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Steam Fined $3 Million For Refusing Refunds (smh.com.au)
Gaming company Valve Corporation has been hit with a $3 million fine after the Federal Court found its online games site Steam breached Australian Consumer Laws. From a report: The court imposed the maximum fine requested by Australia's competition regulator because of Valve's disregard for Australian law and lack of contrition. Valve's general counsel, Karl Quackenbush, told the court the company did not obtain legal advice when it set up in Australia, and did not check its obligations until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission got involved in April 2014. It only provided staff verbal instructions. This lack of interest in Australian laws and lack of cooperation encouraged Justice James Edelman to impose a pentaly 12 times more than Valve Corporation suggested it pay.
What kind of idiots are the people running this company? Do they actually think they're running a Mom and Pop store?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
How could ANYONE be stupid enough to not check local laws when opening in a new COUNTRY? I see that Valve is privately held, and apparently the owners aren't really very good at the detail work on things like this.
I've said before that you can't run a company only by listening to lawyers (and quite frequently you need to ignore them when they get too protective), but that doesn't mean you don't need them at all!
I applaud Australia for levying a fine high enough that someone will perhaps notice and wish to avoid a repeat.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
It is a penalty, which is divisible by five.
Damn straight. Let's get the government out of the affairs of business entirely. No more consumer protection and no more business protection. Including no more court-enforced debt collection, garnishment, or intellectual property rights. If a business can't pry the money out of my hands, market itself out of "consumer confusion" by counterfeit products, and make their product uncopyable, them screw 'em. It should be the consumer's choice on how they deal with business, and businesses are free to decide whether they wante to enter the market or not.
Legal protections are part of a compact between businesses and their customers. They must protect both sides. Otherwise, there's nothing to convince the unprotected side to respect the protected side except raw force.
"During the case the court heard Valve did in fact offer more than 15,000 refunds if a customer was unable to install a game, or unable to play it, or where a subscriber purchased the wrong version of a game by mistake."
So WTF are Aussies fining Steam $3M? Because they can't beat Pac-Man?
Gaming may not be a right, but under the Australia Consumer Law, refunds on products that fail to meet reasonable expectations are. Valve was being stupid.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's when you get screwed over five different ways.
It stands to reason since the countries that put words like "democratic" or "people's republic" in the names of their countries tend to be authoritarian dictatorships that we shouldn't simply trust that a country with the word "socialist" in it is some kind of utopia for workers. However, the authoritarian aspect of a country should be removed from their economic policies. The Nazis were far from socialist and their economic policy something that changed though out their reign. Early on their 25-point plan contained a lot of points that have more in common with communist or socialist positions such as nationalizing industries, more equitable sharing of profits for workers, and the like. It also contained a lot of aspects of nationalism (e.g. a German people, limiting immigration, etc.) which is why it had the name National Socialism in the first place.
However, once they were in power there wasn't a clear push in either direction. The Nazis privatized some parts of the existing government while at the same time nationalizing companies, particularly those that would be used to fuel their war machine. They also outright took over the labor unions to the extent that they were controlled by the party and essentially made them functionally useless. There wasn't a clear cut push for outright government (or worker) control of industry nor was there a hand's off free market approach.
Trying to lump Nazi Germany into one basket (left) or the other (right) ignores a lot of the fine detail. In some regards they leaned left, and in others right. On the whole they probably came closer to the center than most people would care or like to admit and I think it had less to do with any sense of economic ideology and more with doing whatever was most effective in terms of building their army or supporting the war effort.