Problems giving my copy of Half Life 2 to a friend

I gave my (boxed) copy of HL2 to a friend (I haven't played it in several months and won't do again), but it seems the CD-key is linked to my steam account. I just looked on the steam website and there is an option to reset the CD-key to your account, but only if you can provide a receipt from the last 90 days.

I understand the need for anti-piracy, but are they saying I can't legitimately give away my boxed copy of a game? Is there no way to do this?

Nope.

I'm not aware of any way, unless you give your friend your Steam account (which I did, when I stopped playing PC games).

I have a spare gift copy of HL2 I could give to your friend (thru the steam system). Maybe we could come to some agreement.

I have a spare copy too (bought Half life 2 and then later the Orange Box), one of the things I most hate about Steam is that you can't sell software you no longer want. I don't know why so many people LIKE Steam, I can't find anything good about it. My 2nd pet hate with Steam is that they NEVER discount software and so still sell 5 year old games for full price.

Darkheart

> I don't know why so many people LIKE Steam, I can't find anything good about it.

Two biggest ones for me.
1 - Patches are available without going to third party sites
2 - the DRM is less annoying then most boxed games

Not quite true - they have a fair few "weekend deals", where they will slash a game price by 50% or something.

And today they have cut the price of "Audiosurf" from $10 to $2.50 because they have introduced a shopping cart to Steam (?!).

I have two legit copies of halflife and I cant use either because pirates keygened both my codes into their steam accounts...

*sigh*

so much for anti-piracy.

Bah. If I were to let my friend use my steam account login details, would that mean I could never again use steam?

no, you could use steam again, but only when he's not using it.
It sucks really cause they're basically saying you don't own the game in teh same way as you own a normal game that doesn't have to register online. their should be an option on steam to "send" the game to someone else's email address, deleting it from your account and putting it in theirs instead, it's such a massive oversight that you can't do that.

> it's such a massive oversight that you can't do that.

It's not an oversight, it was a choice on Valve's part. They are using the one owner non-transferable license model. Almost all software is done under a license model - you buy the licensce to use the software, not the software itself. (Void where prohibited by law)

@dynaman
well that sucks. It's definietly something you never would've seen coming back in the amiga days, people would've had riots over this sort of thing. A game is simply a product, not a service, once you've finished wiht the product, you should have the right to pass it onto someone else.

Even Amiga software was licensed, just in the case of the Amiga (and almost all PC software back then, and still a large part of the PC software today) the license allowed transference.

The situation for business machines was different - a large portion of those licenses were non-transferrable.

That is simply not true. Weekend deals, and various other offers are common. There are several package deals that are pretty good value (if you want everything in them of course). They're not always advertised fully, and the full price doesn't drop as it does at retail (e.g. BioShock is still full price, and hasn't yet had a discount). But as an example, when Rockstar joined the Steam club, you could buy all the GTA games for a rather low price - if I hadn't already played them all to death on console, I'd have picked that up for sure!

OK maybe they have improoved a little recently, at least they started putting release dates (albiet very misleading ones, many are the re-release date not the actual release date) next to the game titles. It still doesn't justify selling a game like Dreamfall which you can buy anywhere for £3.99 for £20!

The only reason to do that is so that you can take advantage of people who don't know games and are buying.

And don't even get me started on the MANDATORY, FREQUENT updates (makes MS look really soft and cuddly). The fact that Steam scours your system for information and system specs, that Valve then SELL that info to anyone who wants it. They also collect a lot more info (and you can't find out what) that they then also sell. The fact that it's incredibly invasive. That it contains DRM.

I hate Steam!

Darkheart

No

you have a licens

You do not own the game !

Yes it's a license, but it should be transferable.

Darkheart

You could choose to not use Steam. Obviously, this would mean you would have to choose to not play certain games (HL2, for instance).

Unless, and I in no way condone this, you buy a HL2 licence but use and play a copy that doesn't use Steam. Kills any chance you have of multiplayer on Valve hosted servers though.

You mean transferrable to another person, as it is transferrable to another machine.

Why do you believe this?

Why would anyone selling a product choose to base their entire sales operation on a model that means they can recoup no financial reward when the original buyer sells / passes it on to someone else that may otherwise have paid for it?

Yeah, it might be *nice* if it were like a physical bit of furniture or something, but if you buy something where the T's & C's state that *you* are buying it for *your* use only, why is this a problem?

Because if I no longer want an item of property I should be able to dispose of it, or do you dispute the concept of property?

Darkheart

To sum-it-all-up: this is why you buy games across separate Steam accounts (and because you can *accidentally* get VAC banned forever.)

I don't like DRM etc, but I really like Steam. It's very convenient, I don't need to worry about disks, updates, or which computer I want to play on. They seem to price games about right as well.

No. I disagree that you are buying property in the first place when buying a product that is sold by digital distribution. You are buying a license, not an item of property.

It is a completely different - but valid - sales model. You can choose not to like it, but the only reason for not liking the sales model is that you cannot sell it on.

It's not even like when you go to the movies, or a concert, or pay for some other experience where you pay again and again if *you* want to experience it, and it is impossible to pass that experience on. At least with Steam you can choose to experience it again, and on a new computer too.

Uh, because that's how selling everything BUT software works?

Imagine the chaos if suddenly everyone who sold anything was able to prevent you from reselling the item, or gifting it to anyone else after it's been used.

Why should software get special treatment in this regard?


Also, requiring software to be registered to prevent piracy is one thing, but not allowing that license to be transferred violates the first-sale doctrine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Frankly, I'm surprised Valve hasn't been sued over this, but I guess it would have to be a class-action lawsuit to be worth it.

if you have legit copies of the game you cant use i should think youd be entitled to either a refund or to sue the makers; or for them to sort out new keys.

This is one good reason why pirated games are so desirable.

> Imagine the chaos if suddenly everyone who sold anything was able to prevent you from reselling the item

I don't need to imagine it. It already exists in many forms, rent to own being one of them. I personally prefer being able to sell software I buy, but till the laws change it doesn't really matter what I prefer...

Exactly - there are many different sales models.

When did you last go to the cinema, or a concert, or watch SkyTV, or go on holiday, then afterwards go out and sell the experience on to someone else?

As digital distribution is a (comparatively) new sales medium, why should one assume it will follow the same sales model used for anything else? I'm not really arguing about whether they should be doing this, but whether it is valid for them to do so.

And in that vein, the link to the "First Sale Doctrine" is an interesting one, but only seems to apply to US law, and was codified originally in 1908 and then in 1976. Should it be assumed that a new medium has to conform to pre-existing laws? Possibly, but not necessarily...

Because you regisstered the game to your steam account, you CANNOPT pass it on as this would be piracy seeing as you are able to download the entire content via steam, weffectively, you are duplicating the game.

It's ridiculous and annoying with re-selling the licensed stuff like software, but unless you can maybe contact Valve and discuss theoptions with them (maybe bestvia telephone rather than forums/email etc. under the circumstances) I don't think you'l have much luck.

If it's any consolation, through arious other purchases of Valve products, I have acquired a 'Gift Copy' of HL2 which can be passed on to another person's account.

I don't know anyone really that plays games and if your friend has a steam account, I would quite willingly forard the gift to them.

This is where i believe cracking the living doomfrey out of software is morally right. Illegal or not.
However, if you crack it i doubt you can use it online though :/

PS if you live in germany and a load of other countries in EU then its not illegal anyway as its classed as your property which you can sell once (this applies to oems too apparently).

You can resell copies of your console games. You can even rent them. Why should PC games be different?

You can? Please tell me how I go about reselling the copy of Bionic Commando I purchased as a download from XBox Live Arcade. That's what you have to compare with, there's no use comparing Steam with boxed games, because they're completely different.

I thought this was the whole point of having to connect to the Steam server to verify your account every time you want to play the game? Therefore you could install the whole game on ten machines if you want, but only the one whose steam account is linked to that CD-Key would run the game. Thus making it a bit more like a physical item like an Xbox game...

I am starting to agree with Mark Tiffany above - there are lots of sales models, some of which allow resale, some of which don't and some of which cannot, and I'm sure there are others..

Personally i dont like the fact the license is none transferable..but then
i wouldnt use steam anwyay.

You cant compare something like this to the cinema or renting a flat or
whatever - neither of these activities imply ownership of any kind..

I believe if this is the approach these developers/publishers want to take - they have the right to take it - i do however believe that they
should heavily discount theyre software to make up for the fact that the
license is so damned restrictive... heh "halflife2 OEM"

regardless of opinion - you make the decision whether or not to buy this
crap - if you strongly disagree - dont buy it.. its really that simple..

"That's what you have to compare with, there's no use comparing Steam with boxed games, because they're completely different."

I bought my copy of Half Life 2 boxed.

And I've seen plenty of boxed copies of Half Life 2 in second hand stores, whether or not it's strictly legal I don't know, but evidently you can do it. I guess if it comes with the CD key, you have no problems and would have it deactivated when it was resold.

As far as I know, there are no non-Valve games being sold as boxed games but still using Steam. Now that could happen, because Valve have set it up so that developers can do it, and if and when that happens, I'd say you have a valid point, but unless there are games I don't know about, Steam is only being used for downloadable third party games.

But at least that is clear. With games, i wouldnt want to buy a game for 30-40 quid i couldnt sell/swap afterwards. If this is the way its gonna be then i suggest they halve the price and put a "This game can only be used by one person ever" sticker on it. I mean would you buy a TV you couldnt sell because its registered to your address for life? Even if the company had the gaul to say - "Well, you pay for the fantastic experience of watching TV, not the hardware"

I think its missleading and a borderline fair-trade infringement without clear information on the box. DVDs, console games, CDs, Videos etc.. can all be bought and resold perfectly legally as long as it is in one persons posession at at a time. Why should off the shelf PC games be any different?

? Why should off the shelf PC games be any different?

Three reasons

1 - It's legal (except where it's not)
2 - DVD are not able to use that kind of protection (not being online)
3 - People buy them that way

(for item 2 I was going to say consoles as well, but even that is getting less true every day now)

What about statutory 30 day return rights too? that means i can effectively sign up for an account then take the game back to the shop (who will inevitably put it back on the shelf (possibly for ages) until some unwitting person buys it and finds its useless, this has actually happened to me before the first time i tried buying HL2.

> What about statutory 30 day return rights too?

No such thing here, many stores do allow returns but there is no law requiring it, except in the case of defective products. For places where there is a such a law then there is a case.

Personally I think commercial games sold online without boxes, disks and manuals should be a good 20%-30% cheaper. I just don't see any good reason to buy them online, especially when they start putting restrictions on how many times you can play.

They do that for games you buy?

heh, oops sorry meant install it. Lol. Usually amounts to the same thing with me heh.

I think the store's just assume that you've pirated the game if it's a PC game, so they dont' refund it, that's why consoles games can always be taken back to the store. The problem is though, piracy is so rife on PC's that no amount of anti piracy effort on the publishers side is going to crack this. EA can put all the DRM crpa they like on their games, but you know it'll still be on isohunt or mininova within days of release. If anything, adding copy protection increases the popularity of the game in the piracy world as it becomes a competition to see who can crack it and distribute it first. It's been going on since the days of 8-bit machines, and will never stop.

have you tryed game copy world.. they seam good at removing Illware from sertain software devlopers.

Check the License agreement.

If you don't agree with it, you shouldn't click the "I agree" box :)

Bit late by then as you have already opened the box, exposing the key. Clicking no isnt really going to get you your money back without hassle is it. I still think they should be made to put a restricted license sticker on the box.