Courts rule for Valve over Jamppi as legal battle continues

The ENCE rifler had originally sued a company called Valve GmbH back in February, claiming that a VAC ban on an account that had once been owned by the player shouldn’t prohibit him from participating in Valve’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major tournaments. Valve GmbH is Valve Software’s consumer entity in the European Union and exists as a way for European citizens to interact with Valve in a legal capacity. But thanks to the case’s international nature, it became much more complicated from there.

Unfortunately for Jamppi, Valve GmbH was created a year after Jamppi had sold the account in question. Since Jamppi is now suing Valve as a professional player and not as a consumer according to the EU’s definition, the Finnish courts agreed with Valve’s claim dating back to the summer of 2020 and decided that the player’s lawsuit was against both the wrong company and was filed for the wrong reasons, meaning that the player now has a tough decision to make.

ENCE and Jamppi will be making that tough decision together. The team and its player can either choose to sue Valve on its own home soil in the United States, or give up the case entirely, even though the ruling revealed a small fact in Jamppi’s favor during the proceedings.

Over the course of the legal battle, both Jamppi’s legal counsel and Valve agreed that the player’s VAC-banned account was not under Jamppi’s control when the the ban was delivered. But Valve counts VAC bans on a per-user basis, meaning that even though Jamppi technically didn’t receive the ban, an account with his name on it had. That, ultimately, was what prohibited him from playing in CSGO’s Major tournaments.

Jamppi’s legal team has announced they will appeal the ruling to a higher court.