Quote:
Originally Posted by Yammo
First and foremost...
...your steam-account is a free subscription and you do not "buy" the games
on steam, but rent them for a one-time fee. This means that you are
not a customer, but a subscriber which greatly affects your position versus
Steam should you ever run into problems with them. A customer has very
strong rights, but a subscriber does not.
For example, as a subscriber, you have no "rights of first-sale", which means
you can not sell or give your game away. (Actually even throwing away games
that you loathe requires you to contact support.)
If at any time, your subscription should be terminated, you will lose access
to all your steam games and will have little or no real possibility of getting
them back.
For the "privilege" of subscribing to a game, you actually pay a higher price
than for the physical product. Sometimes up towards 50% more...
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Standard EULA verbage for box copies too. All EULAs regardless of physical copy or digital say exactly that same thing. (I understand you like Steam etc, but I am just trying to set records straight).
On the "first-sale-rights" once again read the EULA of any game.
That bit about your account being revoked sucks, but I know of no case where that has happened, and as such I imagine that someone doing that would have to have done some serious shenanigans to get that.
The "higher price" for a digital copy is because Retailer's threatened publisher's with not carrying their products if they allowed any digital distributor to offer the same games at a lower everyday price than the retail version. On the flipside this means more money goes to the people that actual make the games rather than retailers.
I am not trying to be inflammatory, smug, or defensive I am just trying to lay out factual information for those that may not know what Steam is or how EULAs work in general.
I am not some kid either I am a father of 3 and have been playing video games since before I can remember(sometime early '80s is the best I can do). I don't believe that Valve or any company is without fault anymore than I think any person is without fault. I however like to have at hand factual information, and I to pass that information on to those that do not have it. My taste in video games span nearly all genres (excepting platformers I really hate those). I just want these things to be taken into consideration before people call me a defender, or a kiddie, or a smug bastard or whatever they want to throw out there. Name calling achieves nothing.