EU rules - selling accounts is LEGAL (and other digital sales must be resaleable)

[Tanthalus]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...wnloaded-games

The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that publishers cannot stop you from reselling your downloaded games.

More specifically: "An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his 'used' licences allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet

and the big part for wow users:

The ruling continues: "Therefore, even if the licence agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy."

second part is the one for wow players - law now states that you cans ell , legally , your wow account , even if the EULA says otherwise.

[pawsz]

But its not your account to begin with?
It says downloaded games, the account isnt the game. And also Blizzard can ban whoever they want without stating a reason.

[FusedMass]

I wonder if MMO Champion will now allow people to sell their accounts here. It's pretty much right there at least in EU it's legal despite what Blizzard says and if they try to take any action on your account. (Meaning Blizzard) it could easily slip into a messy situation conflicting with another nations laws.

[Deleted]

its not our account, its their's, we are paying to play their account ye?

[Sam the Wiser]

This shall be interesting in the up coming weeks...

[Deleted]

But its not your account to begin with?
It says downloaded games, the account isnt the game. And also Blizzard can ban whoever they want without stating a reason.

getting banned alright.
at least you got your money! *KACHING*

[Deleted]

But its not your account to begin with?
It says downloaded games, the account isnt the game. And also Blizzard can ban whoever they want without stating a reason.

This.
Also, in order to fight against gold sellers and hackers, Blizzard can still suspend any account if they have enough proofs or if the user infringed some rules.

You're signing a contract to begin with, when you read the terms of service. IF you do not accept this contract, well, fair enough, don't play the game, return it to the shop or uninstall the trial version from your computer.

I don't know ANY kind of court able to decide otherwise. They can't do anything against far more abusive cases (like the ToS of machinima.com for example...) so why could they do something against blizzard, and in favor of wow accounts "owners" (who aren't owning anything at all)?

[Tanthalus]

it doesnt matter - you purchase a digital licence to play the game , therefore under the new law you can sell that licence onwards.. need to find the full wording of the law of course

[Blackmist]

I don't believe it's ever been illegal to sell your account.

This ruling appears to make it illegal for the rights-holder to stop you.

Expect a lot of noise on this from EA, Microsoft, Activision and others. They will find a loophole. They always do.

Whether they'll be asked to make license transfers available (e.g. for XBLA games, etc) remains to be seen. On one hand it'd be nice to be able to transfer them to others when I'm done with them, but on the other I don't fancy getting all my games stolen (along with the funny money stealing that EA made profitable when they did that Dream Team player swapping thing for some footy game a while back) if my account gets hacked.

[Deleted]

You can't sell your accounts since it's not allowed to share an account...nobody stops you from reselling the install client, not sure how that would help you though. :P

[Tomana]

No, what they said is that a company can re-sell a software license it bought from the publisher.
So, you can technically re-sell your WoW CD as well. That, however, does not necessarily mean you can re-sell characters on it.

[Effbee]

I'd lean towards what pawsz is saying.

This seems more about if you own a game, you can sell said game and its licence/cd key to whomever you please. You of course can no longer use that licence (no EU law will be able to say "sure, one person in a group of 20 can buy it and you can all use it!"...that's just stupid).

WoW accounts are not games. You may very well be able to sell on your WoW games themselves, but not the account you play on...that belongs to Blizzard, and it says so in everything you have ever ticked "Yes" to when entering the game

[Simulacrum]

This.
Also, in order to fight against gold sellers and hackers, Blizzard can still suspend any account if they have enough proofs or if the user infringed some rules.

You're signing a contract to begin with, when you read the terms of service. IF you do not accept this contract, well, fair enough, don't play the game, return it to the shop or uninstall the trial version from your computer.

Pretty sure that, whatever contract you sign, it doesn't thrump the nation's laws. Otherwise Apple really could make human centipedes out of its users.

[MerinPally]

This will change nothing.

You don't download the account you download the game, you just rent the account. You are not allowed to sell on rented property without the explicit consent of the owner - which is Blizzard.

Also, Blizzard can ban any account whenever they want for any reason they want. That's their clause to keep complete control. It is irrelevent whatever law is changed or ruled upon, Blizzard will not allow account selling therefore neither will mmochampion most likely as it would be seen as illicit activity against the TOS, same reason that botting isn't supported on this site.

[Tanthalus]

or steam/origin games - you buy BF3 on origin , dont like then resell it.

---------- Post added 2012-07-03 at 04:07 PM ----------

IF the eu court, in the small print defines, the game account as also explicitly meaning the game licence, as well as the account, then that means selling account becomes legal.

[hulkgor]

Gotta love people saying "laws" are irrelevant because blizzard can do what they want... do you guys know what LAWS are?

[Reeve]

I didn't realize the EU had a court with this kind of authority over multiple nations.

[Maelle]

This will change nothing.

You don't download the account you download the game, you just rent the account. You are not allowed to sell on rented property without the explicit consent of the owner - which is Blizzard.

Also, Blizzard can ban any account whenever they want for any reason they want. That's their clause to keep complete control. It is irrelevent whatever law is changed or ruled upon, Blizzard will not allow account selling therefore neither will mmochampion most likely as it would be seen as illicit activity against the TOS, same reason that botting isn't supported on this site.

IMO this will turn out to be the case. A bit like subletting - it's not illegal, but you usually have to get your landlords consent first.

[Tomana]

[/COLOR]IF the eu court, in the small print defines, the game account as also explicitly meaning the game licence, as well as the account, then that means selling account becomes legal.

Game account and game license is not the same. For example, I have to create a Battle.net account and then attach a WoW CD-Key to it. This ruling won't prohibit me from re-selling the CD, but that's about it (in its current state).

[Gamdwelf]

Learn to read you can sell digital license of a downloaded game, not the account. It more or less says you can sell games you download, the game not any accounts attached to it.