I doubt that this comes from Valve themselves, probably French government using DNS poisoning to inject "messages" into websites as a form of communication, this should be made illegal by the way.
Hold windows key + R, type cmd, then type ping store.steampowered.com, what IP comes up?
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Actually it's the letter of the law. Companies who are punished by law for defrauding their customers have to publish the sentence and the charges to make their customers aware of it. In the case of a website, they have to create a popup or edit the main page to make sure it's visible.
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Well this "banner" looks so unprofessional that I wouldn't be shocked if it was just ISP injecting the message and not giving a damn how it's going to look, just to meet his obligation. On the other hand, knowing Valve, I'm likely to believe that they could do the same...
Still, there are so many better ways they could've done it, including community update in Steam client just for fr users, but whatever.
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Heh yeah the law didn't say to make it look good. If it's ugly people will probably skip it and assume it's a crap ad or something
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Actually, it looks just like press announcement frame, stuff used in the execution of court demands. I wouldn't be surprised if it had standard, law defined look too, as people tried to weasel out of similar orders by using microscopically tiny font or printing in nearly invisible ink. So, this look might be intentional and be a standardized, clear and readable (as opposed to aesthetically pleasing) norm demanded by the state...
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OK, not ISP or government, this comes straight from Valve and is visible only for FR users then, interesting, thanks for letting me know.
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Isn't that weird it's only from France? what about other EU countries?
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The penalty is issued locally by your government, not by european union or any EU legal department, so they have no legal obligation to share this outside of your country where the local law enforces this. At least this is my understanding, I'm not a lawyer. I can however say that nothing like that is displayed here in Poland, so it's unlikely that any other country sees the same same message.
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I thought it was the EU laws at first for international stuff like this.
Maybe other countries will do the same later.
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Only my FR store accounts have this, UK and DE do not, so is not some EU law
ed: I think it's hilarious. maybe they should add france region pricing. add some cents per game for bureaucratic nonsense from DGCCRF
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Couldn't find anything either but it's hardly surprising. They already had to pay several millions a couple of years back in Australia for similar reasons (refused to refund within the lawful retractation period)
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In the Australian users Store page there is a link " IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT CONSUMER RIGHTS IN AUSTRALIA - click here for details "
details
Australian Consumer Rights Notice
On 24 March 2016, the Federal Court of Australia found that Valve Corporation had engaged in misleading conduct contrary to the Australian Consumer Law in representing to Australian consumers via the Steam Subscriber Agreement and Steam Refund Policy that consumers had no entitlement to a refund in any circumstances and that Valve had excluded, restricted or modified statutory guarantees of acceptable quality. A link to the Federal Court judgment appears here:
http://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2016/2016fca0196
When you buy video games from Valve Corporation as a consumer located in Australia, the video games come with guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot be excluded, including a guarantee that the video games are of acceptable quality. You are entitled to a replacement or refund from the retail supplier of the video games for a major failure and for compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. You are also entitled to have the video games repaired or replaced by the retail supplier of the video games if the video games fail to be of acceptable quality and the failure does not amount to a major failure. Certain other rights are available directly against manufacturers that cannot be excluded or limited.
The test for acceptable quality is whether a reasonable consumer, fully aware of the state and condition of the video games, would find them:
safe, durable and free from defects;
acceptable in appearance and finish; and
fit for all the purposes for which video games of that kind are commonly supplied. This must take into account the nature and price of the video games, and any statements on packaging or labelling.
For further information on consumer rights in Australia, visit www.consumerlaw.gov.au and www.accc.gov.au/consumerguarantees.
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It makes sense. After all, refunds are a customer's right in most first world countries.
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No notification from Valve here in the U.S., of course....
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The sentence was only concerning French law so yeah I guess they don't have to publish it everywhere, although I'm pretty sure they are also routinely breaking similar laws in the US
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Except for breaking the law.
Yeah, nothing to see here...
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"I doubt Valve did anything wrong anyway." I doubt they actually broke any laws.
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If you mean Stateside, maybe not, but they certainly broke Australian consumer laws, in addition to doing the same in France, and a number of other places with more robust consumer protection legislation.
They definitely did some "wrong things"!
:)
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Oh, boy, I shudder to think of what will happen if Brazil starts doing this. By law, we have a seven-day period, counting from delivery, to give up on any remote purchase (by phone, online, you name it). I can only imagine people will be arguing that it's not "delivered" until you install it and thus trying to get refunds from games bought literally years prior... It goes without saying that nobody really planned for that sort of business model when drafting our law. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Just the typical bullshit from silly laws out of failed France, it seems..
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Replied to some earlier post;
"ed: I think it's hilarious. maybe they should add france region pricing. add some cents per game for bureaucratic nonsense from DGCCRF"
more applicable here, for sure.
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Would have worked better with "his Mom". Unless she got a kid at 12 who got a kid at 12. But I don't think they do that.
And yes, guys, this is what the other end of having the hots for your teacher looks like... the one you don't see in movies.
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147.000 euros.
valve could pay that with what they make from store/market profits in 20 minutes...
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Yeah I thought It was a joke first, that's why I wanted to know if there was any article or news about it.
Indeed 147k is very very low to have an impact for big companies like Valve.
It's like they want to show they're not happy, but not too much to not get into trouble.
That's kinda ridiculous.
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that amount looks like a joke, considering prices for dota championship this year are between 11 million and 63k 🤦♀️
well, maybe it's easier for them to sue valve rather than submitting a dota team for the tournament 😅
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Googling, it looks like they make $111 USD a second. With a .86E value per dollar, Valve'd need 1,540 seconds (Aprox 25 minutes) to total up the listed amount (31,557,600 seconds per year, 3,500,000,000 estimated annual profits).
Assuming I didn't mess up basic math again, Mully's estimate was fairly on point.
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Well, yeah. Unless publisher increases price, it won't be $1=1€, default rate is about ~0.84€ per $. Rounded to x.x9€.
like $0.99 game will be 0.79€ by default and $59.99 will be 49.99€
Middle-earth: Shadow of War Definite Edition is probably only non Valve AAA to use that tho lol.
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It is because the 2 hours restriction, there should be a warning before any purchase that clearly state the conditions for refunds (aka the 2 hours limit), some kind of pop-up or something like that and customers would have to agree with it and renounce to the usual refund policy from the law.
The problem is the lack of information and agreement during the purchase, leading to people being not fully informed and aware about their rights.
Edit: I forgot to answer your question >_< yes it should be any time during 14 days or what I said above.
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Why would they? It is hidden in some random support articles or at the end of a long support page series. Not everyone reads gaming news, especially years-old gaming news.
Edit: Case in point, a new thread about being surprised with the gifting policy changes just popped up, and that policy changed 17 months ago. Yet people still discover it as something they never knew.
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Knowing or not is not the problem here. It's lawyer stuff. If a company want to put restrictions about the refund policy, they have to do that to be legal. If they don't, It means they're trying to hide it on purpose to fool you. It's only about wording it while you buy something.
Of course we all know about that because we have hundred/thousand games and use steam a lot, but some people don't play very often and buy only couple games per year.
And I think all of this is only a way from the DGCCRF to say to Valve and Ubisoft "be careful we're watching you" without having any impact on them. Because let's be honest, the amount asked is ridiculous for large companies like these, they're making more money within an hour.
Australians had more balls if you ask me.
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I wanted to look for a game and I just saw this message at the top of the steam store
google translate
Anyone has Info about that? I googled it but I can't find anything.
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