Valve used to have a forced arbitration clause in its subscriber agreement, but that's no longer the case.The Latest Tech News, Delivered to Your Inbox

Previously, Steam’s user agreement said that “you and Valve agree to resolve all disputes and claims between us in individual binding arbitration” for all disputes related to Steam, your account, hardware, or the company’s content and services. The new agreement eliminates any mention of a binding arbitration policy.

If you booted up Steam in the last 24 hours, then you probably saw the pop up window asking you to agree to a new Steam Subscriber Agreement (SSA). Valve laid out the changes in an official blog post on the Steam Community forum,

Valve has removed the arbitration clause and class action waiver from the Steam Subscriber Agreement, allowing US players to take disputes to court.

If you live outside the United Kingdom or EU, you might've had a pop-up lunge into your Steam game today informing you, helpfully, that updates to the Steam Subscriber Agreement had affected your consumer rights.

Legal experts consider this a win for Steam users, even if most of them will likely never take Valve to court. Consumers are usually required in such agreements to arbitrate and n