I'm going to address the following from karajorma, klaustrophobia, and Ghostavo in one swoop:
If this favours the customer so much, why has Valve done it? What's in it for them? And exactly what class action suits were they expecting in order to introduce this?
I suspect it may actually be in response to that EU court ruling about digital rights and in anticipation of blood-sucking tort lawyers descending on a class-action suit against the largest digital distributor in the business. It's much less of an issue for Valve to settle arbitration claims with individual customers throughout the US versus fight a class-action lawsuit where the customers are going to see a much smaller fraction of any potential award than the lawyer they hire.
valve isn't forcing themselves into arbitration. i assume you had that option before this change. all they are doing is removing the class-action option. and regardless of which one is better for the consumer in any particular case, denying the option CAN'T be a good thing. it MIGHT not be a bad thing, but if there is ONE instance where a class-action would have been appropriate and beneficial that is now forbidden, that's one too many, when absolutely nothing was gained on the other end. ok, they agreed to pay the arbitration fee. i have no idea how that works, but i do know that in pretty much every lawsuit ever, the settlement/ruling includes the legal fees of the winner (imo, as it should be). so that's also nothing lost by valve.
honestly i don't think any of this means much, because if it ever DOES come up, i expect there will be a lawsuit about what valve did even being legal. which if there's any amount of actual justice left in the legal system, it won't be. hell, you even can still file a class-action suit. valve can't physically stop you. what they will do is point to the clause in their defense, at which point the judge might very well not give a flying **** that valve tried to take that right away and proceed.
Actually, arbitration requires both parties to consent, either through agreement or contract. So yeah, Valve is forcing everyone, themselves included, into arbitration to settle claims. Litigated awards in civil suits don't always or even most of the time award costs. Again, class-actions suits are highly overrated for the benefit to the litigants. There is a reason why torts have the worst reputation in legal circles and why the sue-happy culture in the US is frequently denigrated - it's because the class-action process is abused, overused, and doesn't actually help legitimate victims as much as individual litigation would. As for the arbitration fee, a significant barrier to individuals instituting legal proceedings is the cost of court filing and lawyers. Arbitration eliminates both of those and Valve has actually reduced the barrier further by reimbursement of the (much less in arbitration) filing fee.
Contract law concerning EULAs is still evolving, so there's no way to predict whether or not changing the EULA with no recourse could hold up to a court challenge in these circumstances. Technically, you have agreed to a contract dismissing the use of class-action suits, so a judge is obligated to uphold that provision unless the contract itself or the means under which it was signed are found to be coercive or fraudulent.
Forcing binding arbitration IS taking away legal rights. In the most extreme cases you end up with people having to fight for years to be heard in courts. If you find court systems to be stacked in favor of the corporations, forced arbitration with them is the equivalent of resigning. Who do you think pays the arbiters and who do you think makes more repeat business with them, you or the corporation?
The fact is that when Sony did almost the exact same thing, people threw a fit, but now that it's their darling Valve, people will take it up the arse and ask for more.
I don't really care that it's Valve so much; more that there's this knee-jerk response that eliminating class-action provisions is a bad thing. When it's done with a little give-and-take, it can be quite fair. In this case, Valve has committed their own position to binding arbitration and is reimbursing some costs.
Binding arbitration is fairer than the legal process in general as arbitrators are obligated to provide written decisions based on the merits of the case. Arbitration doesn't require legal filing of the nature of the court process, nor true legal arguments, meaning that a corporation can't out-lawyer you. And the choice of the arbitration firm is irrelevant; they have to be impartial or no one will use them and their decisions could be subject to an eventual legal challenge. When you agree to a contract, the parties have the right to define the terms and the means under which that contract will be reviewed. Judicial review of contracts is not guaranteed, nor is it the best means of dispute resolution the majority of the time.
At the end of the day, anyone on this board could easily engage in a binding arbitration process without legal counsel. Even I probably couldn't represent myself in a civil court case reviewing contract law, by contrast.
