The Federal Court finds Steam's lack of refund and warranty policies disturbing.
Back in March 2016, digital distributor and Steam sale extraordinaire Valve was found guilty of misrepresenting Australian gamers' consumer guarantee rights in a case bought the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Today, the ACCC has revealed that on 23 December 2016 the Federal Court ordered Valve Corporation to fork out for penalties to the tune of $3,000,000 Australian dollarydoos.
This all started back in August 2014, when the ACCC began investigating Valve's online distribution platform Steam after complaints about its refund policy (or lack thereof) began to surface. While this would fly in the US, Australian Consumer Law (ACL) forbids retailers from offering goods without offering refunds, warranties and guarantees.
Valve Corporation maintained that, while it sold goods to Australians (around 2.2 million Australians), it was still a US company exempt from Australian laws and practices.
When finding Valve guilty of misleading Australian consumers, the Court maintained that Steam's terms and conditions in its subscriber agreements (and refund policies) included "false and misleading representations about consumers' rights to obtain a refund for games if they were not of acceptable quality".
Australian consumers have the right to a refund or solution if a product is not up to the expected quality - a right that Steam's previous policies did not accommodate.
During the hearing, the presiding Justice Edelman went on to discuss Valve's "culture of compliance" which he called very poor.
According to the ACCC website, the Federal Court has ordered Steam to:
publish information on Australian consumer rights on their website for 12 months
implement a consumer compliance program for their system and staff,
not make any similar representations to Australian consumers for three years
This news comes on the same day the ACCC revealed the electronics top the charts for consumer complaints in Australia.