[byron_fast]

I've always wanted to re-sell my Steam games. I assume Valve has a real business reason why they haven't allowed this, since when sharing your games locally they are better than anyone. Clearly they don't have the big company mindset of forcing people to pay for a license on every device.

If Valve complies with this ruling I'd guess we'll find out what that reason is. I think loot crates and the item market reveals the problem. Steam licenses will turn into some kind of black market money laundering machine that will be impossible to regulate.

[still_grokking]

My best guess on why Valve doesn't like the idea of a second hand market for content sold on Steam is that it would destroy Valve's internal price structures if such a market would emerge (globally).

The prices on Steam vary quite substantial between regions / countries. Depending to which country an account is linked to the price for the same content may be only a small fraction (down to single-digit percentages) of the price called out elsewhere.

If there would be a free market for "second hand" Steam licenses, and those licenses could be freely transferred form low price regions to high price regions, Valve couldn't uphold its artificial price structure any longer. I guess they don't like this idea.

Even if Valve finds a way to avoid allowing second hand sales between arbitrary counties they might get in some trouble even with this ruling now: I guess they can be forced to allow second hand sales between EU countries with this ruling (because of properties of the trading union). But AFAIK there are also price differences between countries inside the EU. A free second hand market will likely put an end to this.

[user5994461]

They could region lock each acquisition. It's not difficult and it probably wouln't cause issue with the law because it's already happening with video DVD.

[still_grokking]

Region locking inside the EU is not an option.

The union demands goods being freely tradable within its borders. Just lately this was even extended to explicitly include digital goods. [1]

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/new-eu-rules-e...

[dogma1138]

It is still an option for purchases, the digital content rules have not been formalized yet and currently only aimed and preserving access while traveling within the EU, the current complication is licensing as well as license derived copyright (e.g. translations).

As most content is created outside of the EU and then licensed to various entities within the EU on different agreements there isn’t much that can easily be done.

Sky for example licenses HBO content for the UK you can’t become a Sky subscriber if you do not reside in the UK and pay a TV license. You can access the streaming VOD service as a subscriber from your tablet if you have traveled to Berlin, but you can’t subscribe to it as a German resident.

[still_grokking]

Because INAL I can't give a definitive answer, but here's how I understand this.

Firstly regarding the example: One can't compare selling (digital) goods and some subscription service. That are two quite different subjects.

Secondly: The EU wants to further extend this "one digital market" thing as soon as possible. The aim is to regulate exactly things like Steam. So the law will be more precise in the future.

I'm quite sure something like region codes would violate the idea of "one digital market". So if nobody manages to get some exceptions in favor of Steam-like businesses into the laws region codes (or similar) won't be a solution (at least in the long term).

[dogma1138]

>Because INAL I can't give a definitive answer, but here's how I understand this. Firstly regarding the example: One can't compare selling (digital) goods and some subscription service. That are two quite different subjects.

You don't need to be a lawyer there is no difference in their view between sub to view and buy to view, or between movies, tv-shows, ebooks and games it's all "audiovisual content".

>Secondly: The EU wants to further extend this "one digital market" thing as soon as possible. The aim is to regulate exactly things like Steam. So the law will be more precise in the future.

Precision doesn't have anything to do with it, there is the issue of copyright law differences between various member states, EU copyright directives, conflicts with primacy issues, bilateral agreements of the EU and individual member state with other jurisdictions and the entire existing industry.

You also need to understand what unjustified geoblocking actually means, if you run an online store in a memberstate you are not obligated to ship to the entirety of the EU, to provide service or support to other member states or in languages other than your own. You however cannot arbitrarily discriminate by for example refusing as a Polish shop to ship to a shipping address in Poland if someone is paying with an Estonian debit card with an Estonian billing address it does not however mean that you have to ship to estonia, have to have to provide support in estonian or have to warranty the product in Estonia if an Estonian buys it in Poland and goes back home.

People tend to really exaggerate the implications of some of these EU directives if that was the case there would be no fucking business in the EU anymore other than Amazon... read the full instructions don't extrapolate from the widest possible interpretation of a headline.

[user5994461]

Doesn't seem too bad. It mostly says that consumers have to be able to buy stuff, from any country in the context of websites having different portals per country.

The biggest issue is around Russia (and few others) where games are a fraction of the euro price. They're not in Europe.

Probably some loopholes around currency and/or language. A game bought in euro must be sold in euro. A game is German or French or Polish only. There are already different editions for wild reasons, for example Germany has a no-gore policy so games have a German edition with bloody content removed.

[dogma1138]

You can still lock things out depending on licensing, you can’t just do it arbitrarily and unfairly.

If you do not have the right to sell outside of a member state, or the rights to sell within a specific member state or for example have restrictions on your content imposed by member state you can still restrict access.

However most of these restrictions don’t apply to games really since the publishers tend to grant full distribution rights to online platforms.

It’s only really a problem for movies and TV shows.

[anoncake]

> for example Germany has a no-gore policy so games have a German edition with bloody content removed.

Not for many years.

[tambre]

That's why different European pricing zones were merged into a single EU zone, no? Should no longer be an issue because of that?

[beatgammit]

I wonder if something could be worked out like a rebate for giving up access to a title (e.g. 10% of current retail price or original sale price, whichever is less), or a discounted license transfer to a friend (perhaps the recipient pays 10% to the publisher to transfer the license).

That way, publishers still make money, friends can cheaply "give" games to their friends, and everyone else can still feel like they're "selling" old games, which would hopefully increase engagement in the platform. I know I have a ton of games I no longer care about, and if I could "sell" them, I would, which cleans up my library and makes me want to spend the balance.

Also, if a game is no longer supported by a publisher, transfers should be free.

[IndrekR]

I do not see a good reason why one should not be able to sell the game more expensive than the purchase price. Say when the title becomes unavailable from the original source or was obtained as part of a bundle.

[tensor]

This is all speculation, but I would guess that the main issue is legal agreements with the publishers. The publishers don't want any game resales, they want only new sales. Unless France can equally compel the publishers to allow this, it might end up being that Steam is forced to withdraw from France.

[byron_fast]

Maybe, but I don't see that publishers could push Valve around too much these days.

You're right everyone wants new sales - but they've learned to be okay with offering 90% off at some point, and smaller discounts along the way.

[adev_]

> I would guess that the main issue is legal agreements with the publishers. The publishers don't want any game resales, they want only new sales.

Publishers tolerated reselling for decade when game mediums where physical.

Nowadays they complain about it to increase their margin, purely because they can technically lock the medium.

This is bullshit of the same level than the DRMs and other lock-in nonsense. I am pretty happy some consumer association finally arrived to say them to fuck off.

[rebuilder]

The first thing that comes to mind is contracts. Imagine you're signing a contract to let Valve sell your games. That's fairly straightforward - you agree on the terms for any given sale, probably Valve take a fixed percentage of the sale cost, and you sign. (Any lawyers among us, I beg your forgiveness!)

Now, imagine the contract gives Valve the right to let third parties resell the games at a price of their choosing. What now? Do you, the publisher, still get a cut? How much? What if it's a used game being resold for the Nth time? There's quite a bit of complexity being introduced here.

[meheleventyone]

In the old physical store days distributors and retailers held the power so they cornered the resale market by letting people trade in old games for money off new games. This let them sell the same product twice (or more!) without paying any money from the resale up the chain to the publisher or further to developers.

Valve already has a store that allows for resale of digital assets with an attached transaction fee. So naively it’d be an extension of that to games.

Whether they think they can cut out the people upstream remains to be seen.

[cameronbrown]

> Valve already has a store that allows for resale of digital assets with an attached transaction fee. So naively it’d be an extension of that to games.

Does first sale doctrine apply here? I think this would violate that.

[opencl]

There already is sort of a black market money laundering machine around steam licenses. It basically goes like: buy steam keys (not buying the game directly on steam, but a redeemable key from some other vendor) using stolen credit cards, resell the keys on a site like G2A, then when the stolen credit cards inevitably get chargebacks you still have the money from selling the key.

[rebuilder]

This is what cryptocurrencies really opened my eyes to: Everything is fungible if it can be traded online. And if it's fungible, it's going to attract scammers and criminals.