Valve alters Steam T&Cs to counter lawsuit threat

An alteration has been added the Steam’s terms and conditions that Valve hopes will help combat the threat of consumer lawsuits.

Sony introduced a similar change to its PlayStation Network back in September (in the wake of 2011’s PSN security outage) and was slaughtered by the internet games collective.

It will be interesting to see if fan-favourite Valve is subjected to anywhere near the same level of vitriol.

"It’s clear to us that in some situations, class actions have real benefits to customers,” a Valve statement issued to Kotaku says. In far too many cases however, class actions don’t provide any real benefit to users and instead impose unnecessary expense and delay, and are often designed to benefit the class action lawyers who craft and litigate these claims.

"Class actions like these do not benefit us or our communities. We think this new dispute resolution process is faster and better for you and Valve while avoiding unnecessary costs, and that it will therefore benefit the community as a whole."

It’s hard to deny that the vast bulk of consumer litigation culture if hot hair and opportunistic greed. But actively eroding consumer rights is a dangerous business and risks turning a customer base away from you.

Steam’s updated T&C’s can be read here.