Why I don't like Steam

No particular reason for posting this now, just occured to me I haven't covered it yet.

A few years back I bought Half Life 2 off eBay, I buy 99% of my games off eBay partly because of a lack of disposable income and partly because I rarely have time to play most games fully due to spending my free time playing MMO's so just can't justify paying full price.

Now what I didn't appreciate at the time is that Steam games are tied to the Steam account they are registered to (there is a time-limited and seemingly tortuous transfer process which appears to be of little practical value) and that Steam accounts are not transferrable.

All of this is spelled out in the Steam EULA (which I suspect few gamers have ever read) and referenced on the exterior packaging of Steam games but obviously you don't find that out until the box arrives.

The point here being that, while the seller of a Steam game/account _should_ at least be aware of these points, the buyer (unless previously experienced with Steam) won't be aware of the unauthorised and risky nature of buying a Steam account,

Getting back to the story, Half Life 2 turns up with the account username & password, I change the registered email address and password but the username is fixed. Time goes on and I purchase afew other games and add them to the Steam account and then one day (over a year later) I can't login to Steam and get a message saying the account is locked because of suspected hacking.

Fortunately I still had the sellers email address so I email him asking if he's made any attempt to access the account. It transpires that he owned 2 copies of Half Life 2 and accidentally supplied the wrong copy for the account details he gave me. This meant that when he ran the serial number check for his remaining copy it replied back with the account name he supplied me, being unable to access this account (because I had changed the password & email) but being in possession of the correct serial number (and apparently having forgotten he had sold it) he was able to get Steam to lock the account out and investigate.

Unfortunately at the same time, I had contacted Steam informing them that I had purchased the account over a year earlier (in case my attempts to contact the seller failed) which gave them the excuse they needed to ban the account.

Eventually I was able to work with the seller to get Steam to unlock the account after jumping through some hoops but I suspect this is rare.

I have since opened my own Steam account but have yet to purchase anything through it or register anything against it (or my purchased account for that matter) due to my experience. That's not to say Ive avoided Valve games as I've simple purchased then on XBox (although XBox Live can't really do Teamfortress 2 justice!)

The lessons to be learned here are that firstly you don't really own software purchased through or registered on Steam as they can stop you from using it even though you have the Media and even if it's a single player, offline game.

Secondly it's very very easy to get scammed on eBay when purchasing a Steam account because the seller has the power to get the account locked even if he can't get it back (because the buyer can prove he has the serial number)

Finally I wonder what the legal position is (in some countries) with respect to ownership and resale rights (since you effectively don't get either)?