German Consumer Group Hopes To See Valve In Court This Year

[SajuukKhar]

people keep on saying that as if the value doesn't decay as with every other product known to man kind. Would you spend $50 dollars on a 10 year old game. No, doesn't matter if it is digital or not.

Still love it when people use "the corporations are not making enuf" argument. Mind baffling.

Value decay is largely irrelevant to the point, because even after value decay, that 10 year old, 90% discounted, item still makes companies money, whereas trading digital games doesn't.

And I love it when people ignore things like
A. Video game development costs are, and have been, skyrocketing year after year.
B. Video game companies hardly make enough money to payback the multi-million of dollars needed to make a game in the first place. Which is why most companies only produce sequels to established IPs like CoD, because its the only thing they know will be able to get them their money back.
C. There have been more video game companies closing in the last 3-5 years then the last decade before it, showing just how bad of a state video game companies are in, despite all of the supposed "MASSIEVE PROFETS" people claim they are making.

People love to only look at how much video game companies make from a game, while totally ignoring how much they actually made after they pay back everything the spent to make the product in the first place.

 

[zumbledum]

kind of hope valve wins this tbh, not for valves sake though , for mine. Sure it sounds great on paper the ability to trade our digital games freedom to buy cheap second hand games that are as good as new whats not to like?

simply put this will take more money out of the market than piracy ever could , thats going to mean a lot of devs going out of business and a lot less games coming out.

it will also drastically affect the way games are marketed, we can expect to see the end of single up front payment it just wont be viable, everything will be rental , subscription, or expensive as you like (commonly miss named free to play)

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Cheaper price (due to lower production costs)
Always available (since quantities are relatively infinite)
Ability to install or uninstall freely.
No Disk swapping.

Trade off:

Inability to resell

Cheaper price (due to lower production costs)
Except games on Steam cost more at release than a physical copy.
Always available (since quantities are relatively infinite)
Except when the cd keys run out.
Ability to install or uninstall freely.
Except when the DRM prevents it.
No Disk swapping.
This one is true.

 

[SajuukKhar]

-Except games on Steam cost more at release than a physical copy.
-Except when the cd keys run out.
-Except when the DRM prevents it.

-Except they don't? Games on Steam are the same 60 USD both in retail and on the Steam store.
-Which has happened like once? The only time I recall a game running out of cd-keys was Prey, a game that wasn't on Steam at release, and only added later, which is why it had a cd-key system in the first place. Also, most games dont use CD-keys anymore, since, you know, they are on Steam.
-Which Steam doesn't so.....

 

[Skeleon]

Good, keep going, folks. They're not above the law. And before some Valve-defender jumps on me: Just because you're fine with it or just because they can do that to customers in your country doesn't mean they should or will get away with it here. Consumer protections are a high good in Europe in general and Germany in particular. Blackmailing your customers is simply not okay.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

-Except games on Steam cost more at release than a physical copy.
-Except when the cd keys run out.
-Except when the DRM prevents it.

-Except they don't? Games on Steam are the same 60 USD both in retail and on the Steam store.
-Which has happened like once? The only time I recall a game running out of cd-keys was Prey, a game that wasn't on Steam at release, and only added later, which is why it had a cd-key system in the first place. Also, most games dont use CD-keys anymore, since, you know, they are on Steam.
-Which Steam doesn't so.....

A Steam game is 50? which is roughly 375 DKK, as I live in Denmark. A new release will run in at 300-350 DKK depending on where I buy it. There is a world outside the US and here Steam is generally the expensive option. Tier 1 Euro countries in general.

Personally I've had it happen 3 times that a game ran out and I had to wait days for a new batch. And I'm aware that it's happened more that.

Steam happily smothers games in DRM. Any number uses GFWL, StarForce, SecuROM and TAGES. There is no real point in arguing that as it's a fact.

 

[HannesPascal]

On topic: More consumer rights is always good.
Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband e.V (gesundheit) you have my moral support (not that it will do much good though).


Kind of off topic.
Easy way to make reselling possible. You get like 10% (or less) from the price of the game when you bought it (so you will get more money from a game you bought at the release date than at the summer sale) to take away the game from your library. If you want to play the game again you have to buy it again. The publisher can choose to make it so that the money you get from trading in your game can only be used to buy other games from that publisher (trading in Fallout 3 will give you money to buy Skyrim). This way it's more tempting to buy a game when it's expensive and when you're done with it you will get some publisher money that will entice you to buy another game from the same publisher.

 

[SajuukKhar]

There was also a over 300 pages long discussion of this on the Steam forums where Steam Moderators were merging every thread or outrage into it to "contain" the amount of people that even know about it,

Actually, they did it to prevent the forums from being spammed with 500 repeats of the same topic.

The same reason mods on the Bethesda forums merge all threads that talk about stuff people want for Fallout 4 into the "Fallout 4 suggestions" thread. By your logic Bethesda is trying to "contain" people's knowledge of what other people want for Fallout 4.

 

[SinisterGehe]

How do you sell a Digital game to fucking begin with? What would be the point? Why would ANYONE buy brand new then? Also if you do not agree with the term of the service, do not use that service. I do not accept them Deactivating accounts and removing their contents, but still - don't like the service, do not use it. Vote with your wallets.

Also I do not like the idea that germany wants to go and fucking rule how Europe and it's residents should live... Specially when they have few times bent the rules for their own favor, but that is a different discussion.

This should fail. Because the ramifications of this would hurt the industry I work in.

And would someone explain to me how do you sell used digital license. There is nothing to trade over. IF it is just mere tick box in your account.

 

[Madman123456]

A nice Idea would be to have the option of trading the old games back to valve for "steam money" with which i could buy new games.
Valve would give me some credit, like a buck or something per game and if i trade in many old games i'd have enough to get me some new games next steamsale.
This would put valve in a monopoly of sorts over the trade ins of the games of the steam platform. Then again they'd fulfill the obligation to enable people to trade their old games.
And that would be the only way they would do that. Maybe they'd give you less money per game, about 5 cent or something.

 

[medv4380]

A class action by definition is one where the all the plaintiffs are not named.

Incorrect. You're not a lawyer so you shouldn't be practicing law. I've been "represented" in a class action lawsuit before, and in each, and every, one every last plaintiff was named. Just because the US allows for plaintiffs to be unknown in a class action lawsuit doesn't mean they are always unknown. All a class action lawsuit is where you have a sufficient number of plaintiffs to warrant a class action lawsuit. If enough people bring the same complaint about the same company a Judge can have them bundled into a class action to simplify the ruling and court time.

 

[Richard Allen]

How do you sell a Digital game to fucking begin with? What would be the point? Why would ANYONE buy brand new then? Also if you do not agree with the term of the service, do not use that service. I do not accept them Deactivating accounts and removing their contents, but still - don't like the service, do not use it. Vote with your wallets.

Also I do not like the idea that germany wants to go and fucking rule how Europe and it's residents should live... Specially when they have few times bent the rules for their own favor, but that is a different discussion.

This should fail. Because the ramifications of this would hurt the industry I work in.

And would someone explain to me how do you sell used digital license. There is nothing to trade over. IF it is just mere tick box in your account.

I hope for someones sake you aren't a developer. The amount of ignorance is astounding. The first step is to read the article to understand what the suit is actually about. But no, that's too difficult.

 

[Stryc9]

How to get people to sue you: tell them they can't.

They're not saying you can't sue them. They're just saying that you can't get a collection of people and lawyers together and sue them as a GROUP. If you felt wronged by Valve for whatever reason you could go down to the courthouse right now and for the cost of filing fees and all the other legal bullshit that goes along with it take Valve to court individually for whatever wrong you think they may have committed.

In a way I agree with policies that prevent class action lawsuits as they stand now. The only people that win in a class action lawsuit are the lawyers that file them because they soak up most of the money paid out in damages and the people that are supposed to see the benefit of the suit get fucked.

Just look at that plane crash in San Fransisco a couple of weeks ago. Some ambulance chasing law firm in Chicago is filing a lawsuit against Boeing on behalf of the passengers on the plane, none of whom contacted this law firm, and the claim is that there's a slight possibility that there could have maybe been a mechanical failure with the autopilot that caused it to disengage early. This law firm doesn't want to help the people in that plane crash, if their lawsuit were to succeed and Boeing was forced to pay out money the people on that flight wouldn't see a penny of the money, a bunch of blood sucking lawyers would take it.

 

[Karadalis]

Valve is gonna win this easy. They can afford the expensive lawyers, and in the end that's what matters. Although it is nice to see not everyone here is rushing to defend Valve.

You dont really know how german courts work do you? If they violate german law then you could have the most expensive lawyer in the world and it wouldnt change a damn thing.

There is no jury you can influence in germanm courts... no joe smoe from the street that has absolutely no idea about laws in the first place is going to decide in germany if someone did or did not break a law. If its illegal... it is illegal and will be ruled that way. Sure it might take years, german courts are notorious for taking way to friggin long... but in the end it doesnt matter.

Also the Verbraucherzentrale is not a small run rag tag troupe of some people fighting the good fight.

They are a nationwide organisation, well organised by the way and they have excellent lawyers themselves.

Also in this case its very easy to proof that Valve is violating german law because they themselves have written down their EULAs for everyone to read... its not like the Verbraucherzentrale has to search for proof because the proof is in plain view.

 

[obstructor]

Snip"

Auction house style?

I mean that would be the most obvious solution that doesnt have steam dictate a price and still have steam benefit from it by taking some auction fees?

Oh I can see it now. It will be just like World of Warcraft, account hacking will become a thing, they can sell all the games in your library to a second account for mere pennies and resell them for actual profit.

There will be stories of people making thousands of dollars buying and selling in the steam auction house. People will buy guides on how to make money and end up losing tons of money on games they cannot get rid of. Valve will be even more loaded from a small 5% auction house cut. Bad games won't make anywhere near as much money as these people won't be buying up tons of copies to resell, Good games will make oodles as people will buy more copies than they can get rid of and be stuck with them.

 

[Karadalis]

Uhm.. isnt account hacking allready a thing? I mean there are allready ways of making money through steam with trading TF2 items and now the new collectible cards.. allbeit pocket change true.. but money none the less