And so, our story begins...

This says that a company CANNOT block the sale of software. And that once you've purchased it, they lose the right to control it. Steam even changed their rules on reselling games because of it [Only in the EU, IIRC.]

There's also another court decision, which I can't find, what says that EULAs aren't legally binding. So they can't even get you that way. But, that may be US only.

So it follows logically, that this and this would be illegal in the EU, along with a lot of DRM.

So, no-one has to worry. Yay and all that jazz...


But, wait! A challenger appears!

Physical PC software [and non-Steam digital stuff?] is usually locked to single use activation codes, persistant internet connections or simply tied to an account with no way to deactivate it. Which is one of the reasons I don't play on PC too much. I don't want to faff about making accounts on top of accounts to play a game.

While also illegal, due to the fact it has [to my knowledge] never been questioned in court it's still the go-to DRM. Which means either the law doesn't apply here, companies don't actually care they're breaking the law and/or people don't know/care about this... [Judging from the outrage on the console side of this I'm guessing they do care.]

In theory, I should be able to delete my battlenet account and sell my WoW disks. But, I can't due to having used the CD-keys, AFAIK there is no "I'm in the EU, reactivate the keys and let me sell it" button.


I guess what I'm saying is, regardless of whether you play games on a PC or a console... you're getting screwed one way or another. When someone successfully sues a company for blocking the resale of their PC software, THEN this will be something we don't have to worry about, until then companies are just going to get more and more controlling over what you can actually do with your purchases.