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Valve Could Face Legal Action In Europe Over Steam User Agreement

A German consumer group has threatened to take legal action against Valve Software if the company does not respond to their complaints concerning the recent changes to the Steam end-user license agreement.

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A German consumer group has threatened to take legal action against Valve Software if the company does not respond to their complaints concerning the recent changes to the Steam end-user license agreement.

The parts of the Steam license agreement that The Federation of German Consumer Organizations has taken issue with center around language that was added last month preventing customers from filing lawsuits against Valve. The Federation claims that Valve “coerced” customers into signing the agreement, and that the new terms “unfairly disadvantaged” a large number of current users.

In addition to the complaints over Steam‘s end-user agreement, The Federation also wants to make sure that Valve is planning to comply with a prior European court ruling that video game publishers cannot block European customers from reselling downloadable software.

Valve has already stated that they have no intention of allowing users to resell Steam purchased games, so it seems likely that this complaint will be brought to the courts attention.

The Federation has given Valve until October 10th to respond to the charges. If the deadline passes without a resolution they have promised to “resolve the dispute in court”.

Source: Gamasutra