French court ruled that YOU OWN GAMEs purchased digitally! Ubisoft and Valve are in big troubles!

[v00d00m4n]

A French court passed judgment on a case involving the makers of the Steam Store, Valve. In UFC-Que Choisir vs Valve, the French court deemed the resale of digital materials on the Steam network to be lawful.

This ruling is huge and could have serious ramifications for all digital game stores. According to the site Next Impact, which broke the story first, the Tribunal de Grande Instance — Frances highest court — determined the following:

The owner of the right concerned can no longer object to the resale of this copy (or copy) even if the initial purchase is made by downloading. The publisher of the software (or its beneficiaries) can no longer oppose the resale of this copy or copy, notwithstanding the existence of contractual provisions prohibiting a subsequent assignment."

This is translated from the French site, so it might not be verbatim, but it essentially says that Valve can no longer stop its French users from reselling video games once they are downloaded.

But what does it mean?

Here's what we understand though. The Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) has made it clear that because Valve sells you the game for an unlimited time limit, it cannot be considered a subscription and therefore falls under the normal EU rules set in place for Copyright materials.

Finally, the" subscription "to the" subscription "(of a game) made by the user, which is mentioned in the conclusions of the company VALVE (...) is actually a PURCHASE, the game being made available to said user for an unlimited period. It can not, therefore, be a "subscription" - in the usual sense of the term - but the SALE of a copy of a video game, made for a price determined in advance and paid in one go by the user.

The TGI used European law, specifically the Copyright Directive 2001, the Software Directive of 2009, as well as other specific cases, to reach this conclusion. Since it invoked EU law to come to this conclusion, the outlook for Valve could be pretty bleak.

If this is upheld Valve will have to change its Terms of Service within 30 days since the court says the clause denying the right to resale is "deemed unwritten." This means the clause is unlawful and therefore cannot be enforced by Steam, at least in France. Right now, Valve has 30 days to remove the clause in its Terms of Service and to allow French users to sell their downloaded steam games, but that can change if the ruling is challenged.

So we already have a precident in French court that Valve and Ubisoft ignores but it says clearly that digital games should be treated same way as physical games and users has all ownership rights and can even sell their copy of game, and to put it simple, despite false EULA claim that goes againts the laws of any country - DIGITAL GAMES are SOLD, not LICENSED and you have all the same rights as you have with games on DISKS and nobody can take it away from you or restrict acces and usage and remove any of its advertised functionality, and you have rights to sell your copy, which is known in USA as first—sale doctrine.

So similar precident will surely happen in USA soon and may happen in any other country!

Just remember to say judge that at moment of purchase of game you saw PURCHASE (synonim of BUY) button that starts money transaction, NOT the RENT or SUBSCRIBE button and term PURCHASE WAS used everywhere several times:

Checkout page says it in title - "Review + Purchase".
Onfo block of checkout page on right side says "Purchasing on Steam".
Same info block says you will recieve email with receipt confirm your "Purchase".
Button that starts money transaction says "Purchase".
Confirmation email with receipt says "Thank you for your Steam purchase!".
Confirmation email links to page that says "Your username's Purchase history".
Absolutely every transation in "Purchase history" has type next to that says that transaction was a "Purchase".

So all of this gave you absolute and total impression that you are PURCHASING game, which means you was under impression that you obtaining ownership\pocession rights for game in exchange for your money!

And this is what all sellers parties claimed multiple times before, at the moment and even after money transaction, and if they did not mean so, and baited and switched term PURCHASE to basically a RENT in EULA that contradics their other claims about PURCHASE - they deliberately decieved you and this deceptive EULA has no legal power over initial fist claims and impression that the deal you are making with seller is indeed a PURCHASING or BUYING of game and that its being SOLD. not RENTED, as checkout page claims many times.

And tell judge that term PURCHASE by definition means that you are giving your money in exchange for pocession \ ownership!

Use this argument it court, push on deceptive terms and contradiction between initial claim PURCHASE and Valves EULA that claims that game is not sold to you, and also mention the fact that second EULA by publisher Ubisoft is only shown to you after you completed purchase of game, and is absolutely illegally claiming that you have no ownership rights after you already obtained them, and in a forced manner preventing you from using your purchased product until you will press AGREE button, which seems like extortion or blackmail, use this in addition to non defined period of so called "subsciption"!

Additionally compare it to purchase of book or movie or even game disk in store- say that purchase in store does not force you to agree with any EULA, and that whole EULA agrement has no legal power is an act of extortion, that does not give a warranty that you actually reed and agreed it, and you was put under unfair conditions that forced you to press the agree button againts your desires to not agree with it and without actual awareness of its content, which makes whole agreement invalid, as you had no other options because otherwise you can not use your a product.

Again say that when you open a book in store there is no agreement that prevents from reading it before or after purchase, this whole extortion to force you to agree with something before or after purchase is a criminal practice and must not be allowed or accepted as legaly powerful in court.

Also confirm a fact that even whenever you purchase PC game on disk (better buy The Crew copy on disk to make your argument more powerful), and its already owned by you, after you insert it into PC you are again forced to agree with EULA, force to use some online services you did not want to use, and that they all prevented to use your already purchased property, until you press on agree and do as they force you do by registering in their online services, that ties your game to online servers, that stripts you off your legal rights to resell or gift your game and use it forever, which again makes whole EULA agreement practice before or after purchase a criman act of extortion that must be forbidden once and for all and must be not taken by court as valid argument.

We must stop this robbery and violation of our customer and ownership rights!
All digital purchases should be threated exactly as physical and grant all the same rights! Actually existing laws makes this automatically so even its not stated specifically, general laws always applied to everything not clearly specified, but lack of clear special case speficiation of something often gettin abused to scam people and to force fake abusive and unfair "laws" of corporations, but their laws has no legal powers, despite their attempts to make you believe they does. So they ignore general laws until judge says them they they should not do that or until more speific laws are made and said them so.

And dont be afraid to sue then, surely we will win, law and court is on our side and corporations violating those laws and creating their own "laws" and think they are above the law, about the court and judge, and totally disrespecting authority of laws, courts and judges (use these words in court too, it will help to lean judges to your side even more! They hate those who thinks they are above the laws and above courts and especially above judges and disrespects their authority!), but they are still obligated to do what judges says.

[potato]

means nothing and it's from 2019

[francross]

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071