16 ms·

Valve fined for poor customer service

162 points by eelliott 10y ago

AJRF 10y ago
I have never ran afoul of Steam, but for some reason I always assumed that they had great customer service. How I formed that opinion I am not sure, as is evident I am appallingly wrong. I appreciate it is hard to give anything other than boilerplate legalese to most customers when they throw the book at you, but this customer mentioned in the article even asked to have his case escalated. Fault lies solely with Valve as far as I can see.
problems 10y ago
Valve's refund policy is pretty amazing, <2 hours played and <14 days and you're good. Better than Google's even. I've refunded games for being made in 2016 and not DPI scaling on 4k properly. Wonder if this guy did something ridiculous and then tried to refund it, it seems like Valve's reasons are conveniently edited out in this very one-sided post.
- jazoom 10y ago
  This case is for conduct a few years ago. They've tightened up since then.
- shakna 10y ago
  > 41. As to the Steam Refund Policies, the three relevant versions of those refund policies are as follows: > (1) the 2011-2013 refund policy (1 January 2011 to April 2013) (Court Book p 553); > (2) the 2013-2014 refund policy (April 2013 to 23 July 2014) (Court Book p 555); and > (3) the 2014-2015 refund policy (24 July 2014 to 18 March 2015) (Court Book p 349). There were also four witnesses, who contested that Valve did not abide by the Consumer Law regulations. Anecdata is hardly appropriate as counter-evidence when a judicial hearing has been made. Evidence from both parties was presented, and considered. The finding was in the favour of those consumers who Valve denied refunds to.
  - problems 10y ago
    I'm not arguing that they didn't violate something legally, just that it seems stupid. What exactly did they violate? It seems against common logic if they're within the bounds their own website offers here.
    - shakna 10y ago
      > It seems against common logic if they're within the bounds their own website offers here. They violated Consumer Law. They aren't bound by the website, but by that which they provide. They: * Use AUD prices. * Accept AU billing addresses. * Have hardware in Australia Thus, they sell and operate within Australia, and are bound by the rules that every company in Australia are bound by. Thinking they can get away with things that the likes of Microsoft and Apple can't, seems rather shortsighted.
      - timv 10y ago
        > Use AUD prices. Technically, they don't use AUD prices. Everything is in USD, but the prices are regional, so they have specific prices for Australian customers, but charge them in USD. It's an open question as to whether that is done to avoid currency risk, or to mask the fact that they are, in fact, doing business in Australia.
    - ux-app 10y ago
      > if they're within the bounds their own website offers here In Australia "within the bounds of your own website" doesn't hold water. Australian Consumer Law trumps a site's TOS.
      - problems 10y ago
        Sorry, that's not what I meant, I simply meant that their terms seem extremely good to me, so what exactly is the conflict with australian consumer law? Does it expect refunds to still be offered after a quite fair trial period on products labelled as "early access"? That is what seems against common sense to me.
- ehnto 10y ago
  It's a systemic issue regarding their treatment of Australian refund regulations. More specifically, Valve have simply failed to take into account many Australian Consumer Laws and have attempted to skirt the responsibilities they have to Australian consumers. They don't trade in AUD, which seems to be their attempt to suggest they do not trade in Australia. But they absolutely trade with Australian consumers to a significant degree and there really should be no issue in abiding by our regulations when it's an Australian customer. They regularly put premiums on titles that are sold in Australia, which puts any claims of ignorance of Australian consumers completely out the window. I really don't understand what seems to be an intentional disregard for Australians from Valve, in what should be a very clear allegiance in like-minded markets. Perhaps it's simply legalese gone wrong, but I really hope they don't burn bridges in their attempt to avoid the fine in court. I have been a very consistent Steam customer, and it is a truly second to none platform, so to see it go in this circumstance would be a real shame.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  This is the Origin policy that basically forced Valve to act and implement their own: https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/account/returns-and-cancellations/ https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/account/returns-and-cancellat... * Within 24 hours after first launching the game * Within 7 days from date of purchase * (If pre-ordered) Within 7 days of game release date Valve gives to a little more calendar time, but Origin has no play time limit as far as I can tell.
  - shakna 10y ago
    > Within 24 hours after first launching the game That also doesn't seem to fit within Consumer Law... We'll see how long it takes for this one to come up.
brandur 10y ago
Valve should admit fault and pay the fine. Although they finally have a refund system in place on Steam these days, previously their system could be considered borderline fraudulent. In the past, I bought ~3 3-D games that claimed Mac support, but turned out to be completely non-functional on the platform because I had an Intel GPU. Upon pointing it out to Valve and the developers, they would deny fault, and reply that I should have read the system requirements more carefully. That may be true, but given that the majority of all Macs sold today come with Intel chipsets, there should have been a marquee warning in a 50 point font indicating that Mac is "kind of" supported, but not really.
- x0x0 10y ago
  Also, while it would obviously not catch every case, a warning that hey, this game won't work on your current system seems like a pretty low bar. The valve clients definitely can and I think do capture system hardware.
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    To be fair, the Steam Store in the client is just a browser loading a page from the Steam website. Could they put the system info in a cookie?
    - x0x0 10y ago
      No, the client can push it to a valve hosted db. So yes, there are corner cases. Eg if you've never installed the client this won't help with your first purchase. But so what?
    - CydeWeys 10y ago
      > the Steam Store in the client is just a browser loading a page from the Steam website. No one told them they had to architect it that way. It'd be a reasonable requirement to have the purchasing experience from within the desktop client be aware of what the computer running the client can actually support. If that means doing something a little bit smarter than a simple embedded browser, then so be it. The Google Play Store knows which apps are and aren't compatible with all of my devices, and I don't consider that to be an especially high bar (but rather, the minimum).
shakna 10y ago
> General Counsel for Valve. Mr Quackenbush testified that Valve did not obtain legal advice when it started selling games in Australia and did not consider its obligations until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission began investigating. That is just a bad idea. The ACCC fiercely enforce Consumer Law, and are doubling down on efforts all across the country. Consumer Law is an enormous benefit for citizens of Australia, and though the ACCC is still doing education campaigns on it, retailers dealing with Australia better damn well know their obligations. All it takes is one Australian customer reporting it to the ACCC, and then they assign a lawyer to the case. It is easy for the consumer to protect their rights. So know them, and provide them.
- colejohnson66 10y ago
  Why don't we have something like this in the US?
  - mh- 10y ago
    https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds
  - jazoom 10y ago
    You still can't transfer money between bank accounts, use a sensible system for measuring anything or advertise correct costs (non-included sales tax, tipping, etc.). I think you've got some more basic issues to tackle before getting to something advanced like this. :P
    - pducks32 10y ago
      Fahrenheit is a very sensible system. 0: it's cold. 100: it's very hot. 50: so so depends on what you perceive.
      - CydeWeys 10y ago
        Celcius is way more sensible. 0: Water freezes (cold). 10: Cool. 20: Moderate. 30: Nice and warm. 40: Hot. 100: Water boils. I say this as an American, by the way. We need to stop defending our archaic system. It just makes us look dumb. Literally the entire rest of the world has moved on, and is just laughing at us. But we're digressing now and this comments section isn't about us not getting on board with SI.
rtpg 10y ago
I imagine this will continue to be a hard problem. It's extremely easy to set up a site and collect payments for a digital product. Almost by default, Australians might start purchasing goods. So if I'm using Stripe, now Stripe is in the mess too if I get in local trouble. Or is it Visa? Used to be that you would rrequire some physical presence in a country, but nowadays... I imagine a lot of people are in contravention of a lot of a lot of minor reporting requirements in certain countries. There's probably a big market for "TurboTax but for everywhere".
- shakna 10y ago
  > So if I'm using Stripe, now Stripe is in the mess too if I get in local trouble. Or is it Visa? No. You are. Part of setting up these payment gateways is an acknowledgement that you have the right to sell your product in the jurisdiction.
  - rtpg 10y ago
    Right, but let's say a foreign court passes judgement on you, and you disappear. Stripe (or its partner bank in the region) is holding some of your cash. I could see a seizure happening. I imagine financial institutions have insurance for this sort of thing though. But let's replace Stripe with Shopify. Or some other service providers. I can see execution of court orders being tricky in practice
    - shakna 10y ago
      If you vanish, and have owing, then the civil forfeiture laws do come into play. Visa and others do indeed have insurance policies in effect for such reasons, which is actually the area that gives me most of my experience in this area. Seizure of goods does happen regularly, and if a provider refuses to play ball, then quite often their accounts are frozen, and processors who have a presence in Australia, like Mastercard and Visa, freeze the providers transactions as well. Until such time as your funds are released to the relevant body, so they can arrange compensation and bankruptcy or receivership duties.
    - 10y ago
jschmitz28 10y ago
At what point is a video game seller obligated to provide a refund to unhappy customers? It seems like there's a large gray area between a feature complete/bug free game and one that's completely unplayable.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  This is the blessing and the curse of Australian Consumer Law. It states: > Goods must be of merchantable quality – they must meet a level of quality and performance that would be reasonable to expect, given their price and description. > Goods must be fit for their intended purpose While this gives consumers a fair bit of protection (for instance, this wording forces Apple (and others) to provide min 2 years warranty on iPhones), it can be difficult in some circumstances to establish what 'reasonable' means. Generally speaking though, common sense prevails.
  - shakna 10y ago
    > reasonable to expect, given their price and description Insurance market price tends to be the guiding star on what represents reasonableness. That and precedents that have already been set.
jazoom 10y ago
>If you are unable to establish a legal compliance program alongside your growth plan, then consider managing your risk through good customer service. A high standard of service will likely meet most consumer laws and win you more customers. Good advice.
kogir 10y ago
Set aside whether or not refund is deserved (I'm leaning toward yes?) If I have a business in the US, and sell software online for USD, do I now need to prohibit international users from purchasing my software? I can't possibly comply with the laws in every jurisdiction. For now, the US alone is painful and complicated enough.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jamez1 10y ago
  The converse is allowing US companies to break the law in other jurisdictions. Imagine if Valve just kept the money and didn't deliver the games at all? Surely you have to comply with the law everywhere you operate.
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    Define 'operate' though.
    - shakna 10y ago
      In the cited case, operate means: * Sell in local currency * Accept local billing addresses * Have hardware in local geography
  - Joky 10y ago
    > The converse is allowing US companies to break the law in other jurisdictions. Imagine if Valve just kept the money and didn't deliver the games at all? Would this be allowed in any US jurisdiction?
- resonanttoe 10y ago
  IANAL, but I would imagine no or not to any hugely extensive degree. You charge in USD and require US billing addresses that would most likely be enough to say you operated in US only. If customers go out of their way to defeat that, then its really not on you. The difference here is that Valve didn't do this. The operated in Australia (as other countries too) and sold under AUD. The pricing structure is vastly different between US and other countries (much more expensive in AUD for example, even when counting for conversion). So the argument that they aren't operating or selling goods in AUD falls completely flat for me. They accepted AUD and AU billing addresses and Sold at market rates in AU. They actively opted in to the Australian Market at that stage and should be bound by consumer laws. Australian customers didn't go out of their way to make their purchases happen. Ultimately I don't think as an online retailer you should be compelled to comply with all laws for where you customers are coming from, but if you actively join a market, you should.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
Valve's Steam is a notorious… hmm, what would be the most charitable word… cesspit, now? Over a third of its entire library was added in 2016. Since the introduction of Greenlight, Valve has apparently ceased performing even the most basic quality control. There have been games on Steam that lack an actual game executable, and that's to say nothing of the games which actually do “run”. Maybe consumer protection suits will light enough of a flame under the right part of their corporate anatomy for Valve to start caring again.
- donatj 10y ago
  I get so irritated at the complaints that steam had the gall to allow you to buy a bad game. I'd much rather have an open market of goods than a closed censored market. If you're risk adverse, wait for the reviews.
  - minikites 10y ago
    An open market of goods invites malware. Do you think Valve has an obligation to police their store for malware? If so, where is the line between software that doesn't function as advertised and malware? What if it's poorly written malware that doesn't actually run?
  - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    Steam isn't an open market. You have to be selected by the community to be able to sell your game. Apparently it doesn't need to have any quality, be minimally functional, actually be your own work, be accurately advertised, or even be the game originally approved, though. The last two should surely bother you. How can consumers make an informed decision when a game can have outright misleading advertising? How can consumers make an informed decision when the reviews are for a different game prior to a bait-and-switch?
    - rtpg 10y ago
      Steam prominently displayed reviews. And there are a lot of reviews being written. There's a lot of crap on Amazon too, but reviews help to smooth things out. Not perfect, but definitely a strong signal
unsquare 10y ago
Valve where advertising laws don't apply to you. http://i.imgur.com/N3dEPjE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/N3dEPjE.jpg The image above doesn't do justice to how bad the experience is as a customer, the tv show is already released in the US, but they make international customers wait to watch it. ( after buying it as if it was fully released ) and of course customer support tells you to post in the forums for help...
- tomnipotent 10y ago
  Valve doesn't get to decide how content creators set regional distribution policies anymore than Netflix, Youtube, or Hulu does. This problem exists across all similar platforms.
  - unsquare 10y ago
    I've actually contacted the Studio first and they threw the ball back at Valve/Steam :) Neither even acknowledge the region locking. ( to be fair, customer support doesn't know any of that )
    - beedogs 10y ago
      And as usual, piracy wins.
  - izacus 10y ago
    Of course they decide! They're the storefront owners! They implemented and supported legion locking on their storefront and they dictate the terms under which the software is distributed. They can easily decide that they won't carry region-locked software (they didn't). They can easily decide to fix their broken storefront to not show misleading and false data (they also didn't).
    - tomnipotent 10y ago
      >> They can easily decide that they won't carry region-locked software Unless you're Netflix or HBO, few business have the resources to release a video product in multiple markets. It requires translation (subtitle or audio), marketing & advertising, financing, distribution, customer service, and many other invisible functions required to run a business. When you're a ~20 person studio, that's a little out of your budget. This often requires working with a separate distributor in each market that can provide those services, including taking on the financial risk of distribution in exchange for profit share. In most cases Steam is just a naive distribution platform and the last step in the "supply chain". It has VERY little impact on the overall success of the project, but helps simplify "last mile" distribution by getting the final product into the hands of customers - only instead of DVDs being shipped across the country in trucks to CostCo, we have Steam. >> They can easily decide to fix their broken storefront to not show misleading and false data (they also didn't) The responsibility is on the business managing a Steam account to ensure this data is accurate, not Valve. Same system is at work with the Apple, Microsoft, and Google app stores.
ajdlinux 10y ago
The most important judgment in relation to this case is Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Valve Corporation (No 3) [2016] FCA 196, from March this year. http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/FCA/2016/196.html http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/FCA/...
dirtbox 10y ago
Valve have become a behemoth despite being one of the most lethargic and inflexible companies around. They're by far the most profitable company to employee ratio and you'd think they would be more capable of taking control of these numerous situations and dealing with them, but they just leave all these problems to fester until it damages both them and their customers. I just don't get what their problem is.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  Honestly I think it's that they have so much money. They can afford not to care.
- SXX 10y ago
  Valve don't have investors or tons of shareholders to put pressure on them and company operated in quite unique way. Downside is that no one at company have time to deal with every problem even important ones. According to some developers who visited office few years ago all Steam was literally developed and maintained by a "team" with less than 20 people or so. So Valve itself have very little number of employees, but very few of them working on anything Steam-related.
gavanwoolery 10y ago
To Valve's credit, they generally have taken a pretty reasonable stance, both in cases where they defended the customer and cases where they defended the developer. I think Valve has taken a harsh stance on refunds because it is something that can be rather easy to abuse. That said, Valve has a lot of money to spare and I am sometimes surprised they don't cut their bottom line to increase loyalty among developers AND consumers (i.e. maybe cover refunds out of Valve's pocket rather than the developers, in cases where it makes sense). This is not entirely different from how many brick and mortar stores operate.
stevebmark 10y ago
This is ridiculous. What would be the legal implications of ignoring the fine? What jurisdiction does Australia have here?
- shakna 10y ago
  Valve has around 2 million registered Australian customers, from the judgement, have rackspace and other servers in Australia. They are likely to appeal the ruling, but if they didn't, and ignored the fine, the courts have the right to seize property up to the value owed. What part do you find ridiculous? A company operating in a nation not following said nation's obvious rules?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

162 points by eelliott 10y ago

AJRF 10y ago

I have never ran afoul of Steam, but for some reason I always assumed that they had great customer service. How I formed that opinion I am not sure, as is evident I am appallingly wrong. I appreciate it is hard to give anything other than boilerplate legalese to most customers when they throw the book at you, but this customer mentioned in the article even asked to have his case escalated. Fault lies solely with Valve as far as I can see.

problems 10y ago

Valve's refund policy is pretty amazing, <2 hours played and <14 days and you're good. Better than Google's even. I've refunded games for being made in 2016 and not DPI scaling on 4k properly. Wonder if this guy did something ridiculous and then tried to refund it, it seems like Valve's reasons are conveniently edited out in this very one-sided post.

jazoom 10y ago
This case is for conduct a few years ago. They've tightened up since then.
shakna 10y ago
> 41. As to the Steam Refund Policies, the three relevant versions of those refund policies are as follows: > (1) the 2011-2013 refund policy (1 January 2011 to April 2013) (Court Book p 553); > (2) the 2013-2014 refund policy (April 2013 to 23 July 2014) (Court Book p 555); and > (3) the 2014-2015 refund policy (24 July 2014 to 18 March 2015) (Court Book p 349). There were also four witnesses, who contested that Valve did not abide by the Consumer Law regulations. Anecdata is hardly appropriate as counter-evidence when a judicial hearing has been made. Evidence from both parties was presented, and considered. The finding was in the favour of those consumers who Valve denied refunds to.
- problems 10y ago
  I'm not arguing that they didn't violate something legally, just that it seems stupid. What exactly did they violate? It seems against common logic if they're within the bounds their own website offers here.
  - shakna 10y ago
    > It seems against common logic if they're within the bounds their own website offers here. They violated Consumer Law. They aren't bound by the website, but by that which they provide. They: * Use AUD prices. * Accept AU billing addresses. * Have hardware in Australia Thus, they sell and operate within Australia, and are bound by the rules that every company in Australia are bound by. Thinking they can get away with things that the likes of Microsoft and Apple can't, seems rather shortsighted.
    - timv 10y ago
      > Use AUD prices. Technically, they don't use AUD prices. Everything is in USD, but the prices are regional, so they have specific prices for Australian customers, but charge them in USD. It's an open question as to whether that is done to avoid currency risk, or to mask the fact that they are, in fact, doing business in Australia.
  - ux-app 10y ago
    > if they're within the bounds their own website offers here In Australia "within the bounds of your own website" doesn't hold water. Australian Consumer Law trumps a site's TOS.
    - problems 10y ago
      Sorry, that's not what I meant, I simply meant that their terms seem extremely good to me, so what exactly is the conflict with australian consumer law? Does it expect refunds to still be offered after a quite fair trial period on products labelled as "early access"? That is what seems against common sense to me.
ehnto 10y ago
It's a systemic issue regarding their treatment of Australian refund regulations. More specifically, Valve have simply failed to take into account many Australian Consumer Laws and have attempted to skirt the responsibilities they have to Australian consumers. They don't trade in AUD, which seems to be their attempt to suggest they do not trade in Australia. But they absolutely trade with Australian consumers to a significant degree and there really should be no issue in abiding by our regulations when it's an Australian customer. They regularly put premiums on titles that are sold in Australia, which puts any claims of ignorance of Australian consumers completely out the window. I really don't understand what seems to be an intentional disregard for Australians from Valve, in what should be a very clear allegiance in like-minded markets. Perhaps it's simply legalese gone wrong, but I really hope they don't burn bridges in their attempt to avoid the fine in court. I have been a very consistent Steam customer, and it is a truly second to none platform, so to see it go in this circumstance would be a real shame.
blakeyrat 10y ago
This is the Origin policy that basically forced Valve to act and implement their own: https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/account/returns-and-cancellations/ https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/account/returns-and-cancellat... * Within 24 hours after first launching the game * Within 7 days from date of purchase * (If pre-ordered) Within 7 days of game release date Valve gives to a little more calendar time, but Origin has no play time limit as far as I can tell.
- shakna 10y ago
  > Within 24 hours after first launching the game That also doesn't seem to fit within Consumer Law... We'll see how long it takes for this one to come up.

brandur 10y ago

Valve should admit fault and pay the fine. Although they finally have a refund system in place on Steam these days, previously their system could be considered borderline fraudulent. In the past, I bought ~3 3-D games that claimed Mac support, but turned out to be completely non-functional on the platform because I had an Intel GPU. Upon pointing it out to Valve and the developers, they would deny fault, and reply that I should have read the system requirements more carefully. That may be true, but given that the majority of all Macs sold today come with Intel chipsets, there should have been a marquee warning in a 50 point font indicating that Mac is "kind of" supported, but not really.

x0x0 10y ago
Also, while it would obviously not catch every case, a warning that hey, this game won't work on your current system seems like a pretty low bar. The valve clients definitely can and I think do capture system hardware.
- colejohnson66 10y ago
  To be fair, the Steam Store in the client is just a browser loading a page from the Steam website. Could they put the system info in a cookie?
  - x0x0 10y ago
    No, the client can push it to a valve hosted db. So yes, there are corner cases. Eg if you've never installed the client this won't help with your first purchase. But so what?
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    > the Steam Store in the client is just a browser loading a page from the Steam website. No one told them they had to architect it that way. It'd be a reasonable requirement to have the purchasing experience from within the desktop client be aware of what the computer running the client can actually support. If that means doing something a little bit smarter than a simple embedded browser, then so be it. The Google Play Store knows which apps are and aren't compatible with all of my devices, and I don't consider that to be an especially high bar (but rather, the minimum).

shakna 10y ago

> General Counsel for Valve. Mr Quackenbush testified that Valve did not obtain legal advice when it started selling games in Australia and did not consider its obligations until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission began investigating. That is just a bad idea. The ACCC fiercely enforce Consumer Law, and are doubling down on efforts all across the country. Consumer Law is an enormous benefit for citizens of Australia, and though the ACCC is still doing education campaigns on it, retailers dealing with Australia better damn well know their obligations. All it takes is one Australian customer reporting it to the ACCC, and then they assign a lawyer to the case. It is easy for the consumer to protect their rights. So know them, and provide them.

colejohnson66 10y ago
Why don't we have something like this in the US?
- mh- 10y ago
  https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds
- jazoom 10y ago
  You still can't transfer money between bank accounts, use a sensible system for measuring anything or advertise correct costs (non-included sales tax, tipping, etc.). I think you've got some more basic issues to tackle before getting to something advanced like this. :P
  - pducks32 10y ago
    Fahrenheit is a very sensible system. 0: it's cold. 100: it's very hot. 50: so so depends on what you perceive.
    - CydeWeys 10y ago
      Celcius is way more sensible. 0: Water freezes (cold). 10: Cool. 20: Moderate. 30: Nice and warm. 40: Hot. 100: Water boils. I say this as an American, by the way. We need to stop defending our archaic system. It just makes us look dumb. Literally the entire rest of the world has moved on, and is just laughing at us. But we're digressing now and this comments section isn't about us not getting on board with SI.

rtpg 10y ago

I imagine this will continue to be a hard problem. It's extremely easy to set up a site and collect payments for a digital product. Almost by default, Australians might start purchasing goods. So if I'm using Stripe, now Stripe is in the mess too if I get in local trouble. Or is it Visa? Used to be that you would rrequire some physical presence in a country, but nowadays... I imagine a lot of people are in contravention of a lot of a lot of minor reporting requirements in certain countries. There's probably a big market for "TurboTax but for everywhere".

shakna 10y ago
> So if I'm using Stripe, now Stripe is in the mess too if I get in local trouble. Or is it Visa? No. You are. Part of setting up these payment gateways is an acknowledgement that you have the right to sell your product in the jurisdiction.
- rtpg 10y ago
  Right, but let's say a foreign court passes judgement on you, and you disappear. Stripe (or its partner bank in the region) is holding some of your cash. I could see a seizure happening. I imagine financial institutions have insurance for this sort of thing though. But let's replace Stripe with Shopify. Or some other service providers. I can see execution of court orders being tricky in practice
  - shakna 10y ago
    If you vanish, and have owing, then the civil forfeiture laws do come into play. Visa and others do indeed have insurance policies in effect for such reasons, which is actually the area that gives me most of my experience in this area. Seizure of goods does happen regularly, and if a provider refuses to play ball, then quite often their accounts are frozen, and processors who have a presence in Australia, like Mastercard and Visa, freeze the providers transactions as well. Until such time as your funds are released to the relevant body, so they can arrange compensation and bankruptcy or receivership duties.
  - 10y ago

jschmitz28 10y ago

At what point is a video game seller obligated to provide a refund to unhappy customers? It seems like there's a large gray area between a feature complete/bug free game and one that's completely unplayable.

madeofpalk 10y ago
This is the blessing and the curse of Australian Consumer Law. It states: > Goods must be of merchantable quality – they must meet a level of quality and performance that would be reasonable to expect, given their price and description. > Goods must be fit for their intended purpose While this gives consumers a fair bit of protection (for instance, this wording forces Apple (and others) to provide min 2 years warranty on iPhones), it can be difficult in some circumstances to establish what 'reasonable' means. Generally speaking though, common sense prevails.
- shakna 10y ago
  > reasonable to expect, given their price and description Insurance market price tends to be the guiding star on what represents reasonableness. That and precedents that have already been set.

jazoom 10y ago

>If you are unable to establish a legal compliance program alongside your growth plan, then consider managing your risk through good customer service. A high standard of service will likely meet most consumer laws and win you more customers. Good advice.

kogir 10y ago

Set aside whether or not refund is deserved (I'm leaning toward yes?) If I have a business in the US, and sell software online for USD, do I now need to prohibit international users from purchasing my software? I can't possibly comply with the laws in every jurisdiction. For now, the US alone is painful and complicated enough.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jamez1 10y ago
The converse is allowing US companies to break the law in other jurisdictions. Imagine if Valve just kept the money and didn't deliver the games at all? Surely you have to comply with the law everywhere you operate.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  Define 'operate' though.
  - shakna 10y ago
    In the cited case, operate means: * Sell in local currency * Accept local billing addresses * Have hardware in local geography
- Joky 10y ago
  > The converse is allowing US companies to break the law in other jurisdictions. Imagine if Valve just kept the money and didn't deliver the games at all? Would this be allowed in any US jurisdiction?
resonanttoe 10y ago
IANAL, but I would imagine no or not to any hugely extensive degree. You charge in USD and require US billing addresses that would most likely be enough to say you operated in US only. If customers go out of their way to defeat that, then its really not on you. The difference here is that Valve didn't do this. The operated in Australia (as other countries too) and sold under AUD. The pricing structure is vastly different between US and other countries (much more expensive in AUD for example, even when counting for conversion). So the argument that they aren't operating or selling goods in AUD falls completely flat for me. They accepted AUD and AU billing addresses and Sold at market rates in AU. They actively opted in to the Australian Market at that stage and should be bound by consumer laws. Australian customers didn't go out of their way to make their purchases happen. Ultimately I don't think as an online retailer you should be compelled to comply with all laws for where you customers are coming from, but if you actively join a market, you should.

TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago

Valve's Steam is a notorious… hmm, what would be the most charitable word… cesspit, now? Over a third of its entire library was added in 2016. Since the introduction of Greenlight, Valve has apparently ceased performing even the most basic quality control. There have been games on Steam that lack an actual game executable, and that's to say nothing of the games which actually do “run”. Maybe consumer protection suits will light enough of a flame under the right part of their corporate anatomy for Valve to start caring again.

donatj 10y ago
I get so irritated at the complaints that steam had the gall to allow you to buy a bad game. I'd much rather have an open market of goods than a closed censored market. If you're risk adverse, wait for the reviews.
- minikites 10y ago
  An open market of goods invites malware. Do you think Valve has an obligation to police their store for malware? If so, where is the line between software that doesn't function as advertised and malware? What if it's poorly written malware that doesn't actually run?
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  Steam isn't an open market. You have to be selected by the community to be able to sell your game. Apparently it doesn't need to have any quality, be minimally functional, actually be your own work, be accurately advertised, or even be the game originally approved, though. The last two should surely bother you. How can consumers make an informed decision when a game can have outright misleading advertising? How can consumers make an informed decision when the reviews are for a different game prior to a bait-and-switch?
  - rtpg 10y ago
    Steam prominently displayed reviews. And there are a lot of reviews being written. There's a lot of crap on Amazon too, but reviews help to smooth things out. Not perfect, but definitely a strong signal

unsquare 10y ago

Valve where advertising laws don't apply to you. http://i.imgur.com/N3dEPjE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/N3dEPjE.jpg The image above doesn't do justice to how bad the experience is as a customer, the tv show is already released in the US, but they make international customers wait to watch it. ( after buying it as if it was fully released ) and of course customer support tells you to post in the forums for help...

tomnipotent 10y ago
Valve doesn't get to decide how content creators set regional distribution policies anymore than Netflix, Youtube, or Hulu does. This problem exists across all similar platforms.
- unsquare 10y ago
  I've actually contacted the Studio first and they threw the ball back at Valve/Steam :) Neither even acknowledge the region locking. ( to be fair, customer support doesn't know any of that )
  - beedogs 10y ago
    And as usual, piracy wins.
- izacus 10y ago
  Of course they decide! They're the storefront owners! They implemented and supported legion locking on their storefront and they dictate the terms under which the software is distributed. They can easily decide that they won't carry region-locked software (they didn't). They can easily decide to fix their broken storefront to not show misleading and false data (they also didn't).
  - tomnipotent 10y ago
    >> They can easily decide that they won't carry region-locked software Unless you're Netflix or HBO, few business have the resources to release a video product in multiple markets. It requires translation (subtitle or audio), marketing & advertising, financing, distribution, customer service, and many other invisible functions required to run a business. When you're a ~20 person studio, that's a little out of your budget. This often requires working with a separate distributor in each market that can provide those services, including taking on the financial risk of distribution in exchange for profit share. In most cases Steam is just a naive distribution platform and the last step in the "supply chain". It has VERY little impact on the overall success of the project, but helps simplify "last mile" distribution by getting the final product into the hands of customers - only instead of DVDs being shipped across the country in trucks to CostCo, we have Steam. >> They can easily decide to fix their broken storefront to not show misleading and false data (they also didn't) The responsibility is on the business managing a Steam account to ensure this data is accurate, not Valve. Same system is at work with the Apple, Microsoft, and Google app stores.

ajdlinux 10y ago

The most important judgment in relation to this case is Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Valve Corporation (No 3) [2016] FCA 196, from March this year. http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/FCA/2016/196.html http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/FCA/...

dirtbox 10y ago

Valve have become a behemoth despite being one of the most lethargic and inflexible companies around. They're by far the most profitable company to employee ratio and you'd think they would be more capable of taking control of these numerous situations and dealing with them, but they just leave all these problems to fester until it damages both them and their customers. I just don't get what their problem is.

CaptSpify 10y ago
Honestly I think it's that they have so much money. They can afford not to care.
SXX 10y ago
Valve don't have investors or tons of shareholders to put pressure on them and company operated in quite unique way. Downside is that no one at company have time to deal with every problem even important ones. According to some developers who visited office few years ago all Steam was literally developed and maintained by a "team" with less than 20 people or so. So Valve itself have very little number of employees, but very few of them working on anything Steam-related.

gavanwoolery 10y ago

To Valve's credit, they generally have taken a pretty reasonable stance, both in cases where they defended the customer and cases where they defended the developer. I think Valve has taken a harsh stance on refunds because it is something that can be rather easy to abuse. That said, Valve has a lot of money to spare and I am sometimes surprised they don't cut their bottom line to increase loyalty among developers AND consumers (i.e. maybe cover refunds out of Valve's pocket rather than the developers, in cases where it makes sense). This is not entirely different from how many brick and mortar stores operate.

stevebmark 10y ago

This is ridiculous. What would be the legal implications of ignoring the fine? What jurisdiction does Australia have here?

shakna 10y ago
Valve has around 2 million registered Australian customers, from the judgement, have rackspace and other servers in Australia. They are likely to appeal the ruling, but if they didn't, and ignored the fine, the courts have the right to seize property up to the value owed. What part do you find ridiculous? A company operating in a nation not following said nation's obvious rules?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]