Bucher Law Secures Victory for Steam Users, Defeating Valve Corp.’s Attempt to Shut Down Thousands of Consumer Arbitrations

May 27, 2026 — Bucher Law PLLC has secured a victory for thousands of Steam users in their antitrust fight against Valve Corporation. Judge Whitehead rejected Valve’s attempt to shut down thousands of legal cases brought by Steam users. .  

The ruling in Valve Corporation v. Abbruzzese et al., Case No. 2:24-cv-1717-JNW (W.D. Wash. May 27, 2026), is a rejection of Valve’s strategy of rewriting its own contract mid-litigation to escape accountability. The Court sided with Bucher Law PLLC’s clients holding that Valve cannot bully their customers out of their legal right to seek compensation when wronged.    

Background 

Bucher Law has been litigating against Valve on behalf of individual Steam users since 2023 to hold Valve responsible for unlawfully inflating the prices consumers pay for games on the Steam platform. After Valve used its contract to compel consumers to arbitration, the firm filed thousands of individual arbitration demands before the American Arbitration Association (AAA) to help consumers win back the money they were overcharged.  

Valve’s response was maximum obstruction, refusing to cover AAA filing fees, attempting to dismiss the cases, and repeatedly manufacturing excuses to stop the process. Most of these efforts failed. Then in September 2024, while those arbitrations were underway, Valve reversed course to avoid justice. Bucher Law PLLC and Judge Whitehead didn’t let them. 

The Court’s Ruling 

The PC Gamers and Bucher Law PLLC convinced the court that the PC Gamers could continue pursuing compensation in arbitration. The court found Valve’s new agreement unconscionable and unenforceable. Bucher Law PLLC argued that Valve’s clients had no real choice but to accept the new terms, and that the new terms only benefited Valve. The court agreed, reasoning that:  

• Valve's contract left no opportunity for consumer negotiation. 

• Rejecting the new agreement meant consumers had to give up their entire purchased Steam game library, worth an average of more than $3,000. 

• Valve pushed the new agreement directly to consumers in active arbitrations, deliberately bypassing their attorneys, a "poor (if not unethical) practice” that multiple courts have refused to approve. 

The Court also found the clause unconscionable for additional reasons: 

“Applied to Defendants, it terminates arbitrations they had already filed, unwinds the work and expense those proceedings demanded, and—for those nearest a final award or with an award in hand—threatens the awards themselves. Only one side loses anything of value in the trade. Defendants surrender a forum they invoked, paid counsel to use, and in some instances litigated to the brink of judgment or past it. Valve is relieved of the cost of defending arbitrations whose fees it had agreed to bear.”  

The Court saw through Valve’s argument that eliminating arbitration was a “gift” to consumers because it “restored” class action rights. The Court rejected the false choice—either and only class actions or arbitrations—and held “a party cannot strip a right, compel its adversaries to proceed without it, and then claim credit for handing it back on the condition that they abandon what they have already built.” Meaning, you cannot take away someone’s rights, force them to fight without those rights, and then call it a gift when you hand them back.  

Asked at oral argument what would stop Valve from amending the SSA again, cycling back and forth between arbitration and court depending on which forum was treating it better, Valve’s counsel offered no answer. The Court was unsparing: “A rule that lets the party holding the pen move the forum back and forth, according to which forum has treated it better lately, is not mutual consent —it is the drafter’s prerogative dressed up as agreement.” 

What This Means 

Thousands of arbitration demands remain pending before the AAA. Today’s ruling clears the way for those proceedings to continue. Bucher Law PLLC will keep fighting on behalf of its clients to hold Valve accountable for its anticompetitive conduct.