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Breaking news:
The European Court of Justice just ruled that European consumers always have the right to resell software licenses even if these were bought in digital form (rendering invalid any EULA that says otherwise of course). 
Press release:
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/...0094en.pdf
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That's going to fuck Blizzard up.
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Hi,
haha, that's interesting. I wonder if and how Blizzard (and others) implement this. 
-Kylearan
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I wonder how they are going to consider accounts set up with each game: are they transferable, or must each new buyer start their own account.
Or will they try to claim that is different under the law and fight that as well?
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My guess is that they'll treat it the same way they do when you stop a subscription to WoW, probably something along the lines of the seller mailing blizz, blizz disabling the game from their account and giving them a code to give to the buyer to add to add the game to their account. You re-add the game later, and you get access to everything you had beforehand, as I'm sure they'll tell you many times.
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Gustaran Wrote:Breaking news:
The European Court of Justice just ruled that European consumers always have the right to resell software licenses even if these were bought in digital form (rendering invalid any EULA that says otherwise of course).
Press release:
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/...0094en.pdf
More interesting to see how Steam handles it. The cynic in me says that they offload the work to the game developer.
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There are many devlopers that say that reselling games is worse than piracy. The pirate still has the money and is therefor willing to spend it on other games. Reselling is also not illegal so much more people are willing to do it. I think there is a good chance that steam+blizzard just drops out of the EU and forces you to buy in a USA "store". Then default on all civil judgements against them. If this does not happen I wonder if USA members will be able to buy in the EU. They probably will but your account will always be in danger of getting banned for breaking the rules.
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MJW (ya that one) Wrote:I think there is a good chance that steam+blizzard just drops out of the EU and forces you to buy in a USA "store". That'd be amusing, especially with EA outright stating that they don't plan on selling in physical stores in a few years, and then Eu loses out on the taxes. Whoops.
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Tyrmith Wrote:That'd be amusing, especially with EA outright stating that they don't plan on selling in physical stores in a few years, and then Eu loses out on the taxes. Whoops.
Quote:There are many devlopers that say that reselling games is worse than piracy. The pirate still has the money and is therefor willing to spend it on other games. Reselling is also not illegal so much more people are willing to do it. I think there is a good chance that steam+blizzard just drops out of the EU and forces you to buy in a USA "store". Then default on all civil judgements against them. If this does not happen I wonder if USA members will be able to buy in the EU. They probably will but your account will always be in danger of getting banned for breaking the rules.
What, you're saying that no one will sell any software at all to those people within the EU? Pretty sure there is no legal distinction between the EU store and USA store on steam, it's where the buyer is located. Though that will be the subject of another case...they'd have to not offer them at all which would take a huge bite out of profits (because the production and upkeep costs are relatively constant), and that definitely would increase piracy.
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Krill Wrote:What, you're saying that no one will sell any software at all to those people within the EU? Pretty sure there is no legal distinction between the EU store and USA store on steam, it's where the buyer is located. Though that will be the subject of another case...they'd have to not offer them at all which would take a huge bite out of profits (because the production and upkeep costs are relatively constant), and that definitely would increase piracy.
I'm saying that steam will just ignore the ruling and go online only. Steam will get sued civilly but would default on the judgements. In the EU you could still just buy online, even though steam is breaking the law, and modfying steam would still be illegal.
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