Valve appeals against French judge’s ruling on game resale

Game giant Valve is appealing the French court’s ruling on the resale of Steam games. The Paris Supreme Court has voided the Steam terms and conditions clause prohibiting the resale of game licenses of the week.

As part of last week’s ruling, Valve will be posting a link to the full ruling on the home page of steampowered.com and its mobile apps for three months. The company must do this within a month, under penalty of 3,000 euros per day late, with a maximum of 540,000 euros. However, as Valve appeals, those consequences will be temporarily postponed. Valve disclosed its further plan in this matter to gaming news site IGN. The ISFE, Interactive Software Federation of Europe, of which many major game companies are members, is behind Valve in a response.

The case was brought by a French consumer organization, which believes that game licenses should simply be transferable, just like games on physical media. The case has been running since 2015.

Although the case has been brought against Valve, it is not just about the fate of Steam. Other digital distribution platforms operating in France are also affected by this case. On other major platforms such as Origin, uPlay and the Epic Store, the same applies as on Steam: a purchased game is tied to an account and can only be returned under certain conditions and cannot be resold. It is possible that the case will also have consequences at European level in the future.