Valve Heads To Court Over Refund Policy

August 29, 2014

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, responsible for regulating consumer law for businesses are set to institute proceedings in the Australian Federal Court over several misleading representations of consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law.

This concerns Valve’s digital distribution service known as Steam, where the ACCC claims that Valve has made several false statements regarding their refund policy. The following breaches are stated below, taken straight from the ACCC website:

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.

While the statement notes that Valve does not operate or possess any Australian branches or employees in the country, they still sell products to Australians who use the Steam service and as such, must abide by Australian law to continue doing so.

The first hearing is set to commence 7th October of this year at the Federal Court in Sydney.

Source: ACCC