Gabe Newell clarifies class action clause

Head at Valve, Gabe Newell, has expanded on the initial official statement regarding the company's Terms of Service that forced players to agree that they could not take out a class action lawsuit against Valve; apparently it's because lawyers suck.

This all came out as part of a 4Chan visit to Valve HQ, where the intrepid meme makers quizzed Newell on everything from his beard, to those damn ToS agreements.

The move wasn't to protect Valve from its users, Newell Said, but from the lawyers. “There are all these class action lawsuit lawyers who just pop up and… the problem is that it’s asymmetric, so they can basically file a lawsuit against you in federal court and it costs them nothing,” he said. “Then the first thing they say is, ‘Now, you have to do discovery on every single document you’ve ever created in history’. It’s a shakedown.”

He continued, saying that users were still able to sue the company individually and that ultimately: “We’re happy you’re mad at us and you let us know because we’ll do better.”

As has been pointed out by PCGamesN though, individuals can sue all they like, but if Valve were to be hacked and lose everyone's credit card details, a class action suit would be the usual method of recompense for the huge user base. That wouldn't be possible in the current climate.

KitGuru Says: Valve would have to have quite a fall from grace to rile up enough of its users to get a real class action suit going, but a credit card hack could do it. Did these Terms of Service annoy you guys, or did they not bother you much?

Become a Patron!