We’re all familiar with Steam. And even though they generally do a very good job in providing their services, there’s no denying of the occasional screw-up. Getting tired of their marketing policies, a French group is suing Valve over the right to resell games.
UFC-Que Choisir’s demands
The French group has sued the gaming company, as they claim that Valve is in violation of a number of European legal rights.
The federal union of consumers, or UFC-Que Choisir, is claiming that by preventing the reselling of their games, Valve is denying the rights of European Union members to resell software.
The group also brings into light that the difference between selling a physical copy of a game and a digital one shouldn’t really exist, since the buyer spent money and should be allowed to do with the product as he pleases.
Other counts on which the group is accusing Steam is the claim that the company owns all rights to user created content on the platform, denying their creators of their intellectual property.
They also want the company to accept liability when Steam accounts are hacked, as just this month they released statistics saying that over 77,000 accounts are hacked every month.
Another claim is for Valve to allow users to take their money back from their Steam Wallets when they close their accounts, instead of the money going to the company.
The group is accusing Valve of a number of pretty well formulated complaints, but if we’re to check the precedence of such cases, they probably don’t really have a chance of winning.
Precedence
In 2012, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in favor of a client who sued Oracle over preventing him from reselling their software. The court claimed that it’s explicitly stated in the law that it’s legal to resell software, which is an integral part of video games.
However, in 2014, a German individual lost his second lawsuit against Valve on similar terms to the UFC-Que Choisir group, as the Court of Justice of the European Union claimed that video games are more than just software, so the comparison to the Oracle case doesn’t stand.
This is indeed conflicting with the legal rights to resell physical copies of games, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens during the trial.
Image source: Wikimedia
