Comment on You have one job.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days agoI hear you, but I wouldn’t go that far.
You think Steam is a money printing machine?
MC and Visa are payment processors.
Literally every credit or debit transaction that involves them? Oh yeah, they shave a penny or two or sometimes more off of that transaction.
Thats a fucking money printing machine, they unironically have at least 10,000x more money to throw at lawyers than Valve does.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
It doesn’t matter how many lawyers you have, when Valve is literally simply not in violation of the terms of their contract.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
And it is the legal system that determines whether or not a contract has or has not been breached.
Just like it is also the legal system that determines whether or not a company is a harfmul monopoly.
Your opinion is one I agree with, but that isn’t how things work, therr has to be an official arbiter that agrees with or disagrees with that, and those arbiters are called courts, which are full of lawyers making arguments, and the best lawyers tend to cost the most money.
…
Also… what, is Valve going to sue Visa and MC for… Visa and MC choosing not to do business with them?
There is no legal mechanism that forces Visa and MC to do business with Valve, that punishes Visa and MC should they choose not to.
This is like suing a person at a farmer’s market for not buying an apple.
Or, that is roughly what Visa and MC’s lawyers would argue.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
I don’t think Valve would sue MC. They would just ignore the demands that conflict with their agreement (i.e. removing games that aren’t illegal), and the honus would be on MC to sue Valve.
Which they probably wouldn’t, unless I’m mistaken about the terms of the contract. Which is certainly possible.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Minor nitpick:
It’s just onus, no h. English is inconsistent.
Herb, lol.
But anyway… so, this has yet to go to court.
If Valve just… does their own intepretation, unbans some games, Visa and MC can just say welp you violated the partner rules, no more payments for you.
Now, Valve has to do a prolonged legal battle to prove wrongful termination of contract … while also having their money printing machine offline.
And also, all that would do is possibly award them compensatory damages.
A court cannot compel a business transaction (an ongoing partnership) or partnership anywhere near as much as it can compel people, corporations have more rights than people.
If it could, well then we have turned the economy on its head, now judges run businesses, not CEOs.
Maybe there is some kind of wrongful termination / non renewal of contract clause, but:
1 - I doubt it
2 - Well you’d be having lawyers argue the validity of that anyway.
Valve and MC + Visa both currently do not want to take this to an actual lawsuit because it would be extremely costly in financial / reputational terms for each of them.
Visa and MC and Valve would all massively lose financially if their agreements fell apart, Visa and MC and Valve as well could also suffer massive reputational damage depending on how exactly the public narrative forms around the lawsuit… and lawyers are quite expensive.
That is why we are getting this weird tap unfolding basically PR war, where both sides are angling snd making essentislly veiled threats… but not **actually**seemingnto do much.
This kind of shit happens all the time between corporations, its usually just thst it stays internal to the involved companies, you read about it two decades later in an autobiography named ‘My life as a corporate big shot’ or whatever.