Valve: Accept New Steam Subscriber Agreement Or…

Disable Your Account

Earlier this month Valve updated the Steam subscriber agreement to include language that prevents customers with disputes from filing lawsuits against the company, and instead forces them to agree to the decisions of a Valve-paid-for “independent” arbitrator.

As bad as that is, we are now getting reports that users are being told that they have to either submit to the new terms or have their accounts permanently deactivated, and in the process lose access to all the content they purchased through Steam.

The news of this anti-consumer tactic comes from a Steam support message to a user who asked what would happen if they “don’t wish to accept” the updated terms. The Steam support tech responded saying:

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

We can permanently deactivate your account for you, remove any stored payment information and clear your Steam profile.

Disabling your account will not result in a refund, as explained in the Steam Subscriber Agreement.

The games in your account will not be accessible for future use. It is impossible to make your games available once your account has been deactivated and your information deleted or archived. Once we have permanently deactivated the account, we will not be able to reactivate the account upon a future request.

Please let me know if you would like to proceed.

More at [source]

And in other Steam related news,

Steam To Start Selling Non-Game Software

Now we just sit and await some future lawsuit!!

There is actually a law in the US waiting commitee screw ups in congress which would make mandatory defraud the consumer clauses like this illegal. H.R. 1837 IIRC. For other countries, check your own laws.

The ugly truth of the digital age and online services. They got you by your ball's don't agree you lose every game you purchased. Sad part is it's perfectly legal.

I hope that new law gets voted in.

Regardless of how this ends up working out, this is a good example of why gamers should not be excited for the upcoming all-digital distribution revolution, that video game publishers are pushing for. Often you are not buying a game, but simply a license to play a game. The problem with that (as evidenced by Steam‘s new subscriber agreement) is that the license can be taken away from you, at any time, for any reason, and without compensation.

I have been saying this for years.

I really don't understand the fuss about it.
If you don't want to accept the new terms and still don't want to lose your account/purchases, sue them NOW. Under existing terms.
Don't just accept and sue afterwards.

Or simply accept the new terms and wait for the anti-fraud law azraelck mentioned.

Couch, it's a bit of paranoic thought, why would online service practically steal from you by canceling your purchases for no reason at all? If Steam does that only once, they'll lose thousands of customers.
No refund? Yea, lemme see, I payed xy amount of cash for something that ain't charity giveaway, I have all those bills on my paypal account, and now I don't own something I payed for? Find me a court anywhere on this planet that would say Steam didn't stole/con the money from me.

^ There are several issues…

A) Steam has unilaterally changed the terms of their EULA, which will retroactively affect people who only agreed with/to their original EULA by forcing them to sign the new one. It is a low blow to anyone who has a large library/collection of games on their service bought prior to the change.

B)Why should people have to go to the trouble of suing anyone to secure their access to guaranteed/protected consumer rights? Sure the courts will likely side with the consumers, but how many gamers are willing to risk the money and time to win in court? I can't justify the headache such an endeavor would invariably cause, not for ~$1000 worth games.

C)Perhaps this is just the beginning of how valve will operate if and when they become a monopoly. Who knows, if they become large enough maybe they'll have the capacity to form their own lobby group… In a free market the end game for any large corporation is to limit the free market.

Honestly, this is an underhanded move by a corporation simply because they feel they can get away with it… Valve isn't some messianic engine for PC gaming or DD, despite what many of it's users think. They're a corp in business to make money, and ultimately they will abuse their position to make more of it and/or limit expenses that affect the bottom line.

Yeah, and Valve was the one that said Microsoft will ruin PC gaming with Windows 8. Nice going Valve. Way to help improve the gaming experience on the PC.

Originally Posted by MasterKromm
C)Perhaps this is just the beginning of how valve will operate if and when they become a monopoly.

There is no way Valve could even think about monopolization.
Luckily for us gamersgate and GOG do not drive customers away like EA or Ubisoft.

Originally Posted by MasterKromm
^ There are several issues…

A) Steam has unilaterally changed the terms of their EULA, which will retroactively affect people who only agreed with/to their original EULA by forcing them to sign the new one. It is a low blow to anyone who has a large library/collection of games on their service bought prior to the change.

B)Why should people have to go to the trouble of suing anyone to secure their access to guaranteed/protected consumer rights? Sure the courts will likely side with the consumers, but how many gamers are willing to risk the money and time to win in court? I can't justify the headache such an endeavor would invariably cause, not for ~$1000 worth games.

C)Perhaps this is just the beginning of how valve will operate if and when they become a monopoly. Who knows, if they become large enough maybe they'll have the capacity to form their own lobby group… In a free market the end game for any large corporation is to limit the free market.

Honestly, this is an underhanded move by a corporation simply because they feel they can get away with it… Valve isn't some messianic engine for PC gaming or DD, despite what many of it's users think. They're a corp in business to make money, and ultimately they will abuse their position to make more of it and/or limit expenses that affect the bottom line.

Agreed. The problem is that Steam is holding its customers hostage. Even banks aren't this bad (due mainly to regulation). When Bank of America sent me a notice that they were changing my credit card for a fixed 4.25% rate (which I got when I was an employee there), I had the option of accepting the new notice, which would cause my rate on my existing balance to go up to prime plus something like 13%, or I could reject the notice and so long as I did not use the card again, the rate stayed at 4.25% (I had used it to buy a car when that rate was better than what I could get on a car loan at the time). The point is that I had the option to leave thing as they were on my existing business with them, I just lost out on the ability to do new business with them.


If Steam came out with this new notice and said "You have two options, accept this and keep using Steam as normal, or reject it and while you will retain access to the content you have already purchased, you will not be able to add new content to your account", that would be absolutely fine.

They didn't. They said "Accept this or lose access to everything. End of story."


So fuck Steam. I didn't like them before. The only reason I even have the damn thing is that Civ V required it. I did buy KOTOR for $5 on it too, but I think I'll just download a cracked version of both games instead. F Steam and Valve.

Originally Posted by blatantninja
If Steam came out with this new notice and said "You have two options, accept this and keep using Steam as normal, or reject it and while you will retain access to the content you have already purchased, you will not be able to add new content to your account", that would be absolutely fine.

They didn't. They said "Accept this or lose access to everything. End of story."

The problem with Steam is that they can argue that you are not only buying a game from them but a service that includes archiving, maintaining and updating the digital service continously - so it is not a one-of thing (e.g. a game can continue to be updated by the publisher). I don't think it would be realistic for them to allow you access to just what games you already purchased, as their service is a whole package rather than just a single game.

I don't like this monopoly and the issue is more serious and relates to how can one define a digital game or digital data.

One alternative that we have, is not to buy any more games on steam and wait until all of the games that we want are on GoG (while we clear our backlog)

Originally Posted by azraelck
There is actually a law in the US waiting commitee screw ups in congress which would make mandatory defraud the consumer clauses like this illegal. H.R. 1837 IIRC. For other countries, check your own laws.

HR 1837 deals with State Water rights near as I can tell. So unless it was tacked on in some amendment, that's not it.

Realistically, Valve could never enforce such a policy. If a person wanted to sue them, they could sue them and there is nothing Valve could do about it. That being said, that customer service response was quite unsettling. You would think that you could at least have "offline" access to the games you have already purchased.

This goes to the heart of the problem that consumers have with DRM and EULA's. You are purchasing a product that ultimately doesn't belong to you. There is something inherently wrong with that.

I'm sending the following letter to both my senators and my Congress Rep

Dear [Senator/Representative],
As a constituent in [state/district], I would like to bring to your attention a serious matter concerning Mandatory Arbitration Clauses that are creeping into the End-User License Agreements (EULA’s) of many digital distribution and cloud services.
As you are likely aware, digital distribution and cloud services are revolutionizing the way consumers purchase and use software on their computers, game consoles, tablets and smart phones. For the most part, this seems to be an unregulated area. While I am a proponent of the free market, I believe that appropriate protections are necessary to protect consumers and I ask you to take action in this case.
Many digital distribution and cloud services companies, including Microsoft, Sony and most recently Valve, have amended their EULA’s to require consumers to agree to binding arbitration for any dispute and sign away any right to class action lawsuits. While I recognize the right of companies to change their terms for future purchases, the problem is that these companies are applying these new EULA terms to previous purchases, effectively holding the consumer hostage.
For instance, Valve’s digital distribution platform, Steam, requires a user to log into Steam to activate their games, apply software patches, and install new content from the publisher among other things. Some games even require the user to be logged into Steam during the entire time the software is running. Many users have spent thousands of dollars building up large game catalogues on the Steam platform.
When Value pushed out their new EULA recently, it required users to agree to it or have their accounts closed. Even the banks are not allowed to do this. When a bank changes the terms of a credit card for instance, the customer has the right to reject the change and any existing balance will remain under the old terms. The customer loses the right to do additional business (such as make new balance transfers or charges), but the existing business is unaffected.
This should be the same model for digital distribution and cloud services and it is up to the government to enforce this. There is no reason that a consumer should be forced to give up thousands of dollars worth of software purchases simply because the provider has changed the terms and the customer does not wish to sign their rights away.
Digital distribution and cloud services are already a significant part of the software market and in the next few years will likely dominate it. I implore you protect consumer rights by putting an end to these retroactively applied abusive EULA’s.
Sincerely,

Very interesting. If you don't mind me making one critique, it would be with this line: "when Value pushed out their new EULA recently, it required users to agree to it or have their accounts closed". If you look over the customer service response, it only states one option that they could pursue and doesn't directly say what they would do - "we can permanently disable your account for you" (coming off as more of a threat than anything).

I have to give you some credit for actually taking some initiative to affect change, so congrats on being a proactive member of a dysfunctional system!

Thanks! I have little faith in our system, but you have to at least try.

^ Good effort. Hopefully it pays off and you get a response. My father writes his congressman from time to time(usually Sen Bill Nelson of FL) and the responses he gets back are hilarious. Especially the emails. My dad strongly disagreed with certain aspects of Obama's Health care law back when it was first being debated(still does today). So my father wrote Nelson to let him know where he stood on the issue and why… After the health care law passed the Senate Nelson simply sent a chain email thanking him for his support! I will admit, his office does a better job of responding to physical mail.