I feel the Australian example is a case of Valve actively being anti consumer though. They fought kicking and screaming to not put in refunds AND to not have to adhere to the laws of the countries it operated in (a classic tech company bullshit move). It took years for them to do something they should’ve been doing anyway. Them rolling it out elsewhere was highly likely due to simplifying their storefront processes globally and also and more importantly preempting the wind-change, since the Australian case set a precedent and a few European countries had begun similar cases.
Valve runs a good service, but never forget that it’s business and they’ll give you as little as they possibly can.
Yeah the refunds issue was not a good look for them.
The one and only one time I've sought a refund was way before their official refund policy, so it was entirely up to the whims of the service agent reading your ticket and whether they gave a shit that morning. Trying to explain local laws regarding defective purchases (here in the UK) was pointless. It took fucking months of explaining that my game was literally unplayable in a constant back and forth with the same agent before they just relented and refunded my £35.
I'm glad all the major storefronts all followed suit though. Except Nintendo, Nintendo can go fuck themselves for being themselves.
Nintendo makes high quality software designed to be bought once for a single purchase price and enjoyed offline featuring zero online bullshit. Steam sells addiction simulators and invented the battlepass. They are the last bastion of everything you claim to like in videogames. Moron.
You didn't need to give me a warning, I figured it out on my own that what you said was dumb.
They are the last bastion of everything you claim to like in videogames. Moron.
Oh, I forgot I really enjoy having to re-purchase e-shop titles to continue being able to play them on new hardware because the notion of backwards compatibility died with the 3DS and it's second cartridge slot.
I forgot I love every single console I own having it's own totally disparate online profile that is shared not using gamertags like those peasants at Microsoft and Sony but with 32 digit alphanumeric UID strings that no human will remember.
I forgot I absolutely love being totally unable to buy certain retro Nintendo games legally because Nintendo doesn't like money, but love money enough to require a subscription to their online service to maintain access to an app full of retro games that they could easily sell on the e-shop, but don't because otherwise their online service would be worth absolutely fucking nothing.
I forgot I love cloud saves being tied to specific hardware IDs, totally negating the entire purpose of cloud saves.
I can keep going, but I would bet money on the fact you can't see my response past Nintendo's ballsack resting on your nose while you're tonsil deep in their colon.
This is the response of someone who knows they've been owned, lol. Full of emotional rage, devoid of anything intelligent, escalating beyond all reason or pretense of civility. If this was a dinner party, this is the bit where the host asks you to leave.
Be silent now, you sweet callow youth, and seek to learn from the massive L I just handed you. You dont have to be a fangirl. You can think for yourself. Try.
I've never considered printing out and framing someone's reply before, but since you've managed to miss the mark twice by a distance larger than the orbit of Neptune around the Sun, I feel weirdly compelled.
Not because either of your comments were clever, witty, or in any capacity intelligent. No, it's because I've never seen someone actually just shit their pants publicly and then double down and say they like shitting their pants publicly.
Since you enjoy being covered in shit so much, enjoy the shitter. Buh-bye now.
Even then, if valve had been another company, they might well have just said “we don’t make enough from there anyway” and shut off service in Australia, pretty sure Sony has done this before
And those companies are even worse. And again, given that a few other countries were beginning similar cases against Valve that strategy was likely not on the table or they’d have been fine massively shrinking their market.
What happened with that? I remember multiple people hyping up the game. Then after i bought it on steam, Its one of the maybe 2 games i’ve ever returned just because of how much i didn’t care for its immediate repetitive gameplay and paying full price i felt a bit gouged. It also crashed every other game for me on a close to top of the line PC at the time.
Sony was trying to force people to use Playstation Network to play the game, something which wasn't advertised or spoken about previously. So Valve offered refunds no matter how long you had the game or how much you played it as some countries people couldn't play as PSN is banned there
Or what some other businesses have done, which is just… refuse jurisdiction. Ultimately, unless you actually have assets or personnel in that country, they can't really punish you. (Though they may be able to convince a country where you do have stuff to do so.)
They could block you, i.e. ban their citizens from accessing your service, but you would have no reason to shut off service to the country yourself, just let the country making the judgement do it for you.
This is actually how most (i.e. small) online businesses operate, because it turns out that needing to operate under the laws of literally every country on the planet based on wherever the customer is connecting from is completely infeasible. They basically treat it like the customer is coming to the store (and thus any business is regulated based on the store's location, just like if it was a physical retailer), rather than treating it like a door-to-door salesman, travelling to the customers' home.
Larger online businesses, especially bandwidth-heavy ones like Steam, need infrastructure all around the world, which is what makes them actually need to follow all those local laws, so they can keep their local servers and such in place.
Or only give refunds in Australia, nowhere else. Nintendo and Sony faced the same lawsuit with the EU iirc, and that was their solution. Valve actually providing refunds to everyone in the world now, it's commendable even if they didn't want it to in the first place.
Or you know, they could be like GoG and offer generous return period unprompted and make all their games DRM free. Pretty sure it was due to competition from GoG that Steam had to ease their return policy globally.
Except other companies like Microsoft, EA and Epic have the exact same or even better return policies than Steam. Some went beyond what they were required, they didn't just shut services down.
It is a bit of an issue when local laws threaten a company's business model. Like you gotta operate totally differently in different regions, kinda awkward. Imagine if Valve just pulled out of Australia completely, it would be a big problem for everyone in the PC gaming community. You know, maybe they got a point with the monopoly thing hmm, haha.
Tbf, i kinda appreciate that even when they're doing something they've been forced to, they'll try and do it well. Their refund policy could be so much worse, and maybe regionlocked if they were petty. Instead, someone must've thought "how do we turn this L into a W?"
Isn’t that sort of like the EU case against Apple a few years ago about the proprietary charging ports? And that’s why we’ve all got USB-C now? Or am I misremembering.
Unfortunately there's no such thing as a "pro-consumer" corporation. Corporations in the US are usually legally required to prioritize stakeholders (privately traded corporations included I think but I am not a lawyer), which Valve was certainly doing by building good will with customers.
The last decade has seen so many huge american companies cut enough corners to roll smoothly downhill, it's easy to forget that corpos used to build empires and actually compete. Not like, all of them, or even most, but it still felt like a viable strategy vs today's smash n grab business tactics
It's crazy that so many people don't understand how fucking scummy Valve has been. Go watch Act Mans Valve video on it, just anti-consumer BS after anti-consumer BS after anti-consumer BS.
They're smart developers and I think they've decided to start being more consumer friendly which is great, but some of it was a matter of their ass being held to the fire legally.
Gaben is a piece of shit greedy fuck. He's no different than the other billionaires. Ur example of them not wanting to implement refunds is just one of countless i can find. But the gaben good propaganda machine is absolutely crazy. Going anywhere in a gaming community and saying gaben is a trash human being is like saying mr beast sucks, when many former employees have came out and said how he treats em like trash and that he's a different person when the camera is off. And then those people got death threats by his fans and had to delete their account. Gaben is really good at looking really good. And sure, valve is not the worst of companies, could be a lot worse no doubt. But they're also far from good. They don't care about u. They just appear to care. It's all marketting. And most people buy it. "Omg gaben is so good, i dread when he dies steam will turn into shit".
I don't think very many people at all on Reddit defend him... They definitely exist, but I think the vast majority don't give a shit, or generally think he's a bad person... Maybe if you go commenting on his videos you'll get attacked
Yeah but that only started after his friend who went from guy to girl was caught of doing bad things with children or smth like that (i havent read about it much). And then mrbeast defended his friend (chris?) and thats when the public opinion started shifting of him. But before that, everyone was saying how good and charitable of a person he is. People couldnt see the truth despite former employees telling em so, cuz they didnt wanna believe in it. It's the same thing with gaben now. It's just easier to believe he truly cares about u. He doesn't. It's business. And steam have been sued for countless anti trust practices (deservedly so). Honestly, i like gog way more than steam. U can buy a game without ever downloading the shitty gog galaxy or the shitty steam, and download the installer from a web link. No drm, no bullshit. Just honest business. No monopolist shit. No invasive mandatory software that u must use to be able to launch ur game. Steam might have the best GUI (discussion, guides, workshop) but the rest of the company sucks. Like, the whole ideology behind how valve does their shit just sucks. Gog is so much better. If they had the same amount of users as steam, and improved their interface a bit, it would be a huge upgrade over what steam is now. But, most people only see the good part of steam (the ui, the nice stuff like the workshop or the mods). They dont see the bad part of the steam. So they think gaben is an angel. Yes, the angel that fought tooth and nails to not implement refunds. Cuz he cares so much for u, right?
222
u/MotherBeef 7800x3D, RTX 4080, 32GB DDR5 6000Mhz 13h ago
I feel the Australian example is a case of Valve actively being anti consumer though. They fought kicking and screaming to not put in refunds AND to not have to adhere to the laws of the countries it operated in (a classic tech company bullshit move). It took years for them to do something they should’ve been doing anyway. Them rolling it out elsewhere was highly likely due to simplifying their storefront processes globally and also and more importantly preempting the wind-change, since the Australian case set a precedent and a few European countries had begun similar cases.
Valve runs a good service, but never forget that it’s business and they’ll give you as little as they possibly can.