Valve Gets Penalized In Australia!

General news News 03/29/2016

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Australia is an interesting place: they not only have pricier games, censoring them as well, but they also managed to penalize Valve due to breaching the consumer laws! Valve‘s popular digital platform Steam broke the law.

Steam did not have a refund policy, and that is a breach of the Australian Consumer Law. Past tense – back in 2014, when the proceedings commenced, we didn’t have the 14-day/2-hour return-and-refund policy on Steam.

In 2014, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission required Valve to provide an email address that specifically deals with refunds as per Australian Consumer law, provide a 1800 number to help consumers address any refund issues, provide a PO Box address for consumers to deal with refunds and appoint representatives (the ACCC refer to this person as a contact officer) to reply to consumers regarding refunding.

On April 15, a hearing for relief is scheduled, although we don’t know how much Valve has to pay. There is a chance that they might also be issued to pay up to 75 percent of ACCC’s legal costs!

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Angyal Anikó

Anikó, our news editor and communication manager, is more interested in the business side of the gaming industry. She worked at banks, and she has a vast knowledge of business life. Still, she likes puzzle and story-oriented games, like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, which is her favourite title. She also played The Sims 3, but after accidentally killing a whole sim family, swore not to play it again. (For our office address, email and phone number check out our IMPRESSUM)