Remember that time Sony snuck a small clause into its PSN user agreement that prevented users from engaging in class action lawsuits against the company? You might—it happened right after everyone got their shit hacked and the service had to be pulled offline for around two weeks. Well, other companies were quick to jump onto the “you can’t sue us” bandwagon, including EA and Microsoft, who both added similar clauses to their terms of service.

As of the most recent Steam update, it appears as though Valve agrees with the precedent. In fact, Valve seems to be of the opinion that letting customers participate in class action lawsuits is actually bad for those customers:

“We considered this change very carefully. It’s clear to us that in some situations, class actions have real benefits to customer. In far too many cases however, class actions don’t provide any real benefit to users and instead impose unnecessary expense and delay, and are often designed to benefit the class action lawyers who craft and litigate these claims. We think this new dispute resolution process is faster and better for you and Valve while avoiding unnecessary costs, and that it will therefore benefit the community as a whole.”

It’s fair to note that most class action suits do indeed benefit the lawyer more than the plaintiffs, but blocking consumer protections and pretending like it’s some sort of a favor is a massive stretch. And by Valve’s own admission, class action suits have real benefits in “some situations.”

Of course, no one really knows if these clauses are enforceable, since there’s only been one challenge so far and it’s still working its way through the court system. We’ll just have to wait for the next big disaster before we get a real idea of what sort of impact this has on the industry.

Thoughts?

[DS]

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