Steam, banning players for being generous?

[KalosCast]

I didn't buy this alcohol for children officer. They gave me money, I bought liquor they wanted, and then I set it on the ground and they stole it from me!

No, sorry, this guy doesn't have a case.

 

[Trolldor]

Valve was not wrong at all. Valve is in the legal and moral right by compying with the law.
If you have an issue, bring it up with the governments that enforce it.
Zer: The problem is not giving someone a gift, the problem is giving someone a 'gift' and then accepting its purchase value in return in order to avoid paying tax.

Also, just so you know, the reason it's called an import tax is that it's a tax. A revenue builder for the Government. Valve doesn't pocket the bloody tax.

The question is, how can you really be said to be importing a non-physical product? Also, realistically, they should be charging import taxes to any product sold outside the US by this logic. But they aren't.

At this point it's all arbitrary nonsense, so fudge the import tax element. It makes no logical sense.

Right, then you would have to raise the issue with the Government applying said Tax. Valve doesn't legislate Tax.

 

[KalosCast]

I didn't buy this alcohol for children officer. They gave me money, I bought liquor they wanted, and then I set it on the ground and they stole it from me!

No, sorry, this guy doesn't have a case.

lol you do realize how COMPLETELY flawed that argument is right. I will explain to you, You see buying alcohol for children is what we call a criminal act say it again criminal act which carries a penalty with it by local courts for doing it. The person doing the gift thing has committed no crime that I'm aware of and his only mistake was being dumb enough to use his main steam account to do this operation, from what I'm aware of that and nothing illegal about what he did and steam just ban him because they frowned upon it.

It's still the same thing, just a different law. Valve has made a price offer to HIM for a game (or rather, US customers). This offer is not available to European customers. He is selling this offer to people who aren't eligible for it. Anybody with any knowledge of contract law is going to know this guy doesn't have a case.

 

[darth gditch]

I'll quote an insightful comment from the link...

I wish more people would take a basic contract law class. Unreasonable clauses - primarily clauses which contract out of existing contract law - are unenforceable. Terminating an account which a person has paid for and reasonably expects to be able to use is a violation of the contract. It doesn't matter if Valve includes the clause "we may cancel your account and fuck you up the ass whenever we feel like it*. Neither stipulations are legal, and therefore any consumer could sue for the value of the games. Perhaps even punitive damages, since that would be shady as fuck.

If being banned indeed removes access to your purchased games, it's definitely a lawsuit situation. And nobody would call it frivolous.

But more OT, what this guy did was shady, but I highly doubt it's illegal. Since he bought the game, he owns it, and can sell it to anyone he wants. If Valve wants to fuck non-americans over with their stupid prices, consumers have a right to look for a better price.

Actually, not every country guarantees consumers the right to look for a better price. Just saying.

OT: Eh. It's shady, and it DOES mean that Valve is potentially losing thousands of dollars, if only a couple of dozen people do this. Not saying its cool or fair or that I agree with Valve, just saying that they're totally in the clear legally to ban someone who is costing them money.

 

[KalosCast]

??? how so, it seems to me that this whole thing is vale getting but hurt b/c their European customer are tird of getting fucked and have found away around their sales policy, until valve adjusts their gift system(would they) I believe its fair game

and when you buy a game you get one license to that game. I don't believe they can stop you from giving that license away, as I said Valve can probably ban away their account but I dont believe they are actually breaking the law

They have a licensing agreement WITH YOU. Not with the European gamer. Their purchase agreement states that you are purchasing the license to install and play this game to be bound to the Steam account you are making the purchase from, or to one other Steam account AS A GIFT and exclusively through their gifting system.

They can easily prove that these weren't gifts because he was taking money from them. By using their gifting service in the fashion, he's in breach of contract.

What I should be saying is that he didn't break the law, but he doesn't have any legal recourse to get his account back. But hey, you agreed to a contract by using Steam (likely a seperate one to use the store, too but I can't remember, it's been a long time since I set up my account.) Not to mention that if Valve were complicit in this, they could likely be in legal trouble in other countries for circumventing their tax or other commerce laws (which are likely the reasons that the prices are higher).

 

[kickyourass]

I have zero sympathy for this guy, sure Valve does some rather dickish things, it's not really possible to honestly deny that. But if you cheat someone (And poententially break the law) you have absolutly NO grounds to complain when that person bans you from their sevices, even if the person you cheated is a dick.

If he was honestly just buying them himself and just giving the games away, then I'd be on his side but he didn't do that so I say go ahead and kick his ass off Steam.

 

[Chibz]

They have a licensing agreement WITH YOU. Not with the European gamer. Their purchase agreement states that you are purchasing the license to install and play this game to be bound to the Steam account you are making the purchase from, or to one other Steam account AS A GIFT and exclusively through their gifting system.

They can easily prove that these weren't gifts because he was taking money from them. By using their gifting service in the fashion, he's in breach of contract.

What I should be saying is that he didn't break the law, but he doesn't have any legal recourse to get his account back. But hey, you agreed to a contract by using Steam (likely a seperate one to use the store, too but I can't remember, it's been a long time since I set up my account.) Not to mention that if Valve were complicit in this, they could likely be in legal trouble in other countries for circumventing their tax or other commerce laws (which are likely the reasons that the prices are higher).

Actually, no. Usually things cost more in europe due to the costs involved with shipping. This is just the publishers being greedy.

 

[KalosCast]

Actually, no. Usually things cost more in europe due to the costs involved with shipping. This is just the publishers being greedy.

They're fully within their right to do that as well, but you're forgetting that they do indeed have higher tax rates over there, as well as they likely have to pay for upkeep on things like servers to download purchases from, people to maintain these servers, offices for these people to work from, customer support representatives for these areas, etc etc etc which would all factor into costs.

In the end, it doesn't matter WHY there was a price difference. Valve made two different offers to two different people, one person sold the offer he was getting to other people and utilized a system for gifts to complete a sales transaction.

 

[Chibz]

They're fully within their right to do that as well, but you're forgetting that they do indeed have higher tax rates over there, as well as they likely have to pay for upkeep on things like servers to download purchases from, people to maintain these servers, offices for these people to work from, customer support representatives for these areas, etc etc etc which would all factor into costs.

In the end, it doesn't matter WHY there was a price difference. Valve made two different offers to two different people, one person sold the offer he was getting to other people and utilized a system for gifts to complete a sales transaction.

It's like this. We both enter a store, and they're selling... I don't know, a movie. You express interest in the movie. They offer it to me for $20 and you for $30. You really want the movie, so I take you to one side and offer to buy it for you. You give me the money, I buy the film. I hand it to you.

The store owner gets butthurt over you getting the film for $10 less and bans me from the store for life.

 

[KalosCast]

It's like this. We both enter a store, and they're selling... I don't know, a movie. You express interest in the movie. They offer it to me for $20 and you for $30. You really want the movie, so I take you to one side and offer to buy it for you. You give me the money, I buy the film. I hand it to you.

The store owner gets butthurt over you getting the film for $10 less and bans me from the store for life.

Not quite.

Imagine that if, before even entering the store, you signed a contract that said that you wouldn't do that, and a potential response to you breaking that contract is that you're forever banned from the store.

And then your scenario happens.

This is how Steam works.

 

[Chibz]

Not quite.

Imagine that if, before even entering the store, you signed a contract that said that you wouldn't do that, and a potential response to you breaking that contract is that you're forever banned from the store.

And then your scenario happens.

This is how Steam works.

Actually, the contract says to not resell the game. I'm not reselling it the product in the example, I'm purchasing it on your behalf.

 

[Axeli]

Well, it's Valve's house. Either follow their rules or try to find the game elsewhere. Those are their rules, and since that person was in violation of said rules, they have every right to ban his account.

It never ceases to amaze me how ready people these days are to throw away all their consumer rights.

I mean really, lets just let the companies dictate the rules.

 

[Trolldor]

Well, it's Valve's house. Either follow their rules or try to find the game elsewhere. Those are their rules, and since that person was in violation of said rules, they have every right to ban his account.

It never ceases to amaze me how ready people these days are to throw away all their consumer rights.

I mean really, lets just let the companies dictate the rules.

They don't, Governments do. Business do all they can within the bounds of the law. When they exceed those bounds they pay.

 

[KalosCast]

Actually, the contract says to not resell the game. I'm not reselling it the product in the example, I'm purchasing it on your behalf.

Legally speaking, you're still being a reseller in this regard. Though you might actually be breaking a different law that has nothing to do with Steam by selling a product you don't actually have (which would have nothing to do with his Steam ban), I'm not sure how that law applies to digital purchases.

 

[Axeli]

Well, it's Valve's house. Either follow their rules or try to find the game elsewhere. Those are their rules, and since that person was in violation of said rules, they have every right to ban his account.

It never ceases to amaze me how ready people these days are to throw away all their consumer rights.

I mean really, lets just let the companies dictate the rules.

They don't, Governments do. Business do all they can within the bounds of the law. When they exceed those bounds they pay.

And what happens when the average consumers attitude is like mentioned while businesses keep on lobbying? Chains are pointless when the one chained has the keys to them.

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

this is why I don't have any friends on steam