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Valve Loses Australian Court Battle Over Steam (computerworld.com.au)
angry tapir writes: Valve Software has lost court action launched against it by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The Australian court case centered on the refund policies of Valve Software's Steam digital distribution service. Some of Steam's refund policies contradicted the statutory guarantees of the Australian Consumer Law, the court found. A hearing on penalties is yet to be held.
Such "false or misleading representations about guarantees" include: consumers were not entitled to a refund for digitally downloaded games purchased from Valve via the Steam website or Steam Client (in any circumstances); Valve had excluded statutory guarantees and/or warranties that goods would be of acceptable quality; and Valve had restricted or modified statutory guarantees and/or warranties of acceptable quality. Valve has contested ACCC's arguments on a number of grounds.
Such "false or misleading representations about guarantees" include: consumers were not entitled to a refund for digitally downloaded games purchased from Valve via the Steam website or Steam Client (in any circumstances); Valve had excluded statutory guarantees and/or warranties that goods would be of acceptable quality; and Valve had restricted or modified statutory guarantees and/or warranties of acceptable quality. Valve has contested ACCC's arguments on a number of grounds.
It's an attempt by corporations to rewrite/bypass existing laws, and prevent you from having any recourse by forcing you to agree to arbitration (conducted by someone friendly to the outcome of the corporation).
Despite the idiocy we've been seeing as courts (*cough* American *cough*) decide it's OK for companies to fuck over consumers with bullshit EULAs which skirt around the law, I'm glad to see some common sense.
Of course, expect the next round of "trade negotiations" (*cough* American *cough*) to work to undermine this.
Because, let's face it, America is all lubed up and on the payroll of multinational corporations.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If they keep you from running a game you bought within the first 90 days, do a chargeback. If you own a bunch of Steam games, it might not be worth it since they'll ban you from playing the other games you paid for.
It was bound to happen eventually. As an Australian though, it would be nice for the ACCC to deal with the price fixing issue too. But one thing at a time :-D
I dunno about you, but I like to have at least the minimum protection that the products I buy somewhat resemble what it says on the box, rather than simply being a box full of a picture of a duck in a funny hat. Because fuck you, that's why.
This, might be a good idea to use multiple steam accounts to try and limit the damage.
And before people get on my ass, yeah, he fucked up by either cheating or breaking the rules, sure. No sense in banning him from singleplayer though, that's just insulting.
Probably won't happen anytime soon, but the shitfest that's going to happen when steam shuts down will be crazy.
More punny title: Valve Loses Steam in Australian Court Battle
Ask me about repetitive DNA
I like steam but this is good that the ACCC took them to court and won. Their refund policy is BS. I bought payday 2 ( http://store.steampowered.com/... ) when it had just came out for something like US$25 full price. I trusted the word of the developer who said it would NEVER have microtransactions ( http://steamcommunity.com/app/... ) in the game. Those scumbag developers then added in microtransactions anyway turning it on a P2W game. I tried multiple times through steam to get it refunded and each time I got a template response from steam denying the refund. If this was sold in the shops in Australia it would be ILLEGAL because it was not what I bought nor was it advertised as such to have microtransactions.
I will never buy a overkill game again.
What I absolutely love about steam in particular is they grant themselves the right to "alter the deal".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Lets say you have spent a fortune on steam games.
They decide they are big enough they can do whatever they want and decide to start charging monthly fees or install spyware uploading contents of your computer to the New York Times or perhaps they just decide they don't want to support you anymore and unilaterally shut down the service.
If you don't like the new deal and don't accept it your account is shut down and you lose access to everything you ever paid for without any compensation or recourse. You of course also "agreed" to submit to binding arbitration.
This crap is why I don't play games anymore. It just isn't any fun when everyone has this kind of contempt for their customers trying to fuck people over asserting they don't own anything and have no rights.
Honestly, I'd give up refunds if I could pay US prices for games. I'm a little worried that this will now give publishers a legitimate reason to charge Aussies more.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
We enshrined them (and all arbitration agreements) into the Rule of Law. Our highest court just rule the law was valid too.
Our schools are churning out lawyers like crazy because it's cheap for the University but expensive for the Student and our ruling class took note of a potential glut of people with the means to fire off Class Action Lawsuits. So they bought themselves a nice law. I suspect they're planning to do the same in the rest of the world if they haven't already (or don't just plain own the courts like they do in Brazil...).
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Yes, it does. Microsoft products sold in Australia have often come with a little flyer that specifies the different protections Australian consumers are entitled to outside their usual EULA.
It has to be as described and do whatever you were led to believe it would do. The term is actually "fit for purpose".
The other issue with valve is refusing to comply with the Australian consumer protection laws - refusing to give refunds for a nonworking product.
Further to this, the Australian laws don't automatically apply whenever you buy from somebody overseas, they only apply when the seller is targeting Australians.
Valve are clearly targeting Australians: they charge in $AUD, and they have special cut-down versions of games specifically to comply with Australian laws.
It had to be more than just some stupid things. Bans like than only come from abusive messages or serious threats. So as a TF2 player, I'm glad you and your little shit of a nephew got banned.
You let him play on your account, therefore you took responsibility for his actions. Don't let other people use your account, that's reckless and stupid.
If you drink an entire can of soda, can you return the empty can?
In South Australia, you can. You only get 10c back for the aluminium.
The answer to your question is "no", not for any reason. However, under Australian consumer law, there is no statutory limit on how long after purchase you can seek a remedy (e.g. repair, replace, refund) if it is not of acceptable quality. The only limit is reasonableness, and that depends on the product.
For example, if you buy a new car, and the manufacturer decides to stop making spare parts 15 years later (even if the initial warranty has expired), you may be entitled to a remedy, because cars are supposed to last longer than that.
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they charge in $AUD
No, they charge in US$.
I like the way Valve had argued that they weren't doing business in Australia and as such didn't need to comply because all they did was provide an online portal.
An online portal that accepts Australian dollars.
An online portal that will restrict titles for Australia by geolocation.
An online portal that WILL SEND YOU A CUSTOM VERSION OF A GAME FOR AUSTRALIA to meet Australian content requirements (looking at you Left4Dead 2) that was only released in Australia initially.
You can't argue that you're not doing business in Australia while at the same time creating (not even releasing but actually creating) specific content to comply directly with local requirements.
The retailer is the only one the consumer has a contract with. It's the retailer who gets the consumer's money. So the retailer is the only one the consumer can hold responsible for fulfilling the contract or taking back the merchandise.
If you buy a batch of foul eggs, would you try to figure out what farm they originally came from, or would you just return them to the super market you picked them up, showing the receipt for the proof of sale? Why would that be any different for any technical items?
Looking at the other comments on this, I see some pretty polarised views; either "corporations are evil, let me get a refund on anything I want whenever I want it" or "regulation is evil, let companies do what they want". I think both of those are missing the point somewhat.
The area of refunds for downloadable game purchases is one that a lot of effort has gone into over the last few years and nobody has yet quite found a solution that seems to work fairly for both the public and developers.
Actually, it needs to be acknowledged that things have moved on a long way from a couple of years ago. You can actually routinely get refunds now from the main online PC game stores, provided you meet specific conditions. What's not clear is whether this is down to the threat of governmental action (the EU had been making loud noises) or market forces. In particular, when EA startled everybody by announcing what was actually a fairly ambitious refund policy for Origin, it forced competitors like Steam to up their game and follow suit.
Steam's current policy is that, outside of exceptional circumstances, you can get a refund without question on a game which has been purchased within the last two weeks (or which has been released within the last two weeks if you pre-ordered) and which you have played for less than two hours. That falls short of the statutory provisions for refunds that apply in many jurisdictions, but it's nevertheless a useful protection if you purchase a game which doesn't work on your PC, is hopelessly bug-riddled or is fundamentally not-as-advertised.
But this system is causing problems of its own. In particular, a lot of small-scale indie developers, whose games only sell for a couple of dollars but whose play-time is less than two hours, are finding that people are playing their games to completion in less than two hours and then requesting refunds, despite having, in essenence, fully consumed the product. Guess what - customers can be greedy, exploitive morons too.
Now, you might argue - and indeed I would - that Steam would be a better place if it closed the door to a lot of these small-scale indie developers, or at least increased the barriers to entry. But encouraging them onto the platform and then shafting them through the refund policy benefits nobody.
I think part of the problem here is that for all of their many benefits, Valve remain resolutely awful at direct customer support and, indeed, seem to have no interest in resourcing it properly. Turn-around time for support requests, including non-standard refund reqursts, are abyssmal (and said requests often just drop into a black-hole). This means that when things go wrong either for a customer or a developer, unless you manage to get a twitter-storm on-side, it can be very hard to escalate a problem. Dealing with that and becoming better at processing those non-standard refunds (for instance, when a previously-working game is broken by a patch), might help with a lot of Valve's current problems. But that won't be cheap or easy for the company to implement.
Yes. Microsoft has been taken to town by the ACCC over and over again about their return and warranty policies.
I remember years ago ACCC action in Australia was the reason why warranties were extended to cover red-ringing XBox360s. The Australian "Fit for service" and "expected performance" clauses were read in a way that implied a console should last at least until the next model is released and their short warranty period was therefore invalid for what was clearly a manufacturing flaw.
If you own a bunch of Steam games, it might not be worth it since they'll ban you from playing the other games you paid for.
This is why one of the consumer protection laws we really need in 2016 but don't currently have in most jurisdictions is that businesses providing this kind of sales/distribution service have to treat each transaction independently.
It is clearly unfair for Valve (or your e-book seller, or a service providing movie or music downloads, or...) to attack a customer by retrospectively undoing other transactions or crippling other products involved in them just because one transaction was disputed or didn't work out properly in some way. If I go to a supermarket to complain because the "fresh" food they'd sold me with a use-by date some time next week had gone bad the day after I bought it, they don't get to refund me for that bad food but also make everything else I ever bought from them disappear from my kitchen. Tech firms doing the equivalent are just exploiting an imbalance of power and a controlling position in their market, not to mention abusing the kind of DRM schemes that allow that sort of control in the first place and the laws underpinning those schemes.
There are good reasons we regulate monopolies in other business contexts. We also regulate services in some important industries even though they aren't monopolies, because competition hasn't proved sufficient to keep the market balanced. As far as I can see, almost exactly the same arguments apply to a lot of modern on-line services today.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
1) We're American!
2) What? That's like communism!
3) But it's on the internet!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yep. If someone comes to me and complains that they lost their license due to speeding the first reaction is not that they were actually innocent and it's a big misunderstanding.
Likewise here knowing a bit of history the number of cases where people were wrongfully banned from Steam and the ban wasn't quickly resolved is almost nothing, so the smart money is on guilty until proven innocent.