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
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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.
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.
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
Thread number 768 wherin Lemmy users pretend not to know what a monopoly is cause they love Steam so much.
Why is Anno 2070 still not on GOG?
Cookiewalled article. Pay with your data or pay with money.
remind me again how Gaben is a GoOd BiLlIoNaIrE?
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.
I love valve as much as the next PC gamer, but I agree their rules should not affect what publishers do entirely on other platforms.
They aren’t. If Ubisoft wants to release a game on their own platform steam can do nothing about it.
Did you even read the article? That is exactly what the to lawsuit is about?? Do you have any insider knowledge or why are you starting this as fact???
No, Ubisoft tried to offer a partial game for free, distributed via Steam, but sold paid full access for cheap on Uplay. Basically, a “purchase full access to this Steam game on our storefront so we don’t have to pay the fee we’d normally pay to get Steam to distribute the game for us”.
It’s like if I download an app from Google Play Store, and then go to that apps first party website, and pay for your subscription to the app service there , in order to bypass the Google Play Store transaction and thus the developer fee.
I’m trying to figure out why I’m okay with circumventing this to amazon, apple, and every other publicly traded company offering a platform or marketplace, but feel that my favorite privately owned and operated platform should get a pass and be able to restrict the off network transactions.
Steam can delist all of Ubisoft’s games from their storefront in retaliation to what Ubisoft does on their own independent store
Sure, and ubisoft can decide to not sell their property on steam at all, that mechanic goes both ways.
I forgot the issue at hand while writing that, oh bother
ubisoft can decide to not sell their property on steam at all
they used to have that policy
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ubisoft-explains-why-it-doesnt-release-games-on-st/1100-6469502/
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/ubisoft-comes-crawlin-back-to-steam/
Yes
there’s more to it than that.
Yeah but it’s fairly simple.
You can generate Steam keys using the Steam developer tools. This allows a game key to be purchased on any storefront that supports selling them, which can then be activated on Steam.
The main requirement? You can’t price those steam keys on a 3rd party store cheaper than on Steam itself.
For that, it means if the 3rd party store takes a smaller cut than Steam itself would take, the developer makes a bit more profit through almost no additional effort. Steam is the system users use to download and update the game, and cloud save syncing, and community guides, forums, workshop, etc.
The developer is, afaik, more than welcome to also sell a UPlay key if they partner with Ubisoft at any price point they want (regardless of the Steam price) because Ubisoft is the taking on the burden of distribution, etc.
The only price requirement Valve imposes is on selling Steam keys on 3rd party storefronts. Not UPlay keys. Not Xbox keys. Not Epic Store keys.
Edit: and I read the article, while albeit short (can’t access the linked Bloomberg article sadly), they claim exactly that, that the version on UPlay was significantly cheaper than the version on Steam for essentially the same game. Valve was arguing that Rainbow Six Siege needs to change their pricing on UPlay or they would be delisted.
Yes it’s a very short article and apparently you completely hallucinated a paragraph where it’s about steam keys?
I do not see any mention of steam keys in the article. They wanted to sell a version that wasn’t even on steam. Only on Uplay. This has nothing to do with steam keys. And valve was still complaining.
So yeah. It’s fairly simple and you still got it wrong.
Try reading the actual lawsuit. The article is absurdly misleading. It is actually about steam keys.
You should probably read the lawsuit instead of an article before you act so sure on this lmao
The crux of the case is whether Valve is applying that rule to non-Steam keys or not. Lawsuit says they are, Valve says they aren’t. If Valve is telling the truth, they’ve done nothing wrong. If Valve is lying however that is an anticompetitive practice that should be punished. We won’t really know until the trial concludes though.
Personally I think the most likely answer is that some junior support people at Valve misunderstood the policy and told some people the wrong thing. There’s a decent chance that when those accusations first surfaced a decade or so ago (yes this has been a thing for that long) Valve probably sent some internal memos to clarify what the rule actually covers and what it doesn’t and hopefully that was that.
Valve probably sent some internal memos to clarify what the rule actually covers and what it doesn’t and hopefully that was that.
Speaking from my company experiences as an employee:
If it’s not written in a clear language (e.g. ONLY keys generated and distributed by Valve need to follow the same price on other storefronts. We do not care about 3rd Party key generator/distributors like uPlays own infra) and somewhere accessible it will be forgotten or misinterpreted by employees.
I can’t even count the amount of “With this email we inform you of policy X and order Y”.
This email will be lost and new employees will never receive it.
And employees will repeat the rules in a flawed way.
This isn’t about steam keys, it’s about Valve throwing their weight around.
Valve was arguing that Rainbow Six Siege needs to change their pricing on UPlay or they would be delisted.
It’s the equivalent of Amazon telling a manufacturer that they can’t sell their product at a lower price on their own website if they want to sell it on Amazon.
None of this should be defended.
No, it would be like Amazon saying that a manufacturer cannot use Amazon to ship goods sold on their own website if they’re going to sell at a lower price. That is reasonable. Steam keys are a means of distribution. If steam is going to provide the file transfer, cloud saves, multiplayer server hosting, community page, and workshop page for your game, then don’t sell your steam keys for less than the game on steam.
If you want to sell a key for epic for less than you list the game on steam, they do not stop you from doing so.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT STEAM KEYS
Read the article, jfc
Not really no. Ubisoft agreed to these terms in order to sell their game on steam. If they sold their game on any third party platform, they would agree to the same or even more severe terms. They even made their own storefront specifically so they would have the option to not sell on a third party platform.
They now cry foul because they got all the benefits from selling on steam, but they don’t want to pay for any of those benefits.
Yeah it’s particularly weird in this case because Ubisoft and Valve both have publisher, developer, and distributor departments within each company. So the agreements they signed and put into place are probably somewhat complex.
Looking at the Steam page though it says
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
So in this case it’s whatever Ubisoft as a publisher signed / agreed to with Valve when they accepted their distribution terms. These are probably not the same boiler plate terms an indie dev would sign if self publishing.
that’s some fucked up logic.
steam is simply saying, “if you want to sell your product through us you must not sell it elsewhere for cheaper”. don’t like it? don’t sell your product on steam. simple as that.
valve has a fiscal responsibility to ensure that developers aren’t siphoning customers away from the platform and requiring equal pricing for the same product across all platforms ensures a level playing field for both devs and resellers.
ask yourself, why would Ubisoft sell a game on steam for $60 and then attempt to sell the same game on their platform for $40? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not out of the goodness of their heart.
Valve takes 30% of all sales. What’s 30% of $60?
That’s why Ubisoft could sell their games for 30% cheaper on their own platform - they make the same amount of money as selling for $60 on Steam.
That’s why Ubisoft could sell their games for 30% cheaper on their own platform
good for them. they can fuck off and sell their shit on their platform exclusively.
that 30% that valve takes? that’s the cost of business working with valve. that’s the fee to have access to their delivery platform, their inventory control system, their large consumer base.
it melts my brain to attempt to comprehend how anyone can complain that a company is literally charging for their services AND have TOS to back it up.
Oh, that’s easy: valve takes a cut on their platform. So Ubisoft can sell it lower on their platform because they do not have to pay valve.
A fiscal responsibility to who?
- their employees
- the developers that use the platform to sell products
- the customers that use the platform to buy products
Valve has a fiscal responsibility to maintain solvency. if they allow their competition to undercut them while at the same time abuse the system to sell products at a higher price, they risk opening a rift for consumers to flood to a cheaper platform and thus weakening their solvency and profitability.
if their competition wants to sell from their own platform at a cheaper rate, they need to make their products exclusive to their own platform.
this is marketing 101.
tired of people claiming Valve has a monopoly when it’s very clear that this is manufactured because competition is unable or unwilling to develop a better solution than Valve. that’s not monopolistic, that’s just business.
Nobody said Netflix had a monopoly when they put blockbuster out of business. nobody claimed monopoly when Walmart put your local grocery chains out of business. nobody claimed monopoly when Nintendo put atari and Sega out of business. know why? because a monopoly requires exclusive rights to sell a commodity or service. can you buy games outside of Steam? YES! then it’s not a monopoly.
antitrust my ass. Google had an antitrust suit. why? because the OS they maintained locked down app access to only their delivery platform. THAT’S a monopoly.
Not that I disagree with the point you are making, but yes, I distinctly remember people complaining about monopolistic practices for each example you gave XD
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”
First of all, I trust Ubi and WB way less than valve.
You shouldn’t trust any of them. No billionaire has your best interests at heart. Even Gabe.
That is true, definitely a “lesser evil” situation.
Username checks out
Go to sleep
And in this specific situation, it’s valve doing the evil.
How?
Raising the price of video games artificially by abusing their market position to force other storefronts to also raise their prices… Like the suit you didn’t read says.
in what world demanding price parity equals raising the price of video games artificially?
stop acting like prices going down wasnt a play that long term wouldnt result in fucking consumers, stupid to trust ubi
how long has epic games been running on negative profits?
walmart was cheaper than local grocery stores once too
supporting a false race to the bottom is some silly shit
I’m inclined a little to agree with you, but it’s not like he made his money because Gabe refused to be run by anyone. He pays his employees really well. My dad’s friend still is working at Valve after going there 20 some odd years ago. He rakes in money like no ones business. But they are all benefitting from the work they have done.
Secondly, nobody knows how charitable he is in his private life. The fact that he’s so private about it, inclines me to believe he’s probably a decent guy, who just doesn’t like the spotlight. He may be a billionaire, but how many billionaires have their employees love them like at Valve?
Lastly, most of his money is tied up in shares of the company, as he is 50%+ owner. He may use that to leverage cash loans, but he’s also just smart. He doesn’t really do that all that much, except when he’s buying his research yachts. And those shares are only accessible by the workers, as it’s a private company. Why? Because the money belongs to the laborers who produce the goods.
Now, I’m willing to change my view if there’s ever a situation in which Gabe Newall is intentionally trying to avoid paying taxes, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Bezos, Musk, Gates, Trump, Zuckerburg, Page, Brin, Ellison, Dell, Huang, the Waltons, Blomberg, Thiel. There’s so many worse people out there. I do agree wealth is bad, but what the aforementioned are doing is significantly worse.
Now, I’m willing to change my view if there’s ever a situation in which Gabe Newall is intentionally trying to avoid paying taxes, but that hasn’t happened yet.
What about exploiting child gambling? Valve’s value, and thusly Gabe’s value, skyrocketed after introducing lootboxes to TF2, CSGO, DOTA2, etc. He can be as charitable as he fucking wants, but he still defends lootboxes while taking little to no efforts to ensure that children aren’t gambling on his platform. He’s had… how many years to fix this problem now? Too many. He’s not fixed the problem, and continues to reap the rewards in the meantime.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s just as much of a piece of shit as any other billionaire. The only difference is that he makes toys that a lot of us really, really like; toys that we apparently like so much so that we’re willing to handwave child gambling as long as it doesn’t get in the way of making it moderately convenient to download DRM-infested games.
Mate, I did not know parents were not responsible for their own children. That is on me. I’m glad to hear all the work I’ve done on my network and computers to make them safe for my children was a moot point.
Adults like gambling. It’s not Valve’s fault that children are using it cause their parents are ignorant of their own child.
As far as the DRM stuff goes, that’s all based on the publisher. And it’s not that difficult to bypass. Valve has shown time and time again, that they are a business for their customers. Their customers like a solid platform that works and is easy to use and has a community.
Let’s take a look a Linux real quick. If it wasn’t for Valve, Linux gaming wouldn’t be what it is today. They did that and gave it to the community. I’m sorry other platforms can’t be bothered to put in that kind of effort. If you wanna play with the big dogs, you gotta get off the porch. And Ubisoft wants to take the easy way out through a lawsuit. They need to do better with their storefront. Offer good exclusives. Try to actually appeal to your customers.
I still remember when everybody bitched about Steam when half-life 2 came out. It was kinda bad, and people were mad about it. But Valve was just ahead of the curve. It allowed them to publish updates, patches, anti-cheating. And soon enough, the community grew to love it. It just worked. If something broke in your game, it was probably fixed in a week if it was a Valve game. It gave so much to PC players.
Adults like gambling. It’s not Valve’s fault that children are using it cause their parents are ignorant of their own child.
If adults want to gamble, fine. Let’s enforce gambling laws and get this over with. It would also solve the children gambling problem because that would be illegal. But this is why Valve’s gambling service is indefensible. Valve is actively trying to prevent the gambling classification because if it gets treated like actual gambling it most likely stops being profitable. I don’t necessarily have an issue with gambling, I have an issue with it not being treated as gambling. And all the other things Valve has done that have been positive for gaming do not justify giving Valve a free pass on gambling.
To bring it back to Gaben, he isn’t avoiding taxes but he is avoiding the (gambling) law because it makes him more money, so is it that different from avoiding taxes?
That is a fair point. However, I must ask, what is the different between what Valve is doing with loot boxes v. every single trading card game out there. MTG, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Disney’s Lorcana? You are purchasing an item that has items in it that are random. The only reason they have value is because people have the option to just buy skin they want on Valve’s marketplace. Just like people have the option to buy a specific Pokémon card from a third party.
The other thing that Valve has done is, there’s no inherent value to the item. You can sell items for Steam Wallet funds, to then use in the marketplace. So, to me it seems, it’s really easy to set up a Steam account to not be allowed to purchase items. Which would include adding money to a Steam wallet for the marketplace. So, no this is not a “think of the children” issue. It’s yet again, another people are bad parents and can’t be bothered to use parental controls on their children’s electronics. Or take steps to prevent them from spending real money. Or take steps to prevent them from playing too much.
That is a fair point. However, I must ask, what is the different between what Valve is doing with loot boxes v. every single trading card game out there. MTG, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Disney’s Lorcana? You are purchasing an item that has items in it that are random. The only reason they have value is because people have the option to just buy skin they want on Valve’s marketplace. Just like people have the option to buy a specific Pokémon card from a third party.
I don’t see how that matters at this point, you’ve already called it gambling. Are you going to walk that back to defend Valve? After all the only reason to bring up this point is to claim it’s not actually gambling. And to address your point, yes I also consider MTG, Pokemon and most trading card games the physical equivalent of a lootbox and a form of gambling. I also know they’re not gambling in a legal sense but we’ll get to where Valve differs in the next part.
The other thing that Valve has done is, there’s no inherent value to the item. You can sell items for Steam Wallet funds, to then use in the marketplace. So, to me it seems, it’s really easy to set up a Steam account to not be allowed to purchase items. Which would include adding money to a Steam wallet for the marketplace. So, no this is not a “think of the children” issue. It’s yet again, another people are bad parents and can’t be bothered to use parental controls on their children’s electronics. Or take steps to prevent them from spending real money. Or take steps to prevent them from playing too much.
Actually that’s no longer true and that’s why there was a lawsuit filed against Valve at the start of this year. The items now have a value because you sell the things to get Steam credit and then use Steam credit to buy a Steam Deck and then sell the Deck for real money. It’s no longer a closed system, you can get the money out. And once again, this wouldn’t be an issue if Valve either a) stopped their gambling or b) adhere to gambling laws.
That’s a whole lot of distraction from the point, mate. If you found out that a casino was allowing children to gamble on their property, would you not want to shut down that casino?
Yes, the parents shouldn’t be allowing the kids to gamble. But parents don’t always “allow” their kids to do the things they do in the first place. You know damn well you did things as a child that you weren’t “allowed” to do, things that you were told specifically not to do. You know that you successfully hid things from your parents, but expect other parents to find everything? Most of this happens completely under the parents’ radar.
Addicts steal, and that’s no different for children, either. Often they’ll take their parent’s credit card in hopes that the charge goes unnoticed, or they’ll obfuscate the charge by spending money on another currency that gets converted after the fact to one used for lootboxes.
There are even worse things that an addict will do for money. Some may resort to scams; sometimes they’ll set up catfish social media profiles to bait gooners into paying them gobs of money for fake pictures. Some may resort to worse behavior; I’ve seen instructional TikTok videos for children to lure adults onto Roblox for sexual acts, to be paid in Robux, which can then easily be converted into just about any other game’s currency. Literal child prostitution.
But sure. Let’s blame the parents, instead of the billionaire’s child casino.
I could not give a shit. I am a parent of two and no, you cannot watch them every second. But you can watch your bank accounts. You can watch your child play. You can watch your child’s behavior change if they start getting really into gambling.
I had an older child I kinda took care of, who thinks of me as a father figure; he has none. He called me one night cause he was 16 and drunk and high and didn’t want to drive home. He said, "I called you, because you always said to call you if this happened. I’m so sorry“. I picked him up and helped his hangover the next morning and we had a long talk. That kid is on the ocean sending underwater robots to explore as an electrical engineer. Cause he liked that I did that. EE, not the water stuff lol.
Parents are responsible for their children and children have to learn responsibility for their actions. And that is a lesson that you have to teach your children. The best way is through learning. I’ve watched my mom raise an addict, so don’t you fucking dare try to appeal to me. She was the perfect mom. He just got in with the wrong crowd and went downhill. He’s sober now, but it was rough growing up. But she put in a hell of a lot of work into him.
I tell you that, because I’m not here to say we should ban public schools, because that’s where my brother tried heroin. I’m not here to say we should fund private schools with taxpayer money, because there are drugs in our schools. It’s a fucking bad stroke of luck. Fire and damnnation, this got me hot. Don’t fall off your pedestal as you get on your high horse.
I could not give a shit.
I can tell, since nothing else about your comment was at all related to what I was saying.
Fucking Nintendo and that piece of shit Pokémon company! Fuck Magic the gathering, a bunch of groomers in the 90s trying to get kids addicted to gambling!
GUMBALL MACHINES AND THE GAMBLING OF FLAVOR!
All of those things were specificially degined to encourage addiction to buying the product, like yeah we should do something about those practices when they cross a line. Idk why you think it should all be fair game just because a less problematic version of the issue exists.
What if governments just banned any form of real financial gambling in video games? Valve is still a business, they are going to try and make money, even if it’s shitty. Also a parental problem if you are loading your childs Steam account with money 24/7 so they can gamble.
So much wrong with this. Gabe pays his extremely small workforce very well while keeping the lions share for himself. At 300-400 employees getting paid 300k on average, that is only around one hundred million in total payroll compared to 17 billion in revenue.
Gabe is in no way a good guy here. He could afford to pay his workers a cool million a piece and his payroll would still be a fraction of revenue.
Wild conjecture about how much Gabe is trickling down his wealth has got to be one of the lamest excuses I have ever seen. There is no such thing a good billionaire despite your wish Gabe is.
We already determined Gabe is not giving the money to the people who do the work, he is giving them a small fraction, less than 1%.
If you think for a second Gabe is not taking advantage of every tax loop hole his high paid accountants can find you are fucking crazy. He is definitely doing everything he can to avoid paying taxes.
Gabe has a monopoly. He has not used this to increasingly provide cheaper services like a corporation in competition would. Steam’s cut should have went down over time if there was good competition. I personally think anything above 10% for a digital platform is crazy.
Gabe has a monopoly.
Had me in the first half, lost me here. Offering a decent service while everyone else shoots themselves in the face does not make it a monopoly.
Steam has 75% of the market share. Microsoft, which everyone points to as a monopoly, has around 65% of the market share for example. Steam meets the definition of a monopoly which is above 50% market share.
Not to mention being sued as a monopoly in several lawsuits and of course engaging in anti-competitive practices.
Steam meets the definition of a monopoly which is above 50% market share.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly
I see “exclusive” in the definition, I don’t see “50% + 1”.
Not to mention being sued as a monopoly in several lawsuits
I could sue you for running a monopoly. I won’t be successful because it isn’t true, but I could still bring it to a court. Charges being filled doesn’t mean they are true. That’s why this is a court case and not a judgment.
From the FTC
"Courts look at the firm’s market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages. "
Obviously using a dictionary definition isn’t what is used in a legal sense. This is kind of silly to point out honestly.
Not only does Steam have the market share it is also engaging in price fixing to maintain their market share. This is classic monopoly behavior.
At this point it is not even a question if Steam is a monopoly. The question is will a judge or government do something about it.
Yes, salaries whatever. Who gives a shit about salaries when there are stocks available for employees. Employees get dividends from those stocks.
If there was $17B in revenue, and just $1B of that went through dividends, that means $500M is going to the employees. Because Gabe owns half, because he founded the company. Depending on how many shares someone has, which is most likely tied to how long you’ve been at the company, you rake in money. I know, cause I worked for a large corporation that did that same thing. My buddy who’s still there is pulling $30k/year alone on that. Granted, that company has a much lower revenue:employee ratio. Valve is at the top of this category. So yeah, people who invest time and work into Valve make bank. As they should.
Hold up, they are not the ones making the content. While a digital distribution network deserves a cut they certainly do not deserve 30%. This is just a form of monopoly rent at this point extracting far more than they are worth taking advantage of developers.
Not sure why you want to defend a monopoly, but it is your perogative I guess. Cheers!
Damn, got me. I didn’t realize Steam was the only place to buy games and they’re using their market share to inflate prices and gouge customers. You’re so right. That’s what monopolies do. Specifically, it’s when one business owns the sole source of a good. PC gaming is an oligopoly and the other businesses in the oligopoly are mad Valve is doing it better. There is nothing stopping anybody else offering a better deal with the features customers want from Steam.
You didn’t realize they had a 75% market share? Please save the bootlicking for someone who cares.
sure but i don’t have to waste energy caring because fucking bloomberg tells me to
stop being a useful idiot
No love for those companies but just because you agreed to a contract doesn’t mean the clauses of the contract are legal or enforceable.
True, but this deal is that companies stick to the terms and in turn they get access to steams shop, implicitly the community.
They don’t have some unalienable right to access another company’s customers.
You don’t have a “right” to go into a BurgerKing and advertise and sell your burgers there.
… and in a country with rule of law whether a contractual clause is legal would be decided by a court, no?
Yeah, isn’t that the point of the lawsuit? That this exact clause is challenged in court?
That clause isn’t even relevant to the situation valve is being sued over.
No steam keys or steam infrastructure was being used by selling their own game on their own storefront…a version that wasn’t even available on steam. Valve threatened them anyway over the price
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But were they selling Steam Keys? Sounds to me like Ubisoft was selling a UPlay version of the game for cheaper than the Steam version, which probably didn’t include a Steam Key.
If the UPlay version also included a Steam Key, then yes, Ubisoft would have broken the terms of contract, but that seems unlikely to me.
I think its fair enough for Valve to require that Steam Keys, which use Steam infrastucture, are not sold for less than Steam sells them for, since Valve wouldn’t be making any money on them, but would still have some of the costs associated with delivering the product (and depending on how much Steam infrastructure they use, matchmaking, anti-cheat and other things).
But requiring that keys for other Stores, with their own infrastructure, are never cheaper that Steam is definitely monopolistic, shitty and probably illegal.
Its weird to me that all articles I have found about this issue don’t actually mention this crucial detail.
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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.
amazon’s case is different. if you’re selling the steam version of your game it needs to match the price on steam. if you have a separate non-steam version you can charge whatever you want.
the reason places like gog follow steam pricing is, why wouldn’t they? makes them more money.
There have been several lawsuits about this policy, and the more recent class action one is about whether steam is actually enforcing this policy for steam keys only or also for games sold on other platforms without relying on steam keys. I don’t think there is any actual written rule about this because it’s probably illegal in several jurisdictions but there have been rumors about this since basically the beginning of third party games on steam.
Did you read the article? This is about a completely different version of the game that was not even sold on steam.
i did. here’s what it 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.
emphasis mine.
a “starter pack” is a collection of dlc for a game. all the dlc is on steam. the starter pack was not, making the dlc cheaper on uplay than on steam. rainbow six siege uses the steam backend for online play, meaning that the dlc in question is connected to steam, but available elsewhere for less money.
if you have a separate non-steam version you can charge whatever you want.
This is the part that was unclear from the original comment. If that’s in fact the case, that’s obviously fine (and different from the Amazon case).
why wouldn’t they?
it’s called “competetive pricing”. If I’m a customer and have a steam account holding most of my games (like most PC gamers), why would I even consider buying it anywhere else if it isn’t even cheaper and now I got games in like 3-5 stores with at least 2-3 launcher/downloaders/apps. No, this most likely won’t make them more money but much much less with fewer people buying it there.
If I’m a customer and have a steam account holding most of my games (like most PC gamers), why would I even consider buying it anywhere else if it isn’t even cheaper
I pay the same or sometimes a bit more for GoG games because they are DRM free. Id like better client support on Linux, but DRM free is a value proposition thats usually worth it.
I do appreciate the ability to download a fully offline installer from gog and the requirement that games be drm free. But people keep making statements similar to yours as if steam games have to include some form of drm. There is no such requirement. Steam can simply act as a downloader and patcher. Integrating stream services and failing to start if there is no steam or the active account doesn’t own the game is completely up to the developer.
So if they have a drm free build on gog, but the steam hype includes drm, that’s cause the developer actively decided it should be like that.
Popular game examples that do not include any drm in the steam version are Factorio and (the original) Kerbal Space Program. Once downloaded, you can freely copy the installation around, and just start the exe. These games start just fine.
I know, i know there are also some utilities to back up steam games. Ive used them years ago. I dont hate Steam by any means, but i really like GOGs philosophy and requirements so I support them where i can, though i will borrow games from the family library if someoen else bought it on steam for the achivements
gog is running mostly on rep, to be fair. don’t know about many other stores that don’t just sell steam keys.
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?
because that’s what the lawsuit is about. valve has no problem with people selling games on their own store fronts, as long as what they’re selling isn’t just a steam key. ubisoft wants to sell games on their own store for online games which use steam as a backend without giving steam a cut. you can buy all the anno games for cheaper on uplay than on steam, and that’s not a problem. but rainbow six siege uses steamplay.
Not true. Games bought outside of Steam have no access to most Steam features outside of local based ones, e.g. Steam Input, Remote Play.
sure, but rainbow six siege uses all of those things because it’s an online game. otherwise there’d be a need to have separated server infra for steam and non-steam users.
otherwise there’d be a need to have separated server infra for steam and non-steam users.
That’s exactly how it works. There are companies whose focus is precisely that, e.g. EdgeGap, but UbiSoft have their own infrastructure.
Why did you think you need an Uplay account to play UbiSoft titles?
“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
Yep. Sell your game for whatever you want wherever you want. If you want to distribute your game via Steam (Steam keys), you can’t sell them cheaper than they are sold on Steam because you aren’t handling the distribution (which costs money).
Otherwise a competing company (like Ubisoft) could just make a 20TB game, list it on steam for a crazy price, then sell Steam keys for it on another storefront cheap; Steam will have to cover the distribution costs without making anything in return.
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.
Have you ever bought a game via a Steam key? Those use Steam’s infrastructure for distribution while not providing them (Steam) any income.
As someone that has entered so many Steam keys over the years (over 1,000) yet only bought maybe 20 games from Steam I almost feel bad, but the dev was following the rules and Steam is okay with it (as long as they aren’t selling those keys for less than they can be purchased on Steam for).
Steam keys are a drop in the bucket.
Regardless, this case isn’t about keys either, but Valve pressuring publishers to set prices of games sold outside of the Steam ecosystem entirely.
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.
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.
I’d question even if this is true. OP wrote it like they read the contract lol.
But even if it’s true, it’s not like publishers have a choice. You can’t say no and not release your game on steam because it’s the biggest store by far. Valve is literally abusing its monopoly to reinforce its monopoly.
They’re also being sued because this situation is completely different from the clause mentioned in the policy.
but when they sell somewhere else, that includes the steam key and access to steam and steam’s distribution at no cost.
Ubisoft selling the game on Uplay, their own storefront, does not include a steam key with the purchase. The clause you just listed IS NOT RELEVANT to the situation. Which is why valve is being sued.
They’re offering a version of the game that isn’t even available on steam (so doubly no steam key), and were told that doing so at a lower price would have valve removing all versions of the game for sale. This is blatant market position abuse to fix pricing.
Who the fuck is upvoting your blatant misinformation?
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lol ur the guy who thinks that making sounds with haptics in a controller will make it smoke somehow
nobody should listen to you
Controller Haptics used to be a spinning motor with a weight. Those DO make smoke when they break.
So, maybe sit down and think over how pathetic holding this pretty little grudge for weeks is…
Oh no I just have you tagged with a doodoo brown color and remembered your argument with everyone and how wrong you were lawl
Reading this thread, you just vehemently hate Valve and everything they do. In a strangely petulant way.
Also I looked up after you responded just now and you deleted all your comments about the haptics out of shame, which is hilarious
Definitely not a forgotten detail. There is clearly a campaign against valve brewing for reasons that are less clear.
Hence, the antitrust. If you have the qualities of a monopoly you don’t get to partake in certain business practices. Like the language in contacts limiting competition.
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.
And that policy only exists because monopoly enables them to set anti-trust/anti-competitive practices and further cement their position by ruining competition’s chances.
Imagine there’s a huge fuel station that’s so big they essentially set rules towards suppliers that they can’t offer their gas to other stations at a cheaper price otherwise they can’t sell it in their station with 95% market share.
If you don’t see a problem with this as a customer, then don’t forget to support your local billionaire by paying a 30% fee for each game purchase (and that 30% cut also exists due to no one being able to take on steam, ridiculous amount of money).
I’m slowly getting tired of gamers defending Gabe like he’s Jesus when in reality valve is a corporation doing corporation things.
EDIT: Billionaires have became rich in 100% ethical ways, they do not overcharge, they do not abuse their market position, they most definitely don’t bribe Microsoft and other entities, etc. Now give upvotes, redditors
40% of the market is not a monopoly.
It’s 75-79.5% depending on what data you use. Quite a big mistake on your part.
of the pc market, yes. that’s like calling tesla a monopoly when they sold 75% of electric cars.
Are we not talking about PC market? Steam is a PC platform. What are you even talking about then? Steam market share on PS5?
Yes because the other platforms are worse in every single fucking way. You can’t say oh it’s this huge awful monopoly when it’s only that because the rest purposely fucking suck to make as much money as possible (gog is fine).
we’re talking gaming, of which pc is a niche. a shrinking one at that. nobody is claiming sony has a monopoly on the ps5, ubisoft and wb are seemingry happy to pay them.
nobody is claiming sony has a monopoly on the ps5
And Valve didn’t create PC. What a bizzare argument.
we’re talking gaming, of which pc is a niche
What a bizzare argument. Nearly half is “niche”? Shrinking?
You people become weird when defending corporations.
pc is a niche. a shrinking one at that.
Absolutely not. PC is growing, and continues to grow year after year. Consoles are on a slight decline, but PC has never really stopped growing.
You’re really gonna need to start citing some sources at this point.
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Monopoly implies there are no alternatives. There are plenty of alternatives. People just choose Steam because the other ones are (mostly) crap.
That’s not the legal definition of a monopoly.
Is not Google a monopoly in search and online advertising, then?
Yes, it is.
For most people, google is the only search they use.
Are you saying Yes, it is the legal definition; or Yes, Google is a Monopoly?
Yes it is a monopoly.
The legal theory that market consolidation doesn’t matter so long as prices don’t rise is bullshit and a big reason we have such shitty politics today.
There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)
Yeah but why do they have that market share? It’s not forcefully. They aren’t buying up competitors. They don’t own all the publishers and can dictate who sells their games.
People choose Steam. Why? Because Ubisoft Connect it horrendous to navigate. Because EA App is slow and, when it launched (as Origin), left a bad taste in people’s mouths because it bordered on spyware. Epic Launcher is kinda getting better but when it launched it was extremely bare bones, it didn’t even have a cart to buy multiple products at once, you had to buy things individually, which is absolutely ridiculous for an ONLINE STORE .
This so-called monopoly is not a product of predatory methods, quite the opposite. Valve may be a corporation but they constantly set standards in favor of the consumer:
- Generous refund policy
- Unparalleled customer support, as opposed to their competitors basically giving the finger to users asking for help.
- Actively working towards wider support and accessibility, i.e. SteamOS, Steam Deck, and their runnable-verification markings.
- Just recently announced the “real requirements” stats from players sharing a games’ performance on their actual hardware rather than the developers Recommended Requirements which we all know are complete bullshit. They are literally forcing developers to stop cranking out half-assed games with non-existant optimization for $70.
Definition of Monopoly according to Merriam-Webster:
exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action. specifically : exclusive control of a particular market that is marked by the power to control prices and exclude competition
None of this applies to Valve/Steam, all they’re guilty of is setting policies in favor of the consumer. People tend to choose the consumer-friendly seller.
Who’d’ve thunk?
Generous refund policy
Added it after a lawsuit regarding steam not wanting to properly process refunds. Epic has it better automated and GOG processes refunds regardless of your hours if you have technical difficulties, so in my eyes Steam is in the last place.
Unparalleled customer support
Steam support is commonly regarded as non-existing. The only times I needed it, I got automated replies and my issue was not solved.
Actively working towards wider support and accessibility, i.e. SteamOS, Steam Deck, and their runnable-verification markings.
Making your product accessible is just business. I don’t really use any of that stuff since I’m only on PC.
Definition of Monopoly according to Merriam-Webster:
This is one of those words where definitions vary, but generally if a company has such a large market share/power that they can dictate prices and set rules that affect other platforms/competition, then that’s monopoly/near monopolies. Valve Corporation does this.
all they’re guilty of is setting policies in favor of the consumer.
Riiight, because ripping off gamers and devs with 30% cut (a cut that stayed from physical discs and times when 100gb HDD costed 5000eur) is so in favor of the users. The whole gambling thing and mystery boxes was also done to promote ethics to children, right?
My guy. I deliberately left out GOG in my comment because they fill a different niche in the market, DRM-free and generally older games. The bureaucracy of refunds is probably alot less complicated.
You’re probably the first person I’ve heard say Steam has bad customer support.
They are not making “their product accessible”, they are making other people’s games accessible by providing an open OS for gaming outside of the Microsoft Windows system.
Again, having a large market share because you simply provide the best service is -not a Monopoly-. How do they in any way dictate prices? Ubisoft are free to sell their game for half the price on their store front if they want to.
I’d happily pay 30% to Steam for all the service they provide over 100% to Ubisoft’s reskinned, buggy, unoptimized quarterly “games” or EAs microtransaction simulators any day.
You’re probably the first person I’ve heard say Steam has bad customer support.
Steam customer support was a fucking meme back in my day. You also got oceans of videos like these: https://youtu.be/kE0QtkTNUqk
How do they in any way dictate prices? Ubisoft are free to sell their game for half the price on their store front if they want to.
I… are we speaking English? Do you simply refuse to read and get new information? I mean, sure, they can, but they will get angry emails from Valve Corporation and threats of suspended sales, no pre-orders, etc., because that’s what a near monopoly does to further cement their position on the market, and I don’t even want to think about the future with different CEO and valve having basically grown into the next google or microsoft with Gabe long gone
Imagine there’s a huge fuel station that’s so big they essentially set rules towards suppliers that they can’t offer their gas to other stations at a cheaper price otherwise they can’t sell it in their station with 95% market share.
That is specifically not what is happening.
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.”
Valve does not “dictate” prices in any way.
Ubi and WB are free to sell their games for as cheap as they want. But if and ONLY IF they offer a steam key with the purchase, they can’t undercut steam.
This isn’t about steam keys, it’s about a most favored nation clause. It’s a fairly common clause when selling across multiple platforms. It can be considered anticompetitive in some cases. It’s also pretty standard in retail agreements. It’s why name brand products are generally the same price everywhere.
The same thing would happen if Walmart found Sony was selling PlayStations cheaper on their website than in store.
It’s not even that. It’s about Steam apparently trying to enforce a clause that doesn’t exist. The most-favored nation clause applies to Steam keys only, but Steam allegedly sent Ubisoft a nastygram about them selling a non-Steam version for less.
Please read the article.
“give us your money or let us install cookies” yeah no I’d rather not read the article then.
“I will opine on something I refuse to learn anything about, as it is my god given right”.
Sounds about right.
Okay my guy, whatever you say <3
Do yourself a favor and read the article before commenting on it.
Uplay doesn’t offer steam keys. The game version they were selling wasn’t even available on steam.
Steam keys have fuck all to do with the monopolistic shakedown that valve is enacting to fix PC game prices.
Stop blindly supporting this bullshit behavior. It’s right there in the article you didn’t read.
If i give you free advertising, a solid store page, and the damn server to host your games with free steam keys for the dev (Amazon doesn’t even fucking do this. Authors need to pay for their damn ebooks at full price for instance) and you go out and sell those fucking keys cheaper and spend my money doing it so i make nothing, what the fuck do you expect to happen?
I don’t think you understand what this is about.
EDIT:
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. It’s claimed Valve insisted Ubisoft swiftly remedy the discrepancy, giving the publisher “until the end of day tomorrow” to change that.
This isn’t about keys and devs abusing the system, but competition and monopoly.
Ah, I see the valve bootlickers are already here. Lemmings hate companies, unless it’s Valve.
It’s crazy how valuable decades of really good karma is
People used to say the same about Google.
Haha good karma can only take you so far
Valve is one of the few billion dollar companies that hasn’t screwed me.
haha yeah, me too. like how they wouldn’t give refunds until they were forced to by the ACCC. Even for games that didn’t work. oh… wait a minute!
I like to think of it as a “so far, so good” kind of situation. Mostly.
I think most people have eyes on gaben because if he’s leaves or dies or steps down, the entire world is gonna change, and as much as I hate to think about it, it likely won’t be for the better. All my wisdom tells me that that man, billionaire or not, is the only thing keeping a lot of darkness at bay.
And before you say that’s giving him too much credit, I’d like you to take a look at nvidia and Jensen Huang’s current trajectory and effects on everything you hold dear right now.
Yet!
Gabe has to die some day.
The guy bought a billion dollars worth of boats.
He screwed you, he just has a constant media campaign running to convince you he’s your buddy.
Excuse me? You think media told me Gabe runs a consumer friendly business? I know from experience. Gabe screws with the game industry instead of the gamer and has done a lot of good (and bad) protecting consumers from the worst of the gaming industry.
The guy bought a billion dollars worth of boats.
He screwed you
He screwed me by running a very successful business and earning money?
Add Proton to the list as well.
EDIT: ONLINE multiplayer.
It’s weird how people who haven’t even researched Steamworks are suddenly professionals.
If you speak to actual developers who use steam, they’ll point out that with a few lines of code, they can turn a game into multiplayer, and add features which allow them to compete against larger publishers, whose business models are often just buying other gaming studios. Of course companies like Ubisoft and warner bro’s would be pissed. They’re not known for improving things at all for gamers lol.
If you speak to users like me, i don’t give a shit about the pricing that much honestly. There are games I own on XBOX, Steam and meta, some duplicates.
I use steam because I can play games I bought 10 years, and Steam have even allowed them to work on Linux by integrating proton (you can no longer identify what platform they were designed for). And my saved games work on my Rog Ally, computer, and I can still load saved games from ages ago.
I can use pretty much any controller, and load Emudeck on a Steam Deck.
I’d actually argue that recently, Steam is the best thing that has happened to linux. If we didn’t have them, we’d be screwed.
But hey, you go pretend you’re an anarchist protecting gamers by fighting back against a company that has been good for gaming… Maybe go install epic store or uplay or whatever lol. Then, maybe you’ll understand why actual gamers defend steam. Go enjoy some of those sweet DRM protection schemes that make being a pirate a better experience than actually buying the game.
And whilst you do that, I’ll finish the second half of Broken Age (which I purchased 12 years ago) on Linux via Proton (and its so f**king seamless).
A company can do good, that doesn’t mean I will lick their boots. Google had arguably the best search engine. Doesn’t mean I am not going to hate Google any less. Companies are not my friends. I use what I use and get what use I can get out of them, and I am ready for the moment they turn to shit (which WILL happen).
Seriously. Gabens ass is clearly big enough for all these billionaire dick riders to eat at once.
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.
You are allowed to not market yourself at amazon, i dont see the issue really
Amazon is one of the largest online retailers in the world. If they force prices on suppliers to get a better deal than anyone else, that’s between extortion and price fixing.
Sounds like not shopping or selling at amazon is the actual solution to the problem. I havent bought a single item of them in my life, so why do you?
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.
Platform A has a 40% fee and requires price elsewhere to be the same. Manufacturer X sells their own product on their own website, at +40% their price.
This is bad for buyers and competition. Platform A is already big and important enough that you can’t skip it, and can drive up and control pricing generally.
If the requirement were not there, if platform A does not offer enough plus service for the 40% margin, other platforms would keep the prices at a reasonable level. People could buy from the manufacturer at their original price.
A marketplace important enough that you can’t skip it being able to dictate market conditions is how it manifests itself further as the primary player and controlling instance.
Do you want them to have a monopoly? Because that’s how they are gonna get a monopoly.
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.
Thats basically the only thing that makes a monopoly. Having such a massive market share that you can dictate the market is precisely the danger of monopolies. The fact that America has failed to reign in monopolies shouldn’t be news to anyone.
Yes, let’s do that too.
No. The issue is exactly what they stated. The law does not mention “monopoly.” It is against “monopolistic behaviors”, such as using your market dominance to force price parity. A game developer can’t afford to not be on Steam, because they have such strong market dominance. Valve knows this, and this is about them abusing this position to force price parity.
Regardless of what you folks think about Valve, does anyone believe that a marketplace should have this kind of leverage over their suppliers?
On principle, no, and Valve should not be above criticism.
I’m cautiously in favour of uniform retail pricing, such that no sales platform could either gouge customers or undercut to win more people over, such that the competition is determined by the available selection of products and other amenities, but my gut says that kind of price fixation would end up a minefield of complications, exceptions and loopholes. Few things are ever as easy as a layperson may think, and I sure am one.
Either way, one retailer dictating the prices for all others definitely seems unfair.
For instance, should Amazon be permitted to force manufacturers to set the price of a product outside of their marketplace?
Aside from the obligatory “fuck Amazon”, that would open the door to a particularly vicious level of fuckery. They would set their own price, sustained by cheap, fucked-up working conditions and the capital to afford selling at a loss, which they already do and which is bad enough, but to also dictate that price to other vendors that definitely can’t afford to operate at such a loss? If they’re currently on the road to monopoly, that would turn it into a bullet train: fast, on rails and with no stop to get off at.
I don’t think that’s what people are arguing.
If I manufacture your product from a product version prototype you provided me and give you unlimited access to that product to use outside my manufacturing plant and store front, then say, you can have and sell all this free product I manufactured for you, but you have to price it the same in my store as you do where you sell it elsewhere, that’s makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense and what isn’t right, is if they say "you can’t price your product that someone else is manufacturing for you at a price lower than the one your price my manufactured product of yours at.
But people keep thinking that those two groups are saying the same thing, that Valve should be allowed to do it regardless of who manufactured what when that’s not what they are saying.
If Valve is doing this, they obvious should have the book thrown at them. But we haven’t seen evidence of that that isn’t tantamount to hearsay. So we are doing what you should do when you hear something and can’t determine the veracity of what is being said. You wait for proof and don’t make up your mind based on rumors.
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 “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?
“That person isn’t being robbed. Sure, there’s a gun to their head, but the person is only saying to hand over their money or they can choose to die. They don’t have to obey them!”
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.
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.
Everyone here blindly defending valve claiming they’re not doing the very thing they’re being sued for doing.
Insanity
I’m not sure you know how lawsuits work. If I sue you for punching me in the face, do you think that automatically means you are guilty?
I don’t think you know how lawsuits work. The plaintiff has to show the court there’s even a case to begin with.
There’s currently THREE separate lawsuits about this same issue.
It seems pretty likely they ARE doing it.
And this is exactly why other ongoing cases are, generally speaking, not admissible as evidence. Someone doing something bad once doesn’t mean that they did it twice. Multiple accusations doesn’t mean that they are guilty. Otherwise, a simple conspiracy to bring multiple charges at once would be absolutely damning to a defendant.
Also the pre-trial stuff is pretty much just to show that there was an applicable law that may have been broken. It has almost nothing to do with whether or not the defendant is guilty, liable, or otherwise found at fault.
What’s the point of even having any trials then? If you’re accused of something and it manages to get to court, just skip all that crazy time wasting defense stuff and right off to the firing squad with you! I mean, you’re obviously guilty right?
When steam provides substantially more services for a game with achievements, forums, workshop, etc. And then developer wants to list on steam and then funnel people over to a different platform to buy it cheaper. Steam isn’t getting compensated for the services they provided to boost the game’s popularity.
As others have said there’s already ways to get the game cheaper like humble bundle or Green Man gaming. This is literally just steam doing what they can to see a return on investment and not provide these services for free.
The comparison between Google and apple doesn’t really make sense as steam provides a whole bunch of services while epic provides a purchase button
Valve services do not apply when a game is being sold by Ubisoft in their own platform, with no steam keys included in the purchase. Valve’s infrastructure is not being used. That’s what these lawsuits are about. Not steam key resellers.
Im saying there are other key sellers that have it for less that they don’t stop from doing so, but the things steam had and the publicity it gives are of value and they don’t want to have publishers using steam for publicity and other community and forums what it and directing most of the sales elsewhere. They can by all means list their games elsewhere and price it however they want. But that’s always been the terms of selling on steam. Of they don’t like it they shouldn’t agree to the terms. But it’s not like it’s some new policy that valve implemented out of nowhere. I don’t completely agree with their policy but if publishers have an issue with it then don’t agree to it
So if I go to Amazon searching for a product, read the reviews, check if it’s been returned often, etc., that should be enough for Amazon to set the price of the same product on the manufacturer’s website?
The comparison between Google and apple doesn’t really make sense as steam provides a whole bunch of services while epic provides a purchase button.
Who is talking about Epic here?
Also, both Google and Apple have their own app stores, where they take a cut of the sales, while providing a SDKs for things from push notifications, to payment processing, to analytics. Nowadays they also provide game platforms for things like multiplayer or achievements, among other things. Essentially the same as Steam.
There are other marketplaces to steam. Steam doesn’t prevent you from installing from sources outside of steam. Steam doesn’t regulate your hardware or how you use it. If you want to sell on steam you can still sell elsewhere but it has to be the same price.
This means if you go to steam to find out about a game and then decide to buy it from the manufacturer’s website the manufacturer makes more money because they don’t have to give Valve a cut, and Valve might even authorize you to activate that product on steam.
Expecting valve to offer their marketing and delivery systems without any incentive for you to sell products through it would defeat the purpose of their platform.
Compare that to the other two chuckle fuckers in this mix:
Apple maintains an exclusive platform. Apple has taken specific steps to prevent people from installing software from sources that have not paid them for permission to make software for the hardware you rent from them.
Google maintains an exclusive platform. Google has taken specific steps to prevent people from installing from sources that have not paid them for permission to make software for the hardware you bought from third party vendors and manufacturers.
The ever shrinking accommodation to installing third-party software on your purchased hardware is anti-competitive, and defeats consumer choice.This means if you go to steam to find out about a game and then decide to buy it from the manufacturer’s website the manufacturer makes more money because they don’t have to give Valve a cut, and Valve might even authorize you to activate that product on steam.
Expecting valve to offer their marketing and delivery systems without any incentive for you to sell products through it would defeat the purpose of their platform.
You can only activate that product in Steam if it’s sold as a Steam key. Also, any game added to Steam from outside the platform has no access to their SDK, so this point is moot.
I’m not defending either Apple nor Google, but their business model is essentially the same, with the exception of the hardware integration, which again, doesn’t even matter that much since Steam is at 75% PC market share. And if you read some of the comments in this thread you’ll find out that for many people, the moat is not the hardware, is the platform itself.
Again, weird to see people defending anti competitive behaviour coming from a multi billion corporation, just because they sympathize with them.
“Those bullies are meaner, so you’re not actually get bullied” is some abuser-grade gaslighting there, pal
Yeah that doesn’t even vaguely resemble what I’m saying.
Valve isn’t regulating your hardware and they aren’t forcing anybody to do anything.
Valve is not a bully here. They have a contract saying if you sell your product with me you can’t sell it someplace else cheaper just to use me for marketing and delivery.
Apple says you have to pay me to even have the right to sell your product and you can only sell it through me. If you sell it someplace else I want to cut of that too.
Google just keeps changing the nature of what you’re allowed to do with your own stuff and they take a cut.
If you feel bullied by Valve or some developer feels bullied by valve then you have a victim complex.
Do you think all the sellers to whom Amazon put exactly the same ultimatum have a victim complex too?
Based on your take, I agree with you. If valve is providing services, then developers should not be selling steam keys for cheaper elsewhere. It dilutes trust in their business model too if people start assuming that they can get the same services, provided by valve, for cheaper elsewhere.
However, is that what this article is talking about? The games mentioned, specifically R6 Siege and SoM, both appear to run stand alone without steam integration. I’m not intimately familiar with either one, just what I can gather based off the article and a pair of quick online searches.
The article is alleging. We don’t yet have proof of the veracity of the documentation that has been collected. When the trial finishes and the court has determined whether or not those documents and other information gathered during the course of the case have been proven to be true, then and only then do we have something that says that Valve actually did this.
I don’t trust WB and I don’t trust Ubisoft. I’m not sure I trust Valve either but I can say that my distrust for them isn’t as extreme as my distrust for the other two companies.
If Valve did this, throw the book at them. But at the same time, I want to see difinitve proof.
Both games have steam integration, as all games do on steam. They can be run without it, like most games, but that doesn’t change the fact these developers want steam’s audience and integration (since users want steam integration) and thus they voluntarily agreed to this stipulation.
Ubisoft has their own store, if R6S is so good, it should be able to drive traffic and users to that store and they could just set their own price without worrying about what steam is doing. Fortnite proves you don’t need steam integration to make a good game that people want to play. So does minecraft.
So steam isn’t a monopoly, as proven by those two examples, Ubisoft just wants more money without the restriction that comes with that money.
Does R6S use steam integrations if bought through Uplay? Based on what I can find, the answer is no, and therefore valve shouldn’t be setting the price because, at that level, they have no involvement with the product.
It’s the same product. Ubisoft, at any point, can just stop selling on steam and redirect users to their own store and then have full pricing control. Epic did this with Rocket League. This is fully an option a multi-billion dollar company owned by a billionaire can do at any point. Being on steam is voluntary for all parties, because there are alternate streams.
If you want to sell your product in walmart, you will be signing a similar non-compete agreement. If you want to sell your product at any competent store, you will be signing a non-compete agreement.
Because there is no reason for a store to LET you use their platform otherwise. Your product isn’t that good. There’s 3k games released per month. You aren’t that important individually, or even as a developer. If you want to go the easy route, then like literally ALL PRODUCTS SOLD, you will need to sign an agreement like this.
It’s the same product.
This is the part that is holding me up. Is it actually the same product? The version on Steam comes with server hosting, achievements, voice chat, etc. If I purchased the game through Uplay, would I still have access to those services on Steam? For example, many years ago, I bought “Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale” at Walmart, but it basically just came with an asset disc and a code to register the game on Steam. So buying it at Walmart gave me access to the same features as if I’d bought it directly from Steam. Does Uplay do the same thing?
Versions bought outside Steam have no access to Steam services. The closest you can get is manually adding the game to Steam, and it would account for the hours spent in it and let you use Steam Input, which is completely local.
But in many cases, it is the same product because things like online gaming don’t go through Steam servers other than perhaps serving the Steam friend list, e.g. BG3 online coop works across GOG, Steam, and consoles, and obviously the servers aren’t hosted by Steam.
To make the same argument, but to point out the absurdity of your argument, GameStop (or other retailers) put up advertising for products on their window. This has a material cost. However, if you buy it from somewhere else they don’t pay for this cost.
Valve choosing to advertise is a choice they make. They can choose not to, but it makes them more money if they do. Other stores should not have to pay for a different store’s choices. That’s insane.
Edit: You love to see the downvotes purely out of spite I guess. No one is presenting a counter to this view, but we can’t criticize Valve now, can we? That’d be wrong, because they’re a good corporation making billions in profit, unlike those other corporations!
If you’re thinking of downvoting, leave a message about why this comment is wrong if you don’t mind. If I made a mistake, I’d love to correct it.
If steam wants lower prices, they should subsidize the cost of games for their users. The problem is solved.
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.
