Do we own our Steam games? | Hacker News Reader

Do we own our Steam games?

rockpapershotgun.com

103 pointsCountHackulus59 comments

On a related note, I once had a dispute with Valve about a buggy game I bought on Steam. Their support wouldn't say anything except point me to the subscriber agreement, which says that they could send you a copy of notepad instead of the game you purchased and you'd still be out of luck.

I considered doing a chargeback, but thankfully I researched it first and found out that if you do a chargeback, Valve will disable all of your games, including the ones not under dispute. It was so cleverly evil, I'm still not quite sure what combination of impressed and disgusted to be.

The answer to "do we own our Steam games" isn't just "no", it's "no, and Valve know this, and they use that fact punitively when they want to".

I had the same experience, but instead of giving up, I called American Express and explained Steam's supposed policy to them. They said that was in violation of their merchant agreement and that they'd be contacting Valve for me.

I was refunded the full cost of the game a couple days later. Interestingly, Valve never removed the game from my account. It still doesn't work on any of my PCs to this day.

Note to self: buy all future Steam games with AmEx.

Things like that and the warranty extension they provide are why I got an AmEx card.

These types of services are offered by a lot of credit cards these days. Just have to call up customer service and talk to them about it.

The real question is, if they disable your account, could you chargeback all of the valve charges over the years? I think you'd be justified if they blocked you out of games that you paid for years ago for a chargeback now.

This is almost certainly dependent on various merchant agreements, but (I'm pretty sure chargebacks have a limit on the timeframe you can do them. The only recourse you'd have would be to try to take Valve to court.

Effectively preventing legitimate chargebacks by leveraging unrelated transactions is a big no-no in basically all commercial agreements for card services. Otherwise, not only are chargebacks not worth anything, but also in quite a few jurisdictions the card company will be left to foot the bill for any disputed transactions themselves because they share liability with the merchant in the eyes of the law (and unlike chargebacks, that liability will not be limited to 6 months or so by a convenient commercial agreement).

Basically, regardless of any legal weasel words in their Ts & Cs, if Valve ever actually tried this on a significant scale and one of the card companies got wind of it, Steam would be toasted faster than a loaf in close solar orbit.

This will therefore never happen, and a judicious word with your credit card provider will almost certainly get any threats to make it happen dealt with quite effectively, as kevingadd observed.

I'm pretty certain that's illegal under consumer law in the UK, but like the article says, none of any of this has been tested in court.

It's obviously also illegal in Germany.

Valve has to be very careful with things like that. If they act in those ways to a non US-costumer, they will lose in court.

Valve is a case study in what sorts of evil shenanigans you can get away with if you manage to build up an unassailable sterling reputation in your target demographics (gamers, in this case). The majority of gamers still think Valve can do no wrong.

I don't know why people wouldn't sue Valve in small claims for actions like that. Seems like an easy win.

As a counter-point, I did get a refund from Valve for a game that claimed to have multiplayer, but no longer did (because the publisher had shut down the servers). Valve refused at first, I politely insisted, and got my refund.

I am, however, very much aware that my library is entirely at Valve's mercy.

This happened to me twice. Both times I asked for a refund and Valve refused.

I was quite insistent and even mailed and faxed a letter to their corporate headquarters. This strategy has worked with other companies, but I never heard back from Valve.

Needless to say I quit "purchasing" games from them. They lost a loyal customer that had spent thousands of dollars with them over a $5 sale item.

I can't believe it's the year 2012 and we still can't do Game Distribution correctly.

Despite the fact that Steam knows how long we've played a game or if we've even launched it, we can't get refunds on games that don't work. THIS is what's hurting PC gaming.

If I buy a microwave from Walmart and it doesn't work in my house for whatever reason, I can take it back and get a refund. But if I buy a PC game from Steam, Games for Windows, Best Buy, and it doesn't work, I'm fucked. Which is basically a scam. Period.

How can publishers expect consumers to pay for games when they have no guarantee that it will work?

Only mostly a scam. I've had some experiences that suggest if you push hard enough you can get what you want.

Years ago I purchased Neverwinter Nights (the first one) from a big box. Best Buy, I think. Despite my computer technically meeting the minimum specs on the box, the game didn't work well. (About 1 frame/3 seconds. I found out later my brand of graphics card was specifically excluded.) When I returned it (opened, of course), they initially attempted to refuse the return on the grounds the product had been opened. After some prodding and asking them to explain how I might otherwise discover the product they sold me was defective/not as advertised without opening it, they eventually chose to refund my money. $50 is certainly less of a hassle to them than a consumer protection complaint to a government agency.

> Despite the fact that Steam knows how long we've played a game

Steam is generally wrong about that, so it's not of much help.

In my experience, Steam is only wrong occasionally if I launch the game without Steam open first. Do you have a different experience?

I don't think Steam would be totally reliable for playtime if it was applied to refunds. A few months ago I used ccleaner and screwed up my graphics driver. I was trying to play a game that I had just bought, but after my mishap with ccleaner it never worked for me, though I did add a couple hours to my total playtime. I fixed my computer by reinstalling windows, but if the problem was with the game, my play time counter alone would not accurately reflect the fact that the game was unplayable.

How can customers expect publishers to refund for games when they (publisher) have no guarantee it didn't work?

If you buy a microwave, returning it the next day (and a glance at the product) Walmart is pretty sure that it was not used for hours on end until it wasn't needed.

Games (and other products/media) suffer from a tendency of [some] customers to use/abuse the product and its return policy. Buy a game, play it thru for 24 hours straight (or copy it), and then return it as "defective" - not uncommon behavior. Maybe not majority, but enough do it for retailers to impose limitations akin to what clothing stores do by requiring tags still be attached: returnable for refund if in a condition which indicates it in no way was used in an manner taking advantage of the retailer's return policy.

Enough people _do_ try to abuse return policies that, yeah, it wrecks it for the rest of us.

Hey, maybe there's a startup opportunity for verifying "the game was used in a manner which indicates there was a problem whereby a full-refund return is fair." Steam may not have an interest in such a service directly given its overall profit, but if someone can provide a third-party verification service...

Most major retailers only allow exchanges for the same item in the case of opened media (DVD, video game, etc.).

> How can customers expect publishers to refund for games when they (publisher) have no guarantee it didn't work?

Well, under UK consumer protection law, goods normally have to meet certain basic guarantees, such as fitness for purpose. Moreover, the presumption is that if they fail within the first few months after the purchase, it's the vendor's problem unless the vendor can show why it shouldn't be. It might seem harsh, but that is what the consumer protection laws here say, and it's a cost of doing business here.

I don't see why the same principle should not apply at least as strongly to software, particularly given that software is often relatively expensive, very often of poor quality/compatibility in ways that aren't clear to the purchaser up-front, and usually issuing a refund in such cases will cause very little actual damage to the vendor beyond losing the price of the sale. Surely this all goes at least double for a service where the vendor is providing the software entirely on-line, so their actual damage from issuing a refund is nothing but the admin overhead, and where the vendor can see whether the user has actually been able to run the software effectively as a defence against fraudulent refund claims.

THIS is what's hurting PC gaming

That seems overly dramatic and quite inaccurate. Non-functional games are very low on the very short list of reasons why 'Steam is everything wrong with the PC game industry'.

"But the books on my shelves? I seem to have very little rights over them. The CDs stacked up in a cupboard (remember CDs?) certainly aren’t my property."

This is actually wrong (in the US at least) in an important way. You absolutely own the CDs and books that you have - you can do anything you want with just them including reselling them and you have the Doctorine of First Sales to support you. What you don't have is the right to copy them, that is you own the book but not the story, the CD but not the song. That's the advantage reification gives you with respect to copyright, you can do all sorts of things with the physical object that you can't do with the underlying copyrighted work.

You actually do have a right to copy them, to some degree.

For example, if you buy a "music" CD-R and then burn a copy of an audio CD to it, you can retain that copy even if you've sold the original, legally.

Edit: this is because there is a tariff levied against "music" CD-Rs, which results in the ability to legally make such copies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_Sta...

If that is true then you could start a service where the consumer essentially simultaneously buys and sells whatever CDs they want without money changing hands except for some membership fee to run the business.

I don't think that would be legal, the consumer has to make the copy themselves.

Sure, the user can click a "make copy" button.

(These legal tight-rope walks are so crazy)

There is a fair amount of case law that makes it a public performance when a product is played / copied outside of a users home. EX: You can't have a rack of DVD players and let people remote desktop into them to view any movie they want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_Sta...

17 U.S.C. § 1008 bars copyright infringement action and 17 U.S.C. § 1003 provides for a royalty of 2% of the initial transfer price for devices and 3% for media

It often helps to site a source, even if it is just wikipedia for such things.

One thing I want to see is ALL gaming media stop using the word "Sales figures", "Sales goals" etc.

The publishers like this because it implies ownership when in fact we all know that we are getting a license which can be revoked (Now more than ever). Maybe people will start taking notice when they read

"GAME X licensed 50,000 times" or "50,000 licenses sold for GAME X"

its not inaccurate

GAME X sold 50,000 licenses.

But the implied meaning is hugely difference between

"GAME X sold 50,000 copies" or "GAME X sold 50,000 units"

and

"GAME X sold 50,000 licenses."

Call out the game companies on the fact that they are not selling items most people would understand it

This would be an excellent addition to consumer protection law - setting the terms under which the words "sale" or "sell" or "own" could be used when paying for digital goods. Obviously gamers should push for disclosure - only allowing words like "own" to be used if the seller retained no further power to disable or affect your use of the digital content. If the seller did intend to impose further restrictions on your use of the digital content, they would only be allowed to use words like "rent" or "lease" or "license" to describe the transaction. So a transfer of an unencumbered MP3 file would be allowed to be called a "sale", but a transfer of a DRM file which has to contact authorization servers in order to play would be only a rental, lease, or license.

There is plenty of precedent for this - many words have requirements attached when selling items to the public.

Steam's covered though: they don't release sales figures (ever) and their TOS calls it subscriptions or something like that.

So we've got two things at hand here:

1) Consumers don't understand the license vs own thing, just like they don't understand really basic copyright issues. This isn't about to change any time soon.

2) I can't think of any better way to handle licensing, unless there's a government-standard 'digital license' (which would probably be a terrible idea/implementation anyway). Consumers say they want to "own" something, but what do they want to own? If you own all the IP to the digital item, then others don't own it, or suddenly you're entitled to a share of the revenue from it? That doesn't make sense. A non-revokable license? Maybe that's what consumers are more asking for, but it has its problems too.

Since consumers often don't know what they want, and don't have the language to describe what they want, it would seem a conversation that isn't going to go far.

People's intuitions are based on the physical world: I paid the same price as I would have for a game on a DVD, so I should have the same rights as a DVD, which means 1( the company can't steal it back, 2) I can sell it to somebody else, or 3) I can give it away.

The problem is that publishers want their cake and to eat it, too: sell for the high price that includes covering the cost of the secondary market and kill the secondary market.

I think consumers do understand how things should work; the fact that the law doesn't agree with that is the law's problem. I don't know who came up with the saying "treat this software as you would treat a book", but it's a great idea IMO — over the last few hundred years we've come up with a pretty fair and balanced way of handling books.

I love the idea of a 'standard' digital license, but I agree that it's best not to let a government decide what that is. I think an organisation like the EFF could provide the template.

And there are questions about why people pirate? When you can be sued by Autodesk for exercising the doctrine of First Sale or have your entire software collection "stolen" by the company that sold it to you or have your system riotkitted by playing a CD, it doesn't really encourage people who would pay, to actually pay.

As I've said before, I don't pirate, but I completely understand why somebody who can afford to pay for content does choose to pirate instead.

I don't consider the online version much better. Google can destroy years of data and doesn't care if it is critical to your business or pictures of your baby's first smile. PayPal can turn off access to the funds you need to pay your employees for any reason they choose. Too bad, so sad...

I need to check the license again. (Haven't read it in a long time.)

The thing is: you don't really own any game. Yes you own the manuals and the case and the physical media, but it's still licensed to you. Just like a Steam game is.

The only real difference is that Steam can actually revoke that license and enforce that revocation.

However I thought the license stated that if Steam ever went out of business your games would retain offline functionality and be locally playable. (e.g: You get to keep a copy w/o Steam DRM and Community.)

You hit the nail in the head: It's a license. A contract. You are allowed to use the software under the terms described. The user never "owns" anything.

Yeah, the Steam TOS calls games a "subscription".

Steam support is garbage. I assume from their responses in the past that Steam Support consists of one guy who does not speak English who they keep in a darkened room, mostly drunk, and occasionally every fourth message gets through. They make money hand over fist but refuse to provide even a modicum of service. I purchased Jamestown, the space shooter, and the download did not work correctly. It took more than a week of repeated harassment before Steam support would respond to any question. In between replies was at least 2 days every time, sometimes more. The frustrating part is that they had the solution right there. It was something a call center could have worked out in 45 seconds. I think we should hold their feet to the fire to provide better service or stop buying stuff on Steam because the current level of support in unacceptable.

On a related note, one of the technical details about the Mac App Store that I find interesting is the fact that once an application is downloaded to your machine, there's nothing Apple can do to revoke that copy. It sounds like steam manages the licenses of your games for you, whereas the Mac App Store bundles the receipt into each copy of the application that you download. Apple could in theory deny you access to future updates of an app, and you wouldn't be able to use that app bundle on a different machine, but they can't deny you access to an app once its been downloaded.

That's really how it should work. Once downloaded it's yours.

When my credit card expired last year I could not download any apps I had purchased from Apple until I updated it/paid for the ones in my most recent statement. They did not however DELETE/DISABLE the apps on my computer even the ones I still technically owed them money for.

I think Apple has the right idea in how digital downloads should work.

> I find interesting is the fact that once an application is downloaded to your machine, there's nothing Apple can do to revoke that copy.

I don't believe this is necessarily by design, It's the nature of allowing ANY application on the store. With steam, to distribute your game you must hook into the Steam API.

Both come with positives and negatives, as you have mentioned, but I don't believe either is 'correct'.

I think this is something that we're going to have to adapt to as the media changes. Sure, we don't really own those games, and technically they can take them from us at any time. But Valve (and iTunes or whatever) are trying to make money, and they won't do so by ripping off or treating their customers badly. I guess it's a trust thing.

I mean, I don't own my PVR either, but I don't fear the cable company showing up and taking it away from me.

It's worth pointing out that in all cases you do still have local copies of the data and binaries required to run these games on your computer, even if your account is locked out of the Steam server. So, despite it being against the EULA (which you're possibly not beholden to after having been banned anyway), and also possibly against your local civil laws, you could always download a crack and continue playing anyway.

You're not "illegally downloading" the games, you're legally downloading someone else's software that just so happens to modify the server authentication aspects of the games of which you once owned the right to store on your hard disk. By running that software you are definitely breaking a EULA that you no longer care about, and you may or may not be breaking laws that you're incredibly unlikely to be caught or prosecuted for.

Your morality may differ, but I don't have a problem with this.

It's actually a broader issue now.

It's not only steam but every game that is based on a platform that can grant or refuse access to your games. Just look at the problem with Battlefield 3 and forum discussions. Some people have been banned from playing because they said something disrespectful on the forums. How the hell is it even legal?

Admittedly I am not a very serious gamer, but this is part of why I favour DRM-free games. Humble Bundle has been great. I would feel very uncomfortable investing hundreds of dollars into a Steam account.

Customers can vote with their wallets somewhat, but I feel the situation is somewhat unfair in that many people probably do not understand what they are getting in exchange for their money. You could argue that they accepted terms somewhere, but most of those contracts are of a completely unreasonable length and I doubt many people are capable of properly interpreting them. If they do have problems with the contract, they have no power to renegotiate anything. This seems like a case where legislation to protect consumers is warranted.

My question would be if the recipients of the gifts were in the same pricing zone as the account owner.

If they were in the same zone I can see no possible business reason why Valve would object to it, once they found that it wasn't fraud.

HOWEVER, legally it gets into the grey zone of money laundering, though it is laughable at such tiny amounts! :)

If the person was gifting games across pricing zones (can you do that?) in return for cash it gets very complicated and I can see Valve objecting to this as a way of getting around, say euro and dollar pricing.

Also, Valve only has the rights to some games in some zones.

Yes you can, I was once gifted a game by someone from different zone.

Also, the pricing zones aren't that much about euro/dollar as they are about distributors (some of them at least). They are no different from music/movie distributors. I would understand that in the case of Skyrim for example, where the Russian version is much cheaper. But I really don't understand why some distributors make games cheaper in US than in Europe, considering the Europe is well bellow the USA in purchasing power. And if I remember correctly, Australians got the most expensive games of all.

We can only be happy that there are no zone restrictions as there are on DVDs. Or are there?

Europe is below USA in purchasing power in part because things are more expensive here. Things like games.

There are a whole bunch of reasons: a less competitive market; less scale; complying to country-specific details - everything from translation to censorship schemes to VAT; less price sensitivity; different sales channel setup (game publishers may not want to undercut the physical sales channel by discounting Steam games so much); etc.

Yes, some Steam games are available only in particular regions.

There are restrictions on DVD's... take it from someone who's tried to watch an American DVD on a European DVD player and vice versa. They are pretty easy to unlock though

Even so, if that's the problem, they should solve it with technology. If they let a customer gift games across pricing zones and the trading rules in the EULA don't inform you that this is unacceptable, then it's absurd to ban customers for doing it.

Remember, laws are country specific. Even if Valve plays nice in the US they can easily pull this stuff in other countries (The example was Russian I believe)

Best defense against this kind of stuff is bad publicity and people voting with their wallets. I would love to see a clear concise statement from Valve/Steam on the issue of who actually "owns" the licences to the games we pay for. If the customer is "purchasing a licence" I don't see how Valve/Steam would be able to deny them access to the games they had purchased. At a minimum they need a way to allow you to use the games you already purchased even if they kill switch your account.

If you're just borrowing the games until Steam/Valve get mad at you and suspend your account then you might as well use a service like OnLive or buy retail copies of all your games.

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