Patch Notes 1.139 [Steam]

[Heburnll]

Are you arguing that you do or don't own the game? A licensor is a party that grants a license to another party right.. so aren't you confirming that you don't own it?

You do realize that the exact same license occurs for physically bought software as well, right? 

Whether courts will enforce it or not is one thing, but shrinkwrap licenses have always taken the position that the buyer gets a license to use the software and not actually any title to the software.

Valve isn't doing anything extra-special, here.

This is what I was trying to say. If you buy an EA product from Gamestop, Bestbuy, EA.com, or Steam... you own the game just as much no matter what. So we'll make up a game here, say EA Sports Foosball Madness 2011. EA Sports (a division of EA) makes the game. EA therefor has the intellectual property and produces the product. They have all rights and ownership to this product. They distribute this product out. Gamestop, Bestbuy, EA.com, and steam all becomes retailers for this product. No matter where you buy it from or if you have a physical copy of the game or not, EA still have the rights to the game. EA can now ban your CD-key, take down online servers, or do whatever they want because while you own a COPY of the game, they own THE GAME.

QFT.
A lot of people fail to realize this. Even if you have a hard copy of the product, it still is not yours. And even if you got it directly from the published, they can still revoke your right to play that game even though you bought it from them. This is in no way any different from steam. Except steam also offers VAC on certain games which effectively allows them to revoke your right to play (for 1 reason or another) that game as well as the publisher doing it.

 

[ebipuam]

Good Advice: Always buy on steam

Why would i want to buy games FOR a 3rd party, especially with steams shaky start that denied people who purchased the games access to their purchases?

After all if you buy on steam, you do not own the games, steam does, and can yank your access on a whim.

actually you never "own " a game you basically buy the rights to play it. but i see what you are saying. i doubt steam would do something like that (yank access) as they have a huge customer base and that would cause people like myself to stop purchasing games and stupid little $5 games every week with their weekend deals. i mean i just bought rome total war for $5. will i ever play it? doubtful. but it's in my library. also i have bought many many games from steam and have never had a problem. besides it seems like games run smoother when they aren't bottle necked by your cd rom.

 

[Archonsod]

Valve can shut down your account, but can they disable the CD-keys?

Assuming you write the one they give you down, and it does indeed work with the TW version then no. They can however delete the game from your account.

i doubt steam would do something like that

They have done. Several times.

 

[Rujasu]

Valve can shut down your account, but can they disable the CD-keys?

Assuming you write the one they give you down, and it does indeed work with the TW version then no. They can however delete the game from your account.

Exactly my point. The steam key does work with the normal version.

 

[ebipuam]

Valve can shut down your account, but can they disable the CD-keys?

Assuming you write the one they give you down, and it does indeed work with the TW version then no. They can however delete the game from your account.

i doubt steam would do something like that

They have done. Several times.

im curious what was the reason. i mean i haven't read the service agreement for every game but as far as i know there is no time limit on your license to play the game. i would suppose some kind of breach of their tos may cause this or some temporary bug, but for a good 5 years i have been a steam customer with no problems. maybe i've been lucky. my friend bought far cry from ubisoft download and apparently there is a 2 year limit on having the ability to download hte game. so when he reformatted his comp he wasn't able to DL the game.  that would suck if all of a sudden i couldn't download any of my games anymore. i reformat all the time.

 

[Lieutenant Colonel Ivan]

I buy my almost all my games on steam, I find it faster... but I understand some people like to have the game in their hands and "feel like they own it".

Off topic : Juridically, CLUF are not enforceable everywhere. Those clauses are illegal in many countries, if steam shut down my account, I could sue them and win easily.

 

[Yamchu]

Finally an ATI fix, this bugged me since the Warband release.

You wont get your steam account shut down for no good reason. I like steam, never had problems, but its pretty expensive here in  DE, ordering games from UK or US  with tax + shipping is still cheaper then buying from steam.

Exceptions are those special sales: M&B complete 15€, DA:O Ultimate Edition, 15£ etc.

 

[Tuckles]

@Bigbiker.

The publishing company (e.g. Taleworlds) owns the game.

The digital distributor (e.g. Valve) owns your account.

You own a license (hence you are the licensee) to play the game, which can be revoked at any time.

lrn2law.

 

[SunofVich]

I am glad that they fix things a little bit at a time instead of rolling out one big fix 3 or 4 months down the road.

 

[Katou]

Valve can shut down your account, but can they disable the CD-keys?

Assuming you write the one they give you down, and it does indeed work with the TW version then no. They can however delete the game from your account.

i doubt steam would do something like that

They have done. Several times.

I've been buying my games from Steam for over 4 years now, I've never once had a problem with steam deleting any game from my account. I was actually able to get a refund on a terrible game, that I would have otherwise been stuck with if I bought a physical copy.

In general, for people who have a lot of games at least, I find Steam the best place to buy games because you can dl/install on a whim without worrying about finding your disk/cd-key. I even ended up having to buy Warcraft 3/expansion from Blizzard digital store so it would keep an online record since I always lost my cd key for it, lol. 

I'd have Steams babies, in essence.

 

[wakko2k]

Not too shabby. Still a lot left to be done though.

For being a fast "after release" patch or a "hotfix" im pretty happy with it!

 

[BigBiker05]

@Bigbiker.

The publishing company (e.g. Taleworlds) owns the game.

The digital distributor (e.g. Valve) owns your account.

You own a license (hence you are the licensee) to play the game, which can be revoked at any time.

lrn2law.

reread what I posted, you will see it hasn't even been edited. Lawyered!

 

[Babaganoush]

I was actually able to get a refund on a terrible game

So whats the refund policy on WFAS?

 

[riftaxe]

My point was with a physical medium (CD/DVD) and Valid CD key (non steam) you can practice your license until the world ends.  If you purchase through steam, you are allowing a 3rd party control over the software you purchased.

While Steam has never banned my account, it is not like they do not have a track record of doing that and occasionally for questionable reasons at best.

If you want to use steam fine, go for it; however, if steam goes belly up (for whatever reason) enjoy repurchasing any software all over again.  If you want to include a 3rd party who practices total control over the access to the software you purchased it is up to you, but you should be aware that the 3rd party can cut the link between you and the original software publishers at any time and for any reason, should they choose to do so (leaving you in the cold, and no access to your purchased software). 

 

[Sir Justino]

Valve can shut down your account, but can they disable the CD-keys?

I don't know how anyone can ever get banned from steam honestly. I'v owned steam for about 6 or 7 years now and have never had an issues.

 

[POM_Achilles]

I'm still having major problems with the formations. Why the hell won't they face the enemy? Rawr.

 

[Brandenburger]

Argh! I forget every time that I must click on With Fire and Sword on the TW website to see about patches... But now i found it

 

[Zanfib32]

The problem with Stream is that if the client fails for any reason you lose access to every single game you have ever bought on steam. Because of this I try to avoid buying too many games from steam.

 

[peope]

So you can have 20 games.
One of them you get major screwup with. (Or you screwup with)
Steam blocks all your games.

If you buy them from different vendors there is no single authority to shut you down.

And with M&B (and many other games) without their drm there is no issue with steam as you get a key and the game is downloadable from taleworlds.
I highly doubt taleworlds would revoke a key because of some crap that happened with another game on steam.

You can never ever buy a game.
You buy a license or some sort of a title to it (or part therof).
Even if you buy the title to the source and everything in it you are not buying the game.
You are buying the title. (which you might argue is the same as buying the game in the first place)

 

[Brandenburger]

Thats not the only problem, you open Steam the door to market investigation, like the idiots who use google chrom. And then you are surprised why the advertisement fits to you.