this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024

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The Judge Dismissed Valve's Defence, Now Steam Is Different. [Valve's can't tell you that you can't class action them] (invidious.privacyredirect.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Tldw?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 weeks ago

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.

[+] [email protected] -65 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

Valve being pieces of shit while gamers worship them for no reason yet again.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

In 19 years I have never been burned by Valve, in the same period I have lost access to software (and hardware) from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and Epic. They are a money making business and will always act in their own interest but so far it seems like their own interests includes not stomping on customers (in my experience).

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 weeks ago

Exactly this. My steam account is 20 years old and I have effectively no complaints with Steam or Valve. Are they a profit-driven corporation who will thus still make profit-driven decisions? Sure. But Valve has never specifically done wrong by me, and in fact has a number of times gone against the trend to maintain their status as a comparative good guy.

Far as I'm concerned, Valve is one of the best, most trustworthy corporations I know.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 weeks ago

I will worship you too, when you provide me with first class Linux support for games.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Most times, they are the only distributor of a certain game. For example, where the fuck can i purchase Barotrauma besides Steam?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Yup, why do the dev work for other stores when steam accounts for 99% of sales.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

Other storefronts sometimes pay for exclusivity. And Valve don't restrict you from selling on other platforms, so why not?

Also because a monopoly is always a bad thing. Valve need to know that if they fuck up, there are 100 other storefronts out there waiting to pounce.

[+] [email protected] -16 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Yay, Monopoly!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

What monopoly? Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and Epic all make money hand over fist selling videogames.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago

Most have tried make their own launchers/markets and failed since they are too greedy to build up trust.

[+] [email protected] -13 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I love buying Nintendo games for my PC

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah that's totally valve's fault that Nintendo does not sell on pc

[+] [email protected] -10 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Is the point not that they have a near monopoly in the modern PC gaming space?

It's virtually a requirement for developers who release games on PC to release their game on Steam. From what I recall, developers must also follow requirements set out by Valve regarding what they are allowed to price their game on other platforms.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

How is it "virtually a requirement"? Nothing is stopping any devs from selling their games elsewhere, but most of them see the advantages that steam brings to the consumers and don't bother trying to compete. If steam was buying up publishers and forcing exclusivity then that would absolutely be monopolistic behavior, but they are just beating the competition by being better.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

They aren't just beating the competition by being better.

They're beating the competition because they don't allow developers to sell games cheaper than on Steam if they want to sell on Steam. And they have the market share to be able to make it financial suicide for a developer/publisher to not put their game on Steam.

"You can sell your game anywhere as long as it's cheapest here" smells a lot like a monopoly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

They're beating the competition because they don't allow developers to sell games cheaper than on Steam if they want to sell on Steam

Makes sense to me. Can't use all of steams fancy features and clout to direct people away from it.

Other stores literally paid for game exclusivity and couldn't manage to dethrone steam, you really think it's not a difference in quality?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago

Makes sense to you. To me, it seems like they want a monopoly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

No monopoly, other storefront exist and Valve isn't performing aggressive anti-consumer actions to try and stifle them. Valve is simply offering the best product, so it is the most popularly, but the field is still very much open for any other good guy that wants to sweep in and make an honest living in the field.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 weeks ago

People generally loving, generally hating.

Valve is not that good if you take your time to realize few things more, Valve is not that bad if you take time to realize few things more.

For example, you can't say that Ubisoft can be that bad if you take a look at the industrial grade artistic output (allow you travel and interact with artistically astonishing worlds).

But when you check side as business entity, you can see everything is set up to please share holders and people that don't even know "what's a minecraft?".

Valve knows how, when and why they mess with their customers. Ubisoft is just clueless about their gamer-customers because they known only theirs shareholders-customers.