Valve in legal trouble with Washington's government

Bitrate nigger

Nobody is the good guy here.

This

Most of you are willing to eat shit as long as its free

Some people pay for it
Check the Overwatch thread

Pretty good. With the death of triple A, and consoles and triple A being split, we can finally get back on track to making pc gaming great again. It wont happen though, valve is too rich to fail
Even if this were something they'd lose, they can keep this tied up in litigation for a decade

Anyway there is no reason for a multibillion global retailer to go down due to this. Probably its spare change gaben used to pay for some sluts

Lmao.

Wrong on both counts

What would instead happen is consoles would still get stale ass games but instead devs would flock to objectively worse clients like Origin or worse, Windows Store.

Physical isn't coming back. You're delusional if you think Steam was the reason why the entire industry shifted to digital en masse, and that it's just praying it could go back to having to more expensively release games and having to deal with retailers.

Won't happen with this case.
This is a case about community reactions to a thing valve did.
I can see one of 3 possible results

Its going to be business as usual on Steam once its done.

When will you halfchan niggers learn to do things right?

The only thing I really predict is going to happen is Valve is going to get slapped with a fine and they're going to either gut the Steam API or remove it entirely.

It means trading is probably going to be severely reduced outside the market place and it's either going to be a huge hassle or will get removed entirely.

Which is something a lot of people saw the writing on the wall about when Escrow was introduced and it required having a smart phone to trade.

All I want is for vintage game stores to start caring PC games again. I mean I pirate a lot now, but still…

...

bare in mind that most used game stores don't handle PC games

there's a reason why. It's because PC used games are a pain in the ass to actually handle in a retail setting.

Because of old ass shit like DRM and now, compatibility issues. It runs the risk that 8/10 people who buy a game in your store that was a PC game, will return it because they can't run it. There's a reason why Steam implemented refunds and why GOG has a thirty day policy that lets you refund a game if it doesn't work. Because there was a huge demand for it.

It's why almost all used video game stores stick to just selling console games. And why that's probably not going to go away.

It's why second hand PC games have never, ever taken off and why it's well known in used video game collector markets that it's always a gamble when you buy a used PC game compared to a used console game if it'll even work. And that you need to do a lot of research beforehand when you get it.

There are used video game PC collectors but they're stuff like LazyGameReviews who literally owns dozens of old PCs ranging from several Windows 95 PCs, old Macintosh PCs etc. And the majority of people don't want to bother with that.

It's about time. He sounded bitter as fuck when talking about how valve only gets away with the shit they do because they made some good games over a decade ago.

I pirated Fairy Fencer F. It's okay.

I wish he'd finally catch on to how Valve just keeps patching TF2 with pointless content to just keep selling hats as long as possible so they can avoid making an actual sequel.

While other devs like Blizzard are quicker on the uptake and actually take a huge chunk out of the market that Valve used to occupy with games like Overwatch.

What was the last real game Valve made? Portal 2? Released in 2011 apparently.

CS Go technically came out after. The same with Dota 2

Either CS:GO or DOTA2

Which game is better? LoL or DOTA2?

HoN before f2p

Kill yourself you fucking faggot. Never use the internet on your phone.

webm

fug, forgot to make it a reply to OP

Now valve has to make games in order to keep feeding gaben.

What ever you say, Lord Neck Beard

Valve didn't introduce refunds because there was a demand.
Valve was LEGALLY OBLIGATED to introduce refunds in Europe under EU law. They fought against it for years with their lawyers.

Now Valve could have just left Europe altogether, they didn't have to introduce a refund policy under US law. But that would have created a huge opportunity for a competitor.

...

Holy shit, learn how to webm

Get on my level nubs.

how on earth do you come to this conclusion?

...

...

nothing new, we have to pay sales tax for online shopping and we have one of the highest rates for sales tax in the united states. Hell I heard they want to increase the rate to a flat 10 percent some time soon.

You are forgetting that EA with their Origin and Ubishit with their Uplay are posed to take over. Say what you want about Valve and their Steam botnet, but would you rather have the alternatives?

Valvecuck please go.

yes please, PC has always favored indie devs and AA games, I don't see a problem with this.
Leave that pre-order bonus on-disk locked content day 1 DLC shit festival on consoles where it really belongs.

you fool, that belongs nowhere but bad dreams

Why aren't mobilefags banned by default?

Because they're the majority

Nigga, I just use dos box for anything older then 95. I never ran the full gambit, but there wasn't ever an issue with my running a game on a single set up. I didn't have to build a whole other pc just to get one game to run. Although there is some research for some older games to run, I'll give you that. I think I did at one time have a dedicated "dos machine" which had windows xp, or windows 2000 on it, before dos box really took off, but it actually hardly ever needed that much use.

Dosbox is good for DOS related stuff since DOS itself was a relatively simple operating system and there was almost no 3D acceleration

However when you get into stuff like early windows games then you start running into compatibility problems that require much more research into. Like the game running at sub 20 fps because it uses an older version of Direct X that Microsoft got rid of. And having to use things like dgvoodoo and configuring it to fix it. I remember I legit couldn't run the game Motocross Madness until I started using dgvoodoo with it because it refused to install. And even then I still occasionally get glitches with it. I'm replaying No One Lives Forever with dgvoodoo right now and I still get moments where the game drops to 20 fps for a few seconds. And don't get me started on a few other games. Like I remember it took me 30-40 minutes to fix Blood 2 because it kept running almost in slow motion without sound.

Go fuck yourself. Forced steam integration on goldsrc games was cancer. Pre-2007 steam was also one of the worst platforms in existence; it was called a steam(ing) pile of shit for a reason.

...

Nothing much will happen. Valve will fight it out in courts, appeal out the ass, which will drag on a few more years, maybe win, maybe lose, eventually comply with whatever they are ordered to do and then find out a new way to Jew the retards that pay for skins.

They'll still keep making massive amounts of money from Steam sales alone.

...

It's global demographics. Which websites pay attention to. It would be retarded for a website to "ban mobile users". Much like it would be retarded for a website to "ban windows users" which would result in something like 5 people visiting the website.

of course you know all about 5s

i make slightly better webm

>there are dozens more of us than you!
No one cares about your fag bullshit, fag.

Wanting valve to fail is like removing sadam hussain. Its not great right now, but what comes after will be much, much worse.

I'd feel amazing. PC is already independent, poor developers and AAA trash with no middle ground left in between. Steam is the number one enabler of anti-consumer DRM, their fall would be good for everyone.

Still lower than the Windy City, named such for being the single most corrupt place in the entire country. our current President is from there, heyo

No fucking difference to what we have now.

GoG has a bigger market share then either microshit or EA does, the only shady thing that I know they have done is sell cracked games.

How is that genuinely shady? Because someone told you it is? What is the actual problem with it? People want DRM-free, and crackers have already done the legwork to make it happen. Why do they need to waste the effort and resources to make their own DRM-free version when someone has already done it? What in the world is actually unethical about this?

They're making money off someone else's work.

How is it any different from Bethesda monetizing mods? Only difference is that Bethesda at least had planned to give the modders some scraps.

It's selling a pirated game.

I hope it brings down the whole fuckin' diseased, corrupt temple down on Gabe's head

Can anyone explain what happens right now? Are they in trouble because of trading and shit? Or taxes for steam market?

They're in trouble because skins are being used for illegal gambling and Valve isn't doing enough to stop it in the opinion of the Washington government.

well that's a start. Wish someone would do something against those crappy microtransactions or the fact that you basically don't own anything on steam.

Which is all kinds of retarded. Why is it a company's job to nanny idiots that would pay money for a weapon skin?

The government would be better off introducing personal finance classes to schools, but I guess the whole idea is to keep the population in perpetual debt.

Blaming companies for the stupid shit people fall for is counter-intuitive. They wouldn't keep implementing that shit if people didn't keep spending money on it.

You never do (or did) with software. You were always buying the license. That being said, Valve isn't gonna be removing stuff from your inventory, that's a good way to get raped in court.

Well yes, the people are to blame here, but you still need rules and restrictions for companies or they will totally assrape us. Just think of the first years of the industrialization.

But when I have the cd I can at least reinstall it whenever I want.

Because the gambling is feeding the skin market, so Valve's indirectly making money off illegal activity.

THIS IS A FUCKING AD

hey go to this site and buy shit before it's taken down

go fuck your self

But nobody is actively forcing them to buy the shitty skins. They don't even add anything to the game. It's just fuckwits being fuckwits. Call Valve Jewish for exploiting these retards, but seeing how retarded they are, they are just beginning for it.

It's not like I disagree with the general idea that government should act as a counterweight to the free market and rein in their excesses and break apart entities that are "too big to fail", I just fail to see why the company is to blame people keep buying stupid shit. They even call them virtual slot machines, and I don't see those being banned, let alone the far worse kiking going on in the mobile market.

Sure, but Valve would be suicidally stupid to remove something from your inventory without good reason. That would pretty much ruin their reputation and torpedo any confidence consumers have in them. They operate on the tacit agreement that your investments are safe.

Fair point. I'm not too well versed in US gambling laws, but is it outright illegal or just something of a grey area?

The Gambling commission has also correctly pointed out using legal precedence that Valve had oversight of the API the entire time and had the ability to stop it while people like TmarTn were picking up millions of viewers and the illegal gambling was becoming mainstream and being marketed towards Minors.

Valve is fucked either way because they have to either plead they were incomptent and ignorant of the situation or they knew about it but because "Muh freedoms of the internet and software" didn't act to stop it because they didn't want to create a "closed ecosystem"

Which is dumb as shit because State Gambling agencies tried to sue Microsoft before and never made it to trial because MS proved that while they hold a closed platform they don't hold oversight over what gets built for it (Mainly because if MS did, they would be fucked by Anti-Trust laws) so the precedent is there for Operating systems and API's. But Valve holds complete oversight of the Steamworks API and still let this go on so they can't use Microsoft's defense.

(((Washington)))

Somehow I think they will find a way to weasel out of it. And like I said before, even if they shut down this source of revenue Valve will just come up with a new way to suck out money from retards.

Seems to me they have more people working on ways to further monetize stuff and attract whales than they do developing and maintaining their games.

It would be interesting to see them try because they seem fucked from all sides. The last PR statement they put out after the Washington Gambling commission made the public statement that Valve was being investigated was the equivalent of "Why are you so mean and using harsh language?" instead of an actual rebuttal proving they don't endorse it.

Looking at it now. Realistically they can only try to weasel their way out of a verdict that allows the federal agencies to come in and investigate further. They would rather take a record fine, but no further action. But it depends how the judges see it because if the evidence is there and youtubers sell Valve down the river to try to save their own skins by breaking down how they abused it and how Valve employees assisted them, then it easily could escalate to a federal investigation as it sounds like the feds wanted to keep it at state level for now and wait to see what evidence comes up before they put their time and money into an investigation.

Interesting times. I wouldn't want to be an investor in Valve right now.

I can't wait for the gambling commission to tear through gachapon shit like a knife through butter.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

They still make way too much money.

Also, I was under the impression that Valve isn't a publicly traded company.

They got a taste of shekels, same as how Rockstar did with GTA:O and now will force heavy online integration and focus on all their subsequent games.

Hardly an equivalent comparison. Crackers remove the DRM from something, they don't add new gameplay.

It's selling a copy of digital information that they have the license to sell. That's it.

Then you'd better fucking get home and webm it because I ain't clicking shit, faggot.

What wrong is that he was always a greedy piece of shit with no talent for making games. He came from Microsoft in case you've forgotten.

VAT is 21% here, but then we don't have ghettos and meth addicts living on the streets. It's all about what your priorities are I guess.

Gabe grew up and doesn't like videogames anymore.

Valve isn't publicly traded, but they do have outside investors. Venture capitalists who are happy to simply invest and let Valve do what they need to in exchange for a return on investment and Valve was reliant on "Angel Investors" for a few years because they barely made money off of HL2 and Steam (As before the Orange Box relaunch. Steam was fucking awful and everyone hated it). Gabe has refused investment by any video game or media company as well so it's all very controlled anyway.

So they do have investors. Just not a publicly traded company. Said Investors are still probably pissed how badly this is all being handled though.

Doubtful. The thing with corporations is that they are perfectly willing to take the fines, since they are usually a pittance compared to the money they can make by breaking the rules. If I was an investor I'd be pretty happy with my lot in life considering how effective Valve is at monetizing their shit.

Why care they're gonna fine you a "few" million dollars when you're raking in billions?

I work in a classic game shop, we get maybe one or two people a month that ask about selling PC games to us. Reason we don't take them are simple:
1. they're worth nothing
2. nobody wants them

...

I knew Valve was shit when Portal 2 came out with a fucking item store. I shed no tears.

they made a sequel?

What do they expect Valve to do, realistically? These sites are probably hosted in Russia and whatnot.

youtube.com/watch?v=E7dFt9-aGJQ

If Steam is discontinued: I will likely not be able to access my games any more. In that case: I will demand my money back. If I don't get it all back: I will sue.

Sorry, that's against the terms of service.

kill yourself op

glassdoor.ca/Reviews/Employee-Review-Valve-Corporation-RVW5929977.htm

Sure. You can believe that they will just eat the fine, but if Valve fucks up or there's enough evidence to prove they were complicit and the fine is just a precedent to federal action. Then the fines starts racking up and there's no point in investing in valve any more because they are damaged goods. They can't settle with the state either because the case has the potential criminal violations as well

Thats why I mean investors will be pissed. Valve's handling it terribly and it's clear the strategy by the Federal agencies is to let Washington's notoriously tough Gambling agency look at it and if there's enough evidence. Sweep in and take it federal and possibly make it a criminal case. And if that happens. They lose their source of money. And even Angel investors will have gone off at that point and thrown valve to the wolves

Valve had oversight of the API at all times and knew who was connecting in and out. Courts will take into account missuse of the API beyond borders and beyond a companies control like Microsoft argued with Windows (And I remember Apple had the same). But the problem is, unlike Windows, Valve required an online connection and could ban at will. Microsoft and Apple didn't get any action taken on it over gambling sites and executables because they couldn't block their development and it was a legal dead end because if Microsoft and Apple did block executables they didn't like like competing internet browswers, that was a violation of anti-trust laws (This even included phone OS so Apple had to allow betting apps on phones in the EU. They could actually be sued in the US for this). Valve had complete control and could ban or block someone at any time. Washington's Gambling Comission already picked up on it and it's a cornerstone of their case.

It's one of the reasons Valve don't look good and have an uphill battle. The people using gambling sites and selling to minors had millions of viewers. Valve had to be aware of it and complicit or else they were criminally incompetent and ignorant. Which is not an excuse in the eyes of the law. So either way they are fucked unless they find a way to show that people circumvented the API. Which is highly unlikely.

Really its a question establishing if they were incompetent or complicit. Either way, they are so fucked on it it's insane. Especially since the EU is looking to open a case as well.

Someone explain why it's bad to browse a website on your phone.

What possible reasoning could you have for being this much of a faggot and a nigger at the same time?

It's shitty, mate.
It's not bad if you don't have another choice, but desktop is always better.

Also phones fucked up website design big time. Websites have to be responsive in order to save up on costs of development of another, separate phone version, which kind of fucks up information density since websites can't specialize in desktop anymore.
I don't think that's the reason he hates mobile though.

WEW
E
W

False about Steam, Steam got their asses sued and lost. Their policies are actually not legally enforceable and if you properly force the issue by bringing up the court case they will refund your money regardless of what they say.

Steam is way too successful to be going away anytime soon, and even if Steam were to go under there are other online retailers besides steam, and there's a good chance there will be new retailers to fill in steam's void. Rest assured, the pc market isn't going to disappear anytime soon.

The fuck does that mean? It's entirely their fault. If you host an online site that trades jpegs for literal fucking cash how the fuck do you actually expect that to last? More importantly who the fuck thinks the people who host that site aren't going to just make a new site on the spot or just switch focus to another game.