Valve threatened with legal action by German consumer group

A German consumer advocacy group has challenged Valve for allegedly unfair enforcement of Steam's latest end-user license agreement and failure to allow users to resell game licenses. CinemaBlend reports the Federation of German Consumer Organizations has given the Washington-based company until October 10 to respond or it will take the case to court.

The German group claims Valve illegally coerced its users to consent to a new EULA (which forbade class-action lawsuits against the company, among other stipulations) in August by holding access to their paid library of games hostage. It also references a July EU court ruling that software manufacturers must allow for consumer resale of software licenses; Steam currently has no mechanism to allow for the transfer of activated games between user accounts.

The Federation of German Consumer Organizations has called out other video game companies before. In July it alleged Blizzard did not do enough to inform German consumers that Diablo III requires a constant online connection to play, who were then left out in the cold when servers went down.

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GamesRadar has reached out to Valve for comment on the legal threats, but received no response as of publication time.