We make such a big deal about conflict of interest for judges and juries, but we allow companies to sell their services as functionally a combined judge and jury in civil matters.

If you or I have a dispute with a company that goes to arbitration, in the vast majority of cases we will never work with that arbitrator, or their company, again. But whoever we're in dispute with hires arbitrators all the time. Do you think they are going to keep hiring a company that rules against them?

Yeah, Valve's statement is almost satirical given that settling in courts is already the default.

Forced arbitration is bullshit and all the big players have been trying to introduce it via updated user agreements in the last few years. It make class action lawsuits a logistical nightmare and drags out the process to be even more uneconomical for individual consumers to sue. It's basically telling the consumer they have every intention of dodging responsibility if their product causes you physical or financial harm.

This inversion is both good and kinda funny

Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. A biased judge is bad, but most arbitration is worse, and is designed explicitly to screw you over.