Why do people claim you do not own your games on steam when Developers have Their own TOS?

[N0X]

I seen this a lot in response to complaints about DRM and the erosion of consumer rights when it comes to digital media.
Sure there are companies such that states that your access to digital goods is limited and must be remove when they decide to end your licenses and some will go as far to state that you must destroy physical disk but that statement that you do not own games on steam by default is falsifiable by individual developers who flat out say you own your games or state they are comfortable with a type of system where your access to a single working copy of media is perpetual as long as you made a purchase.

Shouldn't it be framed as steam only gives you temporary access to a platform to retrieve a copy but the qustion of ownership is up to the TOS of the company you buy from?

[Komarimaru]

It's the wording that matters. No developer will say you own their game. Meaning you can sell it, distribute it as you like, modify it etc.

You own your license, nothing more. Been this way since 1966.

[datCookie]

From the SSA:

"2. LICENSES ⏶

A. General Content and Services License

Steam and your Subscription(s) require the download and installation of Content and Services onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.

For reasons that include, without limitation, system security, stability, and multiplayer interoperability, Valve may need to automatically update, pre-load, create new versions of or otherwise enhance the Content and Services and accordingly, the system requirements to use the Content and Services may change over time.

You consent to such automatic updating. You understand that this Agreement (including applicable Subscription Terms) does not entitle you to future updates (unless to the extent required by applicable law), new versions or other enhancements of the Content and Services associated with a particular Subscription, although Valve may choose to provide such updates, etc. in its sole discretion."


And further:

"B. Hardware, Subscriptions; Content and Services

As a Subscriber you may obtain access to certain services, software and content available to Subscribers or purchase certain Hardware (as defined below) on Steam. The Steam client software and any other software, content, and updates you download or access via Steam, including but not limited to Valve or third-party video games and in-game content, software associated with Hardware and any virtual items you trade, sell or purchase in a Steam Subscription Marketplace are referred to in this Agreement as "Content and Services;" the rights to access and/or use any Content and Services accessible through Steam are referred to in this Agreement as "Subscriptions."

Each Subscription allows you to access particular Content and Services. Some Subscriptions may impose additional terms specific to that Subscription ("Subscription Terms") (for example, an end user license agreement specific to a particular game, or terms of use specific to a particular product or feature of Steam)."


It's already framed in the SSA.

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by N0X:

I seen this a lot in response to complaints about DRM and the erosion of consumer rights when it comes to digital media.

There has been no erosion to your rights. You have never owned any game, movie, book, or piece of music that you have paid to experience. Look up intellectual property rights. The only entity that owns them is the one that created the experience or paid to have the experience created on their behalf. Everyone else, purchases a license to access that experience. It's the same for physical. The only difference is that with digital, the owner of the IP can now better exercise their rights to manage the ownership of their property.

[N0X]

Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:

Originally posted by N0X:

I seen this a lot in response to complaints about DRM and the erosion of consumer rights when it comes to digital media.

There has been no erosion to your rights. You have never owned any game, movie, book, or piece of music that you have paid to experience. Look up intellectual property rights. The only entity that owns them is the one that created the experience or paid to have the experience created on their behalf. Everyone else, purchases a license to access that experience. It's the same for physical. The only difference is that with digital, the owner of the IP can now better exercise their rights to manage the ownership of their property.

Yeah you just explain why the argument exist. Copyrights Laws haven't changed much but companies have found new ways to control their products and control how their customers interact with it. Ubisoft pointblank tells your in the user agreements that you must remove the software and even destroy your CDs on their request if they decide to terminate your license.

No one cared in the past because no corporation is going to walk into a persons home and delete the contents from their harddrives and snap their disk. Some contrarians might argue that Ubisoft should be able to take actions against your for refusing to get rid of the media you have in possession but that dives even deeper into the ownership argument and written law vs weird ethics of 2Aing CEOs for playing with your money and the honor system..

But today there is server based DRM and launchers that have to constantly authenticate that affects your ability to run software that is installed on your personal devices. That is the erosion people are talking about, being tethered to a company server just to play a game that only needs your device to function. It's the lose of control over individual instances of software.

[C²C^Guyver |NZB|]

Originally posted by N0X:

Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:

There has been no erosion to your rights. You have never owned any game, movie, book, or piece of music that you have paid to experience. Look up intellectual property rights. The only entity that owns them is the one that created the experience or paid to have the experience created on their behalf. Everyone else, purchases a license to access that experience. It's the same for physical. The only difference is that with digital, the owner of the IP can now better exercise their rights to manage the ownership of their property.

Yeah you just explain why the argument exist. Copyrights Laws haven't changed much but companies have found new ways to control their products and control how their customers interact with it. Ubisoft pointblank tells your in the user agreements that you must remove the software and even destroy your CDs on their request if they decide to terminate your license.

No one cared in the past because no corporation is going to walk into a persons home and delete the contents from their harddrives and snap their disk. Some contrarians might argue that Ubisoft should be able to take actions against your for refusing to get rid of the media you have in possession but that dives even deeper into the ownership argument and written law vs weird ethics of 2Aing CEOs for playing with your money and the honor system..

But today there is server based DRM and launchers that have to constantly authenticate that affects your ability to run software that is installed on your personal devices. That is the erosion people are talking about, being tethered to a company server just to play a game that only needs your device to function. It's the lose of control over individual instances of software.

They won't come into your house and delete anything, however, they will certainly restrict your access to said content. A great example is The Crew. Although hopefully, that game comes back, because the community is working on it.

[veracsthane]

Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:

There has been no erosion to your rights. You have never owned any game, movie, book, or piece of music that you have paid to experience. Look up intellectual property rights. The only entity that owns them is the one that created the experience or paid to have the experience created on their behalf. Everyone else, purchases a license to access that experience. It's the same for physical. The only difference is that with digital, the owner of the IP can now better exercise their rights to manage the ownership of their property.

the laws have changed completely unless your 10.

before if they released a buggy game they where sued for the faulty product and thanks to no patching they would have to do a recall and fix it. it would bankrupt them so it didnt happen now its common.

before if they didnt want you to play their game they had to do a home invasion an obvious crime. now they add some ones and zeros to your account and you lose access. they literally would have been treated like crimnals for the behaviour they now do.

they cry endlessly about meh 60 dollar games. none of the games are 60 dollars. most of them 120-150 without skins after dlc if you buy day 1 which is why so many people are only buying at 80% off.

you can pick an issue they have done nothing but erode your rights and most of it teehee its to costly 10s of 1000s to fight us in courts instead of buying another copy for 60-150 pending dlc bucks and make a new account.

also things like denuvo provably cause performance drops while not working on top of having a race baiter it would be a shame if someone called your business racist model to push the sales of it. what was it mosnter hunter wilds that had 2 instances of denuvo running thanks to a bug on luanch.

sure. no erosion... of quality or rights....

[N0X]

Originally posted by Komarimaru:

It's the wording that matters. No developer will say you own their game. Meaning you can sell it, distribute it as you like, modify it etc.

You own your license, nothing more. Been this way since 1966.

To clarify, Not the ownership of any IPs or likeness. Ownership of privately owned instances.
I have offline installers from GOG, those games are mine for personal use.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by veracsthane:

Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:

There has been no erosion to your rights. You have never owned any game, movie, book, or piece of music that you have paid to experience. Look up intellectual property rights. The only entity that owns them is the one that created the experience or paid to have the experience created on their behalf. Everyone else, purchases a license to access that experience. It's the same for physical. The only difference is that with digital, the owner of the IP can now better exercise their rights to manage the ownership of their property.

the laws have changed completely unless your 10.

before if they released a buggy game they where sued for the faulty product and thanks to no patching they would have to do a recall and fix it. it would bankrupt them so it didnt happen now its common.

This is completely false.

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by veracsthane:

the laws have changed completely unless your 10.

The laws have not changed. The fact certain rights couldn't easily be enforced by the IP holder in the past has not changed that.

Originally posted by N0X:

To clarify, Not the ownership of any IPs or likeness. Ownership of privately owned instances.
I have offline installers from GOG, those games are mine for personal use.

You don't own them though. Ignore GOG's PR (they mislead intentionally) and read GOG's terms of service. They specifically tell you as such.

[Komarimaru]

Originally posted by N0X:

Originally posted by Komarimaru:

It's the wording that matters. No developer will say you own their game. Meaning you can sell it, distribute it as you like, modify it etc.

You own your license, nothing more. Been this way since 1966.

To clarify, Not the ownership of any IPs or likeness. Ownership of privately owned instances.
I have offline installers from GOG, those games are mine for personal use.

And they are still just licensed. You cannot give them away, cannot resell them, cannot trade them in etc etc.

GoG started a whole fake campaign of "You own your games!" Which was a flat out lie. The reason why there is so few games on GoG, is due to the rampant sharing of said games. They still can't combat the problem that people can download every single game on GoG for free from unethical sources, easily.

[Jon the VGNerd]

If my internet goes out, I'll simply use mobile tethering to get myself back online, though I'd have to be mindful about data usage. And if it gets too high, I'll simply play older consoles like either my PS2 or Xbox OG and just play games at my own leisure without the need of an internet until my broadband's back on.

And if I'm not at home, I'll simply take my PSP with me and play games on the go (sorry to say but mobile games no longer interest me and aren't exactly fun with intrusive ads and paywalls that make them less fun). So yeah, when my internet goes down, I'll simply play games outside of Steam in the meantime.

[N0X]

Originally posted by Komarimaru:

Originally posted by N0X:

To clarify, Not the ownership of any IPs or likeness. Ownership of privately owned instances.
I have offline installers from GOG, those games are mine for personal use.

And they are still just licensed. You cannot give them away, cannot resell them, cannot trade them in etc etc.

GoG started a whole fake campaign of "You own your games!" Which was a flat out lie. The reason why there is so few games on GoG, is due to the rampant sharing of said games. They still can't combat the problem that people can download every single game on GoG for free from unethical sources, easily.

PR talk is not relevant. I own my GOG games. If I do not then how can anyone take them away from me? They can't because there is no denuvo or uplay or any other mechanism to prevent me from using them.

[Komarimaru]

Originally posted by N0X:

Originally posted by Komarimaru:

And they are still just licensed. You cannot give them away, cannot resell them, cannot trade them in etc etc.

GoG started a whole fake campaign of "You own your games!" Which was a flat out lie. The reason why there is so few games on GoG, is due to the rampant sharing of said games. They still can't combat the problem that people can download every single game on GoG for free from unethical sources, easily.

PR talk is not relevant. I own my GOG games. If I do not then how can anyone take them away from me? They can't because there is no denuvo or uplay or any other mechanism to prevent me from using them.

How they've done it before. If you lose your back up copy, or data is corrupted etc, you won't be able to download it again. It's not spoken of much and kept on the hush hush, but GoG has no issues locking and removing accounts that break the license agreement.

Of course this only matters if broke the license agreement.

But you don't own them, you can't modify it, can't sell copies of it etc. Not sure what's so hard about understanding this. You don't own it, since can't do the above with it. Not sure why I keep to keep typing it, I figured it was simply to understand.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by N0X:

PR talk is not relevant. I own my GOG games. If I do not then how can anyone take them away from me? They can't because there is no denuvo or uplay or any other mechanism to prevent me from using them.

The license can be revoked from your GOG account and any continued use would then be considered piracy. If found, the developer/publisher could sue as such as well and win.

Even if the license were not revoked, but you simply lost access to the GOG account and were sued for piracy, the developer/publisher would still win if you could not show you had a valid license for the games.

You are bound by the terms of the license, not be possession of the data.

[veracsthane]

Originally posted by N0X:

Originally posted by Komarimaru:

And they are still just licensed. You cannot give them away, cannot resell them, cannot trade them in etc etc.

GoG started a whole fake campaign of "You own your games!" Which was a flat out lie. The reason why there is so few games on GoG, is due to the rampant sharing of said games. They still can't combat the problem that people can download every single game on GoG for free from unethical sources, easily.

PR talk is not relevant. I own my GOG games. If I do not then how can anyone take them away from me? They can't because there is no denuvo or uplay or any other mechanism to prevent me from using them.

walk away bro the trolls are out in force tonight and you wont win wasting time with them.

anyone older then 10 knows games didnt have an internet connection back in the day for the most part and they called me a liar out right. they arent even trying to hide it. hell im pretty sure most of the orignal xbox and play station games didnt even have online for the most part and it wasnt until the end of og xbox and ps2 that it was a thing only to be made standard by xbox 360 and ps3

hell the stupid gameboy colors you had to use a cord to trade pokemon and that was as close to online as they got.