Valve is being taken to court by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) over its Steam refund policy. The suit alleges that the current policy fails to comply with Australian consumer rights; most of which stem from Steam’s no refund policy. It appears the fact that Valve doesn’t have an official presence in the country will not stop the authorities from filing the suit.
The ACCC sent a list of bullet points to Kotaku Australia to outline the main grievances to be addressed in the suit, and we’ve listed them here for your convenience.
The ACCC alleges that Valve made false or misleading representations to Australian customers of Steam that:
- consumers were not entitled to a refund for any games sold by Valve via Steam in any circumstances;
- Valve had excluded, restricted or modified statutory guarantees and/or warranties that goods would be of acceptable quality;
- Valve was not under any obligation to repair, replace or provide a refund for a game where the consumer had not contacted and attempted to resolve the problem with the computer game developer; and the statutory consumer guarantees did not apply to games sold by Valve.
It is possible that Valve may end up changing its refund policy to comply with Australian law, especially after the official statement sent to Kotaku. Whether this will end up changing the policy for the entire world is also unknown; but it would be nice to be able to get a refund for terrible games over Steam.
[Source: Kotaku]
