Steam Finally Makes It Clear: You’re Buying A License, Not A Game
from the etched-in-steam dept
We’ve been writing stories about how, when it comes to digital purchases, we typically do not own what we’ve bought. Instead of buying a product, such as the digital version of a video game, what we are instead buying is a non-transferable license to use that product. While readers here will be largely familiar with this annoying concept, most online retailers bury the language for this so deep inside their labyrinthian EULAs that the overwhelming majority of the public is none the wiser. Steam has traditionally been no different, which is how you get confused fans complaining about how a game they bought has been changed via an update, or how your Steam library just disappears when you shove off this mortal coil.
But thanks to a California law that goes into effect next year, this has already changed. Ahead of that law, Steam has updated the messaging users see when purchasing a game to put the lack of game-ownership right in their faces.
Now Valve, seemingly working to comply with a new California law targeting “false advertising” of “digital goods,” has added language to its checkout page to confirm that thinking. “A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” the Steam cart now tells its customers, with a link to the Steam Subscriber Agreement further below.
California’s AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer “permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.” Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms “buy, purchase,” or related terms that would “confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good.” And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that “the digital good is a license” and link to terms and conditions.
Frankly, the idea that this had to be mandated by state law is silly. That law didn’t suddenly educate Valve and other online marketplaces for digital goods that there was a problem here. Surely Valve has fielded questions and/or complaints from consumers in the past who had thought they’d bought a game only to find out they hadn’t. These companies could have proactively decided that informing their customers of the reality in a way that doesn’t take a set of bifocals and a law degree to parse through a EULA or ToS was a good idea. They just didn’t want to, for reasons that I’m sure you can decipher for yourself.
But now consumers will be better informed. And what will be interesting will be to see if this changes anything when it comes to the macro-behavior of customers.
In other words, if there isn’t some precipitous drop in purchases now that this new language is in place, the open and remaining question will be why Valve and companies like it weren’t more upfront about this reality all along?
Filed Under: ab2426, california, copyright, digital goods, false advertising, license, ownership, steam
Companies: valve
Comments on “Steam Finally Makes It Clear: You’re Buying A License, Not A Game”
Steam Finally Makes It Clear: You’re Buying A License, Not A Game
Now, if only we could go back to the good old days, when you were actually buying a game.
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You can do that. There’s a guy at my monthly flea market selling probably some of the exact games you’re thinking of, in cartridge form.
Of course, the idea of “buying a game” (or licensing one) that’s nothing more than a bunch of digital data is ridiculous in the modern world. I don’t think we should be trying to get back to scarcity, when it’s now purely artificial.
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Many many modern games no longer come with a physical version. Some physical copies aren’t even functional without a downloadable update
The reason people care is because buying comes with a lot of rights that licensing doesn’t. It’s not the physical part that matters, but things like right to resale. Licensing generally gives you way less consumer protections.
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Sure, but when you reference “the good old days”, it’s not obvious that “the good old games” aren’t enough for you. There are literally thousands of them, and I’d get like two per year when I was growing up (Christmas, my birthday, and maybe an extra on a sibling’s birthday if I was lucky); they’d have to last. By that standard, the flea market stall has enough for a lifetime.
I think you’re missing the point. If we didn’t have copyright laws, all that stuff would be on archive.org (actually, the old stuff often is, provided you know what to look for and the site is actually online), and the concept of “resale” would be just as ridiculous as “sale”. Everyone would just have all those rights you want.
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I mean, that wasn’t their point, though. We do have copyright laws (and did, even back in the good old days). Never mind that it wouldn’t having that fix everything, there are still issues with things like revocable licenses etc. That said:
That would also cause other problems, though. I don’t really have an issue with people selling software in a market economy. Being able to build a game and sell it is fine. Freeware is nice but it’s not a 1:1 substitute.
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That was my point when I described “buying” digital data as ridiculous. We’re in a post-scarcity economy when it comes to such things, and the people in charge are just not willing to admit it. So we have this pretense we can “sell” bits, to recoup costs already spent, as if nothing’s changed since the days when stuff had to be physically shipped across the world.
If you want to charge $50 to send someone a copy of some data, when that data transfer costs you less than a cent, that’s fine. I just don’t think there should be any monopoly. If archive.org or aXXo are willing to compete and send it out for less, so be it.
We did have copyright laws in the old days, but they didn’t much affect ordinary people before photocopiers and floppy disks existed. And a “sale” doesn’t seem like as much of a pretense when an actual box is being obtained.
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Or at the very least, had copyright terms at a reasonable and not an insanely long length…
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The “coverage” of such laws is probably roughly as important as the length. If only money-making activities were restricted, but individuals and libraries could share the data, musicians could sample and re-arrange the music, and so on, we might not care so much whether the length was 3 months or 20 years. In principle, different activities could even have different copyright lengths; for example, there’s no good reason why selling an exact copy and making an unauthorized sequel have to be banned for the same amount of time.
Re: You can on GoG
That exists it’s called GoG (good old games)
Whilst some of the disclosures required by the law are good (restrictions such as DRM need to be declared upfront, and it should also stop publishers adding launchers post-release), not sure why you’d expect it to change the purchasing habits of users, as PC gamers have never purchased an “unrestricted ownership interest” – for physical copies and even GOG copies all you have ever purchased is a limited license and have restrictions which would stop them being classed as purchases under this law (if they applied the same purchase definition to physical copies, not that we have any left for PC).
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As far as I can tell, for the most part GOG sells actual copies of games. There is no license agreement whatsoever on the games I’ve bought. Sometimes there is a GPL license but you don’t need to agree to that to use the software – only to redistribute.
A solid step forward towards honesty
“A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” the Steam cart now tells its customers, with a link to the Steam Subscriber Agreement further below.
While I would have preferred if the language was ‘… a revocable license..’ just to really hammer home what ‘owning’ a license means it’s still a good step towards a more honest business practice mandating the switch from ‘buy’ to ‘license’.
Meanwhile at GOG...
https://x.com/GOGcom/status/1844752098145038435
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If there were a way to install GOG and make it run well on my Steam Deck, I’d do it.
If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.
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Piracy (infringement) was never stealing. Buying without owning is a ripoff, however.
Steam is the best run PC download gaming service theres always games on sale for a few
Dollars If I can play a PC game for 20 hours
I m happy in a few years time it’s going to
be hard to buy PC games on a disc the days of going to a physical store to buy PC games will be over in a few years
Most games that rely on playing against online enemy’s only last a few years
If the dev finds it’s not making money the server will be shut down
“why Valve and companies like it weren’t more upfront about this reality all along?”
That’s an easy one, they weren’t sure what would happen so they kept it low key just in case it lowered profits.
Buy -> Get
Just change the text “Buy” into “Get” (short for “Get a License” or indeed, as mentioned above, “Get a Revocable License”) and you’re in compliance with the law.
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That’s actually quite smart.
Because people naturally will think that get means get to keep, but they’ll be disappointed. And taking things away by using language that would make a reasonable person think it was permanent is what they do best
If I buy something and they take it away, I’ll just get it from sailing the high seas. Guilt free, because I’ve already paid.
Cute disclaimers about licensing won’t change a thing.
In the grand scheme of things? Probably not much, despite what some people think, there are a lot of people over in the Steam community that already know that they technically don’t own their games, just the license, they just really don’t care in the end of it all.
Kind of a “C’est la vie” type deal with them, mainly because Steam is actually very beloved by a lot of people
Ok, and? This whole “muh physical media, digital games bad” fearmongering seems to just assume Steam is going to snap their fingers and delete your entire library just because…I dunno.
It’s weird how this article doesn’t even to the due diligence of finding the updated ruleset and comparing it to the old one. It’s just a link to another news site with a bunch of fluff attached to it. Frankly, this entire thing feels pointless when the article you linked covers it in greater detail.
Being a physical gaming zealot basically just guarantees you have a backup of the game’s 1.0 version. Because even physical games get updates and those updates have to come digitally.
Even if these are genuine issues with digital product ownership, I think our stance should be to keep companies from doing that thing (assuming, like I said, they’d have any reason or desire to) and not just to shun the technology entirely and remain stubbornly on physical media like a bunch of cranky old boomers.
This is the equivalent of covering some story about the TV industry being corrupt and saying this is the reason we need to go back to live theatre performances only.