I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Valve.

Tonight I revoked my Kickstarter pledge to Planetary Annihilation. It was a reluctant and unhappy decision. Had I considered HOW the game would be published and distributed beforehand, I wouldn't have made the pledge at all. What occurred tonight is that I realized this game might only be playable through Valve's Steam system. That ends my support of this game, because I might not even be able to play it or participate in the alpha and beta processes. That inability is because I'm not able to use Steam any more.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that contractual clauses restricting class action litigation were legal. More recently, Valve thought it would be a grand idea to monetize that ruling to reduce their legal defense budget, and modified their Steam contract to include that prohibition. Let me state the obvious that even our own Supreme Court can't seem to grasp: it is the providence of a (hopefully) impartial court of law to decide the worthiness of class action litigation, not a self-interested corporation that fears being a defendant in such lawsuits and thus has a vested interest in denying ALL such lawsuits regardless of actual merit.

I had perhaps a month before created a Steam account and purchased licenses to several games. When the inevitable Steam TOS update arrived and demanded my assent, I refused on principle. As a result, I can no longer play the games I had already licensed through Steam, not even in offline single-player modes. I asked for a refund for those games I can no longer play, and was almost quite literally told to frack off.

Why would I fund another game that will only be usable through an online system that I can no longer use because of an unethical breach of contract? I'm certainly not going to fund and buy another Steam game I can't even play. While I recognize the popularity of Steam and the obvious economic benefit of partnering with Valve, it affects me personally and ethically.

Regretfully, I'm done unless I find out this isn't true.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

Sorry to hear it affected you so directly.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

You know, SMNC has a standalone client.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

You do realize that more times than not, the only winners of class action suits are the lawyers right?
Valve is also offering to pay arbitration costs up to a certain point, a cost that won't have to be paid by the complainant
Then there's the fact that laws at the state level(in the US) and government level(in various countries) could nullify that entire provision, requiring Valve to answer to a class action suit

On top of all that, depending on your complaint, you might not even qualify to participate in a c-a suit


In other words, you're throwing a bitchfit over something that probably will never affect you

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

Op, you will never have a court case against Valve. If you do, it won't be class action. If it is, you will recieve 16 cents as the reward.

If you do think Valve is trying to screw you over, then it is still irrelevent as Uber has nothing that requires Steam to run anymore. They have Ubernet and Standalones to run their games.

I am willing to forget you came off like a nutjob trying to say that Valve and Uber and everyone is trying to take your money, give you nothing, and get away with it legally... if you just quietly change the title and body of the main post to reflect that you are satisfied that you don't require Steam to play any Uber games and that you retract your rant. Then we go our seperate ways.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

PA will be available without Steam.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

I'm pretty sure I read this somewhere in the Kickstarter too, right?


I also don't understand why people get so angry that they can't sue a company that has for many years made PC gaming both more cost effective, entertaining, accessible, and popular than it has been in as long as I can remember. Valve is a private company, it doesn't have investors to satisfy and it's not out to monetize every nook and cranny of the cranny. Hell it's a 2.5 billion dollar company and it has under 300 employees. Valve's not the avatar of perfection or anything, but they've got a lot more to lose than gain by doing things that harm their customer base.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

People who actually pay attention to politics are weird :roll:

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

I didn't know about the platforms that Uber was targeting; the only clue I had was the obvious mention of Steam in the 11th-hour update that spurred my hasty reaction. Given the situation and my views there was good reason I reacted the way I did; I didn't want to risk the deadline passing without an answer and have $100 tossed away on a game I wouldn't be able to play. And I DO REALLY want to play it, if it evolves in the way that I hope - and hope I can help ensure - that it does.

I didn't read the FAQ information... because I couldn't. I couldn't view it in my instance of Firefox. None of KickStarter's in-page bookmarks work in my instance of Firefox, including the ones on the donation page. I've looked them all over belatedly, but I had to open the page in Internet Explorer to be able to do it. It's not Uber's fault.

So no, I didn't see the FAQ details until now. I have reinstated the donation based on the assurance I won't be railroaded into Steam.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

You don't care what anyone else thinks, but proceed to give full explanation of your actions.

This surprises me. I was expecting more of a "Thanks for the info - Kickstarter and Firefox weren't getting along when I checked. I've reinstated my pledge."

Saves you time, saves (though you don't care) me time. Has no stigma.

Hey, everyone goes home happy.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

Hey, I thought it showed balls to admit what happened. Clears things up. 10/10, wouldn't change a word.

I am glad to know what form of miscommunication happened there. Let's all go home as per suggested.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

He was reacting to the harsh words I had for critics, which I removed after he complained.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

I hate the entitled gamer attitude.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

Seriously? That's your interpretation? And this is the public response of a Global Moderator? Not very moderate.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

His response doesn't surprise me. You posted an uninformed rant about a policy change that most likely will never affect you and quite possibly would save you money as Valve would pay the arbitration costs up to a certain point
Would you really want to pay a $100+/hr lawyer to settle a problem over a few hundred dollars worth of games?

And let's not forget that in some states/countries, that provision could be considered null

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

My analysis and rant wasn't uninformed. These contractual changes will adversely affect me and every single American. It may be nickle-and-dime adversity, but that is precisely the game plan in a mass production society. These contractual changes will NOT save me or any other consumer money. The opposite will be true. If corporations save money on "litigation expense", that has nothing to do with production cost or competitive pricing. That is money from gross profits that simply isn't spent and just makes the quarterly earnings that much greater. Further, since *every* corporation in an industry will be enjoying the same savings from the same contractual changes, there will not be a relative competitive advantage to come from increasing capitalization: they will ALL have more money in the bank. You won't see a penny of it in lower prices, as you erroneously presume.

I don't understand how you and others can survive the cognitive dissonance of railing against banks and other evil corporate entities in one breath and in the very next castigate me for trying to stop them from denying citizens access to the one type of lawsuit that can potentially punish them the most severely for unethical behavior... all because you've been programmed by decades of bad-mouthing to hate the lawyers more. Do you really think the solution to excessive litigation fees is to allow corporations, of all entities, to eliminate the lawsuits through which lawyers collect the largest fees? Why then don't we just make all lawsuits illegal? That'll put those ornery lawyers outta business.

That is dangerously illogical reasoning. You're being sympathetic to this explicitly self-serving action from corporations, enabled by ONE ill-conceived Supreme Court ruling, for no defensible reason other than you hate lawyers more than certain corporations. (This from the same Supreme Court that gave us the Citizens United ruling.)

Again... seriously? I don't expect to find every visitor here waving a Mensa card, but this is high school caliber problem analysis. You're being partisan and letting emotions drive your reasoning. Stop it. It's bad for all of us.

And again, none of this shouts "entitled gamer". Ad hominem from a moderator is very bad form.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

Seriously bro, take a chill pill because nobody cares about, agrees with, or even reads these posts. It is something that simply will never apply to me, so I don't care. That's not a crime or unreasonable. And in defense of Polynomial, just because he's a moderator doesn't mean he's no longer allowed to state his opinion. He's a forum janitor, not a spokesperson.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

At first I was going to write a long, thought out response, but then I looked closer at the wording and realized it wasn't worth the hassle

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

It's like he's writing his college thesis only not very well.

Re: I really wish Uber hadn't decided to get in bed with Val

Once he said "evil corporate entities" I stopped reading