Valve will appeal French courts ruling that Steam cannot ban resale of 'dematerialised' games

guest · Sep 20, 2019

Valve will appeal French courts ruling that Steam cannot ban resale of 'dematerialised' games
Valve face a half-million Euro fine
September 19, 2019
https://www.pcgamer.com/french-courts-rule-that-steam-cannot-ban-resale-of-dematerialised-games/

Update: Valve's Doug Lombardi responded to our request for comment with the following statement:
"We disagree with the decision of the Paris Court of First Instance and will appeal it. The decision will have no effect on Steam while the case is on appeal"
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Original story: After a long legal battle that we first covered back in 2015, French consumer rights association UFC-Que Choisir claim to have won a major victory against Valve, as reported by French games site Next Inpact. The French courts have ruled that under European law, users should be allowed to re-sell 'dematerialised' non-physical goods, specifically digital games sold via Steam.

Current Steam store policy is that resale of games or accounts is strictly prohibited, and any attempt to do so can result in your account being banned. If the ruling is upheld, then that has to change or else Valve will face fines.

However, those hoping that this will let them sell off their backlog of unwanted games soon may be disappointed. According to the machine-translated ruling, "Valve have one month to comply" with the request to remove the now-illegal clauses from their store policy, and post the full court judgement on their store for three months. However, the penalty if they refuse is a mere 3,000 Euros a day for up to six months.
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A half-million Euros sounds like a lot of money to most, but considering Valve's estimated (reported via ExtremeTech) $4.3bn revenue in 2017 alone, that's a drop in the ocean.
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Valve will appeal French courts ruling that Steam cannot ban resale of 'dematerialised' games

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