I know what they're talking about there but that has always been the case with Steam and pretty much any download service that changes its terms, it wouldn't even hold up in court so it seems kind of pointless to be concerned about it.
Steam Subscriber Argeement
- Thread starter Tobes
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I know what they're talking about there but that has always been the case with Steam and pretty much any download service that changes its terms, it wouldn't even hold up in court so it seems kind of pointless to be concerned about it.
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tldr
EULA/ToS/T+C's mean jack if its written into the law.
Wether you purchase a game or a license to play it, if the courts deem steam need to allow selling/trading they will have to adhere to it.
Had it recently , went to buy stalker pack in the sale but it said as I owned the first one I wouldn't get another copy/license. I was paying for it so don't see why another wasn't included. Didn't buy it in the end lol
EULA/ToS/T+C's mean jack if its written into the law.
Wether you purchase a game or a license to play it, if the courts deem steam need to allow selling/trading they will have to adhere to it.
Had it recently , went to buy stalker pack in the sale but it said as I owned the first one I wouldn't get another copy/license. I was paying for it so don't see why another wasn't included. Didn't buy it in the end lol
If I don't accept the agreement then I can't play my games - therefore access to games has been removed until I click 'ok' to the agreement.
I agree that the terms have been there for years but things have changed now and Steam are rewording their t&c's in an attempt to get around the new changes to digital distribution laws. To risk repeating myself, if we don't agree with them doing this, we don't get to play the games we have paid for. More importantly, we don't get to benefit from the new changes.
It's a hostage situation
Call Jack Bauer tbh
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To be fair, it is at the discression of the publisher if "extra" copies are giftable or not.
Soldato
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I doubt it. They would just shake their heads and shrug and say "sorry, we dont have any money to pay people" and most likely because everyone has agreed to the T&C's you couldnt do a thing about it.
Meanwhile Gabe is relaxing on his luxury Yacht dreaming up new ways of stealing from people.
But he would have had a good run and lets face it the business models of Steam and its ilk are sound - Get together with big gaming developers, hype up a product to fever pitch, release it half finished and broken, then refuse to give refunds and furthermore if your customer starts any trouble threaten to revoke their account access entirely whilst you smile smugly because you know you have them over a barrel. Release the odd patch to make it look like you care and to stop any major unrest, and just laugh all the way to the bank. Business 101.
People have mentioned choice, and I think Steam (and others like it) are bordering on monopoly status because if you want to play games the only way you can do so is to have an account with them and agree to their terms and conditions.
Its a bit like if you could only buy cars from a couple of outlets and all the companies started saying: "yes please buy a new car from us, but please sign this disclaimer that absolves us from any responsibility, and also takes away your right of ownership by saying we only 'rent' you the car - so if you die within 99 years we can take the car back. Further more if you decide you dont like your car or it is broken and not fit for purpose, tough. We wont take it back or give a refund. Oh, and if we think you are an unsuitable driver we reserve the right to sieze the car and take it off you permanently, along with any other cars you have 'bought' from us, whether you use them carefully or not. Oh and finally, theres just a little bit at the bottom that says we can terminate your right to use the car at any point without giving reason and take the car back, and if the company should fail, we will take the car back and you will lose your money and because you signed this disclaimer you will have no recourse in law whatsoever."
Hmmm, smacks of ransom to me.
Would they be allowed to get away with it? I dont think so and I dont understand why people are ascribing special status to games purchases. Unfortunately it is a scary concept as what will be next? Music has already mostly gone that route, but at least you still have the choice to buy a hard copy from a shop and pop it in your CD player.
DVD/Blu Ray can still be bought in hard copy but if companies like Netflix have their way soon you wont even be able to do that.
It does not wash with me that all of these countermeasures have spawned because of piracy. What they are spawned from is greed and a money making racket. For instance music companies where always whinging about how they were losing x-amount of billions from piracy so why all of a sudden can music companies now afford to charge just 99p a track? Why have the cost of albums halved, or in some instances come down by two thirds? I thought piracy was killing the industry? How is it then they can afford to make such huge cuts in sale prices?
Of course its because it is all digital, there is no 'product' or the costs involved with distributing one, or so they would have you believe. However I challenge anyone to prove to me that a £12 album in a shop costs the music company any more than about a £1 to get there, £2 at the most. Secondly theres no risk to the music providers like itunes, only risk to the consumer. Your account his hacked, tough. Not their problem.
They decide they dont like you, they press a button and your music library 'diappears' (read becomes unusable because of DRM). So theres no risk to them and you lose what little consumer rights you had left.
But at least with music you can still go into a shop and buy a hard copy, but actual music shops are in terminal decline. And this is by design of course, because once the digital media moguls have undercut and destroyed the music/DVD/book shops then they have complete control of how you access music, films, books etc. They, like is happening in Steam, can dictate to you the terms of how you listen to music and watch films. You want to watch something at 5pm on saturday evening great, go for it. No wait the servers are down and you cant access the product you have paid to use, sorry. Try again later
I suppose the next step will be the release of CD's/DVD's etc that you can only listen to/watch if you have an internet connection and a copy of itunes or a netflix subscription and this is exactly how Steam started out - with the fact you needed it written in tiny print on the back of the box. All the physical disc will contain is a pass key and you will have to download the music/video off the internet and only play it on 1 device at a time, and only play it when they say you can.
Its a slippery slope, and I am by no means apt to wear a tin foil hat, but even I can see that it smacks of 'control'.
With regard to Steam and it's ilk, its not a choice, it is a lack of options (IE Monopoly - which I am pretty sure is illegal)
I'm all for the legislation. I have mentioned in another topic that I think games companies are having it too easy. Maybe if they could be held accountable for releasing rubbish broken content, then they would start making more effort to release good, well tested games in the first place instead of lazy clones and console ports ad infinitum that they charge a premium for. A premium that actually only buys you the permission to play their broken content no less.
Whatever happened to games that work out of the box eh?
Cheers
Buff
Regardless of what people think of Steam, it is the best of what we have at the moment, by a long chalk too.
Steam has pioneered many features which the "corporate suits" of the bigger publishers would never do because it takes away from their bottom line. They only do so now because if they do not, their product looks inferior.
Something like a simple matchmaking lobby or cloud saves for example is something an indie could only dream of without Steam.
I am not ashamed to say I still support Steam, Valve have done enough to warrant that trust in my book.
Is a monopoly a bad thing if it provides a better choice than the alternative?
Remember, Steam has became as big as it is because it became so big because people decided they liked it, long before Steamworks games.
Steam has pioneered many features which the "corporate suits" of the bigger publishers would never do because it takes away from their bottom line. They only do so now because if they do not, their product looks inferior.
Something like a simple matchmaking lobby or cloud saves for example is something an indie could only dream of without Steam.
I am not ashamed to say I still support Steam, Valve have done enough to warrant that trust in my book.
Is a monopoly a bad thing if it provides a better choice than the alternative?
Remember, Steam has became as big as it is because it became so big because people decided they liked it, long before Steamworks games.
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Steam has done a great deal of good in both helping indy developers bring games to the market as well as reducing piracy. If their service starts to get eroded then it will only turn people back to piracy.
I don't really see an issue with rental based gaming either as long as I only have to pay the steam sale price for something, there are barely any games I go back to play again once done, I would be rather peeved if I paid full EA/Activision price for something and then was denied the ability to play it a few months down the line.
I don't think any of the EULAs are worth anything though, as was pointed out earlier, what makes them different to a poster over a doorway saying all your belongings belong to X if you pass under, they are only around because the legal system doesn't really know how to deal with digital "imaginary" products, any real legal agreement requires a proper signature and all these EULA are worthless until you have to sign them to agree.
I don't really see an issue with rental based gaming either as long as I only have to pay the steam sale price for something, there are barely any games I go back to play again once done, I would be rather peeved if I paid full EA/Activision price for something and then was denied the ability to play it a few months down the line.
I don't think any of the EULAs are worth anything though, as was pointed out earlier, what makes them different to a poster over a doorway saying all your belongings belong to X if you pass under, they are only around because the legal system doesn't really know how to deal with digital "imaginary" products, any real legal agreement requires a proper signature and all these EULA are worthless until you have to sign them to agree.
Soldato
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Steam can put anything they like into a contract but at the end of the day it needs to fair otherwise its worthless. The fact they force you into accepting the new contract to allow access to the games you spent £100 on previously is definately unfair.
Bottom line, it would never stand up in a court of law.
Bottom line, it would never stand up in a court of law.
Dont forget its only for their own gain. They are not doing us any favors. Well except for giving us all our downloads under one roof, and letting us make backup so we dont have to redownload everytime, and having great deals. But what else have they done for us?
But what else have they done for us?
They got the Russians to start buying games!
And I can guarantee you that if it ever happened, game piracy would increase hundredfold within hours
Whatever happened to games that work out of the box eh?
Cheers
Buff
As a long time PC gamer, I don't think "games that work out of the box" have ever been particularly common... (ahh, the good old days of having to set IRQ values etc
)
http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
6. USER GENERATED INFORMATION
"User Generated Information" means any information made available to other users through your use of multi-user features of Steam or to Valve or its affiliates through your use of the Software. User Generated Information may include, but is not limited to, chat, forum posts, screen names, game selections, player performances, usage data, suggestions about Valve products or services, and error notifications. Subject to the Valve privacy policy referenced in Section 1 above, as applicable, you expressly grant Valve and its affiliates the complete and irrevocable right to use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the User Generated Information and derivative works thereof in any form, anywhere, with or without attribution to you, and without any notice or compensation to you of any kind. For any content for which you take advantage of cloud storage provided by Valve, you grant us a license to store such information for you, and you represent and warrant to us that you have sufficient rights in such content to grant us this license. You acknowledge and agree that we may place limits on the amount of storage you may use.
The bit in bold has been added to the agreement. Steam will now share that information with their affiates. Admittedly it's not strictly personal information, but they will share that information (private chat etc) with 3rd parties without your consent now.
then why do people sell houses they dont own but they have on a 1000 year lease or whatever
They don't. It's all done on agreements between the banks and the dwellers and all handled by the lawyers. This is why 'selling' and 'buying' houses can take so long because every agreement on every house in the chain is exchanged on the same day. It's an agreement on the mortgage really, unless you've paid it off and you truly do own the house.
Yes, every time I fire up Steam, Valve are bending me over backwards and ******* me up the ***.
I load Steam and play games.
And they save my game progress and let me redownload the games whenever I want from their servers. How dare they take advantage of me like that, scumbags.
I want to sell my games on.
I want to play my games offline without ever signing in online.
I don't want to receive a message "this game is unavailable right now".
Oh but hang on, it's all rosey for you so therefore I should keep quiet and go away? Or am I reading your posts wrong?