Question comes from the potentially massive payout steam will have in the UK. Could they just stop offering services there and not pay the fines? Like if a person from the USA flees to a country that doesn’t allow extradition in order to escape justice.
Theoretically, yes. It happens all the time. X/Twitter did something like this with Brazil a couple years ago.
The two governments would negotiate the grievance. They could also go after other related businesses: When Xitter pulled out of Brazil, Brazil assessed Xitter’s fines against Starlink.
Wild
The short answer is that it depends. Some countries have treaties where civil court judgements (ie money compensation) from overseas are honored domestically, meaning the domestic court would not have to relitigate the facts but would just be to re-issue the local equivalent of an order to pay up.
Seeing as this is a lawsuit in the UK, Valve does not appear to have a dedicated business location in the UK or EU, and that Valve has not already stopped offering services, I would guess that they don’t intend to skip town. The appeals process in British courts is similar to how it is in the USA, so there would be room for any award to be adjusted downward, before being forced to pay it.
Also, to not pay a lawful judgement in one jurisdiction would cause potential issues in other jurisdictions, such as the massive EU market next door. This is precisely because Valve doesn’t operate a subsidiary but is doing business under their USA corporation. So the EU authorities would be within their rights to curtail the same corporation that skipped on a lawsuit in the UK, even when the UK isn’t part of the EU anymore.
Note: some lawsuit judgements are explicitly disallowed from being “repatriated”, such as lawsuits regarding free speech in the USA. Under the SPEECH Act, an overseas judgement for speech that would have been legal if said in the USA. Thus, that judgement cannot be collected on USA territory or against USA bank accounts. It would have to be collected against the person when they’re traveling, or from their non-USA bank accounts.
There is a hague convention for that, but the US hasn’t ratified it. I would guess if there was actually a concern that they would leave the UK, they’d probably settle for a much lower number.
Not so easy. They would have to disappear thoroughly, not take any money anymore from there and have no assets whatsoever left there. And still it works not in all combinations of countries.
