@@rossmanngroup As a person who despises shorts with all my being and uses a modded yt client to disable them, I think shorts from you will be of the select few I wouldn't mind
Big part of why Valve does things like this is they're not a publicly owned company. No obligation to shareholders, no need for a CEO to constantly make the line go up, so if they feel like doing the right thing, they just can.
@@GBXS Right, because the shareholders are founders/employees of the company. There's no public investment structure demanding maximum profit. By obligation to shareholders I mean there's no external compulsion mandating infinite growth, which leads to enshittification.
There's nothing noble about them trying to force 30k individual arbitration cases into a class action to save them money on the heels of their loss in the anti-trust case.
@@k98killer Nah fuck them lawyers abusing the law. And suing Steam for monopoly is dumb asf when steam didnt corner the market like Epic did with exclusivity. They just existing and being customer friendly, lmao monopoly
@@asain3586 Sounds like you don't actually know anything about the case. I recommend you alleviate your ignorance on the topic. The fact that they lost the case shows that they were engaging in practices that had the effect of fixing prices higher for consumers in violation of anti-trust laws.
@@PatrickRatman there really is no value to do so + as from what i've heard so far as well, his son is getting ready to take the helm of the company and it also does seem like he has a good head on his shoulders so all we can do now is wait and watch
His son is meant to inherit it and from what I've seen, his son follows pretty closely with his ideals. Steam will become the hereditary monarchy of games distribution, and we just have to hope that it stays benevolent! :D
What's crazy is at this point that is probably called "old school capitalism" or something.. even though it is the core of capitalism entirely. We are living in an era where fascism or oligarchy techno-gov is the "capitalism" we live under.
Imagine seeing the Steam notice about the terms updating and basically saying "if you're not satisfied with them, delete you're account" only to look at them and seeing that they *removed* bad things instead of adding them
To note, it is not from good will that they are doing this. They got screwed over by an attorney cabinet and are doing this to prevent further abuses since their appeal got rejected. Since Steam was "nice" enough to have a clause saying they would "pay all the fees" if the settlement was under 10k even if they won. BUT, the forced arbritation was also meaning that peoples couldn't join a class action against them. Steam having rules about where you're distributing your games and the price you're asking for them, the attorneys smelled the nice class action for anti-competitives behavior. But because of the forced arbitration, they couldn't do it the "normal" way. So they decided to abuse Valve decision of "paying the fees" and launched hundreds of griefs at Valve, as representants of their clients. All those cases would fall under 10k and Valve would be forced to pay for all of them. Because of that, they changed their terms, in an attempt of preventing further abuse but also, try to make those griefs "null and void" because the plaintifs have to accept them or lose their Steam accounts. Sources: Bellular News (a channel here on youtube)
@@weatherman1504Yes but it is important for people to recognize the actual reason for the change instead of pretending like steam is just being nice here
@@Artician Ah yes let's talk about a completely different system instead of what's being talked about here like that will change anything at all about what I just said
Reminds me of the Arizona Tea CEO saying: We are not going to keep raising prices like everyone else, because we dont need to. We make enough money from sales and we're not going to be greedy. These people are unicorns, and should be commended publicly.
The glass is half empty AND half full. These are normal human beings... Because most humans are good. The corporate norm is the result of psychopaths rising to the top, with no regard for anything but the bottom line.
Thing is, I don’t know why this isn’t common sense. You will obviously gain much more customers if you are friendly to your consumers and don’t change prices out of greed etc. people don’t like being screwed. With the way that companies are falling now due to greed or not listening to their fans, it’s actually really easy for a new company to rise up from the foreground by doing the exact opposite of what those companies are doing which will naturally attract people towards the rising company because it wants goodwill with its consumers and not to drain their pockets of every last cent.
@@purplelord8531 the "good" change would have been to remove the forced arbitration clause. They didn't do that. They now require people to go to court. In King County. They did it because some jurisdictions put laws on the books that if a company forces arbitration, the company forcing arbitration has to pay. Which put a target on their back for mass-arbitration tactics from lawyers. (or so the rumors on reddit say. I'm not a lawyer) This wasn't a move for consumers. People have Steam blinders.
Like literally went all tech and software company screw the consumer the only one who think "ohh i think our service is good enough" and make it good for you is steam.
@@xFluingunfortunately VC and angel investor are giving founders seed money from the start with the intention to sell at 10-100x and founders didn't get to say no. Compared to back then as long as it's sustainable profit, investor would just let the founders do their job.
I tell annoying people to stop talking to me when they have run out of valuable things to say. I respect people who keep it brief and to the point when they speak, instead of droning on, enamoured by the sound of their own voice. I also like videos which match duration to the amount of presented Information. Showing respect for the value of my time is good.
Yeah the other day I had to accept these new terms and when I was reading it I thought, "wait, this is good for me. Is this right?" Then this video confirms, thanks
This was the EXACT thing I saw too. I'm like "Oh great, looks like Steam has finally fallen... wait this seems like the opposite of the usual nonsense..?"
Mind the little line that prohibits VPNs, but yeah I didn’t really see anything off besides the usual FCC shit (see the back of every device since the 1970s for warnings about harmful interference “...even if it causes unwanted operation”)
I was like... Wait a company doing the _right_ thing? Even though it probs will cost a ton of money? This feels weird. (P.S. I also love the fact they gave change notes)
Gabe does nothing - wins. He keeps winning and winning, it's crazy how providing a convenient service that doesn't go out of its way to screw customers is very profitable
First shareholders push the companies consider them first, then companies decide to go woke and shift to the stakeholder economy. Focus on ESG, screw both shareholders and the customers, listen to minority crazy people that are not even their customers or own any company assets. What a cluster fuck.
Actually, he does a lot, he invests a lot of money for generic open drivers. If it wasn't for Valve, AMD would be dead and Vulkan (the 3D API) would not exist. AMD exists because Valve advised them to make AMD Mantle an open standard. And the moment they did, someone wrote better drivers Vulkan for their hardware than they did. Valve paid so many open source projects to keep on doing what they did and maybe fix a bug or 2. They hired developers to fix bugs in other projects software. And they gained from that because Proton is a culmination of the projects they sponsored. Projects that make it possible to play windows games on Apple arm. Actually the whole steam deck and steam machine (they have been at it for a long time) involves a lot of money from Valve into open projects that everyone can use. And unlike "open projects" Google/Android, Valve seems not to be interested in taking the helm of those projects, so those projects keep being open, they are just getting better. They throw around money and technology (Where did oculus get their initial ideas from? From the headset that Valve lend to Oculus...), and we are all getting better of it. Just as long as enough people buy games through steam, this seems to work very good.
1:42 You're SO RIGHT about this. I am a believer that "desire for a positive response from people" can be more effective than "desire to avoid negative response from people" when getting companies to do things right. As humans we have the natural tendency to complain when things go wrong. But to really make a cultural shift for the better, we need to create positive incentives like this to appreciate when things go right !!
I agree, tho I think there should be both positive and negative reinforcement. Although it's not going to happen because of the way human brains work and social media. There's gonna be a big boom when a big company does something bad or controversial, it raises a lot of emotions in people and things that do that turn trending on social media and more people see it. Positive changes don't cause as much emotions, they're good emotions, but not so strong and chaos-causing, people respond to them more with acknowledgement and more personally.
The problem is that we need to both discourage improper business practices while praising good ones and not all of us can make that distinction simply because they just dont know any better
I saw this change come in personally and had to read it four times because I couldn't believe it! Immediately I thought to myself, "I hope Louis sees this!" lol
Gabe dropping that burned copy of leisure suit larry 3 on the floor really changed the direction of gaming. Imagine if he could have reached the disc - we would still be buying hard copies. Fat Gabe screwed us!
Eh- been a Steam user for 20 years and HL fan for longer, but am no longer a fan of Valve for the following reasons: - L4D2 was announced (and released) within a year of L4D1 which could have easily been part of the 1st game, & they basically went back on their promise to maintain updates to the 1st game. It even sparked a boycott - Valve popularized loot boxes, and the 1st crates were horrible. There is still no real age verification on Steam so it's basically legal gambling for children - The art direction, and general direction of TF2 over the years, culminating in... - FixTF2. It does not take 5 years to fix an issue. Don't get me started on this, I literally made a 52 min vid on it haha. Gabe is better than most game dev CEOs but he is greatly over-glorified IMO.
@@SnackPatrol There is no perfect platform or person but at the end of the day valve/steam/gabe is better than any other comparison out there... ...and they all came crawling back to steam
If he did shorts, it would practically be subliminal advertising! he talks so fast, I had to check my playback speed! Love you, Louis, you're doing great things!
Steam changed it for their own benefit though as judge dismissed Valve's case where they claimed opponent abusing steam arbitration clause. Judge ruled Valve has to go to arbitration as said on their own ToS. If you have pending legal case against Valve, you should not accept new terms before consulting your lawyer, it might result in more legal costs for you to start case over again and other trouble.
@@custos3249 Give it a year and see what they'll do. If they* do the Gabe meanuver (be chill about everything and NOT pull any agendas), we'll be in the clear. But if not, within that one* year span, we'll see* Steam crash & burn to cinders. I swaer i hate autocorrect. 😑
@@custos3249 currently hes picked someone internally that he knows is in line with him and keeping the company going like it has. and avoiding anyone from the outside influencing them to open up and so on. but rightfully the risk is that the first successor might for sure stay on course. but look back in history with companies that were private and had only themselves to answer to. the gig can go on for a while where the right people are picked to hold the company private. but background risk is absolutely. what happens after the first successor picks their replacement? the risk grows and history tells us its a matter of time after that. one day their internal policies might weaken enough that they get people that are influenced from the outside on the higher positions even if valve isnt structured like normal companies. and potentially a takeover happens. but the more likely situation is one of the successors whenever that may be is offered deals from other large companies or investment groups for that matter. i.e people that want to own steam. the line breaks eventually and the person who can change the company legally i.e opening it to the stock market and such. or anything that allows external buyers to get stocks in valve. will do exactly that and then its a matter of time before infinite growth mindsets kick in. which leads to what we have seen time and time again.
@@BGraves Simple napkin math would say otherwise. I don't think you understand how much of a cut they take let alone how many games they're getting a cut from. It's astronomically huge.
1:15 "Steam didn't go bankrupt after they decided to have forced arbitration." Louis, read up on this. Steam is facing almost $500 million in arbitration fees alone and that's why they are fleeing forced arbitration as fast as possible.
Yeah I saw some people on Reddit discussing that. Is it still a net good decision for the consumer then? I’m not very educated on the whole arbitration thing
@@august1870 The concern I have is that the reason for what would be a beneficial change can cause a harmful one to follow. The point of forced arbitration was to limit costs to the company, they will still follow that and potentially come up with someone that further erodes consumer rights.
Arbitration isnt any cheaper than actual court case if they have 500$ mil in arbitration fees they would have had even more if they actually went to court
@@august1870 From what I read on this, Valve was getting screwed by the firm that they hired to do the arbitration process, that is why they are giving up on it. Since we didn't hear horror stories regarding Valve's force arbitration, it is kinda hard to say if this is a net gain, but, in general, courts tend to be impartial and actually give the win to the entity in the right, unlike forced arbitration where the arbiter is on the paycheck of one of the sides.
I'm so happy to see positive content here - thank you for recognizing changes for the better! Also, I don't want "Shorts" - because they can't be put into the watch later playlist. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't want 1 minute videos in traditional format ^^
The court takes SIGNIFICANTLY longer than arbitration. Knowing Steam, I'm sure if there is "tens of thousands of arbitration" case at once, most of them would be knocked out in an afternoon
@@Kaxology You're wrong. Each one takes time and preparation. This change was made because there are law firms that threaten to represent thousands of arbitration claims unless Valve pays out a settlement. Have you ever seen an ad online that said something like "If you use Steam, you may be entitled to compensation"? That was them.
@@Michael-ex8lk Stop. Corporations paid Texas politicians to convince people all lawsuits are frivolous. Next time your grabdpa dies from medical malpractice. Surprise. Your lawsuit gets thrown out too.
I don't think it ever needs to. The 2 logical reasons to go public are to massively raise external capital in one go. Either because you are a startup that needs it to scale, or because you are already in trouble and need to plug the money hole and try to fix your issues. Valve is in neither of these situations. Ofc theres still scenario 3 of founder wants to get a big payday and exits, but thats unlikely until gabe is gone and we are on the next guy.
@@CalgarGTXSome people on the comments said that his son will inherit steam, and that he's also found of his father ideals. I hope steam continues this way for as long as possible.
steam family sharing has improved to be logical where the family of 5 can pool their games into one huge library that doesn't lock up any user's whole library. own two copies of something between those accounts, any pair can play together or at the same time
yeah it's genuinely a life saver when my family has 3 different huge steam libraries, and now we can all play all the singleplayer games the others owns
@@TheErtagon15 correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you get around it by putting your account on your family's machine? If they're on the same system I thought it allowed you to add them to to the family.
Thanks for calling this out, I saw their big policy update popup window and spent almost 20min scrolling through the update terms with a confused expression. I've been so conditioned to assume policy updates are for the worse that it really took me that long to confirm that, yes, they really did change it to 'forced' NON-arbitration. 👏
Just got the email today from them actually. Apparently they're changing their terms that they no longer are going for arbitration but actual Court. And I'm happy for it.
Also because courts are taking a look at contracts where you can't negotiate terms and saying that various parts like arbitration are being used to violate state consumer protection laws. By getting rid of the arbitration part they are making it less likely that they will be called before any court other than their home court in Kent, Washington.
Yeah, being good for consumers is not why they changed this. Also consider they had forced arbitration in the first place, Valve deserves no praise here.
Yeah, in this case it's taking on a risk to lose less money in the long run. But how many companies these days even think about the long tail? They're all slashing and burning for the quarterly highs, and the golden parachutes when they leave. But Valve is private. They're interested in keeping the business sustainable. Not doing coke lines in a Ferrari in a yacht in the Mediterranean, and ending up on the sea floor on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
They didn't do this out of the kindness of their hearts. They had a malicious mass arbitration of like 50k people against them, much of which were not even represented properly, to make them bleed legal fees. This is just them getting annoyed that their suit got thrown out based on their forced arbitration clause.
Yeah, and the refund system wasn't out of the kindness of their hearts either. Gabe is still punishing Australians years later for the fines he had to pay to the consumer watchdog.
maybe thats the solution then... everyone mass claim to arbritrate en mass to companies so that its more expensive to arbitrate than to settle a class action
@@DiddzIt would work in cases with companies with lots of individual purchases of sub 10000 usd or so, like online retailers, software companies etc... But it would not work for larger purchases where forced arbitration costs can be easily priced in
As the owner of a 2018 Ford Fiesta, I can confirm it's equivalent to a lawnmower in terms of power- so it's sensible that they'd get mixed up during a transaction.
Valve did the right thing, but only because it was better than the alternative. Under their non-class forced arbitration terms, they were told that a third-party law firm had found 75k+ of Steam customers for individual lawsuits. Forced arbitration would require that Valve pay an arbitration fee. You can imagine a $3k fee multiplied by that many lawsuits. $225M before the lot of the cases are even heard. The award notwithstanding, this would already be an enormous cost. Instead of dealing with a malicious law firm using their forced-arb clause against them, they changed it and told everyone to take them to the court of Kings County, Washington instead. I can imagine Gabe's absolute disdain for the Valve legal team setting up the forced arbitration and having this be the result.
There's a method of "legal DDOS" that lawyers have been utilizing against the largest companies where they file what is essentially a class action suit against the company in question but each of the individuals has to be their own arbitration. Large tech companies have been getting blown up by this recently so Steam is most likely making this change because of the rise in this new angle rather than a love of consumer.
Exactly what happened, Bellular News even did a video about it, over 75,000 individual arbitration suits that were filed, with Steam having to pay for each and every one of them, and the choice was either "delete your entire Steam account to continue an arbitration where you MIGHT see 'up to' $10,000" or "keep your Steam account you've likely already spent thousands of dollars on and played for years and drop the arbitration".
@wiilov wow steam isn't kind because they defended themselves, I guess this is the only thing they ever done ever, surely they've done nothing consumer friendly, no reason people use steam, no wait it's because muh anti competitive practices right? Eat a bellend
Hello, delete me if I'm wrong, but to my understanding Valve removed forced arbitration because it was costing them more money to arbitrate rather than litigate an actual class action lawsuit. No more arbitration is still rad, but there was a less rad reason for it.
Valve is expected to have tens of thousands of arbitration cases hit their doorstep January 2025. this is all to avoid that, It even says in the details that it retroactively goes against current and former arbitration.
@@OneBiasedOpinion The description of the current class action lawsuit being filed against Valve cites their commission fees being so high that consumers are paying more than they should to purchase a video game. That's the only real source I've come across, but I've also heard that they're being hit with antitrust, anticompetitive practices, and even entire law firms opening up strictly to make money off of Valve in arbitration cases, but in my very limited research I couldn't find any real substance behind any of those.
To be fair, that's not entirely true. Valve said that they would pay full legal fees for you too if you go to arbitration with them. So a bottom-feeder legal company decided to maliciously abuse this by goading users to do it and pick that scum company as their legal representative, so, even if the case fails, if there was *no case* - the scum company still gets teh payday from Valve for participating in this charade. Valve filed a lawsuit against them, and it thrown out of the court **on a technicality**. So Valve ended up just walking back the whole arbitration thing. So now you must sue them, out of pocket, if you're not happy with anything.
This , I remember when people were like Valve is letting you refund games played less than 2 hours within 2 weeks, Aren't Valve great, not realising it was because they got sued for 1.6Million in Australia regarding refunds AND LOST.
But they could have just updated their agreement to no longer include that part though, keeping arbitration in. I think it's more likely that Gabe realizes the bad will that companies are getting from their forced arbitration clauses and decided to just make another in a long history of pro consumer moves.
@@lmcgregoruk But if all they had to do was offer a 2 week refund (even though I don't get how a lawsuit in australia would necessitate them having to allow that globally), they could have done what epic did- make the refund process harder to find and access. Instead its incredibly simple to get a refund- click on I"m having trouble, pick an issue, choose what you want, and pick where you want the money to go and add some comments if you wish. Its simple, and the refund is approved within an hour at times, or a couple of hours at most. Plus I've gotten games refunded from them that were a bit more than three hours in playtime, and others have reported similar refunds going through when they had a good reason (helldivers 2, cyberpunk), even if they had tens or hundreds of hours of playtime.
Well, actually, they have been losing their anti-trust case, and their motion was denied that would have allowed them to combine individual arbitration actions against them into a class action to save money (since according to the previous SSA they had to pay the forced arbitration costs). This change means they no longer have to pay the arbitration costs and forces users to use courts instead. They also added a sneaky "you consent to this if you didn't delete your account before this was updated" provision to try to force the tens of thousands of ongoing individual arbitration cases into a class action lawsuit. There is nothing admirable about this. Edit: originally stated they lost the case and an appeal, but corrected to state they have been losing motions in the initial case which has been ongoing for over a year now.
It was actually a bog-standard "continuing to use the service after the effective date of this change constitutes acceptance of the new terms". This is both perfectly normal and perfectly reasonable.
@@Rr-j4x Steam's terms for selling through their system required that game devs/publishers could not sell the same games they published on Steam for a lower price elsewhere. This artificially fixed prices on competing game marketplaces higher than they otherwise would have been had the anti-competition policy not been in effect. As a result, anyone who has bought games has a claim against Steam for artificially elevating prices paid for games.
@@WombatDave depends on what you mean by "continuing to use the service". If simply not deleting your account is "continuing to use the service" even without logging in or downloading a game/update or synchronizing user data to the Steam cloud, then there is not much "use" going on there, so it would likely not hold up. Passivity is not action, and "continuing to use the service" is an action.
You forgot that steam got nearly a 100k different cases of forced arbitration which cost them a lot of money since each was an individual case that they said they would pay out the cost of the case to the person who started it if it was 10k or below. Steam lost money which is why they are changing it. They did the right thing cause they had too
Hey, you should really dig into this. Steam did not in fact did this willingly. They were forced to go back after losing an appeal about this. So while I am happy that they finally stepped down, I would not give them any praise. THey were legally forced to remove that from their ToS. They were fighting to keep it. Which is as scummy as any other services.
@@ISaIGoI how dare Valve fix an exploit that allowed people to pay nothing for everything on steam, taking money from Valve and game developers (most importantly of which, small indie studios that localize pricing to make their games affordable to all). How dare they stop people from screwing over everyone including the little guys.
@@ISaIGoI Paying people who find exploits in your program so that you can fix them is common and arguably good practice for a business, what are you on about
@@oussama7132 basically if you have a beef with the company you are bound to use an arbiter (usually paid by the company you have a beef with) to resolve the issue instead of suing them in a public court.
@@oussama7132 Forced Arbitration is a clause in a legal agreement that states that, in the case of a legal dispute, you have to take the matter to a third party to settle the issue out of court, rather than go through the legal system. This almost always favors the corporation as they pick the arbitrator / have more money and resources to throw around.
If you wanna do shorts, do it! And thank you for being a gentleman who also respects a woman's time, and admits to being so courteous publicly. Some may try to disparage with language such as "premature", but in fact it's respect and a compliment. *Tip-o-the-hat*
Valve removing the abitration requirements makes them look good on the surface but this was actually a scummy tactic to avoid paying out for the almost 100,000 abitration cases they were about to be charged. There are clauses in the new agreement that this retroactively takes effect and unless you delete your account you can't finsh old arbitrations
the main three problems with shorts for me are their format (especially ui and aspect ratio), amount of these posted by creators and shorts appearing right in the middle of normal full-length videos in the feed
My grandfather told me a story where he bought a car through an ad full price. When he later got a package with a small toy car that had keys, ran on gas, and could do an oil change... He picked up the ad with a magnifying glass and found the sizes he thought were standard meters, turned out to be shrunk into millimeters lmao. Since that ad wasn't false, he did buy things according to it, he couldn't sue. Did get a refund though as he never started it haha.
I thought why is this video less than 3mins.. But u started talking and it made sense. Thankfully you speak very clearly and concise, so i can easily follow 👌 thanks! This was cool information to know
Why is your channel literally one of the best ones for quick news. Like straight to the point no ad revenue timer filler. Just straight "This happened and this is what I think about it / why it's bad"
I respect Louis Rossman and I like seeing him being mentioned for his takes, but I never actually watch him. I don't care too much about all the details, but I'm always interested to hear his conclusion. This is a video about a small, but pretty important thing, that I might've missed otherwise, so I like this format.
I remember when you were shitting on steam for dropping support for windows 7 without mentioning most of Steam's library has support for Linux and even their own Linux based OS is popping off with Steam Deck.
Honestly, that should be *all* of the reason anyone needs. If they don't want to upgrade Windows, _don't use Windows. You bet_ that using Proton for running older games is a pita, but if it's the difference between supporting sweaty stinky Microsoft and a slightly-more-difficult alternative I don't have to beg and plead for it to respect my want of being left alone (since privacy is nigh-unachievable), I'll go with the latter eleven times out of ten. I'm *bready* for it.
@@FineWine-v4.0 Privacy is not in the operating system you use. It's in the software you use with it. If Linux users (like me) are still using privacy-invasive software (like me) and cannot compel their friends to give a toss about it (like me) then privacy of the operating system doesn't matter. Being _on this platform_ is a major invasion of privacy unto itself. _It truly is a lost battle_ because eventually, your privacy is compromised in some fashion. So why I use _any_ Linux distro at all, is because I was sick of Microsoft messing with my stuff. That's all there is to it.
I actually read the new Steam Subscriber Agreement. Sure, they reverted back to using courts to settle disputes instead of arbitration. Yes, any Federal or District court in Kings County, Washington. Fortunately, I haven't had any disputes with Steam, yet. I wonder if I'd be willing to make a 2800-mile round trip from where I live to go to court to address any disputes that escalates that far.
I saw that update on steam and GROANED. I had assumed I would hear that Steam was jumping in to the pile of companies trying desperately to extract money and/or rights from us. I am so glad to hear otherwise.
Louis, it's a good thing. But they didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Look up Valve v. Zaiger, which resulted from Wolfire v. Valve. Basically, since Zaiger lost the ability to Class Action in the Wolfire case, they threatened to file 50,000-75,000 individual Arbitrations. Valve sued, but was dismissed. So now Class Action is actually cheaper than paying for that many Arbitrations. Its happened in other cases like Sargon v. Patreon, and another Doordash case. Mass Arbitrations are starting to become a tool to use against TOS that forbid Class Actions. So Valve is adapting to what might be the cheaper option.
I will never forget the day that Facebook closed my account because of 3 duplicated cross posted videos through my 3 Facebook pages and lost access to all my data including the ones that did not get copyright strikes. The digital world is horrifying, sir. I hope you can talk a little about Facebook's flawed policies.
Did they do good guy big company thing, or 'it was best for us' company thing? If 100,000 people try to sue and go to individual forced arbitration to meet the contract terms, is that better for Valve than a single class action suit that rolls them all into one lawyer event? It may be good that they untied consumers' hands, but it wasn't an altruistic feat.
Of course they're doing it for their own self interest. Valve has spent a ton of time and money helping with Linux development the last couple of years, getting Wayland up to speed, helping with VRR support, adding HDR support, speeding up the development of WINE with their Proton layer, etc. It's all done because they directly benefit from it, since they can make their own products (Steam Launcher, Steam Deck and possible successors) better, and also to get away from having to pay Microsoft anything. It just so happens that all of us Linux users also benefit from their contributions at the same time, simply because all their work is open source. It's mostly that, at least for the time being, what benefits them, also benefits their customers. I'm sure not being a publicly-traded company also helps because their customers are their users, and not the shareholders.
The valve fanboys are embarrassing honestly yeah no shit they did it for their own self interest. In fact the way they made the change is scummy as hell, first of all the force open the popup so that most people would instinctively click it without actually reading what it says. Second they completely removed the possibility of arbitrations, the problem with arbitrations stems from the company paying for them, making it much more likely for the arbiter to side with the company. But arbitrations are far less expensive and far less time consuming that regular suits so this raises the barrier of entry for consumers.
@@mauri9998 God I love Valve so much, I just can't stop winning- just love Valve and you can be winning too. Also that's pretty much the standard way ToS changes are done what are you on about lol
When you have heard him long enough you can hear him clearly regardless how fast he spoke. Tho yea he could slow down for slow listener.😅 I guess time is gold for him
Thanks for talking about arbitration, most companies are falling down this path and there appears to be little we can do about it. Whoever thought that conflict of interest would become the norm in commerce.
Steam isn’t perfect but they are far, far, better than almost any other company, and I believe it’s purely because they are a private company and not public
1:24 that deserves more than just recognition. every big company the past couple years has prioritized money and nothing else, especially UA-cam, Sony, Microsoft, the list goes on. This should be rewarded somehow, I feel thats the only way in which we could show that actions or policies, like this, REALLY ARE for the best.
Forced arbitration with Steam has been apart of the terms for many years now. It is not new by any stretch. Their removing it is almost certainly due to a law firm offering services to allow people to bring claims against Valve through arbitration. Valve reportedly sued that law firm and case was thrown out for, supposedly, lack of jurisdiction. There are likely many other factors that play in but I do not believe any of them are benevolent. While this can be a good thing for consumers, the reasons for the change are not for the consumers benefit and likely can drive other changes that will be to the consumer detriment.
If Steam took action to prevent themselves from being exploited by a dodgy scumbag legal firm leveraging a loophole for hundreds of millions of dollars, they get to keep being Steam. As a consumer I consider that a win for everyone except the dodgy scumbag legal firm.
This is the most damaging take you can possibly have. I haven't looked into it myself, so you may be completely right that Steam isn't doing it for altruistic reasons. But that doesn't mean we should hate them for it. Think about it this way. Let's say that hypothetically, no company cares about the consumers at all, and only does things for greater profit. In that case, the only reason they'd do something pro consumer is because of the good pr they'd get for it. So what happens when people stop giving them good pr for doing good things? Simple. They stop doing good things all together, because there's no point. I understand where you're coming from, and it is important to recognize a company's real intentions behind what they do. However if we completely ignore anything good they do, then they're just going to stop doing good things all together, and that's bad for us all.
I hate shorts due to subbing 100+ channels even if 1 in 10 does a short daily that's more than actual videos in my sub list daily. It's very spammy and in all honesty I remember I was getting nearly 20 shorts per day in my subscription list, I ultimately unsubbed channels I liked due to the shorts spam. When you think of it as soley a you doing it it's not bad, but everyone is always posting them consistently, it adds up quickly. Also the belief you can't learn anything meaningful in 20 seconds. I have nothing against short form videos not everything needs to be 15 mins but genuinely feel most videos under 3 mins don't have much to offer.
They did it so a law firm that is weaponizing arbitration cases, which Valve would have to pay for win or lose, so instead they are returning it back to court that way if they win they don't pay the legal fees. This has nothing to do with consumers, they get ZERO praise from me, they just looking out for themselves, but were happy to use arbitration changes if it helped them.
The only reason they changed it is because they're facing mass arbitration. The new contract specifically states that it applies to any previous claims, meaning that they're forcing those customers who were going into arbitration into court instead under the threat of losing access to their Steam accounts. This isn't a good guy Gabe situation.
Please don't do shorts, I don't watch any of them and don't want to start doing it
Short video means world is getting better. Long video means world is getting worse. Pray for shorts. Nothing but shorts.
@@rossmanngroup Pray for Rossmann 😇
Eat my shorts. @@rossmanngroup
@@rossmanngroup As a person who despises shorts with all my being and uses a modded yt client to disable them, I think shorts from you will be of the select few I wouldn't mind
Shorts are better - that's what she said @@rossmanngroup
Steam does nothing and wins. Steam does something and still wins.
That's how you win
no i need asmongold to react to this and say that.
i think it's that other companies don't realize that providing a good service is directly proportional to their success
@@breakupgoogle You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it.
This isn't to say steam is perfect, but they definitely have had more wins than loses.
Big part of why Valve does things like this is they're not a publicly owned company. No obligation to shareholders, no need for a CEO to constantly make the line go up, so if they feel like doing the right thing, they just can.
There are shareholders, though. A private company still has shareholders. But those often care more about the long term, not quarterly profits.
@@GBXS Right, because the shareholders are founders/employees of the company. There's no public investment structure demanding maximum profit. By obligation to shareholders I mean there's no external compulsion mandating infinite growth, which leads to enshittification.
There's nothing noble about them trying to force 30k individual arbitration cases into a class action to save them money on the heels of their loss in the anti-trust case.
@@k98killer
Nah fuck them lawyers abusing the law. And suing Steam for monopoly is dumb asf when steam didnt corner the market like Epic did with exclusivity. They just existing and being customer friendly, lmao monopoly
@@asain3586 Sounds like you don't actually know anything about the case. I recommend you alleviate your ignorance on the topic. The fact that they lost the case shows that they were engaging in practices that had the effect of fixing prices higher for consumers in violation of anti-trust laws.
I dread the day Gabe goes.
@@kilerkg I bet Gabe has set everything to ensure Valve stays true to itself.
@@Ford.Prefect There is no such thing as a failsafe when it comes to corporations. As soon as Gabe is gone they're likely going to sell out.
@@PatrickRatman The promise of virtually infinite money is enough to corrupt the most loyal people
@@PatrickRatman there really is no value to do so + as from what i've heard so far as well, his son is getting ready to take the helm of the company and it also does seem like he has a good head on his shoulders so all we can do now is wait and watch
His son is meant to inherit it and from what I've seen, his son follows pretty closely with his ideals. Steam will become the hereditary monarchy of games distribution, and we just have to hope that it stays benevolent! :D
The people at steam understand that keeping the customer happy makes money.
esp when all the competition do the opposite.
What's crazy is at this point that is probably called "old school capitalism" or something.. even though it is the core of capitalism entirely. We are living in an era where fascism or oligarchy techno-gov is the "capitalism" we live under.
I thought it was on 2X when the video started ...😂😂😂
Rapgod
As did I
Someone get him sedative or something... he's had too much caffeine.
@@Ford.Prefect no kidding
Wanna have some fun? Actually put it on 2x and start the video again.
This video wasn't about Valve, it was about Ford Fiesta's terrible transmission.
its soo bad
@@breakupgoogle
My brother had one, same year.
Guess why that was written as past tense.
My mom had one, and recently just got a Honda.
Ford Focus too
A video can be about more than one thing, no?
Saw 'STEAM' in the title and got worried for a second.
Same
bruh you're not alone. i saw the same change and didn't think anything bad of it
Imagine seeing the Steam notice about the terms updating and basically saying "if you're not satisfied with them, delete you're account" only to look at them and seeing that they *removed* bad things instead of adding them
Me to.
@@InfernosReaper The GOATS we deserve in this world
To note, it is not from good will that they are doing this. They got screwed over by an attorney cabinet and are doing this to prevent further abuses since their appeal got rejected.
Since Steam was "nice" enough to have a clause saying they would "pay all the fees" if the settlement was under 10k even if they won.
BUT, the forced arbritation was also meaning that peoples couldn't join a class action against them.
Steam having rules about where you're distributing your games and the price you're asking for them, the attorneys smelled the nice class action for anti-competitives behavior. But because of the forced arbitration, they couldn't do it the "normal" way.
So they decided to abuse Valve decision of "paying the fees" and launched hundreds of griefs at Valve, as representants of their clients. All those cases would fall under 10k and Valve would be forced to pay for all of them.
Because of that, they changed their terms, in an attempt of preventing further abuse but also, try to make those griefs "null and void" because the plaintifs have to accept them or lose their Steam accounts.
Sources: Bellular News (a channel here on youtube)
I mean, kinda says a good bit about Valve if even their bad will efforts have a benefit for us as consumers.
@@weatherman1504Yes but it is important for people to recognize the actual reason for the change instead of pretending like steam is just being nice here
@@jjthe Fair enough.
@@jjthe*cough cough* refund system
@@Artician Ah yes let's talk about a completely different system instead of what's being talked about here like that will change anything at all about what I just said
Reminds me of the Arizona Tea CEO saying: We are not going to keep raising prices like everyone else, because we dont need to. We make enough money from sales and we're not going to be greedy. These people are unicorns, and should be commended publicly.
The glass is half empty AND half full. These are normal human beings... Because most humans are good. The corporate norm is the result of psychopaths rising to the top, with no regard for anything but the bottom line.
When you cross that line and go for greed shit happens and it ain't good for nobody. Takes fortitude to say no and remain a decent person.
Thing is, I don’t know why this isn’t common sense. You will obviously gain much more customers if you are friendly to your consumers and don’t change prices out of greed etc. people don’t like being screwed. With the way that companies are falling now due to greed or not listening to their fans, it’s actually really easy for a new company to rise up from the foreground by doing the exact opposite of what those companies are doing which will naturally attract people towards the rising company because it wants goodwill with its consumers and not to drain their pockets of every last cent.
Because no one would buy this disgusting tea anymore if it would be overpriced like hell
They upped the price and sold out to coca cola, the world isn't how it was
> do nothing
> keep winning
Bravo Gabe
they actively didn't do nothing here. they made a change, and a good one at that
@@purplelord8531 the "good" change would have been to remove the forced arbitration clause. They didn't do that. They now require people to go to court. In King County.
They did it because some jurisdictions put laws on the books that if a company forces arbitration, the company forcing arbitration has to pay. Which put a target on their back for mass-arbitration tactics from lawyers.
(or so the rumors on reddit say. I'm not a lawyer)
This wasn't a move for consumers. People have Steam blinders.
@@blarghblarghI don’t give a shit why they did it. If it’s in their best interest and also the consumers then I’m all for it
@@blarghblargh
You can't talk about a global decision due to a county law change lol, pretty sure there's more to it than that
Like literally went all tech and software company screw the consumer the only one who think "ohh i think our service is good enough" and make it good for you is steam.
just imagine how much of a shitshow valve would be if it was publicly traded. it may not be the best it can be, but holy hell is it the best we’ve got
Kinda like Epic Games, which is publicly traded.
Maybe this is the tipping point that wakes up investors and stop being unrealistic with demanding infinite growth or instant growth.
@@xFluing haha
@@xFluingunfortunately VC and angel investor are giving founders seed money from the start with the intention to sell at 10-100x and founders didn't get to say no. Compared to back then as long as it's sustainable profit, investor would just let the founders do their job.
@@xFluing Funniest shit I've read today!
I tell annoying people to stop talking to me when they have run out of valuable things to say. I respect people who keep it brief and to the point when they speak, instead of droning on, enamoured by the sound of their own voice. I also like videos which match duration to the amount of presented Information. Showing respect for the value of my time is good.
Yeah the other day I had to accept these new terms and when I was reading it I thought, "wait, this is good for me. Is this right?" Then this video confirms, thanks
This was the EXACT thing I saw too. I'm like "Oh great, looks like Steam has finally fallen... wait this seems like the opposite of the usual nonsense..?"
@@GreyAcumenyeah valve understands what's up
Mind the little line that prohibits VPNs, but yeah I didn’t really see anything off besides the usual FCC shit (see the back of every device since the 1970s for warnings about harmful interference “...even if it causes unwanted operation”)
I was like... Wait a company doing the _right_ thing? Even though it probs will cost a ton of money? This feels weird. (P.S. I also love the fact they gave change notes)
You guys read the terms and coniditions?
Put this on 0.75x speed for a more chilled experience
75% if you want less angry American 100% if you want furious American
skill issue, do 2x speed anyway
Nook Inc will fall
@@Seacat17 jokes on him, I'm never paying that last loan
0.5X for the Drunk History experience
Gabe does nothing - wins. He keeps winning and winning, it's crazy how providing a convenient service that doesn't go out of its way to screw customers is very profitable
🤯🤯🤯
"Piracy is a service problem" - dude has understood his customers for decades.
@@davidmcken Exactly
First shareholders push the companies consider them first, then companies decide to go woke and shift to the stakeholder economy. Focus on ESG, screw both shareholders and the customers, listen to minority crazy people that are not even their customers or own any company assets. What a cluster fuck.
Actually, he does a lot, he invests a lot of money for generic open drivers. If it wasn't for Valve, AMD would be dead and Vulkan (the 3D API) would not exist. AMD exists because Valve advised them to make AMD Mantle an open standard. And the moment they did, someone wrote better drivers Vulkan for their hardware than they did.
Valve paid so many open source projects to keep on doing what they did and maybe fix a bug or 2. They hired developers to fix bugs in other projects software.
And they gained from that because Proton is a culmination of the projects they sponsored. Projects that make it possible to play windows games on Apple arm.
Actually the whole steam deck and steam machine (they have been at it for a long time) involves a lot of money from Valve into open projects that everyone can use. And unlike "open projects" Google/Android, Valve seems not to be interested in taking the helm of those projects, so those projects keep being open, they are just getting better.
They throw around money and technology (Where did oculus get their initial ideas from? From the headset that Valve lend to Oculus...), and we are all getting better of it. Just as long as enough people buy games through steam, this seems to work very good.
Great to see you being a bit more light-hearted Louis. Of course it helps when there's actually something to smile about!
Gabe is mega based, I fear the day he can't run Steam anymore.
It's coming...
I fear the day Gabe’s Will is Stomped on.
GabeN is going to the first digitized person. Forever living in cyberspace, protecting STEAM/VALVe
@@Pariahmary the problem with trying to upload his consciousness is it won't go beyond 3 bits.
@@Pariahmary Let's hope he doesn't go rogue like GLaDOS.
1:42 You're SO RIGHT about this. I am a believer that "desire for a positive response from people" can be more effective than "desire to avoid negative response from people" when getting companies to do things right. As humans we have the natural tendency to complain when things go wrong. But to really make a cultural shift for the better, we need to create positive incentives like this to appreciate when things go right !!
I agree, tho I think there should be both positive and negative reinforcement. Although it's not going to happen because of the way human brains work and social media. There's gonna be a big boom when a big company does something bad or controversial, it raises a lot of emotions in people and things that do that turn trending on social media and more people see it. Positive changes don't cause as much emotions, they're good emotions, but not so strong and chaos-causing, people respond to them more with acknowledgement and more personally.
The problem is that we need to both discourage improper business practices while praising good ones and not all of us can make that distinction simply because they just dont know any better
I saw this change come in personally and had to read it four times because I couldn't believe it! Immediately I thought to myself, "I hope Louis sees this!" lol
Common Gabe W
Gabe dropping that burned copy of leisure suit larry 3 on the floor really changed the direction of gaming. Imagine if he could have reached the disc - we would still be buying hard copies. Fat Gabe screwed us!
Eh- been a Steam user for 20 years and HL fan for longer, but am no longer a fan of Valve for the following reasons:
- L4D2 was announced (and released) within a year of L4D1 which could have easily been part of the 1st game, & they basically went back on their promise to maintain updates to the 1st game. It even sparked a boycott
- Valve popularized loot boxes, and the 1st crates were horrible. There is still no real age verification on Steam so it's basically legal gambling for children
- The art direction, and general direction of TF2 over the years, culminating in...
- FixTF2. It does not take 5 years to fix an issue. Don't get me started on this, I literally made a 52 min vid on it haha.
Gabe is better than most game dev CEOs but he is greatly over-glorified IMO.
@@SnackPatrol There is no perfect platform or person but at the end of the day valve/steam/gabe is better than any other comparison out there... ...and they all came crawling back to steam
@@jabronilifestyle Ahem, what?
@@lathrael7152 gabe was too fat to pick the disc up, so he invented downloading games.
If he did shorts, it would practically be subliminal advertising! he talks so fast, I had to check my playback speed! Love you, Louis, you're doing great things!
Lord Gabe just keeps on winning.
So what happens when Gabe is gone?
Steam changed it for their own benefit though as judge dismissed Valve's case where they claimed opponent abusing steam arbitration clause. Judge ruled Valve has to go to arbitration as said on their own ToS. If you have pending legal case against Valve, you should not accept new terms before consulting your lawyer, it might result in more legal costs for you to start case over again and other trouble.
@@custos3249 Give it a year and see what they'll do. If they* do the Gabe meanuver (be chill about everything and NOT pull any agendas), we'll be in the clear.
But if not, within that one* year span, we'll see* Steam crash & burn to cinders.
I swaer i hate autocorrect. 😑
@@custos3249 It will be the darkest of days.
@@custos3249 currently hes picked someone internally that he knows is in line with him and keeping the company going like it has. and avoiding anyone from the outside influencing them to open up and so on. but rightfully the risk is that the first successor might for sure stay on course. but look back in history with companies that were private and had only themselves to answer to. the gig can go on for a while where the right people are picked to hold the company private. but background risk is absolutely. what happens after the first successor picks their replacement? the risk grows and history tells us its a matter of time after that. one day their internal policies might weaken enough that they get people that are influenced from the outside on the higher positions even if valve isnt structured like normal companies. and potentially a takeover happens. but the more likely situation is one of the successors whenever that may be is offered deals from other large companies or investment groups for that matter. i.e people that want to own steam. the line breaks eventually and the person who can change the company legally i.e opening it to the stock market and such. or anything that allows external buyers to get stocks in valve. will do exactly that and then its a matter of time before infinite growth mindsets kick in. which leads to what we have seen time and time again.
When did Eminem start to guest host this channel?
Grim Shady.
i thought i had my speed left at 2x
Eminem ain't got shit in Louis
Solder God
extraordinarily common Gabe Newell W
Thanks for the steam praise! Love the “short” video.
Read the terms and I was happy to see Valve is still Valve. Only good massive company left.
They aren't massive except in market share
@@BGraves how? do you have information on their revenue?
@@BGraves Simple napkin math would say otherwise. I don't think you understand how much of a cut they take let alone how many games they're getting a cut from. It's astronomically huge.
Remember when steam had to be sued to have a refund policy while countless other companies in the whole world came with it by default? Cool times
Valve aren't good. The rest are just worse. But Valve is actually also awful in many ways.
a 2 minute video??? I can't believe it
Its ok, slow the video down by half and you can get a 10 minute video.
@@MyAramil math checks out
And UA-cam tried to push 5min adds 😂
@@MyAramilbut what if i want a 1 hour or 10 hour one?
Yo what's up my clanka.
1:15 "Steam didn't go bankrupt after they decided to have forced arbitration." Louis, read up on this. Steam is facing almost $500 million in arbitration fees alone and that's why they are fleeing forced arbitration as fast as possible.
Arbitration is more complicated than this video suggests and could also be beneficial to consumers. In this case it's not all black and white.
Yeah I saw some people on Reddit discussing that. Is it still a net good decision for the consumer then? I’m not very educated on the whole arbitration thing
@@august1870 The concern I have is that the reason for what would be a beneficial change can cause a harmful one to follow. The point of forced arbitration was to limit costs to the company, they will still follow that and potentially come up with someone that further erodes consumer rights.
Arbitration isnt any cheaper than actual court case if they have 500$ mil in arbitration fees they would have had even more if they actually went to court
@@august1870 From what I read on this, Valve was getting screwed by the firm that they hired to do the arbitration process, that is why they are giving up on it.
Since we didn't hear horror stories regarding Valve's force arbitration, it is kinda hard to say if this is a net gain, but, in general, courts tend to be impartial and actually give the win to the entity in the right, unlike forced arbitration where the arbiter is on the paycheck of one of the sides.
I'm so happy to see positive content here - thank you for recognizing changes for the better!
Also, I don't want "Shorts" - because they can't be put into the watch later playlist. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't want 1 minute videos in traditional format ^^
I started this video and immediately went to settings to lower it from 1.5 back to 1.0... except it was already on 1.0 speed.
I leave it on 1.5 so I can practice for the day when my default speed is 2.0
Steam is backpedaling after they realized that they actually don't want tens of thousands of arbitration claims at once
Because of scammers yeah.
The court takes SIGNIFICANTLY longer than arbitration. Knowing Steam, I'm sure if there is "tens of thousands of arbitration" case at once, most of them would be knocked out in an afternoon
@@Kaxology You're wrong. Each one takes time and preparation. This change was made because there are law firms that threaten to represent thousands of arbitration claims unless Valve pays out a settlement. Have you ever seen an ad online that said something like "If you use Steam, you may be entitled to compensation"? That was them.
Somehow i read it in Saul's voice@@Jumbleman5
@@Michael-ex8lk Stop. Corporations paid Texas politicians to convince people all lawsuits are frivolous. Next time your grabdpa dies from medical malpractice. Surprise. Your lawsuit gets thrown out too.
I really hope steam stays private forever. I dread the day it goes public.
I don't think it ever needs to. The 2 logical reasons to go public are to massively raise external capital in one go. Either because you are a startup that needs it to scale, or because you are already in trouble and need to plug the money hole and try to fix your issues. Valve is in neither of these situations. Ofc theres still scenario 3 of founder wants to get a big payday and exits, but thats unlikely until gabe is gone and we are on the next guy.
@@CalgarGTXSome people on the comments said that his son will inherit steam, and that he's also found of his father ideals.
I hope steam continues this way for as long as possible.
Really appreciate the topic and length.
(0:16) if it ends up working, I'd be more impressed than angry.
Wait till you find our MKBHD’s wallpaper app has an arbitration clause.
Ayo what does it says?
If the bucket's still public, MKBSD should fetch 'em all.
Were you ever an auctioneer?
Maybe he was an auctioneer in a past life.
Happy to hear, thanks for sharing!
Im so used to companies screwing me over that when i saw that there was a TOS change, i immediately searched it up to see if its bad
I don't understand what's happening mind giving me a short explanation?
its not as good as you think.
being forced to go to king county washington is extremely cringe
Wow a Louis Rossman video only 2:23 long. =O
Louis instead of making short videos can you make the last 10 minutes just you whispering TOS into my ear
😂😂😂
Yeah, at least when he does that it lasts longer than the act itself... lol
Well done steam! I love this kind of video Louis
Valve is one of my favorite companies. It is fricking awesome. Especially if you use Linux too.
Proton is the GOAT
2:00 should have cut it cold right here lol
Live from Texas, its saturday niiiiiiiiiii
Yes
steam family sharing has improved to be logical where the family of 5 can pool their games into one huge library that doesn't lock up any user's whole library. own two copies of something between those accounts, any pair can play together or at the same time
Wait. they changed it? FUCKING FINALLY!!!!!.
yeah it's genuinely a life saver when my family has 3 different huge steam libraries, and now we can all play all the singleplayer games the others owns
unless you don't live under the same house then you aren't actually a family and you are get completely fucked by the new system compared to old
@@TheErtagon15 correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you get around it by putting your account on your family's machine? If they're on the same system I thought it allowed you to add them to to the family.
@@TheErtagon15 That is a lie. Me and my friend share our games and its great. We don't live in the same house.
Thanks for calling this out, I saw their big policy update popup window and spent almost 20min scrolling through the update terms with a confused expression. I've been so conditioned to assume policy updates are for the worse that it really took me that long to confirm that, yes, they really did change it to 'forced' NON-arbitration. 👏
Just got the email today from them actually. Apparently they're changing their terms that they no longer are going for arbitration but actual Court. And I'm happy for it.
This whole thing goes a bit deeper than face value.
They changed the agreement to avoid millions in fees by a mass arbitration that was going on.
As it always is.
Yep. Steam is basically changing it to say "we decided instead we don't want to pay anything upfront for a lawsuit." Valve vs Zaiger
Also because courts are taking a look at contracts where you can't negotiate terms and saying that various parts like arbitration are being used to violate state consumer protection laws. By getting rid of the arbitration part they are making it less likely that they will be called before any court other than their home court in Kent, Washington.
Yeah, being good for consumers is not why they changed this. Also consider they had forced arbitration in the first place, Valve deserves no praise here.
Yeah, in this case it's taking on a risk to lose less money in the long run. But how many companies these days even think about the long tail? They're all slashing and burning for the quarterly highs, and the golden parachutes when they leave. But Valve is private. They're interested in keeping the business sustainable. Not doing coke lines in a Ferrari in a yacht in the Mediterranean, and ending up on the sea floor on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
They didn't do this out of the kindness of their hearts. They had a malicious mass arbitration of like 50k people against them, much of which were not even represented properly, to make them bleed legal fees. This is just them getting annoyed that their suit got thrown out based on their forced arbitration clause.
Yeah, and the refund system wasn't out of the kindness of their hearts either. Gabe is still punishing Australians years later for the fines he had to pay to the consumer watchdog.
they make like billions off of fees and market transactions (particularly CSGO items). I don't think they're hurting for money even with the suit.
maybe thats the solution then... everyone mass claim to arbritrate en mass to companies so that its more expensive to arbitrate than to settle a class action
@@DiddzIt would work in cases with companies with lots of individual purchases of sub 10000 usd or so, like online retailers, software companies etc... But it would not work for larger purchases where forced arbitration costs can be easily priced in
100 percent correct im apart of that CAL
I truly appreciate the work you do with your channel. Your POV is generally reliable and trustworthy.
6 min is the ideal length for a short.
As the owner of a 2018 Ford Fiesta, I can confirm it's equivalent to a lawnmower in terms of power- so it's sensible that they'd get mixed up during a transaction.
you should be glad you got the 2018 model, 2011-2016 DCT for fiesta had transmission that would blow up after 20k miles.
Valve did the right thing, but only because it was better than the alternative. Under their non-class forced arbitration terms, they were told that a third-party law firm had found 75k+ of Steam customers for individual lawsuits. Forced arbitration would require that Valve pay an arbitration fee. You can imagine a $3k fee multiplied by that many lawsuits. $225M before the lot of the cases are even heard. The award notwithstanding, this would already be an enormous cost. Instead of dealing with a malicious law firm using their forced-arb clause against them, they changed it and told everyone to take them to the court of Kings County, Washington instead.
I can imagine Gabe's absolute disdain for the Valve legal team setting up the forced arbitration and having this be the result.
They happy. We happy. Everyone win. No problem at all
I mean they are currently being sued under arbitration by tens of thousands of cases. Im one of those cases
@@genesisdigitalytWhat are you suing for? If you don't mind me asking
@@Metal_Tao He's a spy main and it caused him severe brain damage over the years. Poor lad... I hope he gets compensated.
@@randomdeliveryguy he wanted 25 cents I guess? I'll wait tho
There's a method of "legal DDOS" that lawyers have been utilizing against the largest companies where they file what is essentially a class action suit against the company in question but each of the individuals has to be their own arbitration. Large tech companies have been getting blown up by this recently so Steam is most likely making this change because of the rise in this new angle rather than a love of consumer.
Nailed it. Steam is competent, not kind.
This is literally it, there was a clip released of the lawyers proposing this kind of forced arbitration blackmail as an investor opportunity
Strategic from valve and still w for the consumers
Exactly what happened, Bellular News even did a video about it, over 75,000 individual arbitration suits that were filed, with Steam having to pay for each and every one of them, and the choice was either "delete your entire Steam account to continue an arbitration where you MIGHT see 'up to' $10,000" or "keep your Steam account you've likely already spent thousands of dollars on and played for years and drop the arbitration".
@wiilov wow steam isn't kind because they defended themselves, I guess this is the only thing they ever done ever, surely they've done nothing consumer friendly, no reason people use steam, no wait it's because muh anti competitive practices right? Eat a bellend
Great short! Thanks Louis
Hello, delete me if I'm wrong, but to my understanding Valve removed forced arbitration because it was costing them more money to arbitrate rather than litigate an actual class action lawsuit. No more arbitration is still rad, but there was a less rad reason for it.
i'm 90% sure this was it, i really wish more people realized this
source?
Valve is expected to have tens of thousands of arbitration cases hit their doorstep January 2025. this is all to avoid that, It even says in the details that it retroactively goes against current and former arbitration.
@@devonhall490what’s the cause of those arbitration cases?
@@OneBiasedOpinion The description of the current class action lawsuit being filed against Valve cites their commission fees being so high that consumers are paying more than they should to purchase a video game. That's the only real source I've come across, but I've also heard that they're being hit with antitrust, anticompetitive practices, and even entire law firms opening up strictly to make money off of Valve in arbitration cases, but in my very limited research I couldn't find any real substance behind any of those.
To be fair, that's not entirely true. Valve said that they would pay full legal fees for you too if you go to arbitration with them. So a bottom-feeder legal company decided to maliciously abuse this by goading users to do it and pick that scum company as their legal representative, so, even if the case fails, if there was *no case* - the scum company still gets teh payday from Valve for participating in this charade.
Valve filed a lawsuit against them, and it thrown out of the court **on a technicality**. So Valve ended up just walking back the whole arbitration thing. So now you must sue them, out of pocket, if you're not happy with anything.
This , I remember when people were like Valve is letting you refund games played less than 2 hours within 2 weeks, Aren't Valve great, not realising it was because they got sued for 1.6Million in Australia regarding refunds AND LOST.
But they could have just updated their agreement to no longer include that part though, keeping arbitration in.
I think it's more likely that Gabe realizes the bad will that companies are getting from their forced arbitration clauses and decided to just make another in a long history of pro consumer moves.
@@abetterfuture4787 Gaben only does pro consumer moves, when it benefits Valve (him). He NEVER does it out of the goodness of his heart.
It's crazy how I said this word for word in my head as why Valve would do this and I was 100% right!
@@lmcgregoruk But if all they had to do was offer a 2 week refund (even though I don't get how a lawsuit in australia would necessitate them having to allow that globally), they could have done what epic did- make the refund process harder to find and access. Instead its incredibly simple to get a refund- click on I"m having trouble, pick an issue, choose what you want, and pick where you want the money to go and add some comments if you wish. Its simple, and the refund is approved within an hour at times, or a couple of hours at most. Plus I've gotten games refunded from them that were a bit more than three hours in playtime, and others have reported similar refunds going through when they had a good reason (helldivers 2, cyberpunk), even if they had tens or hundreds of hours of playtime.
How can one not like this Rosmann guy?
More and more often he doesnt do enough research, and then after i asked critical question he called me a bot. -_-
I saw this! I read the TOS update splash and thought of you! Such a good day!
Well, actually, they have been losing their anti-trust case, and their motion was denied that would have allowed them to combine individual arbitration actions against them into a class action to save money (since according to the previous SSA they had to pay the forced arbitration costs). This change means they no longer have to pay the arbitration costs and forces users to use courts instead. They also added a sneaky "you consent to this if you didn't delete your account before this was updated" provision to try to force the tens of thousands of ongoing individual arbitration cases into a class action lawsuit. There is nothing admirable about this.
Edit: originally stated they lost the case and an appeal, but corrected to state they have been losing motions in the initial case which has been ongoing for over a year now.
@@k98killer
Keep crying mate
can you summarize what really happened and how does it affects us who bought games from steam?
It was actually a bog-standard "continuing to use the service after the effective date of this change constitutes acceptance of the new terms". This is both perfectly normal and perfectly reasonable.
@@Rr-j4x Steam's terms for selling through their system required that game devs/publishers could not sell the same games they published on Steam for a lower price elsewhere. This artificially fixed prices on competing game marketplaces higher than they otherwise would have been had the anti-competition policy not been in effect. As a result, anyone who has bought games has a claim against Steam for artificially elevating prices paid for games.
@@WombatDave depends on what you mean by "continuing to use the service". If simply not deleting your account is "continuing to use the service" even without logging in or downloading a game/update or synchronizing user data to the Steam cloud, then there is not much "use" going on there, so it would likely not hold up. Passivity is not action, and "continuing to use the service" is an action.
You forgot that steam got nearly a 100k different cases of forced arbitration which cost them a lot of money since each was an individual case that they said they would pay out the cost of the case to the person who started it if it was 10k or below. Steam lost money which is why they are changing it. They did the right thing cause they had too
Hey, you should really dig into this. Steam did not in fact did this willingly. They were forced to go back after losing an appeal about this. So while I am happy that they finally stepped down, I would not give them any praise. THey were legally forced to remove that from their ToS. They were fighting to keep it. Which is as scummy as any other services.
Thank you for the good news, Louis! 💖
a company actually being decent??? where am i??
It mostly comes down to a company being publicly traded or not.
Valve paid 7k$ for a guy that had vulnerability to purchase anything within steam for free, they are not "decent".
@@ISaIGoI how dare Valve fix an exploit that allowed people to pay nothing for everything on steam, taking money from Valve and game developers (most importantly of which, small indie studios that localize pricing to make their games affordable to all). How dare they stop people from screwing over everyone including the little guys.
@@ISaIGoI Paying people who find exploits in your program so that you can fix them is common and arguably good practice for a business, what are you on about
@@ISaIGoI How could they prevent people from using a glitch to get free games! What an absolute evil company! lmao
1:55 the arbitration requires you to provide the burden of proof..wait they already have access to your camera feeds
No more arbitration
Yay! Lets go sue them now!
Can someone explain this to me? What is forced arbitration and why is it bad/good?
@@oussama7132 basically if you have a beef with the company you are bound to use an arbiter (usually paid by the company you have a beef with) to resolve the issue instead of suing them in a public court.
@@oussama7132 Forced Arbitration is a clause in a legal agreement that states that, in the case of a legal dispute, you have to take the matter to a third party to settle the issue out of court, rather than go through the legal system. This almost always favors the corporation as they pick the arbitrator / have more money and resources to throw around.
@@pvshka oh that seems really good for customers. Thanks. But when does this apply? The company refused a refund ?
If you wanna do shorts, do it!
And thank you for being a gentleman who also respects a woman's time, and admits to being so courteous publicly. Some may try to disparage with language such as "premature", but in fact it's respect and a compliment. *Tip-o-the-hat*
Valve removing the abitration requirements makes them look good on the surface but this was actually a scummy tactic to avoid paying out for the almost 100,000 abitration cases they were about to be charged.
There are clauses in the new agreement that this retroactively takes effect and unless you delete your account you can't finsh old arbitrations
the main three problems with shorts for me are their format (especially ui and aspect ratio), amount of these posted by creators and shorts appearing right in the middle of normal full-length videos in the feed
My grandfather told me a story where he bought a car through an ad full price.
When he later got a package with a small toy car that had keys, ran on gas, and could do an oil change...
He picked up the ad with a magnifying glass and found the sizes he thought were standard meters, turned out to be shrunk into millimeters lmao.
Since that ad wasn't false, he did buy things according to it, he couldn't sue. Did get a refund though as he never started it haha.
I thought why is this video less than 3mins.. But u started talking and it made sense. Thankfully you speak very clearly and concise, so i can easily follow 👌 thanks! This was cool information to know
This right here is why I love Steam!
Steam is one of the few services that I support and trust. Hope this will last even if Gabe steps down someday.
Steam doing Steam things.
I pray Gaben lives forever.
Why is your channel literally one of the best ones for quick news. Like straight to the point no ad revenue timer filler. Just straight "This happened and this is what I think about it / why it's bad"
I respect Louis Rossman and I like seeing him being mentioned for his takes, but I never actually watch him. I don't care too much about all the details, but I'm always interested to hear his conclusion. This is a video about a small, but pretty important thing, that I might've missed otherwise, so I like this format.
I remember when you were shitting on steam for dropping support for windows 7 without mentioning most of Steam's library has support for Linux and even their own Linux based OS is popping off with Steam Deck.
Honestly, that should be *all* of the reason anyone needs. If they don't want to upgrade Windows, _don't use Windows. You bet_ that using Proton for running older games is a pita, but if it's the difference between supporting sweaty stinky Microsoft and a slightly-more-difficult alternative I don't have to beg and plead for it to respect my want of being left alone (since privacy is nigh-unachievable), I'll go with the latter eleven times out of ten. I'm *bready* for it.
@@bluephreakrLinux is private
@@FineWine-v4.0wdym private?
@@FineWine-v4.0 Privacy is not in the operating system you use. It's in the software you use with it. If Linux users (like me) are still using privacy-invasive software (like me) and cannot compel their friends to give a toss about it (like me) then privacy of the operating system doesn't matter. Being _on this platform_ is a major invasion of privacy unto itself. _It truly is a lost battle_ because eventually, your privacy is compromised in some fashion.
So why I use _any_ Linux distro at all, is because I was sick of Microsoft messing with my stuff. That's all there is to it.
@@bluephreakr yeah enough guides exist that at some point it should takes less effort to maintain a linux system than an outdated Windows system...
I'm terrified what will happen at Valve when Gabe passes away.
as much as I love Gabe and Steam/Valve, I 100% expect to see a Steam subscription fee to access my account after he dies.
Thank you for sharing this.
I don't have anything against short videos in general (in fact, I prefer short videos in this case), but I hate YT Shorts for other reasons.
Care to elaborate on those reasons?
If I'm going to waste my mind, I want to actually gain something valuable with that time. @@gusslx
I actually read the new Steam Subscriber Agreement. Sure, they reverted back to using courts to settle disputes instead of arbitration. Yes, any Federal or District court in Kings County, Washington. Fortunately, I haven't had any disputes with Steam, yet. I wonder if I'd be willing to make a 2800-mile round trip from where I live to go to court to address any disputes that escalates that far.
Dude, I had to swap to HALF SPEED.
SLOW DOWN. 😂
I saw that update on steam and GROANED. I had assumed I would hear that Steam was jumping in to the pile of companies trying desperately to extract money and/or rights from us. I am so glad to hear otherwise.
Louis, it's a good thing. But they didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts.
Look up Valve v. Zaiger, which resulted from Wolfire v. Valve. Basically, since Zaiger lost the ability to Class Action in the Wolfire case, they threatened to file 50,000-75,000 individual Arbitrations. Valve sued, but was dismissed. So now Class Action is actually cheaper than paying for that many Arbitrations. Its happened in other cases like Sargon v. Patreon, and another Doordash case.
Mass Arbitrations are starting to become a tool to use against TOS that forbid Class Actions. So Valve is adapting to what might be the cheaper option.
0:53 thank you Lord Vader
I will never forget the day that Facebook closed my account because of 3 duplicated cross posted videos through my 3 Facebook pages and lost access to all my data including the ones that did not get copyright strikes.
The digital world is horrifying, sir.
I hope you can talk a little about Facebook's flawed policies.
This is one update that i actually read, and from watching your recent video on forced arbitration i knew what was being said.
Bro is trying to break the world record for the fastest rap 😂
The Eminem opening lol
Did they do good guy big company thing, or 'it was best for us' company thing? If 100,000 people try to sue and go to individual forced arbitration to meet the contract terms, is that better for Valve than a single class action suit that rolls them all into one lawyer event?
It may be good that they untied consumers' hands, but it wasn't an altruistic feat.
Of course they're doing it for their own self interest. Valve has spent a ton of time and money helping with Linux development the last couple of years, getting Wayland up to speed, helping with VRR support, adding HDR support, speeding up the development of WINE with their Proton layer, etc. It's all done because they directly benefit from it, since they can make their own products (Steam Launcher, Steam Deck and possible successors) better, and also to get away from having to pay Microsoft anything. It just so happens that all of us Linux users also benefit from their contributions at the same time, simply because all their work is open source.
It's mostly that, at least for the time being, what benefits them, also benefits their customers. I'm sure not being a publicly-traded company also helps because their customers are their users, and not the shareholders.
The valve fanboys are embarrassing honestly yeah no shit they did it for their own self interest. In fact the way they made the change is scummy as hell, first of all the force open the popup so that most people would instinctively click it without actually reading what it says. Second they completely removed the possibility of arbitrations, the problem with arbitrations stems from the company paying for them, making it much more likely for the arbiter to side with the company. But arbitrations are far less expensive and far less time consuming that regular suits so this raises the barrier of entry for consumers.
@@mauri9998 God I love Valve so much, I just can't stop winning- just love Valve and you can be winning too.
Also that's pretty much the standard way ToS changes are done what are you on about lol
@@WallGnome how can you type all this and not be utterly ashamed of yourself
@@mauri9998 With a smile on my face, and love in my heart :)
The first thing I checked after clicking the video is the playback speed xD
When you have heard him long enough you can hear him clearly regardless how fast he spoke. Tho yea he could slow down for slow listener.😅 I guess time is gold for him
Thanks for talking about arbitration, most companies are falling down this path and there appears to be little we can do about it. Whoever thought that conflict of interest would become the norm in commerce.
the video is only 2 minutes long because Louis is basically talking at 2x speed.
Title should be Ross lets off some steam!
Steam isn’t perfect but they are far, far, better than almost any other company, and I believe it’s purely because they are a private company and not public
1:24 that deserves more than just recognition. every big company the past couple years has prioritized money and nothing else, especially UA-cam, Sony, Microsoft, the list goes on. This should be rewarded somehow, I feel thats the only way in which we could show that actions or policies, like this, REALLY ARE for the best.
Forced arbitration with Steam has been apart of the terms for many years now. It is not new by any stretch. Their removing it is almost certainly due to a law firm offering services to allow people to bring claims against Valve through arbitration. Valve reportedly sued that law firm and case was thrown out for, supposedly, lack of jurisdiction. There are likely many other factors that play in but I do not believe any of them are benevolent.
While this can be a good thing for consumers, the reasons for the change are not for the consumers benefit and likely can drive other changes that will be to the consumer detriment.
If Steam took action to prevent themselves from being exploited by a dodgy scumbag legal firm leveraging a loophole for hundreds of millions of dollars, they get to keep being Steam. As a consumer I consider that a win for everyone except the dodgy scumbag legal firm.
This is the most damaging take you can possibly have. I haven't looked into it myself, so you may be completely right that Steam isn't doing it for altruistic reasons. But that doesn't mean we should hate them for it.
Think about it this way. Let's say that hypothetically, no company cares about the consumers at all, and only does things for greater profit. In that case, the only reason they'd do something pro consumer is because of the good pr they'd get for it. So what happens when people stop giving them good pr for doing good things? Simple. They stop doing good things all together, because there's no point.
I understand where you're coming from, and it is important to recognize a company's real intentions behind what they do. However if we completely ignore anything good they do, then they're just going to stop doing good things all together, and that's bad for us all.
@@Mr.Bimgus Some people just want to watch the world burn.
Truly extraordinary. Haven't watched the video yet tho.
I hate shorts due to subbing 100+ channels even if 1 in 10 does a short daily that's more than actual videos in my sub list daily.
It's very spammy and in all honesty I remember I was getting nearly 20 shorts per day in my subscription list, I ultimately unsubbed channels I liked due to the shorts spam. When you think of it as soley a you doing it it's not bad, but everyone is always posting them consistently, it adds up quickly.
Also the belief you can't learn anything meaningful in 20 seconds. I have nothing against short form videos not everything needs to be 15 mins but genuinely feel most videos under 3 mins don't have much to offer.
It has been a while since I've seen a Rossman video. He looks healthy, younger even. Glad to see.
They did it so a law firm that is weaponizing arbitration cases, which Valve would have to pay for win or lose, so instead they are returning it back to court that way if they win they don't pay the legal fees. This has nothing to do with consumers, they get ZERO praise from me, they just looking out for themselves, but were happy to use arbitration changes if it helped them.
The only reason they changed it is because they're facing mass arbitration. The new contract specifically states that it applies to any previous claims, meaning that they're forcing those customers who were going into arbitration into court instead under the threat of losing access to their Steam accounts. This isn't a good guy Gabe situation.
Good news at last!