A Steam kōan



  • I don't think I either agree or disagree with the new Steam subscriber agreement, but there's no "Mu" option.

    Steam's new subscriber agreement

    And it appears that the new privacy policy is ... well ... pretty private.

    Steam's latest privacy policy.

    Of course, I tried clicking here to print.  I can't tell whether it printed nothing or didn't print anything.

     



  •  It's not like you really have a choice anyway :




  • I wonder if they could skirt the 14th Amendment by demanding you be their slave - since it would take a legal challenge to stop them, and you'd lose access to your Steam account right away, folks might not actually want to challenge the agreement!



  • @vic said:

     It's not like you really have a choice anyway :


    Yeah, I guess I was aware of that.  I only have single-player stuff like Portal on Steam, so I was working on the assumption that if I ever did have a disagreement with Steam's Ts'n'Cs, I could just block the Steam client from internet access at the firewall and continue doing what the hell I liked without it being able to uninstall my games, but I think nonetheless that I might refer this matter to Trading Standards.  It may be arguable that they don't have the right to impose changes in terms on you after the act of purchase, regardless of their original terms probably having said that they do have that right.




  • @DaveK said:

    It may be arguable that they don't have the right to impose changes in terms on you after the act of purchase, regardless of their original terms probably having said that they do have that right.

    Keep in mind that Steam's user agreement clearly states that what you are paying for is a subscription; a subscription to a service that grants you a valid non-exclusive license for your 'purchased' content for the duration of the subscription. You have not in fact purchased copy of a game. Infact, you haven't even purchased a license to said game; you only have a subscription to a license, which means you are not entitled to any kind of monetary compensation or retention of goods should you (or Valve) terminate said subscription.



  • @Ragnax said:

    Keep in mind that Steam's user agreement clearly states that what you are paying for is a subscription; a subscription to a service that grants you a valid non-exclusive license for your 'purchased' content for the duration of the subscription. You have not in fact purchased copy of a game. Infact, you haven't even purchased a license to said game; you only have a subscription to a license, which means you are not entitled to any kind of monetary compensation or retention of goods should you (or Valve) terminate said subscription.

    Like Netflix or your cable subscription, you're renting the content essentially.



  • @Ragnax said:

    @DaveK said:
    It may be arguable that they don't have the right to impose changes in terms on you after the act of purchase, regardless of their original terms probably having said that they do have that right.

    Keep in mind that Steam's user agreement clearly states that what you are paying for is a subscription; a subscription to a service that grants you a valid non-exclusive license for your 'purchased' content for the duration of the subscription. You have not in fact purchased copy of a game. Infact, you haven't even purchased a license to said game; you only have a subscription to a license, which means you are not entitled to any kind of monetary compensation or retention of goods should you (or Valve) terminate said subscription.

    Yeah it's like MSDN or TechNet subscriptions. Every software company is moving toward renting, I'm surprised it's not like that already with stuff bought on iTunes.



  • @Soviut said:

    @Ragnax said:
    Keep in mind that Steam's user agreement clearly states that what you are paying for is a subscription; a subscription to a service that grants you a valid non-exclusive license for your 'purchased' content for the duration of the subscription. You have not in fact purchased copy of a game. Infact, you haven't even purchased a license to said game; you only have a subscription to a license, which means you are not entitled to any kind of monetary compensation or retention of goods should you (or Valve) terminate said subscription.

    Like Netflix or your cable subscription, you're renting the content essentially.

     

    Usualy rents do not consist of an up-front payment with no extra expenses.



  • @Mcoder said:

    @Soviut said:

    @Ragnax said:
    Keep in mind that Steam's user agreement clearly states that what you are paying for is a subscription; a subscription to a service that grants you a valid non-exclusive license for your 'purchased' content for the duration of the subscription. You have not in fact purchased copy of a game. Infact, you haven't even purchased a license to said game; you only have a subscription to a license, which means you are not entitled to any kind of monetary compensation or retention of goods should you (or Valve) terminate said subscription.

    Like Netflix or your cable subscription, you're renting the content essentially.

     

    Usualy rents do not consist of an up-front payment with no extra expenses.

    Would you prefer paying a monthly fee to play your games?



  • @ekolis said:

    @Mcoder said:

    @Soviut said:

    @Ragnax said:
    Keep in mind that Steam's user agreement clearly states that what you are paying for is a subscription; a subscription to a service that grants you a valid non-exclusive license for your 'purchased' content for the duration of the subscription. You have not in fact purchased copy of a game. Infact, you haven't even purchased a license to said game; you only have a subscription to a license, which means you are not entitled to any kind of monetary compensation or retention of goods should you (or Valve) terminate said subscription.

    Like Netflix or your cable subscription, you're renting the content essentially.

     

    Usualy rents do not consist of an up-front payment with no extra expenses.

    Would you prefer paying a monthly fee to play your games?

    Is the monthly fee positive or negative?



  • The top of the cake, in some countries (like belgium), renting has lower taxation than selling. The mean, instead of selling an item for 10$, it would bring you more money to rent it for a period of, let's say, 20 years, for a unique fee of 10$ :D



  • @Ragnax said:

    Infact, you haven't even purchased a license to said game; you only have a subscription to a license, which means you are not entitled to any kind of monetary compensation or retention of goods should you (or Valve) terminate said subscription.
    Renting and subscriptions come with a time period. If I subscribe to a newspaper and they stop sending it to me, I am entitled to compensation, since they didn't fulfill the part of the services I already paid for. If I rent a computer, and pay in advance, and the rental company decides to take it back before time, they owe me something. In the latter case, I could argue that there is some kind of "damages", e.g. they stop me from being able to work. So the story doesn't end with "we've got a contract and we can do whatever we like".



  • I am just glad Steam has the offline mode so if it (or when) goes too soul owning, I can set my firewall to permanently block it and force it into offline mode.  The idea of Steam using a subscription to a license is probably how they can get away with doing sales on things, which I will have to say really makes me love Steam.  During one of their summer sales I was able to get Fallout NV for 75% off.



  •  Isn't that limited to like two weeks, though?



  • Maybe what we ought to do is try and draft an "End provider license agreement" where we get all these providers to "agree" to something that grants them a non-exclusive right to our attention and currency.  We will rent them our currency in exchange for keeping us entertained, but we will retain the right to keep their entertainment with no further compensation if we grow tired of their antics and/or DRM or changes to other contracts.

    The tougher way to go about this would be to get ourselves all elected and make all rent-seeking activities illegal.



  • @Anketam said:

    I am just glad Steam has the offline mode so if it (or when) goes too soul owning, I can set my firewall to permanently block it and force it into offline mode.

    How much you wanna bet that's just the thing they disable in the patch right before the Patch of Doom (tm)?



  • @too_many_usernames said:

    Maybe what we ought to do is try and draft an "End provider license agreement" where we get all these providers to "agree" to something that grants them a non-exclusive right to our attention and currency.  We will rent them our currency in exchange for keeping us entertained, but we will retain the right to keep their entertainment with no further compensation if we grow tired of their antics and/or DRM or changes to other contracts.

    The tougher way to go about this would be to get ourselves all elected and make all rent-seeking activities illegal.

    Elected? Nah, the only people who have the power to change the government are the terrorists. Anyone who actually joins the government will inevitably become corrupted by the stench of what's come before.



  • @TGV said:

    @Ragnax said:
    Infact, you haven't even purchased a license to said game; you only have a subscription to a license, which means you are not entitled to any kind of monetary compensation or retention of goods should you (or Valve) terminate said subscription.

    Renting and subscriptions come with a time period. If I subscribe to a newspaper and they stop sending it to me, I am entitled to compensation, since they didn't fulfill the part of the services I already paid for. If I rent a computer, and pay in advance, and the rental company decides to take it back before time, they owe me something. In the latter case, I could argue that there is some kind of "damages", e.g. they stop me from being able to work. So the story doesn't end with "we've got a contract and we can do whatever we like".

    It does come with a time period; for the duration of the existence of your user account with Steam. The user agreement for the Steam client itself goes into further details, such as availability of service, grounds for termination of service, etc.



  • @ekolis said:

    @Anketam said:

    I am just glad Steam has the offline mode so if it (or when) goes too soul owning, I can set my firewall to permanently block it and force it into offline mode.

    How much you wanna bet that's just the thing they disable in the patch right before the Patch of Doom (tm)?
    I am sure someone would have an offline hacked old version of steam I can get my hands on if they do something like that.




  • What am I looking at? Also since when did Facebook have a Linux distro?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    What am I looking at?

    That's Steam. And a bunch of other crap. Notice that my Steam has less words than the OP's Steam.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Also since when did Facebook have a Linux distro?

    Not sure if troll or just stupid. I'll assume the latter.



  • @ekolis said:

    Would you *prefer* paying a monthly fee to play your games?

    On a pedantic note, Sega Channel was the shit back in the day. Easily worth the $20 per month.



  • @Nexzus said:

    @ekolis said:

    Would you prefer paying a monthly fee to play your games?

    On a pedantic note, Sega Channel was the shit back in the day. Easily worth the $20 per month.

    The Playstation Store has Plus which works that way. If their billing system worked, and if it had more/any Vita games, I'd consider it.



  • @Ben L. said:

    Linux users and Wine is like OSX users and Parallels. They look down on Windows users but can't let got of the convenience of using applications that work and that are not Photoshop or Midnight Commander.



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    Linux users and Wine is like OSX users and Parallels. They look down on Windows users but can't let got of the convenience of using applications that work and that are not Photoshop or Midnight Commander.


    So apparently playing video games is a "convenience" now. I only use Wine for Steam and World of Warcraft.

    See those applications in the taskbar? They're all native to Linux and they all work and none of them are Photoshop or Midnight Commander.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Speakerphone Dude said:

    Linux users and Wine is like OSX users and Parallels. They look down on Windows users but can't let got of the convenience of using applications that work and that are not Photoshop or Midnight Commander.


    So apparently playing video games is a "convenience" now. I only use Wine for Steam and World of Warcraft.

    See those applications in the taskbar? They're all native to Linux and they all work and none of them are Photoshop or Midnight Commander.

    I think you faked this entire screen shot using the Blender application that is itself in the screen shot.



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    I think you faked this entire screen shot using the Blender application that is itself in the screen shot.

    I still don't get how it's legal that they stole the Facebook logo.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I still don't get how it's legal that they stole the Facebook logo.

    They existed before Facebook.


  • BINNED

    @blakeyrat said:

    @Speakerphone Dude said:
    I think you faked this entire screen shot using the Blender application that is itself in the screen shot.

    I still don't get how it's legal that they stole the Facebook logo.


    Like button



  • @Soviut said:

    @Ragnax said:
    Keep in mind that Steam's user agreement clearly states that what you are paying for is a subscription; a subscription to a service that grants you a valid non-exclusive license for your 'purchased' content for the duration of the subscription. You have not in fact purchased copy of a game. Infact, you haven't even purchased a license to said game; you only have a subscription to a license, which means you are not entitled to any kind of monetary compensation or retention of goods should you (or Valve) terminate said subscription.

    Like Netflix or your cable subscription, you're renting the content essentially.

    Hmmf.  So I would have to make the somewhat more difficult (but still, I think, valid and true) argument that the original purchase in fact actually [i]was[/i] a sale, but falsely disguised as a rental in order to deprive me of my consumer rights, and that the contract terms were unreasonable.

    Tricky, I admit.  But long overdue, I also believe; the balance has swung way too far away from consumers over the past decade or two.  How the fuck can games companies expect anyone to respect their supposed IP rights when they created them only in order to deprive us of our conventional property rights over things we buy? (see also: games companies that complain about second-hand sales not earning them any revenue.)

     



  • Hmmf. So I would have to make the somewhat more difficult (but still, I think, valid and true) argument that the original revolution in fact actually was a peaceful turnover of power to a new regume, but falsely disguised as a revolution in order to deprive me of my civil rights, and that the peace terms were unreasonable.

    Tricky, I admit. But long overdue, I also believe; the balance has swung way too far away from citizens over the past decade or two. How the fuck can governments expect anyone to respect their supposed sovereignty rights when they created them only in order to deprive us of our conventional civil rights over our own bodies and lives? (see also: governments that complain about international businesses not earning them any taxes.)



  • @ekolis said:

    Hmmf. So I would have to make the somewhat more difficult (but still, I think, valid and true) argument that the original revolution in fact actually was a peaceful turnover of power to a new regume, but falsely disguised as a revolution in order to deprive me of my civil rights

    Erm yeah, that happens.  Bloodless coup d'etat disguised as a popular uprising?  More than once in history.




  • @DaveK said:

    More than once in history.

    Every four years, where I come from.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ekolis said:

    ...peaceful turnover of power to a new regume,...
    That sounds like a new sort of vegetable.



  • @PJH said:

    @ekolis said:
    ...peaceful turnover of power to a new regume,...
    That sounds like a new sort of vegetable.

    THE MUSHROOM KING IS SLAIN! All hail QUEEN Peach Toadstool!

    And now, a quote from our new queen: "What recession? I have LOTS of fungible assets!"



  • @ekolis said:

    @PJH said:
    @ekolis said:
    ...peaceful turnover of power to a new regume,...
    That sounds like a new sort of vegetable.

    THE MUSHROOM KING IS SLAIN! All hail QUEEN Peach Toadstool!

    And now, a quote from our new queen: "What recession? I have LOTS of fungible assets!"

    Sorry, your fungible assets is in another castle.

     



  • @DaveK said:

    @ekolis said:

    @PJH said:
    @ekolis said:
    ...peaceful turnover of power to a new regume,...
    That sounds like a new sort of vegetable.

    THE MUSHROOM KING IS SLAIN! All hail QUEEN Peach Toadstool!

    And now, a quote from our new queen: "What recession? I have LOTS of fungible assets!"

    Sorry, your fungible assets is in another castle.

     

    +1up



  • @Ben L. said:

    +1up

    I just realized that the Mario 1up sound is pretty much the same as the Dragon Quest casting-a-spell sound...


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