French consumer association sues Valve over Steam resale ban

A French consumer organization is suing Valve over Steam’s terms of use. It prohibits, among other things, the resale of Steam games, while this would be permitted under European law.

The French consumer organization UFC-Que Choisir publishes a statement about the decision on its website. This was briefly translated by the French-speaking Reddit user Silencement. The organization sees a problem in the fact that Valve does not allow users to resell their purchased game licenses. The European Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that, regardless of what terms an agreement contains, consumers are free to resell a license for a digitally distributed software product.

In 2014, a German consumer organization also sued Valve for their attitude to the reselling of games licenses. However, Valve managed to win this because the German court ruled that a computer game falls under general copyright laws and not under software copyright laws because of, among other things, the audiovisual content. The ruling of the European Court is precisely about the software copyright.

According to PC World, the French consumer organization has found similar what they believe to be illegal terms of use with Sony, EA, Microsoft and Blizzard. For now, however, the organization is only going after Valve and their sales platform Steam.

The consumer organization also sees a problem in the fact that Valve disclaims all responsibility in the event of a data breach. In addition, the organization does not want the company to claim all user-generated content on Steam as its property. Also, according to UFC-Que Choisir, Valve must start giving users their Steam Wallet funds back when an account is closed. Finally, Valve would apply the Luxembourg consumer law to all European users, which would not be the intention.