Valve has come under fire from a French consumer association called UFC Que Choisir (slightly different from that other UFC). The organization litigates on behalf of the public, and they feel that Steam is letting customers down. I like what theyâre trying to do, but I donât love their chances here.
UFC Que Choisir believes that 12 clauses in Steamâs much-scrutinized Subscriber Agreement constitute breaches of consumer law. Their main points of contention, translated by Silencement, break down as follows:
-Steamâs Subscriber Agreement explicitly forbids users to sell their games, despite the transfer of ownership of digital products/licenses being legal
-Valve declines any responsibility in case they get hacked and usersâ personal info gets stolen
-Valve claims ownership on the rights of any user-created content uploaded on Steam
-It is impossible to get the money on your Steam Wallet back if your account is closed/deleted/banned
-Valve applies Luxembourgâs consumer law regardless of the userâs country
Sounds pretty damning, huh? If UFC Que Choisir got Valve to concede these points, odds are they wouldnât be able to just flip a few switches for France, specifically. Steam would be looking at some systematic changes. Problem is, most of UFC Que Choisirâs points donât really hold water. Letâs break this down.
The first pointâthat people canât resell their gamesâis a complex issue that hasnât been solved in other mediums, and Valve already won in court against a German consumer group that filed a similar complaint. Valve expressly forbids the reselling of Steam accounts or games associated with Steam accounts. As for why, well, there are a lot of reasons.
At its most basic level, the issue is that physical goods are finite and digital goods can be as numerous as the stars in the sky, as manifold as Donald Trumpâs selection of weird neck/jowl configurations. On top of that, in the current system we buy licenses to specific games under a larger Steam subscriptionâas opposed to individual copies of games themselves. This allows us to, among other things, download and re-download games to our heartâs content. It also means, however, that we donât technically own the games we buy on Steam. We subscribe to them. As a result, our games are part of a serviceânot products we own.
Introducing the ability to resell would likely turn the current system on its head. Even if Valve implemented a feature that would, say, scrub a game from your account/machine and turn it back into a code you could sell, weâd be looking at a more or less infinite secondhand market. Because digital games donât expire with useâlike, say, keys you can sell on the Steam marketâa relatively large number of people could pass around a few keys quickly and easily. The convenience is the biggest factor here. It might not seem all that different from the way a few friends might pass around a copy of a physical game, but the ramifications could be much greater because itâs all so easy and the potential audience is so much larger. On top of that, what happens when big Steam Sales enter the picture? It wouldnât be difficult for people to buy up games on the cheap from developers/publishers, wait for prices to go back up, and then sell for a high price. I imagine that, in time, thatâd cause publishers to raise the initial price of games, and Valve would likely need to cease Steam sales altogether. Itâd be a big hit to folks making games, is what Iâm saying.
That said, it might not be so bad. Microtransactions already help a lot of publishers deal with dual monetary damages caused by the brick-and-mortar secondhand market and piracy. If Steam were forced to implement some kind of resale system, we might just see more microtransactions and similar online featuresâa direction the industryâs already trending toward anyway. But, as more games go free and rely almost entirely on microtransactions, digital resale of games themselves becomes less and less relevant. Valve, meanwhile, already allows for the sale of some digital goods on the Steam marketplace.
Still, laws in certain countries (like France) stipulate that the transfer of digital software licenses is legal, despite what any single company might (try to) say. An EU law to that effect has been in place since 2012. However, Valve won the aforementioned case against a German consumer group in 2014. Games, as it turns out, may not be mere âsoftware,â given that they can contain all sorts of music and art that fall under various copyright laws. On top of that, Valve has recently implemented game sharing and refund features that mitigate some of the inconveniences that emerge when people canât resell games.
The short version? UFC Que Choisirâs chances arenât looking great here.
UFC Que Choisir might actually have something with their second point, though. Valve declines responsibility pertaining to hacks when users bungle their own way into compromising situationsâthat is to say, when they get scammed by other users or duped by third-party trading sites. If an account is hijacked, however, Valve will sometimes make exceptions:
âInventory restorations are granted on a case by case basis. In order for Steam Support to restore items, technicians will need to verify, using Steamâs internal data, that the account was hijacked.â
But what about an external hack of personal information, specifically? Well, a major Steam hack actually did happen back in 2011, and Valveâs report card there is⊠mixed. They waited four days to initially report what happened, but they tried to investigate the ramifications of the hack and informed users that theyâd seen no evidence of credit card compromise. Unfortunately, it took them months to follow-up after that, and they found that hackers probably had gotten ahold of a lot of personal info, some of it encrypted. Ultimately, they advised users to stay on guard and use tools like Valveâs own Steam Guard security functions. Itâs not clear what sort of steps they took to try and secure said data in the aftermath of the hack. So, in short, Valve responded to a hack by trying to clean up the mess, but they were slower about it than they probably couldâve been, and they left users in a frightening limbo. Classic shitty Valve communication. The whole episode wasnât great. Since then, Valveâs implemented tighter security measures, but UFC Que Choisir isnât entirely off the mark on this one.
When it comes to user-created content, Valve actually claims a non-exclusive right to your stuff, so you can still post or reproduce it elsewhere. Given that user-created content is often made within games Valve or their publishing partners own, that actually doesnât seem like a terrible dealâespecially since Valve gives mod makers a cut of the profit if they end up selling said items. A handful of particularly successful creators are even able to make a living off it.
The fourth pointâthe inability to get money on your Steam Wallet back if your account is closed/deleted/bannedâsucks, but itâs also kinda a âthemâs the breaksâ situation. You turned that money over to Steam, same as you do when you buy a game or what have you. It makes a kind of sense that itâd vanish with all your games as punishment for breaking Steamâs rules in a way significant enough to get you banned. Admittedly, there are cases where account hijackers get people banned, and Valveâs notoriously shitty customer service takes weeks or months to respond. Until Valve convincingly clears that up, theyâre not spotless here. All in all, though, the policy in itself isnât super damning.
The last pointâthe bit about Luxembourg lawâis flat-out wrong. In Steamâs Subscriber Agreement, Valve writes: âHowever, where the laws of Luxembourg provide a lower degree of consumer protection than the laws of your country of residence, the consumer protection laws of your country shall prevail.â
Iâm glad to see this organization trying to fight for the rights of Steam users, but I feel like theyâre barking up the wrong series of treesâor âforest,â as the kids are calling them these days. Theyâve got one solid point and a bunch of weak/misinformed ones. Meanwhile, Valve has legal precedent (albeit in another country) on their side. Theyâve yet to comment on how they plan to respond to the impending lawsuit.
All that said, would you like the ability to resell your digital games? What would need to happen to make such a system functional?
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