Valve sued for $25.5 million?

[Varsity]

Suspend your disbelief and read on:
GameSHOUT.com, Red Planet, LLC is filing a lawsuit against Valve Software, LLC for 25.5 million plus compensation. Since early this year, Valve Software, LLC changed their Steam billing to "STEAM GAMES WWWSTEAM 425 07/27STEAM GAM" making it appear as though it's from GameSHOUT.com's www.SteamGames.com.

Valve Software changed this billing description after they wanted to purchase www.SteamGames.com for $8. GameSHOUT.com declined. Records and statements from various Steam purchases do show that they did mislead consumers to www.SteamGames.com for technical advice/solutions and questions regarding billing. "Our staff went from 10 to 40 because of this problem" says Andy Hodges, Executive Producer for GameSHOUT Radio. Our SteamGames.com domain was never meant to support Valve Software's problem or technical advice, or billing questions.

...

The Lawsuit against Valve Softare, LLC is underway.(link no longer avaliable)

Is this bizarre scenario real? Hodges, or at least his account, is active on the GameShout forums and claiming it is.

UPDATE: A forum post has claimed that an agreement has been reached.

This whole thing is a mess. Why is the site under question so crap? Is it a twisted publicity stunt? Was his website hacked? Why are threads about it being deleted from the Steam forums? What the hell is going on?

[bandersnatch]

GameShout link doesn't work for me. Just puts me back to their main page.

[UnderHero5]

People will sue over anything. I hope they get counter-sued for wasting Valves time and they go out of business and the owners house burns down.

Edit: I hope I don't get sued for saying that.

[bandersnatch]

Actually, no need to worry. They've just settled.

http://www.gameshout.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36582



UPDATE! We have struck a deal to sell the www.SteamGames.com domain to Valve Software.
This whole thing is now settled.

[Zombosis]

That was fast. My guess would be that the claim was more than valid; why else would Valve be so hasty in settling?

[bandersnatch]

That was fast. My guess would be that the claim was more than valid; why else would Valve be so hasty in settling?

Probably felt it was bad PR for them. This wasn't a class-action lawsuit -- so if Valve really wanted to fight it, they would have just delayed the discovery part of the trial (the fact finding part) till his bank account was drained and he would have folded.

[EvilBob46]

For the slow folks among us, can someone translate what exactly happened here?

[H.M._Murdock]

They would not have much of a case since Valve actually owns the rights to the name Steam and since that SteamGames.com was admittedly named after Valve’s Steam. I bet Valve could have taken them to court and gotten the domain if they really wanted to.

I think I will go register BudweiserBeer.com and AOLdialup.com because I have some people to sue or at least get a settlement out of.

[hund_]

They would not have much of a case since Valve actually owns the rights to the name Steam.
actually they dont

http://www.steam.com/

[H.M._Murdock]

actually they dont

http://www.steam.com/
That site has nothing to do with videogames.

[Draft]

Why is this so hard to believe?

[bean19]

Pure conjecture, but I'm a paralegal. . .

My guess is that Valve offered a small settlement for a tiny fraction of the named damages and the threat of a countersuit. Gameshout's attorney's advised their clients to cut and run.

Without doing research, I can't tell you if having a billing name that is close to another site's name like "steam games" could indicate intent on misleading customers to an unaffiliated site. Since this would be a very bad business move (to send your customer base to a site unable and inappropriate for billing concerns), it is unlikely that this was Valve's intent. The fact that Valve offered to buy the url from them is the only thing I can see that would possibly give their case merit.

On the other hand, we also do not know the sequence of events. If Steam EVER used "Steam Games" in the past. . . which is likely given their longevity, then they could argue that they hold trademark or that, at the very least, their intent was not to missend customer support traffic. Valve could have a good chance of winnign a countersuit stating that www.steamgames.com intentionally named themselves after their business in order to bring a frivilous lawsuit upon them. . . What would happen if someone had jumped on "Crispy Cremes" right after it was successful and then filed against that company for "misdirecting traffic".

If I were on the plaintiff's side. . . given the little information we have, I'd be very afraid of having my client go bankrupt from a countersuit as I think that winning is all but certain, and I'd advise him to jump at any offer. Additionally, if I represented Valve, I wouldn't want to go to court and/or have to pay to change my billing practices, so I'd offer a reasonable but small settlement with a notice of intent to file countersuit.

Either they were pretty amateur about this from the beginning or the release was a ploy to force Valve to up their bid.

Anyway, I don't really know enough to be saying any of this. I'm taking quite a few logical jumps based off small tidbits of information.

[bandersnatch]

Either they were pretty amateur about this from the beginning or the release was a ploy to force Valve to up their bid.



That sounds about right to me.

[bean19]

Btw, let me reitterate that I could be completely wrong. Intellecutal Property law is all case law and I haven't read up on it EVER. I've studied it in school, but particulary in something as new as the internet, I cannot speak as an authority. Additionally, I've only read the plaintiff's news release.

So take my first post for what it is. . . wool-gathering, gossip, and conjecture.

[bandersnatch]

Btw, let me reitterate that I could be completely wrong. Intellecutal Property law is all case law and I haven't read up on it EVER. I've studied it in school, but particulary in something as new as the internet, I cannot speak as an authority. Additionally, I've only read the plaintiff's news release.

So take my first post for what it is. . . wool-gathering, gossip, and conjecture.

What do you think about my post regarding the whole discovery phase if Valve really wanted to fight?

[Royal Fool]

Valve would have easily won a countersuit against those idiots. The whole SteamGames.com site is designed to mimic the style of Steampowered.com and the Steam application itself, not to mention that it only covers games available on the Steam service.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

[Morrolan]

What a wierd situation. Are they claiming that it cost them 25.5 million dollars to not help people with their problems? Putting up a disclaimer on their main page, and ignoring help requests is all it would have taken. Unless they're claiming that they got 25.5 million dollars' worth of bandwidth used... heh...

[bean19]

bandersnatch - Prolonging a law suit costs both parties money. My guess is that they settled for LESS than the cost of prolonging a lawsuit. Whether or not they would have attempted this strategy is unknown. . . if you can bring a case to a law firm that has a potential payoff of 25.5 million, then there is a strong likelihood that the law firm would shoulder all costs and even take a loss (no direct attorney's fees to the plaintiff) if they lost by entering into a contingency fee plan with the plaintiff.

Btw, I'm sure I am being very boring now. . . but I hope that answers your question.

[bean19]

What a wierd situation. Are they claiming that it cost them 25.5 million dollars to not help people with their problems? Putting up a disclaimer on their main page, and ignoring help requests is all it would have taken. Unless they're claiming that they got 25.5 million dollars' worth of bandwidth used... heh...


Most of that is probably punitive damages. . . They'd have to argue malicious intent though.

The idea of punitive damages is to make corporations pay for their mistakes with enough money that they will work to not repeat them. For instance, some asbestos manufacturers held to a policy of paying off lawsuits when their employees became sick because the production and sell of asbestos was profitable enough that they still made money. It prevents companies from budgeting for the loss of human life or other such evil corporate wrongdoing.

However, it also explodes every lawsuit against a corporation that is frivolous into something ridiculous. Yes, Owens Corning needs to be punished into paying $10 million on top of the pain and suffering and medical expenses of one of their employees dying of mesothelioma (a particular nasty disease akin to cancer that disables someone slowly as their flesh literally decays). Yes, McDonalds should pay $10 million if they make their coffee dangerously hot and it leads to burns (so that they will change their policy that was evidently very popular or they wouldn't have done it). And NO, Valve shouldn't pay $24 million for naming their billing site with THEIR long established name and an appropriate descripter for their type of product when it is also the name of a fan site. . . They COULD be held liable though if they did so maliciously (with intent to cause damage) or with negligence. However, if I'd represented Valve, I'd have gone in saying things like "Pizza Hut Pizza", "Starbuck's Coffee", and "Steam Games". . . I don't think they could have EVER pulled off punitive damages based on the few facts available.

[bandersnatch]

bandersnatch - Prolonging a law suit costs both parties money. My guess is that they settled for LESS than the cost of prolonging a lawsuit. Whether or not they would have attempted this strategy is unknown. . . if you can bring a case to a law firm that has a potential payoff of 25.5 million, then there is a strong likelihood that the law firm would shoulder all costs and even take a loss (no direct attorney's fees to the plaintiff) if they lost by entering into a contingency fee plan with the plaintiff.

Btw, I'm sure I am being very boring now. . . but I hope that answers your question.

Not boring, I eat up the little details like that. Thanks for taking the time. :D

[Spigot]

This is just an aside, but I've notices a fascinating trend. For those of us who really are into games and follow the news on sites like this, it seems almost impossible to not come away with at least a rudimentary understanding of business cycles, IP law and so forth, just from the shenanigans that go on at the corporate level of the publishers and developers.

Not to say anything about the social engineering attempts by the politicians and wacko lawyers.

If I had only a passing fancy towards games, I'd never know half of the stuff I know about how the machine behind them works.

I guess it's like your nutty sports fan knowing all of the ins and outs of how deals are done and so forth. Games are my sports, I guess.

Just figured I'd toss in that observation given the posts about litigation and so forth in this thread.

And you're talking to a Biology/English major who really cannot stand business types. All those numbers are creepy :) Yet here I am, explaining to my friends about the reasons why certain games won't come out until the next quarter, why certain companies are being sued, etc. AAAH!

[Kefkataran]

So you say this guy quit PHL in a "storm of indignation". I didn't catch that scandal. Indignation over what? And if he's such an HL fan, what exactly is he doing suing Valve? I'm confused.

[51|RandoM]

So you say this guy quit PHL in a "storm of indignation". I didn't catch that scandal. Indignation over what? And if he's such an HL fan, what exactly is he doing suing Valve? I'm confused.

hell hath no fury like a fanboy scorned.

[Last of the Red Hot Mamas]

I'm pretty sure Andy Hodges was never the webmaster of Planet Half-Life; I think Varsity is getting Hodges mixed up with Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen, who was PHL's Site Director before leaving in April 2004, accusing Valve of lying about the delay and generally disrespecting "the community." A Google search turns up nothing indicating that Hodges was ever PHL's webmaster.

[Draft]

I remember when Fragmaster left. That was some funny shit.

[happycat]

Andy Hodges is just a bitter attention whore trying to squeeze some more money out of Valve, first he squats on their domain, and now tries to sue, and don't get me started on the unecessary drama he started when he left PHL.

[Cuba]

It sounds like GameShout just wanted to drive up the price Valve were willing to pay for the domain. No mention of how much it cost them, but I bet it was more than $8.

[Varsity]

I'm pretty sure Andy Hodges was never the webmaster of Planet Half-Life; I think Varsity is getting Hodges mixed up with Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen, who was PHL's Site Director before leaving in April 2004, accusing Valve of lying about the delay and generally disrespecting "the community." A Google search turns up nothing indicating that Hodges was ever PHL's webmaster.
I think I am. Could have sworn it was Hodges. I got the author wrong too: It's someone called David Hodgson. :o There was definitely some sort of link though.

Does anyone know what the 'Steam billing' actually is? The name that appears on your CC bill?

[bKangy]

It's bullshit. The guy who runs the site hasn't prowess or intelligence to do this. I really think that this is made up to give his ailing site a bit of coverage. I saw this pretty early on too, so I actually went through the steps he claimed linked to his site:

Steamgames.com appeared nowhere.

[Zeal]

This guy is a fucking idiot. If I were Valve, I would counter sue him just for trying a stunt like this.