What he loved doing was taking away consumer rights and pocketing the profit as the one who did it the best. Before Steam, you actually owned your games and could resell them without asking anyone permission. Steam bypassed all copyright laws by saying, “But what if we sold a steam key instead of the game.” It’s the same “It’s not illegal if we do it on a computer” law sidestep that techbros learned from Gabe and copied.
Before Apple sold restricted ownership music and before Amazon sold restricted ownership books, their was Steam paving the way to our current economy where you own nothing.
be noted that steam added DRM in 2008 and DRM exist since '90s, one of the first companies to use it was Nintendo, before the 2000 the USA made the DMCA (i think?) 2001, 2003 and 2004 the EU also passed some law about copyright protection(and maybe DRM?) in the early and mid 2008 many companies before valve started to also use DRM (see Spore, assasin’s creed, etc etc) during the later 2008 and early 2009 DRM was also added by EA, Ubisoft and Atari, alonside Valve
By that point the ships had already sailed. You didn’t own software, and micro transactions already existed. Steam did not “bypass” copyright laws- the facilitated a storefront that sold based on already established and litigated law.
This goes back tk the 1960’s with the origin of computers, when they were gigantic. Manufacturers like IBM would lease the hardware to institutions that used it, and the software was just included for free. This practice ended because of antitrust lawsuits in 1969, which led to IBM charging for software seperstely.
It’s funny you mentioned Apple, because one of the foundational cases of software copyright law was 1983’s Apple vs Franklin case that ruled against a company making Apple II clones, who argued that machines readable code was similar to machinery designs and thus not subject to copyright law. 20 years before Steam existed.
But I guess you can just ahead and make things up on the internet to jump aboard a hate train.
By 2003, I believe EA and Microsoft had also implemented CD Keys with a limited number of uses, usually 5 or so. If they hadn’t by then, it would be by 2010 at the absolute latest.
The war on secondhand sales of games and software had been going on since CD Keys themselves were introduced in the 90s, and probably in some other format in the 80s that I’m not aware of. Digital marketplaces were just the next logical step in the fight and the carrot of convenience for people to sacrifice their sense of ownership.
I think this is why Steam is well-loved today and why people say that they keep winning by doing nothing. When Steam came out, everybody hated it. You gave up ownership of your games and the online aspect was obnoxious with early 2000s internet. But they continued to add features of convenience - friends lists, achievements, stable servers for all kinds of games (like indie games), modding support and tools, the ability to download patches in the background, a user score/review system, frequent sales, etc. And now, Steam has so many features that it’s become a positive feature for a game in people’s minds while so much of the competition only has the lack of ownership and forcing people to download their launcher to offer.
The person who disagrees is too young to know that was ever possible. They have grown up in a dystopia so they don’t know the law is being broken or know that other countries, unlike America, stopped Steam from violating consumer laws.
The Supreme Court ruled and Congress ratified into law that once a copyrighted work is sold, the owner gives up the right to control resale. The specific case was book publishers who added a disclaimer that the book couldn’t be resold cheaply after purchase.
That is absolutely not true. You sold your game with the key. Nothing about CD keys nor secure rom stopped this. The CD key gave the game the location of the specially stamped spot on the CD to verify it was the original CD. SecureRom kept people from selling copies. It did not stop selling the original.
What he loved doing was taking away consumer rights and pocketing the profit as the one who did it the best. Before Steam, you actually owned your games and could resell them without asking anyone permission. Steam bypassed all copyright laws by saying, “But what if we sold a steam key instead of the game.” It’s the same “It’s not illegal if we do it on a computer” law sidestep that techbros learned from Gabe and copied.
Before Apple sold restricted ownership music and before Amazon sold restricted ownership books, their was Steam paving the way to our current economy where you own nothing.
be noted that steam added DRM in 2008 and DRM exist since '90s, one of the first companies to use it was Nintendo, before the 2000 the USA made the DMCA (i think?) 2001, 2003 and 2004 the EU also passed some law about copyright protection(and maybe DRM?) in the early and mid 2008 many companies before valve started to also use DRM (see Spore, assasin’s creed, etc etc) during the later 2008 and early 2009 DRM was also added by EA, Ubisoft and Atari, alonside Valve
Steam added DRM at the very start. And it was originally worse until the public pushed back.
You couldn’t play HL2 without online verification through Steam.
Oh right, i forgor about that, then i correct myself: Valve didn’t give to developers tools to add DRM until 2008
Steam was launched in 2003.
By that point the ships had already sailed. You didn’t own software, and micro transactions already existed. Steam did not “bypass” copyright laws- the facilitated a storefront that sold based on already established and litigated law.
This goes back tk the 1960’s with the origin of computers, when they were gigantic. Manufacturers like IBM would lease the hardware to institutions that used it, and the software was just included for free. This practice ended because of antitrust lawsuits in 1969, which led to IBM charging for software seperstely.
It’s funny you mentioned Apple, because one of the foundational cases of software copyright law was 1983’s Apple vs Franklin case that ruled against a company making Apple II clones, who argued that machines readable code was similar to machinery designs and thus not subject to copyright law. 20 years before Steam existed.
But I guess you can just ahead and make things up on the internet to jump aboard a hate train.
In 2003 it was pretty normal to sell your used games, on CD (or DVD) at a car boot sale or whatever.
By 2003, I believe EA and Microsoft had also implemented CD Keys with a limited number of uses, usually 5 or so. If they hadn’t by then, it would be by 2010 at the absolute latest.
The war on secondhand sales of games and software had been going on since CD Keys themselves were introduced in the 90s, and probably in some other format in the 80s that I’m not aware of. Digital marketplaces were just the next logical step in the fight and the carrot of convenience for people to sacrifice their sense of ownership.
I think this is why Steam is well-loved today and why people say that they keep winning by doing nothing. When Steam came out, everybody hated it. You gave up ownership of your games and the online aspect was obnoxious with early 2000s internet. But they continued to add features of convenience - friends lists, achievements, stable servers for all kinds of games (like indie games), modding support and tools, the ability to download patches in the background, a user score/review system, frequent sales, etc. And now, Steam has so many features that it’s become a positive feature for a game in people’s minds while so much of the competition only has the lack of ownership and forcing people to download their launcher to offer.
The person who disagrees is too young to know that was ever possible. They have grown up in a dystopia so they don’t know the law is being broken or know that other countries, unlike America, stopped Steam from violating consumer laws.
Of course you don’t “own software” like you don’t own the right to distribute to reproduce a book you bought. This is about resale rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
The Supreme Court ruled and Congress ratified into law that once a copyrighted work is sold, the owner gives up the right to control resale. The specific case was book publishers who added a disclaimer that the book couldn’t be resold cheaply after purchase.
This is exactly what Steam prevents.
For the record, the iTunes Store is actually like 6 months older than Steam.
You haven’t been able to resell your used PC games since the invention of the CD key and SecuROM.
That is absolutely not true. You sold your game with the key. Nothing about CD keys nor secure rom stopped this. The CD key gave the game the location of the specially stamped spot on the CD to verify it was the original CD. SecureRom kept people from selling copies. It did not stop selling the original.
SecuROM limited you to 2-5 activations per CD key.
You could revoke authorizations. Which didn’t matter because until 2007 it didn’t need Internet activation.