Nothing like a legal drama. Today, we investigate the story behind Valve's recent change to the Steam Subscriber Agreement. The story goes far deeper than I thought.
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https://bellular.games/loading-screen-blizzards-secrets-spilled-out/
Sources:
https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/4696781406111167991
https://web.archive.org/web/20240925000911/https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#11
https://www.masonllp.com/case/valve-mass-arbitration/
https://bellular.games/ls-valve-really-are-that-successful/
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/washington/wawdce/2:2023cv01819/328826/28/
https://www.404media.co/steam-removes-forced-arbitration-clause-gamers-can-now-sue-valve/
A Judge Says No 00:00
What Valve Did 01:38
The Reason Why 04:23
”Our Arrows Will Blot Out The Sun” 07:25
Valve’s Riposte 09:30
Correction: I misspoke, saying October instead of August. (00:03)
Steam subscriber agreement removed a clause that forces individual arbitration instead of court.
Before this you couldn’t sue and this couldn’t do a class action, but law firms decided to just file thousands of arbitration clauses at once which cost like $1500 each to valve no matter who wins.
Valve then decided to change the SSA (whilst trying to retroactively kill outstanding arbitration cases with another clause) to save them money.
If you’re in the EU, UK, AUS, or a bunch of other countries this never applied to you and you could take valve to court in your own country.
Steam subscriber agreement removed a clause that forces individual arbitration instead of court.
Before this you couldn’t sue and this couldn’t do a class action, but law firms decided to just file thousands of arbitration clauses at once which cost like $1500 each to valve no matter who wins.
Valve then decided to change the SSA (whilst trying to retroactively kill outstanding arbitration cases with another clause) to save them money.
If you’re in the EU, UK, AUS, or a bunch of other countries this never applied to you and you could take valve to court in your own country.