Steam Fined $3 Million For Refusing Refunds (smh.com.au) 160
Gaming company Valve Corporation has been hit with a $3 million fine after the Federal Court found its online games site Steam breached Australian Consumer Laws. From a report: The court imposed the maximum fine requested by Australia's competition regulator because of Valve's disregard for Australian law and lack of contrition. Valve's general counsel, Karl Quackenbush, told the court the company did not obtain legal advice when it set up in Australia, and did not check its obligations until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission got involved in April 2014. It only provided staff verbal instructions. This lack of interest in Australian laws and lack of cooperation encouraged Justice James Edelman to impose a pentaly 12 times more than Valve Corporation suggested it pay.
Pentaly (Score:1, Insightful)
Pentaly.
"did not obtain legal advice when it set up" (Score:5, Funny)
What kind of idiots are the people running this company? Do they actually think they're running a Mom and Pop store?
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Or perhaps you believe that governments have the power to fine you large amounts of money.
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If you believe it's sensible to have to obtain legal counsel to set up voluntary trade of digital goods—where nobody is forced to participate.
The thing is if you were trading in them like ordinary physical goods then that would be fine, but if you're selling out "licenses" which is essentially a rather complex contract, then yes getting a lawyer for different jurisdictions might be advisable. Dealing in international IP law is always going to be a mess because you're not selling something tangible and different countries have different rules and accepted customs. There have been attempts to harmonise law on this in the shape of TPP, Berne, etc bu
Re: "did not obtain legal advice when it set up" (Score:3, Insightful)
This! I sent a bilateral contact to mark zuckerberg laying out the terms on which i'd be happy to license my personal data, and he laughed at me till I showed him your post. That convinced him!
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The "law" should simply be the contracts voluntarily entered by individuals.
Exactly. If I were Gabe Newell, I'd pull the company out of Australia. No more Aussie sales, no more Aussie bullshit. Let them play Kangaroo Simulator 1.0.
This shows that they're all descendants of criminals.
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I think Gabe Newell prefers money to stunts. Steam is still profiting in Australia.
To my understanding, Steam was simply breaking a clear and not at all obscure law, due to a failure of due diligence.
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The "law" should simply be the contracts voluntarily entered by individuals.
Any contract is only valid as long as all parties agree to abide by it, or as long as at least one of the parties has the ability to enforce it.
The "law" is indeed a type of contract, enforced by a 3rd party entity we commonly refer to as a "government".
If you don't understand why it's necessary for civilized societies to have involuntary contracts (Laws), then you need to go do some serious reading and study of the entire history of Humanity, the origin of Law, and Civilization in general. I'm not going to
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Steam is not an individual...
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Valve Software is not an individual. It is a legal fiction created by law.
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Pull your head out of your Libertarian ass and start living in the real world.
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...I still maintain and use my Steam account I buy very little new stuff from them at this point ...
Me too. In my case, though, it's because it's nearly impossible to find anything in the store without being bogged down in F2P crap and indie games using 8-bit nostalgia as a crutch for lazy graphics work. There really is no way to filter out indie games.
The last thing I bought from Steam was Doom, and that's only because I could search for it by name.
Australian "conservatives" don't understand (Score:1, Funny)
This is just more government meddling in the affairs of a business. For a country lead by supposed conservatives I'm surprised they would take such an anti-free market stance here. It should be Valve's choice on how it deals with refunds, and consumers are free to decide whether or not they can live with it. Gaming is not a necessity nor a right.
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Nope. This is just more No Man's Sky backlash.
Re:Australian "conservatives" don't understand (Score:5, Interesting)
Damn straight. Let's get the government out of the affairs of business entirely. No more consumer protection and no more business protection. Including no more court-enforced debt collection, garnishment, or intellectual property rights. If a business can't pry the money out of my hands, market itself out of "consumer confusion" by counterfeit products, and make their product uncopyable, them screw 'em. It should be the consumer's choice on how they deal with business, and businesses are free to decide whether they wante to enter the market or not.
Legal protections are part of a compact between businesses and their customers. They must protect both sides. Otherwise, there's nothing to convince the unprotected side to respect the protected side except raw force.
Re:Australian "conservatives" don't understand (Score:4, Interesting)
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New Zealand had a very similar law. I had a company refuse to warranty a Nexus 4. First I could get only text/voice and no data and then the Wi-Fi went out. Then it stopped booting. It was a clear hardware failure. I put the stock rom on but forgot to relock the bootloader. They refused saying I damaged the phone by unlocking it.
I had to go to court and argue with the incompetent, non-technical idiot they company sent. The arbitrator awarded me the $450. I'm not even sure of the three hours in court were wr
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The US has similar laws. You could always take a company to court for not honoring their warranty.
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The US seems to follow "buyer beware", whereas Australia (and NZ) follow "buyer be protected". If you buy a device with a 12 month warranty and a reasonable consumer would expect it to last in excess of five years flawlessly, you can likely get it repaired/replaced for free if it dies within that time period (though it'll probably take some arguing). Likewise if the device doesn't do what it purported to do, or what the sales person said it could do, you can have it refunded. Reduces risk on the buyer's beh
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I support strong consumer protection laws. These are simply a group of people getting together and saying, collectively, if you want to do business with us, then these are the overall guiding terms by which you need to do that business. This is, essentially, just an umbrella contract. Steam didn't look at the umbrella contract for the group of customers it was dealing with, and now has to pay the penalty specified in that contract. How is this anti free market? Every market has rules. Look at the insi
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*citation please
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Found the American. It's the only place on Earth where anything short of a straight up Nazi is considered a leftist.
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Hahaha... Actually, you leftist progressive nutjobs skewed the political spectrum a while back because it was really hard to sound reasonable when you were arguing against conservative centrists as a left wing socialist progressive. The correct and original political spectrum looks like this:
- Left wing: totalitarian government involved in all aspects of daily life
Examples: Nazi (new socialists), socialists, fascists, progressive left, etc
- Centrists: limited government to do w
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The correct and original political spectrum looks like this:
Leftist politics supports the populous, Centrists politics is self involved and Right wing politics supports the establishment. It is that simple.
Nazi/fascist/socialists are all cut from the same cloth. They all want totalitarian governments that have massive power and control over your daily life. How someone marked the AC post above informative just shows how effective the propaganda and brainwashing of the main stream media and higher education together are.
The main stream media is *owned* and consolidated by right wing entities in control of the capital that pays for them. The neutering of the education system (starting with ignorance of the constitution) is to make populations more compliant to mainstream media messages of control from the establishment. Your protestations and willful ignorance are illust
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Nazis are leftist.
Really? Do tell!
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Nazis are leftist.
Really? Do tell!
I believe he's reading into the fact that "socialist" is part of the term, "national socialist," which is the formal term for "nazi." Of course, national socialism is not at all socialist in that way...
Re: Australian "conservatives" don't understand (Score:5, Informative)
However, once they were in power there wasn't a clear push in either direction. The Nazis privatized some parts of the existing government while at the same time nationalizing companies, particularly those that would be used to fuel their war machine. They also outright took over the labor unions to the extent that they were controlled by the party and essentially made them functionally useless. There wasn't a clear cut push for outright government (or worker) control of industry nor was there a hand's off free market approach.
Trying to lump Nazi Germany into one basket (left) or the other (right) ignores a lot of the fine detail. In some regards they leaned left, and in others right. On the whole they probably came closer to the center than most people would care or like to admit and I think it had less to do with any sense of economic ideology and more with doing whatever was most effective in terms of building their army or supporting the war effort.
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The NAZIs were authoritarian centrist. As a libertarian centrist I'm perfectly happy to use the word "centrist" to describe NAZIs as long as people understand that their ideology and mine are opposites along the other (i.e., up/down) axis.
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Socialism is very much a part of what Nazism was.
No, they were Fascists. And in fact, the primary opposing Party to the Nazis were the Socialists.
Go study History.
Difference b/w the Third Reich and the Soviet Union is that while the latter believed in 'Internationalism' and world communism
People may have called them Communists, but they were Socialists. Which is why USSR contained the word Socialist, not Communist. From a very general viewpoint, the difference is that Socialism is when the Government tells you what you own, and Communism is when you just flat out don't own anything.
A big problem with trying to discuss this kind of thing is that there also differences between the
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The Soviets were very much Communists, but they interchangeably described themselves as either socialist or communist. Yeah, that country's name was USSR, but the ruling party was called the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The international association that they headed was called Comintern, their equivalent of the EU was the Comecom, and so on.
The last paragraph of what you described perfectly reinforces my point. Both Nazism and Socialism are Leftist ideas economically, and they are both about ce
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To determine whether Nazism was a Leftist or Rightist movement, just look at whether they believed in limiting the size and scope of government. Answer is a huge 'NO'. They were big believers in big government, but since Communists were one of the groups that they decided to persecute, nobody ever recognized them as being Left Wing
Nazi's were Fascists, the epitome of right wing politics. Anyone who has studied any history would recognise that and the parallels in politics today.
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Re:Nazism is right wing (Score:3)
Irrelevant. The Nazi governments, repealed German Citizens rights, shutdown the constitution with the 'Reichstag Fire Decree' and threatened those who opposed the legislation with the SS and the SA. The Socialist democrats that you are demonizing are the only Germans who stood *against* Hitler. Case in point is that under these regimes left wing opponents like union and community leaders were rounded up and put in concentration camps by right wing fascists who bought us history like the mass murder of Jews.
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D'oh! math fail. 96 times.
Realized it just as I was clicking "submit".
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
How could ANYONE be stupid enough to not check local laws when opening in a new COUNTRY? I see that Valve is privately held, and apparently the owners aren't really very good at the detail work on things like this.
I've said before that you can't run a company only by listening to lawyers (and quite frequently you need to ignore them when they get too protective), but that doesn't mean you don't need them at all!
I applaud Australia for levying a fine high enough that someone will perhaps notice and wish to avoid a repeat.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
You probably have a website or a Facebook page or a Twitter feed. Since it's online, it's accessible from nearly every country in the world. Did you check to make sure everything you post complies with every law in every country on the planet?
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You don't get to arbitrarily pick and choose that one is ok and the other isn't. If you abstract the argument here, you believe an entity operating in one country should be subject to the laws of another country because people in that country choose to interact with that entity. That's what makes the two situa
Re: Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
I operate a digital service online. My business is established in Canada, marketed to Canadians.
If someone from within the European Union decided to sign up and make a payment to my business in Canadian Dollars, I now legally have to register for a Tax ID within a European country and remit VAT.
Do I like it? Not at all. Is it the law? Yes. Do trade agreements enforce this law? You betcha.
I chose the alternative, and put a notice on my site that I can't do business with Europeans with an explaination and referenced the specific law.
I'm a small business owner. I can't afford the headaches that would cause. Perhaps in the future, but not righy now.
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Re: Seriously? (Score:2)
Agreed.
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What we have here is sort of an international prisoner's dilemma: from each country's perspective, it is against their interest to allow any other country to make their citizens subject to that country's laws... but it is in their interest to make every other country subject to their own laws. So, all things being equal you either end up in a situation where multinational corporations are subject to no laws, or one in which they are subject to the union [in the set theory sense] of every country's laws. Sin
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By what definition is 300 the lower end of medium?
I've seen definitions where that's the middle of medium (and logarithmically, the upper end), and definitions where that's simply large.
Not accusing, just honestly curious.
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Missing in summary... (Score:4, Interesting)
So WTF are Aussies fining Steam $3M? Because they can't beat Pac-Man?
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Unlike the US, a lot of countries have consumer protection laws. If you buy something that's substantially different than was advertised, or it's not fit for purpose, or doesn't do what a reasonable person would expect it to do, you can get your money back.
For example, in Canada, what the US calls 'Kraft Mac and Cheese' is called 'Kraft Dinner.' It can't be advertised as 'cheese' because, well, it contains no cheese.
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Spoiler: they have on the box advertising 'more cheese' 'extra cheese', and 'three cheeses'. Be a bit hard to have that if there weren't any cheese by some legal metric.
Sauce: have a box beside me
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I may well stand corrected. I cannot, for the life of me, find the reference I'm fairly sure I'd found that explained all this.
Everything I'm reading now talks more about branding and KD being some sort of Canadian cultural icon.
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Another fun bit from Canada. This one has to do with margarine. [www.cbc.ca] Those consumer protection laws are exceptionally useful, many of them up here also cover all contracts. And ensure that things like software aren't licenses, but considered an "owned product" much like a physical purchase. I know that many US states are finally catching up, but here in Canada they exist because many companies up here have in the past been far worse then American companies. An example back oh a decade or more ago Rogers(th
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There's a funny comic about Craft Singles:
http://catandgirl.com/?p=2364
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Let me give you a very relevant example of Valve being assholes. Do you recall a few years back when Valve decided to jump on the forced-arbitration-clause bandwagon let loose by the Supreme Court? When the "change in terms of service" arrived, I decided that I'd had enough and refused to agree to the new terms. Paypal had given me the right to opt out of the similar change to its agreement. Refusing with no opt-out of course meant that I would be barred from the Steam DRM system and thus unable to play
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I did and you could have just clicked accept on the new terms. The fact that you already had purchased games under a previous agreement meant that if you did at some point need to take Valve to court, you could do so under the previous EULA. The reality, in the US at least, is that for consumer purchased software, the EULA is not worth the paper it is written on if you have a real, justified lawsuit. The fact that you must accept something after a non-refundable transaction has occurred means that it is
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That was the entire reason for my objection. It's being abused - as the Supreme Court knew it would be when they rendered that decision - to avoid legitimate responsibility that only class action lawsuits can reasonably address and pad corporate profit margins in the process. We all hate lawyers who abuse the class action system, and there are many, but the class action system exists because it serves a purpose that only lawsuits brough
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Companies sell quality products because they want to make money.
Reminds me of the DisneyLand rides in the People's Republic of California. They have these big signs at the beginning of the rides showing how this and that state organization confirmed the ride is safe. Imagine how that went before the State started inspecting the rides! Probably crashes and deaths all the time, right?
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Companies sell quality products because they want to make money.
Explain counterfeits.
Explain the garbage that comes from china.
Explain Walmart.
Explain Comcast.
You aren't living in a libertarian utopia. Abusing your customers and paying off politicians is more profitable than producing quality.
Imagine how that went before the State started inspecting the rides! Probably crashes and deaths all the time, right?
Yes. [ca.gov] If you need more, check out how many people die in areas that don't have stringent inspections. [rideaccidents.com]
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And how many people did GM kill with faulty ignitions, just to save a dollar on parts per vehicle?
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The consumer.
I seriously doubt they went into "saving the customer" mode knowing a lot of people were going to die from faulty ignitions.
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Delusional corporatist is delusional.
They kept putting the same parts in vehicles over ten years [npr.org] after knowing it was a problem. You see this DGAF attitude over [cnbc.com] and over [hotcoffeethemovie.com] and again, [wral.com] just to save a few bucks per widget for the sake of profits.
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I see the shell finally fell off the delusional corporatist nut.
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If a customer bought a pre-release game that can't be viewed beforehand, the consumer would be protected under the trade practices act, also, the manufacturer isn't the one who has the obligation here, it's the retailer, or seller to the end user.
If a person has a faulty Sony Hi-Fi, they take it back to where they bought it, not back to Sony in Japan.
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It might be made in the USA, it's irrelevant, Sony is a Japanese company, but the person selling the good is the one with the responsibility.
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ACTUALLY that's just moving the goalposts. Your point was that bait & switch isn't really bait & switch if the consumer spends a moderate to an extreme amount of research in advance to make sure the company isn't lying them, remember? But keep fucking that chicken.
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Maybe "they didn't like it"?
I've gotten a half-dozen refunds from Steam on the basis that "I didn't like it". All that Steam cares is less than two weeks, and less than two hours of game time. I think that's overly restrictive, personally, since I sometimes buy a set of games on sale, but it certainly enough to take a risk on a game.
How to collect? (Score:2)
Unless Valve has branches in Austrailia, I wonder how they intend to collect the fine if Steam decides not to pay up?
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essentially this, most fines i think are like that, "if you want to continue doing business with us, you'll pay us"
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They could block Valve receiving any earnings from Australia.
Valve could just as easily disable the game in their customer's end, since all games start by starting up steam.
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If that goes over well with the populace, then they deserve that solution.
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Unless Valve has branches in Austrailia, I wonder how they intend to collect the fine if Steam decides not to pay up?
Actually, due to agreements between the US and Australia they can now be pursued in US courts. Its similar to if an Australian company violated US laws whilst selling digital product to Americans would be able to be sued in Australia for violating those laws. Ignorance of those laws is not a defence.
Its actually quite an open and shut thing. Pulling out of a country after the fact is not a defence either. Also even if they had branches in Australia, the legal path via another country is the preferred met
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I admit chances are it's probably easier for Steam to just pay the fine unless the Auz market is worth less than I thought too but it would be interesting to see what would happen if Steam decided to fight. I suspect gamers would be the ones hit in the crosshairs. Auz could effectively block Steam but that would result in their games becoming unplayable and a whole lot of gamers getting angry.
The US has a very pro-US president now (Trump) for better or worse who's plan is to be super pro-US when he comes
not fair (Score:1)
So when businesses do something bad to me the government gets the money?
In other words, government is more important than people.
Follow the laws to avoid fines (Score:3)
Companies often try to use licenses and agreements to get around laws. It can be amusing when they find out that this doesn't actually work. The laws specifying the circumstance where a refund is required are very simple and not unreasonable. A customer that just changes their mind has no legal right to a refund. A product that does not live up to the claims there were made by the seller, is defective or not fit for purpose must be refunded. A truthful seller has nothing to fear.
The ACCC regularly goes after companies for breaches of Australian corporate law and $3M is not a big fine when you consider Steam refused a lot of refunds where it was legally required to give a refund. Only weeks ago a drug company was fined $6M over misleading claims. Individual offences can be up to $10M per breach.
In Australia it is actually an offence for seller to put up sign stating that no refunds are give under any circumstances.
When it comes to software being fit for purpose and living up to the original claims there are extra complications compared to a physical product. An update that changes functionality so that the original claims are not met or that makes the software no long fit for purpose could leave the buyer with a right for a refund. It might not be a complete refund, depending on the time it was in use and actual changes but it give sellers something to consider. Again, an honest and truthful seller that does not screw their customers has nothing to fear.
Dear Australia (Score:1)
Thanks for this, now can you maybe do something about the companies breaking games permanently by shutting down DRM servers? The US certainly doesn't seem to care.
No one's saying an MMO company has to keep the game running till the end of time. But for games with single player mode there's no excuse.
A lot of love for Valve (Score:2)
Why does software cost more in aus? (Score:1)
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Re:Proof read (Score:5, Funny)
It is a penalty, which is divisible by five.
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FATALITY
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It's when you get screwed over five different ways.
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Also, let's be fair, the typo is a direct quote from the article.
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Also, let's be fair, the typo is a direct quote from the article.
Yeah well, Sydneysiders. 'nough said.
There is no class north of the border. (and go one notch further north and there is even less class. Unless you count pumpkin scones)
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Bass Strait, I'm guessing.
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Seriously editors, what's a "pentaly"?
It's when you count up all the pens you have.
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Actually EA's support is way better than Valve's. You actually can immediately reach a person rather than open a ticket and wait weeks for it to be responded to.
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Actually EA's support is way better than Valve's. You actually can immediately reach a person rather than open a ticket and wait weeks for it to be responded to.
If only EA's software was so reliable... or they bothered to support more platforms. You talk about Origin as if it's actually a viable alternative.
Besides, you're exaggerating how slow Steam's support is anyway. I've actually received refunds (past the normal 48-hour mark even) on Steam within 36 hours of requesting them. I've never needed technical support for a first-party Valve game, but admittedly I have not recieved stellar support from third-party developers. As for games that actually work, I can pl
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Any country with laws not inline with ours are just backwater dictatorships.
Who do our companies need to freaking read up about their stuff. That's like asking us to read a few hundred country's laws and these shitty dictatorships would probably have consumer protection laws in their traffic laws just to make us pay.
If they play punch with us we should just stop trading with them and see what happens to their economy.
These assholes are biting the hand who feeds them.
While the AC is obviously a troll, there are some aspects of this ruling which seem a bit odd. For one, Steam was called out for not having "minimum quality guarantees." How exactly do you DEFINE "quality" for a video game? Do Australian laws really require this of all vendors...so that if you buy a book from a bookstore, and don't like it, you can say it had "poor quality," and get your money back? (Or, more to the point, you can claim that it had "poor quality" and get your money back even though you