Hacker News Reader

Comment by nibnalin | Hacker News Reader

I think Valve’s defense is one that’s perfectly strong too, in theory, at least. Steam Cloud saves (syncing game state online), steam workshop (for community game mods, maps etc.), achievements/ leaderboards (arguably, steam makes a social network for games) are all features with running costs, aka a subscription, even if their price to the user is included in the sale price of the game.

From a developer’s perspective, Steam actually handles many more pain points of building games (voip, playing with friends, build processes, DRM, anti-cheat etc.) so arguably, the user is a subscriber of _steam_, since the developer is a subscriber of those services.

I’m curious to know why you find this defense “obviously bullshit”?

View on HN

Steam is a digital store and a consumer buys software from it. You can twist words and describe it using all sorts of other marketing bullshit but it's mostly in bad faith.

It's why the NZ's consumer guarantee's act has terms like what is "reasonable" and The Disputes Tribunal (somewhat equivalent to small claims court) will often consider things from an average consumer perspective.

HN is full of technical power users so it's common for the comment sections of these stories to devolve into a "well actually" nitpick of language use but most sane countries consumer protection laws are intentionally not designed this way.

Otherwise you can probably extrapolate anything into a "subscription" service. Your bank and most credit cards are structured in a way that looks like a subscription, but an average consumer doesn't consider their plastic cards a financial "subscription".

> Otherwise you can probably extrapolate anything into a "subscription" service. Your bank and most credit cards are structured in a way that looks like a subscription, but an average consumer doesn't consider their plastic cards a financial "subscription".

I do, but I have to pay my bank X EUR a month to use it; therefore a paid subscription service. I don't have to pay Steam X EUR a month to use it. If I don't pay for Steam for a year, my account is still going to work exactly as it did before (sans a few DRM games, maybe, heh). Therefore, Steam is at the very least not a paid subscription service.

Whether it is a subscription service or not, well that is a different matter. I'd say a subscription service is only a subscription service if you regularly pay for the subscription (ie. monthly, quarterly, yearly). If the service stays running and working for you without you paying, then it isn't a subscription service. No, the reason Steam stays working is because of the <= 30% tax on all the sales. Which isn't a subscription service but more akin to a communal tax to keep the infrastructure working.

Apart from that, I never signed up for a Steam subscription. I did sign up for a World of Warcraft subscription. And that means there's no first sale doctrine, sadly, as this goes against the collector mindset the game stands on.

It not being a paid service is not a defense.

Steam is a DRM too, so if they don't want to keep the games in their servers offer a DRM free versions of all the games.

Thanks for bringing up disputes tribunal. Friend of mine recently lost a stupid case (buyer requested a picture to be stretched, even when seller explained it will look bad) and Trademe immediately closed his account with 100% positive feedback...

I’ve lost a case recently by super partial judge and dyslexic seller just blasting nationalistic insults.

NZ is nice but it’s not all daisies and roses.

> NZ is nice but it’s not all daisies and roses.

You'll get no argument from me. Didn't mean to imply our processes are perfect. I do my fair share of complaining about the NZ political and legal landscape elsewhere. :)

I think most people consider a subscription to be something that you pay for on a recurring basis. obviously you can "subscribe" to channels on YouTube without paying anything, but I'd say this is outside the typical usage of the word. if I bought a game in 2005 and it received some patches, I wouldn't have considered myself a "subscriber" to a "service".

no idea how this lines up with the legal definition, though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com