Nice to See When Someone is Dragged Kicking and Screaming Into Doing the Right Thing

In this case, it is the game distribution service Steam, which has removed its requirement for arbitration from its subscriber agreement.

This was not out of the goodness of its heart, it is that a number of law firms have been recruiting thousands of plaintiffs for file arbitration through them, at a cost of $3,000.00 per filer to stream.

All the law firm does is get the people to take them on as counsel, and then they do bulk arbitration requests, at a cost to the company of $3 million per thousand users.

Said law firm then suggests that perhaps settling for only $2500.00 or $2,800.00 might be a good path. 

Valve Corporation, tired of paying arbitration fees, has removed a mandatory arbitration clause from Steam's subscriber agreement. Valve told gamers in yesterday's update that they must sue the company in order to resolve disputes.

The subscriber agreement includes "changes to how disputes and claims between you and Valve are resolved," Steam wrote in an email to users. "The updated dispute resolution provisions are in Section 10 and require all claims and disputes to proceed in court and not in arbitration. We've also removed the class action waiver and cost and fee-shifting provisions."

The Steam agreement previously said that "you and Valve agree to resolve all disputes and claims between us in individual binding arbitration." Now, it says that any claims "shall be commenced and maintained exclusively in any state or federal court located in King County, Washington, having subject matter jurisdiction."

………

One likely factor in Valve's decision to abandon arbitration is mentioned in a pending class-action lawsuit over game prices that was filed last month in US District Court for the Western District of Washington. The Steam users who filed the suit previously "mounted a sustained and ultimately successful challenge to the enforceability of Valve's arbitration provision," their lawsuit said. "Specifically, the named Plaintiffs won binding decisions from arbitrators rendering Valve's arbitration provision unenforceable for both lack of notice and because it impermissibly seeks to bar public injunctive relief."

Mandatory arbitration clauses are generally seen as bad for consumers, who are deprived of the ability to seek compensation through individual or class-action lawsuits. But many Steam users were able to easily get money from Valve through arbitration, according to law firms that filed the arbitration cases over allegedly inflated game prices.

………

Valve used to prefer arbitration because few consumers brought claims and the process kept the company's legal costs low. But in October 2023, Valve sued a law firm in an attempt to stop it from submitting loads of arbitration claims on behalf of gamers.

Valve's suit complained that "unscrupulous lawyers" at law firm Zaiger, LLC presented a plan to a potential funder "to recruit 75,000 clients and threaten Valve with arbitration on behalf of those clients, thus exposing Valve to potentially millions of dollars of arbitration fees alone: 75,000 potential arbitrations times $3,000 in fees per arbitration is two hundred and twenty-five million dollars."

(Emphasis original)

Nice to see that this tactic is working.

Now let's see the class action suits.