Steam does the opposite of forcing Arbitration on its users

Also, take note how they actually tell you, clearly and concisely, what has changed. Most ToS are intentionally made difficult to read to, you know, discourage people from reading them.

So, remember... they just 'switched' from forced arbitration to going into the courts. Yes it is good, but note 'Good guy Gabe' didn't start this way.

Maybe consider 'why' he's making the change? It's actually because this forces the money question to the one suing them. It costs them less by doing this. Now I think this is actually good, but don't blindly fawn over the guy for this.

Those bastar.... Wait what?

I was kinda worried when I saw the subject line of the email.

Steam is actually pretty decent, by company standards.

I appreciate this. That said, I was playing a game on my Steamdeck last night when this popped up over the game, while the game was running. Subsequently I died in the game. Kinda shit.

Good Guy Gabe strikes again.

Wow. Say what you want about them, but that is some good shit right there. I've been getting emails for months from some random fucks telling me about arbitration agreements, and steam releases this. One more reason to love the company.

Forcing you to shut up or go to court isn't great either, though.

On the big stuff where they're liable for a lot of money and you might be able to get a pro bono lawyer, sure.

On the small stuff, though, the prospect of having to pay for a lawyer and likely have your case thrown out by a judge for not being worth the expense and effort of suing a foreign company is probably going to deter a LOT of legitimate claims.

If, for example, I want to return a game in accordance with the rules and they won't let me, I'm not gonna lawyer up and sue them from the other side of the Atlantic.

Based. Steam ftw. Here from louis rossmans video

IANAL, what does this mean?

As I saw in another post:

This is because a lot of individuals tried to start an arbitration process with valve and that got costly for Valve. So now they try to force everyone to do it in a different way.

More info in other posts:

https://lemmy.ml/comment/13944017

https://lemmy.world/comment/12586412

Can anyone ELI5 this to me? Arbitration is a big scary word that I don't understand.

Holy based alert

Louis Rossmann has entered the chat

Agree or delete account is real "good guy gabe" energy.

What a fucking trash monopoly

Edit: Ok for the corporate apologists; the company gave 0 days notice to this. You HAVE to agree or you can't access your account, which locks you out of your games. The only options you have are to agree or delete account.

At least discord allowed you to opt out by a certain date when they updated to forced arbitration. Not only is steams move here to protect their 30% take on transactions, more than double of competitors, but steam is also choosing to fuck people over who don't want to agree. Supposedly if steam ever went under they'd let you continue to access your games but i guess they can instead just enshittify their subscriber agreement so that no one would still have an account. For instance you now agree to only access your games for 1 minute per day and you will be charged $1000 for each time you start up steam would be a great way to force people to delete their accounts so steam doesn't have to honor their EULA.

But go ahead, keep talking about how good gabe is. Steam is a monopoly. And there are no good monopolies.

This is bad, no?

It’s taking away a cheaper option for users to get results for their complaints. Now you have to pay legal fees and go through a court, making it less accessible to the average user.