Steam appears to have started posting a notice in its shopping cart that purchases in the store are only for the license and not the game, according to a notice seen by Engadget. It appears to be an attempt by the company to get ahead of a new California law coming next year that forces companies to acknowledge that consumers do not own digital content.
When you open your shopping cart with items in it and before going to checkout, a notice at the bottom right says: “Purchase of a digital product grants a license to the product on Steam.” This is the first time our editors have seen a notification like this (and we use Steam a lot), so it seems new.
Last month California governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2426 into law, forcing digital marketplaces to make it clear to customers if they are only buying a media access license. It will not apply to endless offline downloads, only digital copies of video games, music, movies, TV shows or ebooks from the online store front. Companies that fail to comply with the law can face false advertising penalties if they do not explain in clear language the limits of a given digital transaction. The law followed cases like Ubisoft’s resignation Employees from player libraries after the game servers are closed.
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