Steam Finally Makes It Clear: You’re Buying A License, Not A Game

We’ve been writing stories about how, when it comes to digital purchases, we typically do not own what we’ve bought. Instead of buying a product, such as the digital version of a video game, what we are instead buying is a non-transferable license to use that product. While readers here will be largely familiar with this annoying concept, most online retailers bury the language for this so deep inside their labyrinthian EULAs that the overwhelming majority of the public is none the wiser. Steam has traditionally been no different, which is how you get confused fans complaining about how a game they bought has been changed via an update, or how your Steam library just disappears when you shove off this mortal coil.

But thanks to a California law that goes into effect next year, this has already changed. Ahead of that law, Steam has updated the messaging users see when purchasing a game to put the lack of game-ownership right in their faces.

Now Valve, seemingly working to comply with a new California law targeting “false advertising” of “digital goods,” has added language to its checkout page to confirm that thinking. “A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” the Steam cart now tells its customers, with a link to the Steam Subscriber Agreement further below.

California’s AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer “permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.” Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms “buy, purchase,” or related terms that would “confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good.” And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that “the digital good is a license” and link to terms and conditions.

Frankly, the idea that this had to be mandated by state law is silly. That law didn’t suddenly educate Valve and other online marketplaces for digital goods that there was a problem here. Surely Valve has fielded questions and/or complaints from consumers in the past who had thought they’d bought a game only to find out they hadn’t. These companies could have proactively decided that informing their customers of the reality in a way that doesn’t take a set of bifocals and a law degree to parse through a EULA or ToS was a good idea. They just didn’t want to, for reasons that I’m sure you can decipher for yourself.

But now consumers will be better informed. And what will be interesting will be to see if this changes anything when it comes to the macro-behavior of customers.

In other words, if there isn’t some precipitous drop in purchases now that this new language is in place, the open and remaining question will be why Valve and companies like it weren’t more upfront about this reality all along?