Valve may have found themselves in a little hot water over their new end-user license agreement (EULA), at least in Germany. According to reports the Federation of German Consumer Organizations has given Valve until October 10 to cease and desist their end-user license agreement, otherwise Valve will face legal action and potential lawsuits.
The issue at hand is the new end-user license agreement, which basically takes peoples rights away to file class action lawsuits against Valve for anything that happens on Steam. The VZBV argues that Valve is forcing people to sign this agreement without consent because people have no choice whether or not to sign up. If a consumer doesn’t sign the end-user license agreement they lose all access to their Steam account, so the Federation of German Consumer Organizations is arguing that Valve is more or less forcing people to agree to their terms.
What this all comes down to is Valve will have until October 10th to decide if they want to continue to force people to sign their end-user license agreement (EULA) or face a lawsuit.
Here is the other interesting part to the story Cinema Blend is reporting that part of the reason for the new end-user license agreement is because of the EU court ruling earlier this year that states “authors cannot oppose their ‘used’ digital download software being resold.” The idea is that Valve is protecting themselves from consumers who want to sue them for not allowing people to re-sell their digital content which is now legal in Europe.
VZBV is trying to get Valve to adhere to the July court ruling, the deadline for desist being today September 26. However, the deadline has now been pushed back to October 10th, and at this time Valve has not commented on the situation.
This case is actually very interesting because so many companies make consumers sign end-user license agreement that essentially do the same thing, force consumers to give up their rights to a class action lawsuit (both Sony and Microsoft do the same). And if what Cinema Blend is reporting is true this might be one of the more deceitful things Valve has ever done, but I would like to hear from Valve on this issue but like always they aren’t saying much.
