[RD] Games as a Service

[Takhisis]

Steam refunds are an obvious example of Valve's motivations. It took YEARS for them to start offering refunds, a basic service for ANY store, and that was only because of legal and political pressure from more consumer-friendly countries (i.e. NOT the US). There would still be no refunds without that.

I think that a big part of the consumer abuses perpetrated by Steam (and smaller distribution companies too) is that they are allowed to do so by the US government which is a relic of the Gilded age and specifically set up to protect the ruler from the ruled instead of the other way around, and that they then impose their business model onto the rest of the world. Facebook got stopped with (some of) their manipulation of data only by European courts, but nobody's taking the giant head-on.