In the gaming industry, only a few companies are seen as being the ‘good guys’. Most distributers and publisher have become quite the rage inducing entities that, even though we continue to buy from, often make us curse and vow to never return. Yet, a few white knights in shining armour exist, at least in the minds of most gamers. Valve is one such company. Steam has wiggled its way into the hearts of many of us, in times so far, that even reasonable criticism of the company is met with a shitstorm coming from all sides and directions. For many, Valve is what keeps the PC game market from collapsing.

Indeed, Valve has done a lot of good things for the PC gaming market; yet, they too have done some more ‘interesting’ things in the past. Somehow, probably because most gamers have so much good will when it comes to this company, they always got away with it. While EA gets beleaguered all the time, Valve simply sneaks through the siege lines.

However, those times might be over. While Valve was able to sneak past the snoring piquet’s of the world’s PC gamer army, they had no such luck with the captious guard of the Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (VZBV) e.V. – or simply the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. It seems that German competence and the unscrupulous insistence that everything should run in an orderly and correct fashion could very much give Valve some trouble. As well as that, we Germans are probably the only ones that would dare to anger the PC gaming community – just think about it, we’ve been the bad guys and scapegoats for all the world’s problems since the beginning of the last century. That’s not going to end soon, so we might as well use and build upon that reputation for all its worth. Come at us, bro’s.

So what is this actually about? Well, Valve has until October 10th – oh, we Germans love deadlines – to explain to the VZBV why it has modified its end-user license agreement back in August to something that the Organization perceives as ‘unfair’ and a ‘coercion’ to consumers. As well as that, the VZBV wants Valve to abide the new EU court turnings regarding the resale of digital goods.

All of this will make for some interesting days until the 10th of October. Valve has been given the extended deadline (Sept 26th was the previous set – never say Germans aren’t merciful) and it is now up to them if they choose to change their system to allow digital redistribution, a feature also looked at by competitors such as Ubisoft and EA, or risk a duelling session at court. The VZBV is known to be a worthy adversary on the judicial battlefield, so it’ll be interesting how things unfold.

Do you have an opinion on the current state of affairs? Feel free to comment below.