Unlike the most treasured game cartridges and discs that came, most of the time in their respective limited editions, digital, downloadable games simply cannot be sold to another gamer. The games that you own in your digital library are forever the user's own, even if they don't have the motivation to play it anymore. This is what UFC-Que Choisir wants to solve. The French consumer group is suing games distribution giant Steam, demanding the ability to resell games from a user's Steam library whenever they want.
According to reports, Steam's policy violates the European Union's right to resell legally purchased software. The group points to a 2012 decision from the European Court of Justice that centered on the resale of software licensed from Oracle, where a judge had ruled that there wasn't any difference between reselling disc-based copies compared to their digital equivalents.."It makes no difference whether the copy of the computer program was made available by means of a download from the rightholder's website or by means of a material medium such as a CD-ROM or DVD," the court ruled.
In addition to the complaint, the UFC-Que Choisir blasts Valve's claim of the right to reuse any user-made Steam content "at will." Furthermore, the group argues that Steam should refund any leftover credit should the user chose to close their Steam account.
However, determining the victory of the group is still far ahead. Last year, German group Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband filed a similar complaint against Valve's End-User Licence Agreement (EULA) that disallows the resell of digital content, but was only ruled in favor of the American digital distribution company.
Furthermore, even if the lawsuit by the French group grants the resale of games, it most likely won't hit the United States. Reports suggest that the United States consider downloads as licenses rather than sales.
