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Comment by nolok | Hacker News Reader

> I'm curious about why France was going after Valve when PSN, Xbox Live, Apple App Store and Nintendo eShop appear to be softer targets

Because "France" is not going after anyone, nor our watchdog, it's UFC Que Choisir (a pro consumer association, similar to eg EFF in their status/legal form) that sued Valve in court.

UFC is a regular of first trying mediation and getting companies to change nicely, and if nothing occurs then they do court cases like this, and then use the verdict as a basis for more mediation with other actors in the field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFC-Que_Choisir

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Thanks for the correction, but it doesn't actually answer the question. Why did whoever initiated the lawsuit go after Valve, when there would have been stronger cases to be made against closed platforms?

(The cases against closed platforms would be stronger, since on those platforms it's far easier for the secondary seller to prove that they no longer have access to the game.)

How is Valve not a closed platform for the games that it sells?

You can't really export the game outside of Steam, or use it with Steam disabled for any significant amount of time.

You can link games you buy outside of Steam to your steam account. This provides users all the upsides of a steam purchase without all of the steam limitations.

Further, many games purchased on Steam provide keys that work without using the steam account.

Linking games to Steam provides the library aspect and social features I believe, but I wouldn't argue it has all of the upsides of a Steam purchase. For example, I would buy Ubisoft releases way back when on Steam instead of Uplay because I could have it manage installing/uninstalling the games (even if I could've purchased it at a cheaper price via Uplay. Ghost Recon Wildlands comes to mind).

For library management, GOG 2 (Alpha) is the best solution I've personally seen (have the various storefronts installed, import the connector for GOG 2, all the games from that storefront are imported into GOG 2, can install/play/etc. on a whim).

I have had steam download and install games like They are Billions I purchased outside the service, as long as it had the keys. This might not apply in all cases, but I have yet to have an issue.

You can do also bought games for XboxOne and PS4 outside the store and activate them on it. I'm not sure about the Switch.

Presumably jsnell means PC gamers and game-makers can choose between Steam, Origin, GOG, Epic, Humble, and Microsoft Store.

While on the other hand, an gamer or game-maker on iPhone or Android or Nintendo or Playstation or XBox has no choice in digital distribution channels.

(And of course the latter have other flaws too - like their famously capricious acceptance processes)

One could even go on to argue that PC gaming allows you to launch your own game store that allows resale if you think it's so important. Personally I don't find that a very convincing argument, though.

Surely that's an argument that the PC platform is an open one, not the Steam platform. The Steam platform appears to be an attempt to create a walled garden in exactly the same way that the consoles are.

Gamers can only choose between those when the platforms don't lock themselves down using things such as epic's store exclusive deals. Should go after those deals as being anticompetitive, and then we will have an open market.

> You can't really export the game outside of Steam, or use it with Steam disabled for any significant amount of time.

That isn't true for all games. There is this [0] list, but I have no idea about its quality. Essentially there are games that don't use the steamworks DRM parts, so while you do not get a steam-independent installer, those games still work after uninstalling steam (and you could probably watch the installer to make your own for a completely steam free PC).

[0]: https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

Consoles also control the hw which means it is possible to make the drm stronger.

My interpretation was this:

- because games are software, it is hard to enforce that people “selling” them don’t keep a copy for themselves as well

- apparently, this may have allowed an exemption from the “must allow reselling” rule

- because iOS is a walled garden, it is easier to implement DRM to prevent this

- therefore, the courts would have been more likely to force the App Store to allow resale

Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

Because french people dont go for "easy targets". This is why we have universal healthcare (and actually in all of europe), and also aviation worldwide.

Sarcam aside ufc que choisir have foughr a lot of high profile guys before.

Steam is a closed platform, but:

It's easier to beat Valve's lawyers than Sony's. Sony has a long history of paying out the nose for lawyers who could convince a judge that a law saying "Kill no one" meant "Genocide is legal for Sony Corporation!" (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...)

Apple and Microsoft are the two most valuable companies on the planet right now, and they, too, can get some great lawyers (though they haven't demonstrated the same courtroom magic that Sony has).

I can't remember who originally was responsible for this quote, but "Nintendo is a pile of cash disguised as a video game company" is something that has been proven anything but incorrect over the past decades. Wouldn't want to pick a fight in any court with them, either. (Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nintendo)

Valve, though? Valve is worth little in comparison, and hasn't had a great history in court. Easy pickings. Then, after you win against Valve, you go up, using the precedent set to help you with the next target.

>It's easier to beat Valve's lawyers than Sony's. Sony has a long history of paying out the nose for lawyers who could convince a judge that a law saying "Kill no one" meant "Genocide is legal for Sony Corporation!" (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...)

Is this supposed to be hyperbole? The case itself was never tried, so it that doesn't show anything about how effective sony's lawyers are.

That was just one example of a case (I just picked it because it's close enough to Hacker News that most people here probably remember it), and notice that Sony got everything they asked for before the case was settled, including some incredibly unfair things (like the list of people who had legally downloaded the legally-created software of Hotz). The reason it was settled out of court was seemingly just so Hotz could avoid a felony.

There are plenty of other Sony cases that demonstrate the rule.

>Sony got everything they asked for before the case was settled

Not much happened before the settlement, the parties settled very quickly after Hotz's motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction failed. The TRO sucked, but wasn't particularly unreasonable.

>incredibly unfair things (like the list of people who had legally downloaded the legally-created software of Hotz).

Jurisdictional discovery is not incredibly unfair, and was only a natural consequence of Hotz's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.

>The reason it was settled out of court was seemingly just so Hotz could avoid a felony.

The fuck? This was a civil case.

The fuck? This was a civil case.

Computer fraud is a felony, and around that time the DoJ was getting very trigger-happy in turning civil cases criminal. Google the CFAA, which they were trying to pin Hotz under.

> DoJ was getting very trigger-happy in turning civil cases criminal

Do you happen to have a single example of this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

I don't think there was ever a civil suit filed against Swartz. As far as I remember and according to the timeline on wikipedia this seems to have been a criminal case from the very beginning.

And in any case I don't think this is a great example of the DOJ being trigger-happy, what Swartz did was obviously criminal and they were still willing to let him off with only a slap on the wrist.

People go on telling everybody about "legal" cracks because their lives are not affected.

If it meant hackers stole everything you own and worked for in your life so far you would think twice how legal this is.

A jailbreak isn't a crack, and the idea that it's a crack is ludicrous. iOS has had hundreds of jailbreaks. There's no financial incentive: it's just freeing a system.

Further, the idea that software piracy is stealing is also absurd, for an entirely different reason: copying is not stealing. Sony still had the original copies.

Beyond that: I already do release all of my source code under libre licenses. Copying isn't stealing, and I've lived my life as a testament to that.

iOS Jailbreaks are immensely valuable because they let you access the user’s data, hence why they’re literally sold for millions these days.

Stealing is taking someone else's property without due permission. That applies to intellectual property, it doesn't have to be physical.

Now you can use the stupid libertarian argument that you're just "moving bits around" or "moving numbers around" (and math is not illegal). But do that do much and you'll find that society's answer is to move particles of lead in your general direction, at high velocity.

I'm not a libertarian at all, actually. Intellectual property is a reasonable idea, but it only makes sense when forced upon producers instead of consumers, and a lot of what people deem as intellectual property is in reality something that should have patents on it. Patents expire, copyright doesn't meaningfully.

Stealing is taking someone else's property without permission, as you said. However, copying doesn't take it away from them, and jailbreaking literally doesn't do anything but apply a patch to your existing bits. That's the farthest thing from stealing you could imagine, and your argument falls apart with just the tiniest bit of poking.

I don't know the exact answer to that but if I had to take a guess, it's to avoid the "internal feature" defense. It's easier to make the case that your market for your own product (no other digital market can sell for it, your market doesn't sell for other products) should not abide to the traditionnal rules of normal sales.

Instead make the ruling clear in a case where this specificity doesn't apply, then go deeper in the rabbit hole if needed.

Again I'm only guessing here but it makes sense; similar to how, if you were to go against phone os app stores, you would go after Google first because Apple has the "my market for my product" and "not legaly a monopoly [depending on how you define the market]" card.

Because (at least in the American court system) the precedent is far more important than the target. Valve has less less of a defense than some of the bigger players that actually do offer more of a subscription (or value-add for hardware purchase) and probably have a smaller legal team to boot, while still not being nobodies.

Does the EU have precedent like the US common law system does?

It depends on which member stay you are talking about - most are civil law jurisdictions and so do not have precedent cases binding as law - especially in France as we are discussing here.

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