Steam is a video game digital distribution service by Valve.
Steam News | Steam Beta Client news
Useful tools:
SteamDB
SteamCharts
Issue tracker for Linux version of Steam
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20230080
Noticed this update got pushed just now.
Edit: Seems they’re doing this to prevent costs from arbitration.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this looks like a major _de-_enshitification step on the part of Steam.
I'm not missing something big, am I?
I have not idea what this means. Can someone ELI5 me?
Without getting into the weeds of arbitration—if you want to sue Valve for some reason, you now have to file in King county, Washington. This makes it too expensive to be worth it for any amount less than the cost of flying to and staying in Seattle for a lawsuit. Even if you're right and Valve is wrong.
Amazon recently did this too and it worked out well for them I guess, since other companies seem to have followed suit.
There are much less expensive ways of suing someone than just flying there and staying until the lawsuit is done. They're still not cheap, but that's a pretty absurd way of doing it.
Forced arbitration is also complete bullshit. The fact that corporations are starting to realize it's almost as bad for them as it is for us doesn't make it any less bullshit.