Steam Removed Forced Arbitration from Their Subscriber Agreement
store.steampowered.com
store.steampowered.com
>For example, in the TurboTax case, a judge tallied (PDF) Intuit’s potential costs for the arbitrations to be at least $128 million—$3,200 for each of the 40,000 clients represented by Keller Lenkner, the firm behind the mass arbitration.
https://www.consumerreports.org/money/contracts-arbitration/...
So companies are removing the provision...
>Finally, companies may want to reconsider whether individual mandatory arbitration still represents the best dispute resolution system for their needs. Some companies already have opted to revert to court litigation and class actions, although the majority – even after having to face a mass arbitration – continue to use arbitration, albeit with several of the risk mitigation strategies described above.
https://www.cooley.com/news/insight/2022/2022-06-30-how-comp...
Binding Arbitration was already a blatant sidestepping of the American Constitution and general corporate accountability, but leave it to Microsoft, a monopolist with government contracts, to take it to another level. The only binding arbitration agreement I've seen which compared was Linode's, which included a gag clause.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/14/business/disney-plus-wrongful...
They backed away from it but they tried.
- steam families
- removing the monopoly of windows gaming on PCs
- removing a ton of game piracy by making a platform people want to use
- progressing Linux desktop to be in a usable state
???
by becoming a monopoly? A lot of this ball started rolling because Wolfire accused Valve of price fixing. Pretty much the worst thing you can do.
And if you didn't read the ToS update: this is
1) RETROACTIVE application of this arbitration (remember when we got mad at companies trying to apply terms to the past)?
2) option out requires you to delete your Steam account. Holding your potential hundreds or thousands of dollars of games as hostage.
I don't think people realize how absurd this is.
>removing a ton of game piracy
Except when you need another third party account, then suddenly piracy is convinient again.
>progressing Linux desktop to be in a usable state
By relying on a windows environment, sure. I still yearn for native Linux gaming.
Last night, I was playing Elden Ring, when suddenly the game screen froze, and then went black. The game's music was still playing in the background. I assumed that it was some sort of crash (notably, the first crash I have EVER experienced while playing that game on Steam Deck). After rebooting the Steam Deck, and finishing my play session, I noticed there was some sort of critical notification on my account, which turned out to be the update to the subscriber agreement. I assume that my game 'crash' was actually Steam attempting to show the agreement update over the game. Thanks, guys!
I also find it interesting that I woke up to find california passing a bill declaring the use of "Buy" buttons for purchasing a content license on this site.
I find the arguments in this thread persuasive, but the timing and nature of valve announcing the change in terms more than a suspicious. I'd have to go check, but I would not be suprised if I received the notice around 5pm california time.
Its one of those weird peculiarities present in US law which apply virtually nowhere else but show up in quite a few agreements across the world.
I wonder how valid the whole agreement is if it contains points which one can not possibly agree to.
Ther is actually some sort of way to resovle that called the blue pencil test.
It seems that the only way to not accept the new agreement is to close your Steam account. I assume they don't provide any way to use the games you bought if you do this, and don't refund you either. How is that legal?
Of course I've seen this in a ton of subscription-based services, but since Steam lets you "purchase" games, that really seems problematic?
Not really, no.
>Can I play games after deleting my account?
>During the 30 days before account deletion, games that require a VAC server will not be playable. After your account is deleted, games that require a Steam account will not be playable.
People calling Valve a "good monopoly" and then they turn around and hold your games hostage when lawsuits get too sweaty. This is exactly why GOG is my first choice where possible. And ironically the very kind of thing that Wolfire was worried about in their lawsuit.