Valve cuts binding arbitration from its Steam user agreement

If you booted up Steam in the last 24 hours, then you probably saw the pop up window asking you to agree to a new Steam Subscriber Agreement (SSA). Valve laid out the changes in an official blog post on the Steam Community forum, and notably, binding arbitration is no longer part of the SSA.

Binding arbitration is a requirement that disputes be resolved by a legal proceeding that takes place outside of courts. Instead of a judge, these disputes are overseen by an arbitrator, who is paid by the company for their service. You can imagine why there might be some conflict of interest inherent (or why companies love these things). Instead, the new SSA says customers should seek resolutions to any problems by first contacting Steam Support. If a solution can’t be reached, disputes will be referred to the court instead of individual arbitration.

Hauling a company into court wouldn't be all that notable on its own, except that in recent years with the rise of Terms of Service agreements, arbitration clauses have become ubiquitous. Next time you download an app, join a website or even sign a contract for a new job, take a look at the contract: more often than not, you just signed away your right to sue.

The new SSA also no longer has a class action waiver, which previously barred groups of similarly situated plaintiffs to sue jointly, which is also a major departure from other Terms of Service agreements.

Valve says these changes will have “limited impact” in some regions including the EU and UK, Australia, New Zealand and Quebec. The arbitration requirement in the SSA did not apply to these regions.

While these are positive developments for consumers, Steam curiously doesn’t list its reasons for making these changes. We’ve reached out to a Steam representative for comment and will update if we hear back.

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