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Valve Corporation v. Activision Blizzard
In April 2009, Valve sued Activision Blizzard, which acquired Sierra Entertainment after a merger with its parent company, Vivendi Universal Games. Activision had allegedly refused to honor the Valve v. Vivendi arbitration agreement. Activision had only paid Valve $1,967,796 of the $2,391,932 award, refusing to pay the remaining $424,136 claiming it had overpaid that sum in the past years.[30][31]
Blizzard Entertainment v. Valve Corporation
Shortly after Valve filed its trademark for “Dota” to secure the franchising rights for Dota 2, DotA-Allstars, LLC, run by former contributors to the game’s predecessor, Defense of the Ancients, filed an opposing trademark in August 2010.[32] DotA-Allstars, LLC was sold to Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of DotA’s platform Warcraft III and its world editor, in 2011. After the opposition was overruled in Valve’s favor, Blizzard itself filed an opposition against Valve in November 2011, citing their license agreement with developers, as well as their ownership of DotA-Allstars, LLC.[33] On May 11, 2012, Blizzard and Valve announced that the dispute had been settled. Valve retained the rights to the term “Dota” commercially, while Blizzard reserved the right for fans to use the trademark non-commercially, and changed the name of their StarCraft II map, Blizzard DOTA, to“Blizzard All-Stars”.[34] Blizzard All-Stars was adapted into a standalone game and renamed “Heroes of the Storm” on October 17, 2013.[35]
ACCC v. Valve Corporation
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced it was taking action against Valve in 2014. On March 29, 2016 Valve was found guilty of breaching Australian consumer because:[36][37]
- consumers were not entitled to a refund for digitally downloaded games purchased from Valve via the Steam website or Steam Client (in any circumstances);
- Valve had excluded statutory guarantees and/or warranties that goods would be of acceptable quality; and
- Valve had restricted or modified statutory guarantees and/or warranties of acceptable quality.
A hearing is scheduled for October 5, 2016 to decide on action.
UFC Que Choisir v. Valve Corporation
Consumer rights group UFC Que Choisir, based in France, filed a lawsuit against Valve in December 2015, claiming users should be able to resell their software.[38][39]
A.M. v. Valve Corporation
A former employee filed a $3.1 million lawsuit in May 2016 alleging mistreatment after sex reassignment surgery, and exploiting workers.[40][41]
Skins gambling
Valve was named in a defendant in two lawsuits in June and July 2016 related to third-party gambling sites that use the Steamworks API to allow betting with the virtual currency of cosmetic weapon “skins” from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which through these sites can be converted from or to real-world money. Both suits assert Valve aiding in underaged gambling.[42] Valve subsequently stated it has no commercial ties with these sites, and that it would demand these sites cease their use of the Steamworks API as they violate the authorized use policies.[43][44] In October 2016, the Washington State Gambling Commission required Valve to stop the use of virtual skins for gambling on Steam, stating they would face legal repercussions if they failed to cooperate.[45]
Games
Cancelled games
Incomplete games include a fairy RPG,[46] Prospero[47] and Stars of Blood.[48][49]
Valve worked with Arkane Studios on The Crossing, which was canceled in May 2009. Arkane later tried to produce Return to Ravenholm (a.k.a. Half-Life 2: Episode Four) without consensus by Valve, which was then also canceled.[50][51][52]
Valve announced its games platform Steam in 2002. At the time it looked merely to be a method of streamlining the patch process common in online video games, but was later revealed as a replacement for much of the framework of the World Opponent Networkservice and also as a distribution and digital rights management system for entire games.
By July 2014, there are over 3,400 games available on Steam, and the platform had surpassed 75 million active user accounts by January 2014.[53] On August 1, 2012, Valve announced revisions to the Steam Subscriber Agreement (SSA) to prohibit class action lawsuits by users against the service provider.[citation needed]
Alongside these changes to the SSA, the company also declared publicly the incorporation of Valve S.a.r.l., a subsidiary based inLuxembourg.[54][55] Valve set up a physical office in Luxembourg Kirchberg, according to Valve’s project manager Mike Dunkle, the location was chosen for eCommerce capabilities and infrastructure, talent acquisition, tax advantages and its central geographic locations – most major partners are accessible with 50% within driving distance.[56]
Valve S.a.r.l is used to sell games to United Kingdom–based users to avoid paying the full 20% VAT.[57] The tax loophole was expected to be closed on January 1, 2015.[58] In December 2015, the French consumer group UFC Que Choisir initiated a lawsuit against Valve for several of their Steam policies that conflict or run afoul of French law. One of the reasons was for using the tax loophole.[59]
Steam Machine
Newell has been critical of the direction that Microsoft has taken with the Windows operating system in making it a closed architecture similar to Apple’s products, and has stated that he believes that with changes made in Windows 8 are “a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space”.[60] Newell identified the open-source Linux platform as an ideal platform for Steam, noting that the only thing holding back its adoption is the lack of games.[60]
In 2012, Valve announced that they were working on a console/PC hybrid for the living room which was unofficially dubbed by media as the “Steam Box”.[61][62] A precursor to such a unit is SteamOS, a freely available Linux-based operating system that builds upon the Steam client functionality that includes media services, live streaming across home networks, game sharing within families, and parental controls. SteamOS was officially announced in September 2013 as the first of several announcements related to the Steam Machine platform[63] as well as their unique game controller.[3] In May 2014, Valve announced that the company’s own SteamOS-powered Steam Machine would be delayed until 2015 due to problems with the game controller.[64]
Pipeline
In July 2013, Valve officially announced Pipeline, an intern project consisting of ten high school students working together to learn how to create video game content.[65] Pipeline serves a dual purpose:
- to discuss and answer questions that teenagers often ask about the video game industry[66]
- to see if it is possible to train a group of teenagers with minimal work experience to work for a company like Valve[66]
The latter purpose breaks Valve’s tradition of employing experienced developers, as the company is not very good at “teaching people straight out of school”.[66][6]
J. J. Abrams collaboration
At the 2013 D.I.C.E. Summit, Gabe Newell confirmed that he and director J. J. Abrams were collaborating to produce a Half-Life or Portal film, as well as a possible new game.[67]
HTC Vive
In March 2015, Valve and Taiwanese electronics company HTC announced a joint project to develop the Vive, a virtual reality headset with motion tracked controllers.[68] The companies are working with Google, Lions Gate, and HBO to develop content for the device.[69]
Organizational structure
Valve is run as a flat organization without bosses, and uses open allocation (employees can move between teams at will).[6][70][71] Economist Yanis Varoufakis, a former economic consultant for Valve, and former Finance Minister of Greece, attempted to place Valve’s organization in the context of theories of the firm and broader economic thinking.[72][73][74]Former employee Jeri Ellsworth has, however, criticized the structure as “a lot like high school”, where while the structure is flat, certain people within the company nevertheless have more say in decisions than others.[75]
“Valve Time”
“Valve Time” is an industry term used jokingly with game releases from Valve, used to acknowledge the difference between the “promised” date for released content stated by Valve and to the “actual” release date; “Valve Time” includes predominant delays but also includes some content that was released earlier than expected. Valve itself has fully acknowledged the term, including tracking known discrepancies between ideal and actual releases on their public development wiki[76] and using it in announcements about such delays.[77][78] Valve ascribes delays to their mentality of team-driven initiatives over corporate deadlines to make sure they provide a high-quality product to their customers.[79]
Valve’s former business development chief Jason Holtman stated that the company sees themselves as an “oddity” in an industry that looks towards punctual delivery of products; instead, Valve “[tries] as hard as we can to make the best thing possible in the right time frame and get people content they want to consume. And if that takes longer, that’s fine”.[80] For that, Valve takes the concept of “Valve Time” as a compliment, and that “having customers consistently looking at our property or something you’ve done and saying, can you give me more” is evidence that they are making the right decisions with their game releases, according to Holtman.[80] The company does try to avoid unintentional delays of their projects,[81] and believes that the earlier occurrences of “Valve Time” delays, primarily from Half-Life development, has helped them improve their release schedules.[79]
PowerPlay
PowerPlay was a technological initiative headed by Valve and Cisco Systems to decrease the latency for online computer games.[82] Gabe Newell, the managing director of Valve, announced the project in January 2000 and after 12 months the project was quietly abandoned.
PowerPlay was described as a set of protocols and deployment standards at the router level to improve performance. It was claimed that a player with 1000 ms ping was able to play against another player on a LAN connection with no noticeable disadvantage.[83] Initially the protocol was to be released with PowerPlay 1.0 focusing on Quality of Service(QoS) and later a revision, PowerPlay 2.0 that would focus on functionality. Cisco and Valve intended to deliver a single dial-up service in Q1 2000 in the United States with a 30-day free trial with a bundled copy of Team Fortress modified to support PowerPlay.[84] Despite never deploying the dial-up plan featuring PowerPlay 1.0, Valve announced in January 2001 that the standard had indeed been finalized.[83]
The standard was to involve purchasing PowerPlay approved Cisco hardware and infrastructure that had adequate bandwidth and QoS standards that prioritize PowerPlay gaming packets at the expense of all others. Gabe Newell conceded that Internet service providers (ISPs) would bear the brunt of this expense: “The ISPs are going to need to spend a fair amount of money to be compliant with PowerPlay. But how they get that back is up to them. Some will have a tiered service, and some will just try to recoup their investment through reduced customer churn and customer acquisition
