EuGH allows resale of digital software licenses

[Gustaran]

The pirate still has the money and is therefor willing to spend it on other games.

What do you think a private reseller does with his money ? I would never buy a game for my PS3 that is 60 Euros and will entertain me for ~10 hours if I didn't know I could resell it for 40 Euros. That money will go towards my next game.

We might have to wait how this turns out, in different legal blogs you can read different opinions. The worst sounded something like this: Steam can not prohibit you from reselling your game, yet they are not obliged to help you sell it in any way either.
In the end, you would maybe have to create a single account for every game, which is not exactly convenient.

Added to this with cloud gaming services on the rise, I am afraid that the usual buying mechanic may completely disappear at some point in the future, forcing you to rent a game that's running on a server somewhere else....

[Krill]

What do you think a private reseller does with his money ? I would never buy a game for my PS3 that is 60 Euros and will entertain me for ~10 hours if I didn't know I could resell it for 40 Euros. That money will go towards my next game.

Market fragmentation and European studios getting a hand up because of "cheaper" games?

We might have to wait how this turns out, in different legal blogs you can read different opinions. The worst sounded something like this: Steam can not prohibit you from reselling your game, yet they are not obliged to help you sell it in any way either.
In the end, you would maybe have to create a single account for every game, which is not exactly convenient.

Yeah, first step on a long road and all that. Still, 1 game per account isn't exactly difficult to set up.

Added to this with cloud gaming services on the rise, I am afraid that the usual buying mechanic may completely disappear at some point in the future, forcing you to rent a game that's running on a server somewhere else....

The point of this ruling is that the license is transferable...so even with a monthly account you can still sell it to someone else. Things would get truly weird with WoW, though there was a point about true rentals being different, but what defines a rental in computer licenses...

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

The whole case is about downloads being no different to DVDs. Going online only doesn't change anything.

[MJW (ya that one)]

What do you think a private reseller does with his money ? I would never buy a game for my PS3 that is 60 Euros and will entertain me for ~10 hours if I didn't know I could resell it for 40 Euros. That money will go towards my next game.

This is incorrect. Most gamers don't buy a lot of games. 10 hours actually takes awhile for them to chew though because they don't play a lot. So they would just eat the fact that they cannot resell. People said that steam would bomb because you could not resell. They were wrong. Just like people who say cloud gaming won't work (it might take awhile to happen in the USA because the internet is a bit weak here).

I agree with you that what this ruling really means needs to be sorted out by the courts before that is known. The last point I have to make is that people already use the one game per account trick but its not very common yet.

[MJW (ya that one)]

The whole case is about downloads being no different to DVDs. Going online only doesn't change anything.

Yep, that's what the court says. What I'm saying is that steam would sell online and not support reselling even though the EU court says they have to. Steam would get sued by the goverment but they would just default and refuse to pay the judgement. I think you can still buy from a company that breaks the law. You would just have to pay though a service that does not track where you are from.

Now steam would still lose some money but reselling is so bad that it might be worth it.

[Mist]

Yep, that's what the court says. What I'm saying is that steam would sell online and not support reselling even though the EU court says they have to. Steam would get sued by the goverment but they would just default and refuse to pay the judgement. I think you can still buy from a company that breaks the law. You would just have to pay though a service that does not track where you are from.

Are you aware of stuff like seizure of assets and international arrest warrants for executives of companies that are found in contempt of the court? Even Microsoft doesn't ignore European law, and they have much more resources and muscle than Valve.

Steam will certainly challenge any ruling against their current business practice, the appeals will take good few years ( Microsoft antitrust case from 2005 concluded very recently ), but in the end, after paying all the assorted fines, Steam will either adapt the store for EU citizens only or it'll stop taking business from EU altogether ( shut down EU based infrastructure, close down regional offices, place a ban on regional IP addresses, ban on EU registered credit cards, ban on accounts with EU home address, and handle transactions in US Dollars only ).

I can imagine avoiding all the countries that have extradition treaties with EU and all the financial institutions that do business in Europe makes for a miserable life.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Are you aware of stuff like seizure of assets and international arrest warrants for executives of companies that are found in contempt of the court? Even Microsoft doesn't ignore European law, and they have much more resources and muscle than Valve.

Steam will certainly challenge any ruling against their current business practice, the appeals will take good few years ( Microsoft antitrust case from 2005 concluded very recently ), but in the end, after paying all the assorted fines, Steam will either adapt the store for EU citizens only or it'll stop taking business from EU altogether ( shut down EU based infrastructure, close down regional offices, place a ban on regional IP addresses, ban on EU registered credit cards, ban on accounts with EU home address, and handle transactions in US Dollars only ).

I can imagine avoiding all the countries that have extradition treaties with EU and all the financial institutions that do business in Europe makes for a miserable life.

? Well if you can get extricated for civil contempt, in the USA, they would have to allow reselling in EU. They cannot chesse it by not checking IP because they have proven they already can. You overestimate how bad it would be to be stuck in the USA but this is small issue.

I was aware of the MS cases but they were silly things like removing windows media player from some versions and not having IE on by default. It is not worth going online-only because of that.

[SleepingMoogle]

All the legal speak is making my head hurt, but from what I understand you must have ownership of a license in order to resell it. So this probably will affect Steam and Origin in one way or another, but since you don't actually 'own' licenses for stuff like Blizzard games (you just get to rent them while they retain ownership), I doubt this would suddenly enable you to sell your MMO accounts.

Unless I'm misreading it of course (fair chance of that, but still)

[novice]

(you just get to rent them while they retain ownership)

isn't that what a license is? Selling a license means selling this right to use something that is owned by someone else.

[SleepingMoogle]

I suspect it will take another couple of years of legal wrangling to get that kind of definition nailed down.

[Tyrmith]

I'm saying that they will simply sell through their US servers (or some other country) to the EU, and thereby simply ignore the EU restrictions. It's the internet, it's worldwide, even if the governments would prefer it not to be.