Funny thing is I don't support Valve or Tim Sweeney. While by American standards, Valve are angels, that is a very low standard. Sweeney is your stereotypical American corporate degenerate:
But honestly Valve is no better. Europe (and other countries/regions) should either force Valve to have to de facto white label their store for Europe (where they are a junior partner and hold minimal control) or kick them out. And I am not saying there can't be collaboration on common goals; e.g. investing into Linux support and open platforms, but you can't have Americans in charge of major platforms. That ship has sailed.
There are many massive issues with Valve:
- They made a huge contribution to the rise of lootbox gambling schemes
- They initially attempted a fraudulent scheme on local consumer laws on refunds
- For most of Steam's life their TOS had mandatory arbitration requirements which is a local corruption scheme that is not too different from Soviet kangaroo courts. In their defence they did add that "as far as your country’s laws permit".
I will admit that the overall logic of the case doesn't make sense.