by Valve.
Simply put - game developers and distributors have done everything to destroy the aftermarket and prevent users from resale of digital content.
Valve has one month to comply with this request, and each day of delay will cost the company 3,000 Euros penalty for a maximum of six months. For now, the situation concerns mainly French users, but if the matter becomes public, Valve will have to change the rules for the whole Europe.
Well, how about the rest of digital distribution platforms?