A French consumer group has brought a lawsuit against Valve, saying that Steam and its required terms of service infringe on a number of European legal rights, including the right to legally resell purchased software.

The 64-year-old UFC-Que Choisir (the "federal union of consumers") argues that Valve must provide the capability for Steam users to resell their legally purchased digital games whenever they want. While noting that many online stores have similar resale restrictions, the group argues that the difference between being able to resell a physical game disc and not being able to resell a digitally purchased game is "incomprehensible... No court decision prohibits the resale on the second-hand market games bought online, and the European Court has even explicitly stated that it’s possible to resell software which, let’s remember, is an integral part of a video game."

The group is referring to a 2012 decision from the European Court of Justice that focused on the resale of downloadable enterprise software licensed from Oracle. "It makes no difference whether the copy of the computer program was made available by means of a download from the rightholder’s website or by means of a material medium such as a CD-ROM or DVD," the court ruled.
"From an economic point of view, the sale of a computer program on CD-ROM or DVD and the sale of a program by downloading from the Internet are similar," the court ruled. "The on-line transmission method is the functional equivalent of the supply of a material medium." But in 2014, the Regional Court of Berlin ruled in favor of Valve in a case brought by a German group arguing for the same resale rights.

[Update: Thanks to reader Carl Gleisner for pointing us to the 2014 EU Court of Justice case Nintendo v PC Box. The ruling there distinguishes between video games with a "creative component" and the kind of pure productivity software being discussed in the earlier 2012 case. So the "right of resale" might not apply as directly for digital games as it does for other software.]

The state of the law is quite different in the US, where courts have decided on multiple occasions that companies had broad rights to limit resale of digital software through the use of end-used license agreements, even for physical copies of software. That decision is in some conflict with the "first sale doctrine" that gives an initial purchaser wide-ranging rights regarding the use of a purchased product. Software publishers have argued—successfully, in Vernor vs. Autodesk—that software is licensed, not purchased, and therefore the doctrine of first sale does not apply.

In addition to the resale complaint, UFC-Que Choisir takes Valve to task for claiming the right to reuse any user-created content on Steam "at will." This clause "denies... respect for the users'/creators' rights of intellectual property," the group says. The group also wants Valve to accept some liability if and when users' personal data is hacked or breached from Valve's servers, specifically citing the 77,000 Steam accounts that Valve says are compromised every month.
UFC-Que Choisir also wants Valve to allow Steam users to refund remaining money out of their Steam Wallets when they close their accounts. Finally, the group disputes the use of Luxembourg law for any European complaints against the company. "We have the same currency but not the same rights!" the French group says.

UFC-Que Choisir says it had previously provided Valve with formal notice of its complaint and has brought the case to the High Court of Paris "in the face of resistance from Valve." Valve has yet to respond to a request for comment from Ars on the complaint.