New Steam Agreement gets rid of forced arbitration and waivers for class action lawsuits

That was technically my thinking too, haha. If you're ever targeted by this (and it can be as simple as having a Google image placeholder in an unindexed page) you just need to be stubborn and spiteful. It's not worth their time with so many other patsies, haha.

Should've gone with a much lower number. The difference of 100 dollars means nothing to my burning spite.

Having been sued by copyright vultures, I definitely get the difficulty with court. The minimum just to have a lawyer retainer was 2500. The vultures told us to essentially give them 2400 and the problem would go away (a strongly worded email managed to get them off my back, but mostly because they clearly used bots).

I can see it weed out small cases less than that. I guess it'd help if I knew what people were sueing over.

>I've seen some arbitration agreements stating that you can't collaborate with other customers who are affected by the same issue, requiring each customer to have a different attorney.

Oh no, I did it anyways and collaborated with other customers online. Oh well guess we gotta arbitrate that now.

I've seen some arbitration agreements stating that you can't collaborate with other customers who are affected by the same issue, requiring each customer to have a different attorney.

Some companies really want to make it impossible for you to win any significant damages against them.

At that point, they are just telling on themselves.

I think there's a bit of a sea change in business generally where arbitration ended up being worse for corporations if too many customers/employees used that option because it meant paying a bunch of money for each case instead of dealing with one class action suit.

While the arbitration courts themselves are generally biased to corporate interests, it's not enough of a thumb on the scale to make up for the huge downside.

From what I've read, it can go either way (note: not a lawyer).

Arbitration is easier for people to seek compensation, but it usually prevents any significant damages and doesn't set a legal precedent that others can use to easily get compensation.

Court cases are harder to start and generally require a lawyer, but if you win you can get significant damages and it can set a legal precedent.

So it's usually best for the consumer to have a choice on how to pursue issues. I have seen a lot of companies lately update their terms for arbitration only though, so this is at contrast with how most companies I've seen are handling things.

Exactly! Pirate Software talked about this a while back. Steam doesn't want you cutting them out, and then them still being responsible for the bandwidth to download and host your game.

I am almost certain that steam keys are actually free to developers, which is the whole reason for the policy.

Yes, they are. That's what many of the Kinguin etc. keys are. People/bots pretend to be game reviewers/streamers and ask for free keys. I have a "Game Press" license for a game because back then I didn't know of that method. I was under the impression those were keys sold by the developer in foreign markets for adjusted prices. Now I know better.

I am almost certain that steam keys are actually free to developers, which is the whole reason for the policy.

Why is that reasonable? Storefronts don't get free keys from Steam, they have to buy them. After they pay Steam, they should be allowed to sell them at any price they want.

Imagine if Ford said you couldn't sell your car for less than what Ford dealers charge for used cars.

Its this one. And the reason is that if steam sells a game at $10 and humble sells you a steam key at $5, steam gets no profit and is 100% responsible for the bandwidth when you donlload it, for hosting the page, for the market, etc etc. Basically steam doesn't want to assume all the work with none of the reward. Which I don't really see an iissue with.

It's false if I remember correctly. Steam prohibits you from selling steam keys outside the store for less than the price on steam. They don't forbid you from selling cheaper elsewhere

The steam store didnt use to region lock and game companies still had different pricing.

That's more complicated than it sounds. An export strengthening the currency is a significant part of Dutch Disease.

If you do it that way you are importing a good.

The end of this would not be that Steam relenting enables folks to start using foreign currency to get cheap games on a publicly traded space.

What will happen if that goes through is a swift increase in taxation of export of digital goods. You'd have countries fighting tariff wars over video games.

The idea that you can use foreign safe spots to buy and sell goods at a cheaper cost is something that only rich people get to do. As soon as it becomes broadly available to the general populace the governments crack down on it quickly.

The game company can afford to sell digital goods and services to Brazil at a fraction of the cost and they profit.

If they sold redeemable codes on cards and cardboard locally it would solve their issue.

They should have to offer any two people online the same price when they list things. An American with Brazillian Currency should have the right to buy a digital good with said currency at the price listed.

A sudden demand for Brazilian Currency certainly does not hurt Brazil, either.

I think that's part of the argument. It isn't just for Steam keys, it's for alternate storefronts like GOG, Ubi, EA, Epic, etc. If you want to sell on Steam, you have to keep it the same price as anywhere else. It seems a bit harsh, but I am tentatively siding with Steam on this one. I've never had a company be as consumer friendly as Valve has been over their lifetime, and they've earned some brand loyalty. It'll quickly dissolve if they start fucking people over, but for now, as far as I'm concerned, they get the benefit of the doubt.

This is the correct interpretation and the crux of the matter in Valve's view. Why should they be forced to allow other retailers to sell Steam keys at whatever price they want, effectively taking money out of Valve's pockets, when it's Steam providing all of the actual services for said key to function?

This should not be confused with gray market key resellers, by the way (e.g. G2A, Kinguin, etc) . Those aren't the same as retailers like Fanatical or GreenManGaming.

There was another case in 2021 that originated this complaint and some of these plaintiffs in the 2024 case actually broke off from that one to start this one. We'll see what evidence they actually end up bringing to court to argue their case and how legitimate it is. All I know, is this will likely end up with Valve stopping third-parties from selling steam keys entirely.

You could very well be right, I haven't read the full suit or done a lot of research on it, so I'm just going off the scraps I've read. I did check out isthereanydeal to look at price differences between Steam and Epic on some major titles, and all of them had even pricing. I don't have a huge sample size, so if you want to look for some that have different prices, I'd be interested to see how much difference there is, and if, say, the lowest price on Epic has had a Steam sale *after* it where the game was priced higher on Steam.

Yeah, on the other hand, I'm also an idiot, and I could be completely off with what I'm talking about. IANAL, so we'll have to wait and see.

Valve just doesn't allow cheaper prices from other storefronts if it's a steam key being sold, where valve is the one footing the bill for the server costs. There are games for sale on epic all the time that are better deals than what's on steam. But when you buy a game on epic, you're using epics servers/bandwidth.

Presumably Valve's lawyers can make this case, so I guess we'll see if the judge is receptive to it.

It wouldn't make them available to more people, it would make deeper sales available to certain storefronts. Right now, Valve says that if you want to do business with them, and you offer a discount on another storefront, that same discount must be reflected in the Steam price when it sold for a discount on Steam. What the lawsuit says is that Publishers should be allowed to publish whatever discount they want on whatever site they want. That sounds like a better deal to consumers, but what it does is open the door for anti-competitive loss-leaders.

It's the same strategy that companies like Wal-Mart have employed to gain marketshare. They come in, sell everything at a loss to drive out competition, and then raise the prices to the same price the competition was charging. They haven't given the consumers a better option, they've only ensured that they don't have another choice. If you look at Valve and you look at Epic, you can easily see who has the deeper pockets: Valve is worth a little over $3 Billion from what I can tell, while Epic is worth over $40 Billion. If Epic wants to sell at a loss to drive Steam out of business, they can, easily. As a matter of fact, they've already tried this by offering the free weekly games that they do.

I'd wager that if this goes through and Steam loses, we'll see that free weekly game go away, and then large doorbuster sales of everything on the site just to undercut every steam sale as it happens. Where are you gonna buy that new game at? Steam where it's full price, or Epic where it's half price? What about the Steam Winter Sale? Will you buy the game for 80% off, or go over to Epic offering it at 90% off with a $10 coupon for another game on the site? Pretty soon you'll only be shopping on Epic, and once Steam is gone, Epic can charge whatever they want. It's the long game. They don't need to be profitable today. They just need to show their shareholders the path.

Price parity with other store fronts is only for steam keys tho? Right? I think the publisher can charge whatever on the other store front if they use the other storefronts infra.

It is just when you in effect sells steam infra, (steam carry the cost) you have to have the same price on steam.

Except that's not really true. Or at least a half truth.

Steam prevents publishers from selling *steam keys* through other sites and means for less money. Publishers and other distributors are able to sell their games as cheap as they want anywhere they want. They just can't sell it dirt cheap somewhere and then use valves steam program and bandwidth to download and play the game.

I thought the lawsuit was about overcharging, but what you just described would make sales available to more people?

It's actually kinda the opposite. It's claiming that Valve makes deals with publishers that use Steam forcing them to maintain price parity with other storefronts. So, if you want to discount a game on something like Fanatical, you'd have to run the same discount on Steam, you can't just have one or the other. I don't want to put on the ol' tin foil hat, but it reeks of Epic. Epic wants to run cheap sales through their storefront that Steam won't get, so they can pull users away from Steam. If they both have the same discounts, then Epic can't get the upper hand. That is complete conjecture on my part, but it fits with Epic's shit strategies. Instead of making something that brings people to them, they want to kill off the competition through anti-competitive practices. It's the same thing they are doing by signing exclusivity contracts with third-party developers.

Discrimination only applies if the two parties are similar. In this case the location makes these parties dissimilar due to the inability to just go from one place to the other legally. Brazil gross national income is 1/3rd the US. It makes sense to price things at 1/3rd the US price.

Steam taking 30% is a better deal than any other form of media gets by a mile. It's crazy folks complain when it is so easy to self distribute a video game, people have been doing it for years and years. Steam doesn't even require you to sign up for exclusivity like basically every other distribution/marketing service does for all media including other video game services.

You realise that if that were to be "fixed", you wouldn't end up paying the low price, Brazil would end up paying the high price? One they can't afford because they make as much in a month as you do in a week, or worse.

After a short read, the case is specifically "Steam is prohibiting developers from selling their games *to other platforms, at a price lower than that of steam*, and then pockets the 30% platform cost, due to effective monopoly power".

Which, if true, is super bullshit.

I think part of the issue is steam allows publishers to set region specific prices and lock users into a region.

You pay $89 for an annual subscription package, somebody in brazil pays equivalent to $32.58.

By definition it is discriminatory.

It's a little hard to square "steam is over charging for games" with "look at all these games I bought for 80% off ($5) off", but I guess there's more to it.

Ah that makes sense, it’s oddly suspicious they’d do this out of the blue. Though I am curious at the arbitration. Can they not include a clause that just says that the forced arbitration can be waived by them when they so choose? I feel like they would make carve outs for these big cases if they could to where they can still arbitrate on smaller cases which costs them less.

(Also updating my post text, thanks!)

They're only doing this because of the class action being brought against them. It's cheaper to let this go to court than to try and settle tens of thousands of individual arbitrations. In fact, there are plenty of companies now reversing course and realizing how badly forcing arbitration can backfire.

Edit: For those unaware: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/video-game-giant-valve-hit-with-consumer-class-action-over-pricing-2024-08-12/

Seems like a good thing?

I was wondering if it was related to anything passed recently, because another service had to change privacy rules to opt in over a rule change in Cali. I just assume if it sounds like a good thing for consumers, it probably wasn't their choice, lol, but I guess in this case it's just a cost cutting measure.

I at least appreciate them being pretty clear about what's different now.

Honestly really pisses me off how often I see people try to normalize forced arbitration clauses.

It isn't normal, and should never become normal, and in many cases should be outlawed.


So you realise that when a lawsuit has a larger corporate backing, they get to bribe the arbitrator more than you and now you back off from arbitration.

Sad that this cannot be done to companies that already agree with others.