France highest court declares Valve has to allow re-sale of games.

[kail]

Neither are people who genuinely believe that having less rights over the property they own is a good idea.

It's more about accepting the inherent pros and cons of digital licenses compared to physical goods. I am all for basic consumer rights like refunds and protection guarantees but reselling licenses is like reselling a haircut service. Doesn't seem feasible.

[Velerios]

I don't think anyone has argued that this only would concern Steam. Of course the matter deals with every digital market; The EU law on the matter is clear on the subject. However this particular court decision is about Valve and Steam.

I doubt it; when people say that Steam could stop sales in France and others say that others like uplay/epic/gog would be happy to fill the gap, i think they do not understand that every digital seller of digital goods would be affected by it. So everyone would be affected by it; and i doubt that this will NOT go to the High court of the EU. And if this is decided there, then it would affect everyone within the european union.

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Or the more likely scenario is that Valve will stop selling you games. They will rent them to you. $60 for a new game for oh, 50 years. Now they are no longer bound by resale, and they aren't forced to let you sell anything.

Valve actually did it in their terms; naming their customers subscribers of the game. They were declared invalid, so no, something like this will not simply work. And even if they rent it to you for 50 years, it would not change the issue that you could sell it within this 50 years. Courts here aren't that stupid.

[Krastyn]

Valve actually did it in their terms; naming their customers subscribers of the game. They were declared invalid, so no, something like this will not simply work. And even if they rent it to you for 50 years, it would not change the issue that you could sell it within this 50 years. Courts here aren't that stupid.

Do you have a citation for that, as I can't find anything backing that up. Courts don't allow people to sublet apartments, all willy nilly, so I fail to see how they would force Valve to let people sell their rentals. The court declared that as is, Steam isn't set up like a subscription service. Depending on what the terms of "resale" are, this may push them to that. Or they'll just make easy money off of resales, and publishers get nothing.

At best this is a win for consumers, at the expense of developers.

It has nothing to do with courts being stupid. It has to do with how laws are written. If you allow people to resell rentals