Latest news with #ValveCorporation
Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Valve Corporation Gets Steamed By Own Subscriber Agreement And Is Dismissed On UPEPA Special Motion In Washington Case
Anti-SLAPP Laws Protect Free Speech. Steam is an online platform that allows the developers of video games to sell their games to users. Stream is owned by Valve Corporation. To participate in the Stream platform, the users must first agree to something called the "Stream Subscriber Agreement" also known as the "SSA". Among other things, the SSA provides that if a dispute arises between Valve and a user, the user may not file a lawsuit or participate in a class action, but instead must go to individual binding arbitration. Enter Bucher Law PLLC and AFN Law PLLC, which are law firms that apparently rounded up a bunch of the users to make individual claims against Valve for Valve's alleged anticompetitive practices. Following the terms of the SSA, these law firms would send a letter on behalf of each of their user clients to Valve make a claim for damages from the alleged anticompetitive practices and also proposing settlement terms. At first, Valve complained that the user complaints filed by the law firm were not particularized to each user, lacked necessary information for each user, and were not sent in good faith. The law firms then responded to Valve with individualized emails for each of their clients. When Valve did not settle within 30 days after receiving these complaints, then invoking the SSA the law firms initiated arbitration proceedings for each of their user clients. Not happy with all these claims and arbitration proceedings, Valve decided to sue the law firms (henceforth referred to as the "Bucher Defendants") in the Washington state court for wrongfully interfering with Valve's relationships with their users and for abuse of process. Faced with Valve's SLAPP lawsuit, the Bucher Defendants then filed a special motion to dismiss Valve's claims under the Washington Uniform Public Expression Protection Act ("UPEPA"). Hearing the special motion, the trial court held that Valve had alleged sufficient facts to establish its claims and that a statutory exception applied to allow Valve to proceed with litigation against the Bucher Defendants. The Bucher Defendants then appealed the trial court's decision and this lead to the opinion in Valve Corp. v. Bucher Law PLLC, 2025 WL 1792620 ( June 30, 2025), which is the subject of today's article. The first issue that came up was whether the Bucher Defendants could immediately appeal the trial court's denial of their UPEPA special motion. Valve of course claimed that they could not, citing the normal Washington appellate rule preventing appeals of motions to dismiss. The problem for Valve is that the UPEPA specifically provides for an immediate appeal of right if the party who brought the special motion loses that motion before the trial court, as happened to the Bucher Defendants. So, Valve lost on that issue. Moving on to the merits of the Bucker Defendants' appeal, the appellate court noted that the first prong of a UPEPA analysis was whether the challenged cause of action fell within the scope of the UPEPA's protections. On this issue, the appellate court that there were two categories of protected speech into which the Bucher Defendants' actions could fall. First, the UPEPA protects communications that are made about an issue that is involved in a judicial proceeding, which would include an arbitration proceeding. Since the users represented by the Bucher Defendants were involved in arbitration proceedings against Valve, the communications of the Bucher Defendants to their user clients were clearly within the scope of the UPEPA's protections. Second, the UPEPA also protects a person's exercise of their rights to free speech, association and to petition under either the U.S or Washington state constitutions. Since both the U.S. and Washington constitutions have been interpreted to include a lawyer's representation as a guaranteed freedom of speech, association and to petition, Valve cause of action based on the Bucher Defendants' representation of the Valve users easily fit into this category of protection as well. The scope provision of the UPEPA contains one other requirement: The protected expression must also relate to a "matter of public concern". This means that a purely private statement with a small group, such as somebody insulting somebody during a poker game or somebody sending a nasty email to another, is not within the UPEPA's protections. This was a non-issue in this case, however, since the underlying dispute involved Valve's alleged anticompetitive practices and that would be a matter of public concern. There are exclusions to the scope provisions of the UPEPA, meaning that some forms of expression may fall within the definition of protected expression but still not be protected by the UPEPA. One of these exclusions of for so-called commercial speech, being statements made in the course of some commercial transaction, including the sale of services. Here it was Valve that argued ― and the trial court agreed ― that the statements of the Bucher Defendants to their clients, the Steam users, amounted to the law firms selling their legal services to those users. The fly in the ointment of the commercial speech exclusion was that the notices and statements that the Bucher Defendants made, and which Valve based is case on, were made to Valve as the users' and the Bucher Defendants' adversary regarding an ongoing dispute and not for the purpose of the Bucher Defendants selling their services. Thus, the appellate court observed that, "Instead of centering on the commercial relationship between a law firm and its clients . . . the Bucher Defendants' communications were acts of legal representation." Thus, the commercial speech exclusion was inapplicable, the trial court had erred on that point, and the expressions of the Bucher Defendants were within the scope of the UPEPA's protections. That Valve's cause of action fell with the scope of the UPEPA's protections did not end the matter, however. The appellate court now examined the next prong of a UPEPA analysis, being whether Valve's complaint had stated viable causes of action even in light of the constitutional protections. For Valve, the problem here was something known as the litigation privilege, which gives special protections to litigants and their attorneys alike for communications and actions taken during the course of judicial proceedings and which reasonably relate to those judicial proceedings. The idea here is that if a party or their counsel have done something egregious wrong in litigation, the proper remedy is for the court to issue sanctions and fines ― not that the aggrieved party initiate even more litigation about those wrongs. The litigation privilege is thus an absolute privilege. What was Valve complaining about? It was exactly that the Bucher Defendants were engaging in the litigation activity of sending legal notices and then initiating arbitration proceedings exactly as required by Valve's SSA. Whose fault was that? As the appellate court noted: "The conduct Valve complains of—the filing of thousands of individual arbitration requests—is a direct result of its own agreement barring class actions and prohibiting collective or representative arbitration. Such conduct is part of a legal practice and is directly related to representing clients, which is precisely the kind of conduct the litigation privilege is designed to protect." In a footnote, the appellate court further wrote that "[o]n this particular issue, Valve is hoist by its own contractual petard." That footnote further elaborated that Valve had since done away with the individual arbitration requirement of the SSA. This litigation privilege created an absolute bar to Valve's claim, meaning that the trial court committed error in denying the Bucher Defendants' special motion. The appellate court thus reversed that decision and remanded the case back to the trial court to enter an order dismissing Valve's claims. ANALYSIS The UPEPA is a uniform Anti-SLAPP statute adopted by Washington state. The acronym SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. Valve's lawsuit is a classic example of a SLAPP case: It was brought for the strategic purpose of stopping the law firms from participating in litigation on a matter of public interest. The purpose of the UPEPA is to cause an early dismissal of such lawsuits, but that failed here because of a bad ruling of the trial court and the law firms had to appeal that decision. Fortunately, the UPEPA also provides for an immediate appeal of right of the denial of a UPEPA special motion and that resulted in the correct decision by the appellate court. The litigation privilege is very powerful and when combined with the UPEPA it should normally have the effect of quickly knocking out claims meant to harass or deter law firms from taking or maintaining valid actions in judicial proceedings. Indeed, too many SLAPP lawsuits are precisely of the type brought by Valve here which did not seek a resolution on the merits (the allegations of anticompetitive conduct) but instead was simply meant to harass the law firms from not taking any more of these types of cases against Valve. As the appellate court noted, the real problem was that Valve's corporate counsel had totally screwed everything up in the SSA by prohibiting users from participating in class actions. When a lot of the same folks are making the same claims, then it is in a company's best interests ― if the claims are truly all defendable ― to consolidate those claims into a class action and get a single favorable ruling that is binding upon all. Valve's corporate counsel only belated figured that out and corrected their mistake by removing the requirement of individual arbitration from the Valve SSA. None of that was the fault of the law firms but rather it was all Valve's own fault. This sort of proves to some extent the point of some of my previous articles on arbitration, which is that arbitration is not a panacea and arbitration agreements should instead be approached with great caution. Too many attorneys will throw blanket arbitration clauses into agreements without thinking through the ramifications and thus ultimately leading to undesired outcomes. As here.
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Gabe Newell's daily routine is 'get up, work, go scuba diving,' says he's been 'retired for a long time' but works 7 days a week: 'The things I get to do every day are super-awesome'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve Corporation and the driving force behind much of the company's unique philosophy, has had a much less public-facing role in recent years. Newell still turns up for things like the Steam Deck launch and official documentaries, but much of his time now is spent on one of his (several) superyachts, and on his other companies' projects: He co-founded Starfish Neuroscience, a company focused on neural interfaces (popularly known as "brain chips"), and Inkfish, a marine research operation. Newell also remains magnificently quixotic, popping up every so often to talk about things like when a shark went for him, and now he's re-surfaced to do an interview with a YouTube channel that has 19 subscribers (Valve confirmed to PCG that the interview is legit). Zalkar Saliev "shares powerful interviews and lifestyle stories with successful men across the US," and his channel has previously played host to employees of Amazon and Microsoft. And now Gabe Newell's on there: well, some short clips are on there, with a full interview to follow later. The ocean-loving billionaire is asked, "What is the daily routine for Mr Gabe?" I'd hesitate to call Newell "Gaben" to his face so Mr Gabe is quite the framing. "My daily routine," begins Newell, "I get up, I work, I go scuba-diving, work some more, [then] either go on a second scuba dive or I go to the gym and work out. I live on a boat so I just hang out with everybody on the boat. Then I work. "I work seven days a week: I'm working from my bedroom as you can tell. I like working, it's fun, to me it doesn't feel like work. The kinds of things that I get to do every day are super-awesome." Indeed, we can see from the clip, which alternates between Saliev's Macbook view and the camera feed, that Newell appears to be sitting on the end of his bed. The view makes it impossible to say for certain, but the IRL Saxton Hale is looking good for his age and more trim generally: clearly all the scuba-diving and gym-going has paid-off. Newell goes on to say that he's effectively retired, inasmuch as he only does stuff that interests him now, but the man's work ethic is clearly second-to-none. "I've said it before but, when you retire, you want to like stop doing your horrible job and go do what is sort of most fun and entertaining," says Newell. "In that sense I've been retired for a long time." Newell goes on to give some examples of what's currently taking up his time. "In one of the companies we're working on an aerosol pathogen detection device so you can see all the pathogens that are in the air. Brain-computer interfaces are incredibly cool and all of the associated neuroscience is incredibly cool." The upshot? Talk about life goals: "I just work all the time," ends Newell. "But it's not like 'oh my god I'm up late at night slaving away on stuff.' It's more like 'I can't go to sleep because I'm having fun', you know?" Expect more to come from this interview, even if Newell's current interests have moved (somewhat) away from pc gaming. Newell's spectacular success and unusual perspectives have created an intense cult of personality around the man's pronouncements, but as the above shows some of it is really quite simple. As a Valve exec once observed, Newell's real superpower is in how he "delighted in people on the team just being really good at what they did." Solve the daily Crossword
News.com.au
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
400 video games with rape, incest, child abuse pulled from Steam
More than 400 games depicting rape, incest and child abuse have been pulled off of a gaming platform after an Australian non-profit called on payment processors to cut ties. Collective Shout, an Australian non-profit that fights the sexualisation of women and girls, shared an open letter on Monday calling on payment processors to cease ties with gaming platforms such as Steam. Steam, a digital storefront for gaming owned by American company Valve Corporation, was hosting close to 500 games that depicted rape, incest and child abuse material. MasterCard, PayPal, Visa, Paysafe Limited and Discover were some of the payment processors named in the open letter. 'A Collective Shout team member has conducted extensive research using a Steam account set up for this purpose. She has documented content including violent sexual torture of women, and children including incest related abuse involving family members,' the open letter read. 'These games endorsing men's sexualised abuse and torture of women and girls fly in the face of efforts to address violence against women. We do not see how facilitating payment transactions and deriving financial benefit from these violent and unethical games, is consistent with your corporate values and mission statements. 'We request that you demonstrate corporate social responsibility and immediately cease processing payments on Steam and any other platforms hosting similar games.' Melinda Tankard Reist, the movement director of Collective Shout, told the push came after she appeared on a television show in the UK to discuss the game No Mercy — a game where players assumed a persona of a man who sexually assaulted women as a punishment for his mother's infidelity — that Collective Shout had gotten pulled off of Steam in April. 'The reporter mentioned she'd come across other related games so we did a deeper search and discovered almost 500,' Ms Tankard Reist said. 'These games features rape, sexual violation and extreme torture of women and girls. They also include incest-themes. Players can rape vast numbers of women including family members. Women are represented as deserving of punishment. 'The game descriptions are open about 'scenes of non-consensual sexual activity' and 'Sexual scenes with a woman during conversation or while sleeping'. 'In one game 'men abduct women, hold them hostage and rape and sexually torture them'. 'Another says 'The captured women will be violated every day … They will not stop. There is no human rights at all'.' Following the recent action, there are now 27 incest games and 55 rape themed games remaining on Steam. Steam has also updated its rules on what content can be published on the service. In addition to sexually explicit images of real people, defamatory statements and content that exploits children, a new clause reads; 'Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.' has contacted the Valve Corporation for comment multiple times. When first approached on the topic, a MasterCard spokesperson told 'We have zero tolerance for illegal activity on our network. When specific instances of potentially unlawful or illegal activity are identified, we investigate the allegations so that the appropriate action can be taken. 'We have not received the evidence or materials noted in the letter but will investigate the claims upon receipt.' understands that Steam does not directly connect to the MasterCard network but use 'acquirers' as intermediaries. Acquirers are responsible for conducting due diligence on customers. PayPal and Paysafe gave similar comments to with the latter stating it was investigating concerns that were raised. Since Collective Shout's open letter, the organisation has been inundated with abusive commentary online — including rape and death threats. Some went so far to call Collective Shout's act a 'declaration of war'.
Sky News
11-04-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Nintendo Switch 2 launches straight into Trump's trade war
It was going to be the revivifying event the video games industry desperately needed - instead, thanks to Donald Trump's tariffs, the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 is experiencing a troubled birth. Barely had Nintendo announced the pre-order date and price point of the hotly awaited new handheld console when the US president slapped tariffs on China and Vietnam, among others, prompting the Japanese gaming giant to immediately suspend US pre-orders of the Switch 2. Today, Nintendo invited Sky News to be a part of the first group of journalists in the UK to try the console, and get to grips with a product that is fast becoming a totemic casualty of the global trade war. It was already a challenging market for the successor to the third best-selling console of all time, the original Switch, which has sold more than 150 million units. When the Switch first launched in 2017 it had next to no rivals - that landscape now looks very different. Valve Corporation's Steam Deck, whose release was also anything but smooth thanks to supply chain issues caused by Taiwanese semiconductor shortages, has gained considerable market share. Its ability to play most Windows-based games, of which there are many more than for the Switch, and the option to use it in desktop mode - essentially turning it into a handheld PC - made it appealing to consumers looking for a more powerful, versatile unit. To make matters worse, few could have expected the extent to which Mr Trump would sanction countries in the Asia Pacific region. China, a significant manufacturing base for the Switch 2, is now subject to 145% American trade tariffs. Vietnamese imports were due to be taxed at 46%, however these were paused for 90 days by Mr Trump following turbulence in the financial markets. Nintendo announced pre-orders in the US would open on the 9 April, with the console costing $449.99 (£395.99 for shoppers in the UK). However, before even a single American order could be placed, pre-orders were indefinitely suspended following sweeping tariffs imposed on east Asian countries by the US on the 4 April. UK consumers are still able to place pre-orders. The delay could well come with further changes for gamers, said Gareth Sutcliffe, Head of Gaming at consultancy Enders Analysis. "The other significant impact is the tariff consequences on Nintendo's physical game sales, given they are all produced in Japan, and whether they can be imported as a finished game or as a component." He foresees the upset in global trade potentially leading to unprecedented prices for gaming hardware, saying: "The price points for consoles overall could hasten the decline of this generation of consoles if you suddenly have price points nearing the $1,000 (£764) mark." Nintendo's rivals, Xbox and PlayStation, are not insulated from the trade war because their supply chains also run predominantly through east Asia. Nintendo are hoping to sell 10 million units this year - whether they succeed, may well depend on the whims of the President of the United States of America.
