What if we turn it on it’s other side and say: In the interest of its customers, Valve prohibits publishers from selling for a higher price on Steam than somewhere else.
That would be corporate speak.
Amazon does that. You can’t sell your product cheaper than you do on Amazon.
I want to make something clear about the Valve Anti-trust lawsuit currently making its way through the court system.
This case is predicted on the idea that Valve’s “Price Parity Clause” in its contracts with Game Devs is anti-consumer and anti-competitive.
The original lawsuit filed by Wolfire before this became a class action Anti-trust lawsuit is available online and it alleges a couple of things.
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Steam is two separate services that are lumped together in an effort to maintain its market share.
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It uses this market share to enforce a Most Favored Nation Clause.
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The Price Parity Clause does not only apply to Steam Keys but to all e-shop sales outside the Steam store.
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The Price Parity Clause is actually a Most Favored Nation Clause, aka a Price Veto Provision.
The reason that people are claiming this is about Steam Keys is because the original lawsuit filed by Wolfire says that it is. This is what most of the articles that are actually written about this exempt from their writeup and since they don’t provide source documentation (from the filing), they lack this context.
The lawsuit is literally about whether or not Valve applies and enforces their Price Parity Clause to not just Steam Keys but also to non-steam storefronts that do not at all use Steam Keys.
If you are arguing that this isn’t about Steam Keys, your information is inaccurate and based not on the court filing but on articles that exclude information from the court filing.
If you’re saying it’s solely about Steam Keys your information is contextually right to some small degree but just as incomplete and therefore just as incorrect.
Because of the nature of the claims in the Wolfire lawsuit (some of which are actually demonstrably false), it does not lend creedence to the other claims being made by Wolfire (on which the class action is relying).
One of the most notable discrepancies between what Wolfie claim and what is legally proven to be true thus far is that Steam does not make a 30% commission on Steam Keys. In point of fact, Valve do not claim any percentage of sales figures from Steam Keys at all. Only sales made directly on the steam e-shop are charged the 30% fee.
The second major one is that the clause in their contract with Steam on which this is predicated is specifically about Steam Key availability and use.
So far as I can tell, there is not a difference in these particular parts of the lawsuit between the class action and the original lawsuit that was dismissed in 2021. So Wolfire’s original lawsuit and the Class Action still state that Valve does these things and this lawsuit is as much about Steam Keys as it is about Price Parity/Most Favored Nation type market tactics and clauses.
I believe they have not changed this wording because they cannot remove their Steam Key argument from the lawsuit because without it they do not have a written Steam Policy on which to rely.
So far as I can tell Wolfire and the Class Action claim that the Most Favored Nation Clause is only spoken of in person and is not part of the official contract they signed or any such contract that Valve offers for Steam services. It is unclear if this is their own claim or something they point to as being true based on alleged Microsoft Employee statement.
If I come across more information on this I will try to post it, but I might not remember.
I do wish we could stop posting articles with sensationalized claims and horribly clickbait titles that don’t actually providing even a link back to the sources of their information and claims.
I believe there is a separate lawsuit happening in Europe and I haven’t delved into that one to this degree.
There’s also a separate lawsuit alleging price fixing between Microsoft and Valve. I have not looked into that one at all though I did come across it in my rabbit hole dive.
If anyone can direct me to a non-account required court filing for the two video game developers that sued Valve I would like to see them. So far it looks like the court filings were originally separate but have been combined into a single court filing and that court filing doesn’t use the same language as Dark Catt’s singular filing did.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754.1.0_1.pdf
https://lawfold.com/valve-lawsuit/
https://www.classaction.org/media/wolfire-games-llc-et-al-v-valve-corporation.pdf
https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/14/sweeney-vs-steam-cut-epic-tirade-gaben-emails-revealed
https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/revealed-tim-sweeneys-epic-rant-to
https://aftermath.site/gamers-sue-microsoft-valve-steam-antitrust-lawsuit/
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.300801/gov.uscourts.wawd.300801.1.0.pdf
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/it/ip_21_170
The reason that people are claiming this is about Steam Keys is because the original lawsuit filed by Wolfire says that it is.
If you go through the comments in this very same thread, you’ll see that most people didn’t even read the article. I highly doubt that they read through court filings instead.
One of the most notable discrepancies between what Wolfie claim and what is legally proven to be true thus far is that Steam does not make a 30% commission on Steam Keys. In point of fact, Valve do not claim any percentage of sales figures from Steam Keys at all. Only sales made directly on the steam e-shop are charged the 30% fee.
That’s not what the filing says.
What it says is that, since Valve doesn’t allow publishers to sell a meaningful amount of Steam Keys, and these Keys cannot be sold at a discount, it creates a situation where consumers, not publishers, are screwed by higher prices. This is very explicitly stated under point 12:
Even if a rival game store were to charge game publishers a lower commission than Valve’s high 30% fee, the distributor would not gain more sales because the game publishers could not charge a lower price in its store.
Whether bypassing the Steam tax is fair to Valve or not, is a completely different topic.
I do wish we could stop posting articles with sensationalized claims and horribly clickbait titles that don’t actually providing even a link back to the sources of their information and claims.
The Bloomberg article is right there: https://archive.ph/YvHxF
And tells a more thorough story.
From the filing:
Of those sales, approximately 75% flow through the online storefront of a single company, Valve. Valve’s online game store, the “Steam Store,” dominates the distribution of PC games. And Valve uses that dominance to take an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its store—30%. This 30% commission yields Valve over $6 billion dollars in annual revenue. For everyone else, it yields higher prices and less innovation. 3. Valve is able to extract such high fees because it actively suppresses competition to protect its market dominance. Many other game stores have tried to charge lower fees, in the range of 10-15%, but they have all failed to achieve significant market share. This is because Valve abuses its market power to ensure game publishers have no choice but to sell most of their games through the Steam Store, where they are subject to Valve’s 30% toll. Steam Key Price Parity Provision. Valve nominally allows game publishers to make some limited third-party sales of Steam-enabled games through its “Steam Keys” program. Steam Keys are alphanumeric codes that can be submitted to the Steam Gaming Platform by gamers to access a digital copy of the purchased game within the Steam Gaming Platform, even when the game is not purchased through the Steam Store. Steam Keys can be sold by rival distributors including the Humble Store, Amazon, GameStop, and Green Man Gaming.
11. But Valve has rigged the Steam Keys program so that it serves as a tool to maintain Valve’s dominance. Among other things, Valve imposes a price parity rule (the “Steam Key Price Parity Provision”) on anyone wanting to sell Steam Keys through an alternative distributor. Put explicitly by Valve, “We want to avoid a situation where customers get a worse offer on the Steam store.”3 But that is equivalent to preventing gamers from obtaining a better offer from a competing distributor. The effect of this rule is to stifle price competition. 12. Because of this rule, Valve can stop competing game stores from offering consumers a lower price on Steam-enabled games in order to shift volume from the Steam Store to their storefronts. Even if a rival game store were to charge game publishers a lower commission than Valve’s high 30% fee, the distributor would not gain more sales because the game publishers could not charge a lower price in its store. Game publishers and consumers suffer because this rule keeps Valve’s high 30% commission from being subject to competitive pressure. The bolded section in particular makes it sound like Valve is forcing developers to pay 30% commission on Steam Keys sold on rivals shops when in fact it supposedly alleges (when you read the whole thing) that Valve is using its Price Parity Rule (which makes it so steam keys have to be the same price as their equivalent steam e-shop price) coupled with its popularity to force other shops that sell non-steam keys at lesser commission rates to fall inline, or alternatively that the game devs must offer their games for the same price as on Steam’s e-shop even when using Keys provided by another supplier.It doesn’t explain (and I’m fairly sure that’s on purpose) that this means that those same devs would charge the same amount on each shop regardless of who supplies the digital keys, and make more money on those other sites which benefits themselves.
- This Price Parity Provision is one of the reasons why Valve has been able to continue to charge an inflated 30% commission for many years, even as that commission is plainly above the levels that would prevail in a competitive market. Competition would normally force such an inflated commission to come down to competitive levels—but Valve’s restraints prevent those competitive forces from operating as they would in a free market.
- Because of Valve’s restraint, publishers cannot utilize alternative distributors to avoid the 30% tax that Valve has set for the market. Thus, they reluctantly market their games primarily through the dominant Steam Store where Valve takes its 30% fee. While several distributors have tried to compete with Valve by charging lower commissions on Steam Keys, those efforts have largely failed to make a dent in the Steam Store’s market share because publishers using those distributors had to charge the same inflated prices they set on the Steam Store.
Price Veto Provision. Valve also requires game publishers to agree to give Valve veto power over their pricing in the Steam Store and across the market generally (the “Price Veto Provision”). Valve selectively enforces this provision to review pricing by game publishers on PC Desktop Games that have nothing to do with the Steam Gaming Platform at all. Through this conduct, prices set in the Steam Store serve as a benchmark that leads to inflated prices for virtually all PC Desktop Games.
- As explained by the founder and CEO of Epic Games (“Epic”), one company that has tried to compete against Valve, “Steam has veto power over prices, so if a multi-store developer wishes to sell their game for a lower price on the Epic Games store than Steam, then: 1.) Valve can simply say ‘no.’”4 Valve makes every game publisher accessing the Steam Gaming Platform agree to this Price Veto Provision.
- Valve uses this provision to further enforce price parity and prevent rival game distributors from gaining volume by competing on price.5 And by inhibiting rival distributors from competing on price—even when selling games that have nothing to do with the Steam Gaming Platform—Valve inhibits potential competition against the Steam Gaming Platform as well, because rival gaming platforms cannot encourage usage by connecting to lower-priced distributors. Valve therefore protects its monopoly position in both of the relevant markets—the markets for PC Desktop Game Distribution and PC Desktop Gaming Platforms—through this provision.
It doesn’t explicitly say that Valve make a commission on Steam Keys but lots of people seem to be of the belief that they do based on statements by Wolfire including in the filing. I would argue that they heavily imply this by leaving that context out of the filing entirely which is why half the comments in this thread have wrong information about it.
Specifically because part of the filing states that Steam is charging excessive commissions, which is something that is also stated in the Bloomberg article.
The fact that Steam Keys don’t have a commission is integral to the reason why a developer might want to distribute them for a lower price on other retail sites.
However, I believe you are correct that this is not something specifically worded into the legal filing. The wording might lead people to believe this without specifically saying it.
As for the Bloomberg article. I have problems with it. The first of which is that it’s paywalled which adds a barrier to entry and is one of the reasons it’s not listed with everything else in my original comment.
The second problem is it specifically asserts that Gabe Newell spent an unknown morning in November of 2023 in a meeting talking to lawyers. Who’s lawyers? Is this where he asserted that Valve and Steam don’t have a policy or dictating prices for other platforms? Or was that a statement made in the court room during deposition as it states later in the same paragraph? Are these two things which appear in the same first paragraph related? If so how? It doesn’t really go into anything else he said to these lawyers or anything else said by these lawyers. What is the specific framing of the questions put to him? It claims that he was then presented with written communication of Valve employees that they do in fact have such a policy. But it fails to quote those emails or link to them. Then it switches tac entirely going on about Valve’s consumer fan base and how that fanbase view him. That’s directly geared to make people think a specific way about the situation instead of simply providing facts. It goes on in that same paragraph to talk about allegations from WB and Ubisoft and their emails but doesn’t directly link to or quote those either.
It goes on about the number of developers who believe Steam is a monopoly but can’t be bothered to list the reasons they gave for such a stance.
I cannot tell you how much I do not care how many hours of DOTA 2 Gaben has. I do not care what their employee handbook has to say about taking advantage of company perks. I do not care about his yacht(s).
Critics argue that its freewheeling culture masks abusive business practices that make the gaming market worse for developers and consumers. The US lawsuit Newell was deposed in, which has been certified as a class action, alleges that it “is not economically feasible” for game makers to leave Steam in favor of a rival store and that they are effectively “forced to comply” with Valve’s rules and high fees.
What is the culture and how does it mask the abusive practices? There’s so much more in this article but you have to slog through it to find nuggets of substance.
Additionally it has a lot of random paragraphs of arguably superfluous information comparing it to other companies,
and makes claims but can’t be bothered to reportedly documented which ones are privileged court information or link to the court filings or to anything of substance including pointing people to Valve’s own website where they explain the Steam Key program. If people want more context or information about what is going on they can’t rely on that article either. It doesn’t even actually quote the court filing at all that I can see. I take significant issue with that. But in any case I’m not here to argue the validity of any of the claims made in the filing, in the Bloomberg article or in the IGN/eurogamer article copypasta. Mostly I’m here to provide links to the most credible information I can. Some of the links are just biased in their own right but they do provide links to their sources which I believe is extremely helpful. @mabeledo@lemmy.world
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I like Valve as a company, but this is exactly what antitrust laws are for. I hope the due course of justice is followed and the appropriate consequences result if any impropriety is found.
This is the sanest take in the entire thread.
can’t be doing that steam.
stopping people from undercutting you by selling steam key cheaper elsewhere and avoiding steams cut, sure.
mandating price parity in other situations, no bueno. gonna lose this one probably
Valve allegedly threatened to delist all editions of Rainbow Six Siege after Ubisoft offered a cheaper option on its Uplay store.
Similar tactics to Amazon
tell them to make it playable on linux so i can care more
The suit, which is ongoing, centers on what the developers alleged was a tacit company policy designed to punish them for offering discounts at competing online stores. But instead of defending the purported rule, Newell just denied it existed. “Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms,” he said, according to a previously unreported transcript of his deposition. Presented with internal communications in which Valve employees appeared to be enforcing the rule, Newell repeated his denial, at times verbatim, again and again. When an attorney pressed him on how Valve would react if a developer did charge less money for a game on a competing store, Newell demurred. “I’m confused by your question,” he said, before later adding, “Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we’re providing.”
from the bloomberg article.
maybe that explains why epic started peeling some quality games at half price yesterday until the 11th.
Why is Anno 2070 still not on GOG?
Requires UbiSoft DRM and TAGES bullshit dependign in the platform. GOG is strictly no-DRM.
Bloomberg cites two high-profile cases referenced in the ongoing lawsuit, one involving Ubisoft, and another Warner Bros.
First of all, I trust Ubi and WB way less than valve.
Valve allegedly threatened to delist all editions of Rainbow Six Siege after Ubisoft offered a cheaper option on its Uplay store.
Yeah.
Because it violates their policy. That’s not a “threat”, those are the terms of the contract Ubi and WB agreed to. Terms that everyone has to follow.
Heck, Ubi and WB should be hit with a counter suit for trying to leverage their market position to exert control over valve and getting unusually favorable terms.
Clown suit. Ubi and WB are mad they can’t break their contract with valve in a one sided way.
edit: I forgot some context:
The deal between valve and a publisher or dev is: they can sell on steam and elsewhere if steam is at least tied in price, or cheaper, but when they sell somewhere else, that includes the steam key and access to steam and steam’s distribution at no cost.
What the devs and publishers wanted to do was leverage other features of steam and the steam ecosystem, while undercutting steam’s price.
They are always free to just not sell on steam for a cheaper price. That’s not what this is about.
edit2:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
“Steam Key Rules and Guidelines”
Amazon got slapped with a substantial fine (in the EU) for having basically the same “rule” in their contracts, that forbid cheaper listings elsewhere. So yes, in the EU hanging that rule is illegal. But if it applies to digital licensing is another matter.
You do know you’re only renting access to the game with a one-time fee, not buying it, right?
Edit: the original comment left it unclear if the price rule only applies to copies sold that include a steam key, or if copies that work completely without steam can be arbitrarily priced. If the latter is the case, it’s obviously fine. If it includes any game version, it isn’t OK.
Edit: the original comment left it unclear if the price rule only applies to copies sold that include a steam key, or if copies that work completely without steam can be arbitrarily priced. If the latter is the case, it’s obviously fine. If it includes any game version, it isn’t OK.
Ok. The rule is, actually let me link it…
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
“Steam Key Rules and Guidelines”
“You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam.** It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”**
Just read that paragraph. It should be pretty clear what the whole thing is about.
But it says nothing in your link about selling games that work without steam key on another platform?
I do not see where steam keys are mentioned in the article? Why do you care so much about steam keys if that’s completely irrelevant in this case?
“It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”
That’s a very fair way of phrasing it and should make sense to anyone saying “but what if they want to sell it cheaper elsewhere?” Seems most people don’t even understand the actual issue, they just are butthurt over headlines
That is another situation
Amazon is a seller. Steam is (aside from selling) a service provider with their workshop, forum, etc
While it would be way better if those were all in a different tier for devs, so for example they can select to get less of a share for those features, what they are basically doing is sidestepping a provider
Or in the case of photography:
You go to a Photo shop and lend their camera equipment and services for free, but they take a 20% cut for every copy of that picture sold.
If you buy a picture, you can download it indefinitely and get some services like changing the color grading on the website. The photo shop hosts the picture for free and only makes a profit through selling licenses. The owner also has an option to get infinite licenses for these services for free.
What youre allowed to do is host the picture on your own, pay your own cloud provider, and sell the picture that way.
What youre not allowed to do is generate infinite licenses for free and sell them without ever paying the photo shop for their services, while still using them.
Calling Amazon just a “seller” is an understatement. It’s like saying that the Google Play store is just an hosting platform. Amazon provides ad and marketing services, hosting, support, and more importantly, logistics.
Games sold outside of Steam have no access to Steam features, in the same sense that products sold outside of Amazon aren’t promoted and delivered by Amazon.
Amazon provides ad and marketing services, hosting, support, and more importantly, logistics.
Yes, but if its not sold on Amazon, they don’t do these logistics.
Games sold outside of Steam have no access to Steam features
And steam allows that too. Their only problem is with distributing the steam keys yourself for less.
The act of reading is something only the fewest people can do, apparently
Yes, but if its not sold on Amazon, they don’t do these logistics.
Right, exactly like Steam.
Their only problem is with distributing the steam keys yourself for less.
The act of reading is something only the fewest people can do, apparently
Perhaps you should read the Bloomberg article first: https://archive.ph/YvHxF
OK, I know English is hard, but you should at least know what alleged means.
This article describes allegedly that that is happening. The same way I can say that alledegly my guinea pig has just started to talk to me in perfect English. It means literally nothing until either lawsuit no. 4 suddenly finds this to be true (yes, there have been at least 2 before, all of them dismissed afaik) or out of nothing you find some clause saying this is true
Either that or Mii Mii lends you their hard drive.
Your asserted that
Their only problem is with distributing the steam keys yourself for less.
Which is not true.
From the Bloomberg article:
Emails indicate Valve employees once threatened to delist all editions of Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege “by end of day tomorrow” after they learned the publisher was marketing a separate $15 “starter pack” exclusively on its in-house Uplay store. In 2017, Kassidy Gerber, who works in business development at Valve, wrote to Warner Bros. executives that preorders for its new Middle-earth: Shadow of War game had been deleted from Steam because the price was “significantly higher than what was available at other retailers for the same version of the game.”
From the lawsuit itself, point 16:
Valve also requires game publishers to agree to give Valve veto power over their pricing in the Steam Store and across the market generally (the “Price Veto Provision”). Valve selectively enforces this provision to review pricing by game publishers on PC Desktop Games that have nothing to do with the Steam Gaming Platform at all. Through this conduct, prices set in the Steam Store serve as a benchmark that leads to inflated prices for virtually all PC Desktop Games.
English is hard, amirite?
This article describes allegedly that that is happening.
Of course these are “claims”. That point is made in the Eurogamer article, and the Bloomberg one, and the lawsuit. If your point is that whatever journalists write should be summarily dismissed unless there’s a final and binding judgement from a court of law, I don’t know what to tell you other than that is not how journalism works.
The service part only applies to copies sold that include steam keys and therefore use the steam-API related things (workshop, cloud saves). I haven’t read about this specific case in detail, but as long as that use of steam for copies sold is part of what they wanted to leverage but essentially not pay for, that’s obviously bull.
This honestly is somewhat unexpected and I had to re-read the comment I replied to to understand it correctly, hence my misunderstanding of that aspect. It’s unexpected cause ubisoft in particular for the longest time had their own “store” and games required at least their own launcher. I haven’t played Ubisoft games in at least a decade, so I don’t know/remember if the games reuired your own ubi-account, or if the games relied on Steams systems (workshop/cloud saves/…). I would’ve assumed no, and that they only use it as a downloader cause players essentially wouldn’t buy it outside of steam (or at least not enough).
Top be clear: if steam allows copies of a game listed on steam to be sold at an arbitrary price as long as that doesn’t include a steam key, this is perfectly fine. Actively thinking about it now I would assume it does, as I’m pretty sure I bought games without steam keys for less than the listing on steam was.
Definitely not a forgotten detail. There is clearly a campaign against valve brewing for reasons that are less clear.
Valve allegedly threatened to delist all editions of Rainbow Six Siege after Ubisoft offered a cheaper option on its Uplay store.
Yeah.
Because it violates their policy. That’s not a “threat”, those are the terms of the contract Ubi and WB agreed to. Terms that everyone has to follow.
I do like Valve more than most companies, but this is absolutely monopolistic behavior.
I do think the R6 Siege situation is a bit different, to my knowledge it was about Ubisoft adding a new cheaper “Starter Pack” option that lets you access a multiplayer-first game on different terms. It seems scummy to give users playing the same game on the same servers different terms on different storefronts.
The amount of people in this thread that are arguing that steam is fully within the right here due to the fact that they have a restriction on steam key pricing blows my mind.
for example with the UbiSoft case, It’s clear they have never actually opened or used Uplay because if they had they would realize that Uplay does not use Steam keys period at all. They are their own distribution platform that distributes off of uplay servers.
The entire point of the lawsuits is going one step further, which is that despite steam having a policy that says it’s for keys only, they unilaterally enforce it on all platforms regardless of the usage of the keys.
Now whether that’s actually true or not is what the lawsuits have to determine. But that is what the claim is. Personally I’m leaning towards it’s true because I’ve seen some screenshots posted about customer service saying that’s how it worked and threatening to delist steam games for cheaper first party distribution pricing elsewhere.
I’ll be curious where these cases go.
Such a weird stream of comments to be read on Lemmy.
Regardless of what you folks think about Valve, does anyone believe that a marketplace should have this kind of leverage over their suppliers? For instance, should Amazon be permitted to force manufacturers to set the price of a product outside of their marketplace? Should Apple be allowed to force app developers to price match the Google store?
Amazon literally does this if you sell on their platform as the manufacturer or just at all. My source: Hi, that’s me, and I can confirm this is standard practice at Amazon and I’m the manufacturer of my own product.
Hell, Reggie from Nintendo of old just stated that the entire reason Nintendo was not on Amazon for like 3 years because Amazon asked Nintendo to basically burn bridges with alllllll of their other suppliers, just like what you mentioned.
And in my opinion it should be illegal. What do you think?
Genuinely why? Why do you think you have the right to any specific marketplace?
Do you really think that Amazon should be allowed to set prices outside their marketplace? That’s wild.
For the same thing sold on their marketplace, yes. Literally you are voluntarily agreeing to use a private marketplace, you should agree to all their rules or just stop using that marketplace.
Amazon isn’t a public service. They aren’t a Farmer’s market run by the city. They aren’t a sidewalk. If you would like a public version of Amazon that doesn’t have those restrictions and would be cheaper for literally everyone, advocate for that. But until a public alternative exists then yes, Amazon can and should impose whatever rules it wants. Alternatives will appear if it becomes too restrictive and the platform will die.
That’s insanity. Under those terms, most suppliers would be at the whims of platform owners.
Microsoft asking Valve for a 50% cut? Sure. Google delisting a website because the owner criticized their CEO? Absolutely. Amazon telling you to sell at a loss or not sell at all? Why not.
That’s insanity. Under those terms, most suppliers would be at the whims of platform owners.
Congrats, you found one of the many problems with the concept of capitalism.
Microsoft asking Valve for a 50% cut? Sure. Google delisting a website because the owner criticized their CEO? Absolutely. Amazon telling you to sell at a loss or not sell at all? Why not.
Yes. That is how all that works. Because they are all private companies and it is voluntary to use their services.
If you think those services should be neutral, congrats, you’re advocating for communism. I think communism is pretty cool and there should be a state-run online marketplace that is entirely non-profit. But you seem to think you should or could force companies to be that public entity. That’s not only not realistic and not how the world has ever worked under capitalism, but it’s just simply a bad idea. Look at the USPS for why you should not have a private entity perform a public service.
Absolutely, stop using Amazon. Except what’s the alternative? They’ve wedged themselves in that space, and bought out any other competitor. So either they get forced to compete with themselves (by breaking the company apart) or they adhere to anti-monopoly laws where they’re not allowed to influence other prices as part of their agreement.
Except what’s the alternative? They’ve wedged themselves in that space, and bought out any other competitor.
Aliexpress, walmart.com, ebay.com, wayfair.com, any manufacturer’s website. Or the actual global leader in the space, Alibaba which dwarfs Amazon’s entire marketplace with over twice the users and easily a thousand times the suppliers.
So either they get forced to compete with themselves (by breaking the company apart) or they adhere to anti-monopoly laws where they’re not allowed to influence other prices as part of their agreement.
Or, if people think private companies should be neutral, like a public service… PEOPLE SHOULD FUCKING ADVOCATE AND ORDER THEIR GOVERNMENTS TO PROVIDE A PUBLIC SERVICE.
It is infinitely easier and better to get the government to do things for you than it is to force a private company to do things for you.
No company should have that kind of market leverage, no. The issue though is saying this makes them a monopoly. It’s shit behavior but then if that ability makes a company a monopoly, we should be busting down a lot of company doors that do/did the same thing. Looking at Wal-Mart, nearly every major ISP in the USA, there’s a lot of that going on.
Yes, let’s do that too.
They aren’t “forcing” anyone to do anything. All they are saying is saying that you can’t sell on our store if you sell cheaper elsewhere.
They aren’t even saying that. They’re saying, you can’t sell steam platform keys outside of steam for cheaper than you would on steam. Because a steam key provides all of the services and quality of life of buying a game in the steam store (downloads, cloud saves, workshop, multiplayer, etc.). If you sell keys outside of steam for a consumer to use on steam, steam still has to treat that consumer like everyone who bought the game on the marketplace. Also, when you sell a steam key, valve doesn’t take the usual 30% cut of the sale. In fact they take no cut of the sale and STILL provide distribution and services for that sale.
That’s not what the article says. It’s about UPlay keys sold by Ubisoft through UPlay that have nothing to do with Steam, and Valve threatening to remove a game from Steam unless the UPlay keys sold through UPlay became the same price as the Steam keys sold through Steam.
The version of Rainbow 6 Siege on the Ubisoft store says its version is PC(digital), Steam.
Whether or not that’s true at the moment (obviously, the status quo has changed because in 2020 UPlay changed to Ubisoft Connect, so the alleged incident happened years ago, and it’s alleged that Ubisoft were forced to stop selling something, so they wouldn’t still be selling it), the article specifically says:
Uplay featured a $15 USD Rainbow Six Siege Starter Pack, but this version was not available on Steam, making the cheapest option on Valve’s platform much more expensive.
The obvious way of parsing that is that it was the UPlay version of the game, but even if not, it’s generally not viable to sell Steam keys for things not available on Steam. The only time you can is when a game’s delisted but you’ve already generated keys for it, and then Valve can just wait for Ubisoft to run out rather than making the alleged threat.
Obligatory big if true
This is what they allegedly do coming out of this article. Until court resolves the problem, it is only a speculation. Ubisoft and WB have bad reputation in gaming and gamedev circles compared to Valve, so I would take their word with a grain of salt.
They aren’t “forcing” anyone to do anything.
Then you say:
All they are saying is saying that you can’t sell on our store if you sell cheaper elsewhere.
Steam is the dominant player in PC gaming, by a large margin. Not being in Steam is like not being on the Internet.
How is this not “forcing” someone to do something?
FYI: Eurogamer is owned by IGN who is owned by Ziff Davis.
IGN has been known to write hit pieces against competition for Ziff Davis and their partners.
Article comes from Bloomberg.
it’s wild how those letters spell “Bloomberg” and not “Eurogamer”. how does that work?
It’s wild that you didn’t even bother to read the article.
those are emails, you said the article. there’s a huge difference there.
further, why wouldn’t valve attempt to stop developers like Ubisoft from undercutting the products they sell. If Ubisoft doesn’t like it, they can just not sell their products on steam.
exclusivity of products isn’t abnormal to commerce. you didn’t complain when Death Stranding was exclusive to PlayStation. you didn’t complain when Super Mario was exclusive to Nintendo. you didn’t complain when Bigmacs were exclusive to McDonald’s.
so why complain now?
those are emails, you said the article. there’s a huge difference there.
You cannot be this obtuse. The emails are mentioned in the Bloomberg article. Eurogamer is just publishing a summary.
further, why wouldn’t valve attempt to stop developers like Ubisoft from undercutting the products they sell. If Ubisoft doesn’t like it, they can just not sell their products on steam.
What you are saying is that Valve should have the authority to set prices for products they don’t make. That’s insanity.
you clearly are attempting to set a narrative.
enjoy the blocklist, you’re among your peers.
Do you add anyone who corrects you to your blacklist?
Must be a pretty long one.
What? I made a purchase from Epic instead of Steam since they didn’t make the MENA currency change and as a result many older games are significantly cheaper on Epic in my country.
For example Celeste’s base price on Epic is 66 cents in my country with no discount (currently on %75 discount) versus 10 USD with no sale and 2.5 USD currently on Steam.
Celeste is based
You know, this reminds me of a little story. There was a small family owned supermarket. They wanted to expand. What better way to do that than offer better prices than your competitors? And what better way to prevent competitors than opening up that store in a small city. So, that’s what they did. The government let them. And then that store drove local business out. That allowed them to raise prices and continue that business model until they were the largest employer in America.
This seems to me, that Ubisoft wants to play, but has nothing unique to offer other than their games. The store front is terrible. There’s no community. And there’s always issues when I’m trying to play with friends. Never any issues on Steam. I don’t know y’all, this just seems stupid. I hate Ubisoft though.
Everyone involved is a multibillion dollar company lol.
Only one is consistently defended. Reverse the roles, would anyone be defending Ubisoft?
No, because ubisoft is a shit company with a shit product.
Ahhh so it’s because one is a billion dollar company you like and therefore, can do no wrong and must be defended at each point.
Every billionaire is living off stolen wealth except Gaben because he has a nice product that I like.
You know when everyone was simping for Elon before he went mask off, that’s what the Gaben fan squad sounds like.
Threatening and forcing price parity because you own the largest market share isn’t acceptable no matter who does it and to whom.
Every store has price parity to some extent. Every store you will ever sell a product in has a non-compete agreement built into your contract. Not only is this not controversial there’s no actual reason it should be.
It is common sense that you, as a product producer, shouldn’t intentionally sabotage someone you’re selling your product to. It doesn’t matter who you’re selling your product to. It is optional to sell your product to a third-party intermediary in the modern era.
This isn’t defense of gaben or whatever weird fucking fantasy you people have come up with, this is just how private trade works.
If you have a problem with this, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE CONCEPT OF PRIVATE SERVICES AND CAPITALISM.
Leave the billion dollar company that adds real value to our lives alone and go attack the multitude of effective monopolies that exploit us as much as possible.
Yeah I hope Valve loses this in favor of developers and consumers. If another platform asks for a smaller share devs should be allowed to set a lower price.
Let’s go on a hypothetical trip. Say valve loses this, and as a result they stop providing free steam keys to publishers, so that you can now only buy on steam. Obviously this is the absolute worst thing they could do.
Everyone loses, every key shop is dead. Say goodbye to humble, greenmangaming, fanatical and so on.
Giving “if we tax billionaires they will leave!” vibes.
what?
