Historically, Valve has hired lawyers to weasle out of legal responsibilities around the world, to limited success. They repeatedly tried to get out of legally mandated refunds for digital goods in several western nations, and now people think that Valve is the good guys for eventually capitulating like it was their idea in the first place.
I cannot imagine a scenario where Gabe Newell would hire a lawyer just to have him say “comply with the new laws instead of fighting back”.
EDIT: Just cause I felt like it made for more present context, Valves legal team clearly isn’t going to take the “maybe we should ban loot boxes as a form of online gambling targeted towards children” debate lying down. You mess with Valve’s sources of revenue, they will pull out every possible slime ball argument to say they are legally allowed to piss over any and all consumer rights. Gabe’s not about to allow porn to be banned on his store of “digital game license’s where you don’t own anything actually”. Not until the legal situation gets so dire that porn isn’t worth attempting to profit off anymore. He has fought far more tasteless battles in his career.
People probably think Valve is the “good guy” in the case of refunds because they made it a worldwide policy after the Australia case. Other game platforms have only offered refunds explicitly where required. Hell, PlayStation gets away with no refunds almost anywhere if you’ve downloaded the game.
Historically, Valve has hired lawyers to weasle out of legal responsibilities around the world, to limited success. They repeatedly tried to get out of legally mandated refunds for digital goods in several western nations, and now people think that Valve is the good guys for eventually capitulating like it was their idea in the first place.
I cannot imagine a scenario where Gabe Newell would hire a lawyer just to have him say “comply with the new laws instead of fighting back”.
EDIT: Just cause I felt like it made for more present context, Valves legal team clearly isn’t going to take the “maybe we should ban loot boxes as a form of online gambling targeted towards children” debate lying down. You mess with Valve’s sources of revenue, they will pull out every possible slime ball argument to say they are legally allowed to piss over any and all consumer rights. Gabe’s not about to allow porn to be banned on his store of “digital game license’s where you don’t own anything actually”. Not until the legal situation gets so dire that porn isn’t worth attempting to profit off anymore. He has fought far more tasteless battles in his career.
People probably think Valve is the “good guy” in the case of refunds because they made it a worldwide policy after the Australia case. Other game platforms have only offered refunds explicitly where required. Hell, PlayStation gets away with no refunds almost anywhere if you’ve downloaded the game.