A steam key is the receipt that you paid for the game. It is ridiculous that companies get to skirt laws by saying, “It’s on a computer.”
Imagine you buy a car. Years later you go to resell it for less and the manufacture claims you can’t because the sales receipt that proves you are the legitimate owner is a “Steam Cars Inc key” and therefore all existing laws do not apply.
Yeah that’s not what they’re preventing. It’s to stop someone with rights to generate keys, i.e. the developer, from generating a lot of Steam keys and then selling them on their own site at a discount, which is basically leeching off of the Steam infrastructure & ecosystem while sidestepping the storefront. Which is fine as long as they don’t undercut.
The EULA for any software you’ve ever paid for is what forbids resale.
Again that is a separate issue from the no undercutting clause. Prohibition of resale is ubiquitous in the software world because for decades the ploy has been to sell you a license, not an actual product.
Of course I’d love that to change but it’s a core precept of how digital ownership works and has worked for most of it’s existence. Steam is not the main force behind that.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A steam key is the receipt that you paid for the game. It is ridiculous that companies get to skirt laws by saying, “It’s on a computer.”
Imagine you buy a car. Years later you go to resell it for less and the manufacture claims you can’t because the sales receipt that proves you are the legitimate owner is a “Steam Cars Inc key” and therefore all existing laws do not apply.
verdigris@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Yeah that’s not what they’re preventing. It’s to stop someone with rights to generate keys, i.e. the developer, from generating a lot of Steam keys and then selling them on their own site at a discount, which is basically leeching off of the Steam infrastructure & ecosystem while sidestepping the storefront. Which is fine as long as they don’t undercut.
The EULA for any software you’ve ever paid for is what forbids resale.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If it was only about developers then consumers could have the right to resell their game at whatever price they wanted.
verdigris@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Again that is a separate issue from the no undercutting clause. Prohibition of resale is ubiquitous in the software world because for decades the ploy has been to sell you a license, not an actual product.
Of course I’d love that to change but it’s a core precept of how digital ownership works and has worked for most of it’s existence. Steam is not the main force behind that.