The more I hear about the process of the Steam arbitration (or would-be arbitration, since they only intend to request arbitration if gamers are not fairly recouped from buying games at a loss from Steam), the more I’m liking the fact it’s happening. Steam should never have been allowed to buy out their only competition, which they did in 2004, to follow that up telling game manufacturers that they couldn’t list their games anywhere else for more affordable prices if they wanted to retain the ability to list them on Steam. And although I continue to have problems with them for a number of reasons, ones that I would like to see rectified by them at some point, this isn’t a bad first step. The next thing I’d like to do is see improvements made to their API for the sake of added security, and depending on what they do with this, changes to their TOS to reflect that.

https://www.steamclaims.com/

If you haven’t read about that, I highly suggest doing so. For the one or two people who aren’t already at least somewhat aware, litigation has commenced because it appears that Steam is and has been in violation of antitrust laws, not allowing game manufacturers to sell their games cheaper than the required asking price for them on Steam. It was determined that all of this had to be settled through arbitration rather than class action suit and encompasses the last four calendar years of any Steam game purchases you might have made. Seeing as how I’ve bought Bub alone as many games as I have on Steam (and the Steam Deck!), I’ve signed up to receive settlement should it be determined that Steam has indeed violated antitrust laws and is to be held accountable. I have problems with Steam that I’ve had for awhile, but their monopoly on PC games has made it impossible to avoid them or to avoid transacting with them when they are literally the only vendor selling the majority of computer games. The security of their API also leaves a lot as a whole to be desired, and it’s something that they have shown no interest in fixing, so any win is a win nonetheless.

You can also get up to three times awarded in damages, and most lawyers taking these claims on will only take a percentage if successful (and given the sheer number of people requesting services, I support this).