Valve Litigated in Germany Over Steam License Agreement

Half-Life developer Valve faces litigation in Germany over the user agreement in its Steam digital distribution system. 

The corporation has been posed with a legal claim stating that its end user license agreement violates user rights by forcing users to agree to it. The agreement was rewritten not too long ago to be in accordance with the Citizens United decision, which weakened access to class action lawsuits and allowed corporations such as Valve to impose restrictive text upon its users preventing them from pursuing anything but individual lawsuits against the company. 

Not surprisingly, the German government doesn’t have a provision defining corporations as people, hence the opposition to how users effectively forced to agree to not sue Valve. 

CinemaBlend reports that the Federation of German Consumer Organization (VZBV) has posed a legal challenge to Valve, which forces users to accept its legally enforceable end user license agreement (EULA) to use the product. In other words, not agreeing to the new EULA locks users out of already purchased content.

The organization has provided Valve until October 10 to respond to the claim before they take the matter to the courts.