Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead
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And to add to this, allowing a lower price on a different storefront isn't going to make the game cheaper to purchase. Either it's not going to have any impact on pricing, unless a competing store has money to burn and will pay the publisher extra to sell the game for cheaper (which will actually hurt only the smaller storefronts), or it will lead to games being overpriced on Steam which is a near guaranteed controversy to any publisher pulling this stunt, at which point it would be cheaper to not change pricing or just go full exclusivity.
It's an argument on paper but in practicality it's bullshit. If Steam removed this clause or wouldn't be a net positive for the consumer and worst case would be a net negative.
It's crazy to me that when they sell a steam key on another store front, steam takes none of the profits from that at all, the key is free to generate for the dev, and the only stipulation is that they have to sell if for the same price it is on the steam store front.
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It's worth giving the dev his $5 though. Great game and open source
More like 3.33$ (or 3.33€ in my case) plus fees, but agreed
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It's more nuanced than that.
Choosing not to release on Steam isn't easy because it's not a balanced market, at all. It's trying to release a Disney-style animated movie, but only in adult theatres.
Steam is the 900-pound gorilla. Yes, they have a good interface, but they take a ludicrous portion of game revenue. Epic has a shit interface, but they take well-under half of the fees Steammdoes for the same game.
Gabe is not your friend. He's a billionaire yacht-collector. Half-Life 2 wasn't designed to be a great game. It was designed to launch a digital storefront that allowed Valve to rake in 30% of all revenue for games sold on the platform - which is often a larger percentage than is paid to the actual people making the games.
Why are we defending a system where the fucking checkout system is valued as much as the people making the games?
Yes, they have a good interface, but they take a ludicrous portion of game revenue.
They take the same cut as Microsft, Nintendo, Google, Apple, Sony, and more. You wanna argue 30% is excessive? I agree, but Steam isn't an outlier here. At least Steam has enough extra shit they do for devs to make that 30% almost feel worth it.
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alleges Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms.
Epic gives away games for free that cost money on Steam. The fuck is this person talking about?
Valve forces price parity with all platforms. So if they have lower charges, that saving cannot be passed on to the customer and so stops price competition.
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Am I the only one who finds this story laughable? As a mostly console gamer, if feels like Nintendo releases games for $70, and they NEVER drop in price.
If you can find a walmart that somehow still has PS2 and gamecube games, the PS2 game will probably be some sports game, and it's been reduced to $0.10.
The Gamecube game will be some kirby game, and still 2002 MSRP of $60.
Meanwhile over on steam, they're like:
"Ok, this is a AAA game, came out in 2025, MSRP is $60, but we're running a sale to pick it up for $5.
Also, here's a shitton of free games. Go nuts."
I don't think the example at the end of your comment is relevant, since to my knowledge it's the publisher deciding on pricing and doing sales, and steam is still taking the same cut.
I also think it's generally not a great thing, since it basically puts the value of the game at $5, making it not worth getting off-sale, while also creating urgency to do so during a sale. I respect Factorio developers' choice to just not do sales at all, and state so, so that buyers know exactly what the price is.
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alleges Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms.
Epic gives away games for free that cost money on Steam. The fuck is this person talking about?
Valve gives you free steam keys for your game on request, which you can sell off steam, without paying Valve a cut. This has a specific rule that disallows selling those keys for a lower price. However, not sure if it's this case, there was an email from a Valve employee submitted as evidence telling a game developer that selling their game for less in general would be undercutting steam, and something they wouldn't want. If the email is real and not a misinterpretation, Valve indeed was/is pressuring developers to not sell games cheaper elsewhere.
Also, sales and giveaways are exempt from the steam key price parity rule, which I would assume epic's free games would fall under, if you applied the rule to that despite not involving steam keys.
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alleges Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms.
Epic gives away games for free that cost money on Steam. The fuck is this person talking about?
That doesn't conclude anything.
Are these the same games that are part of this lawsuit? If they are not, then what does Epic giving away different games conclude that this is a false premise for the lawsuit?
Critically think about that statement, it's not logical.
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It's more nuanced than that.
Choosing not to release on Steam isn't easy because it's not a balanced market, at all. It's trying to release a Disney-style animated movie, but only in adult theatres.
Steam is the 900-pound gorilla. Yes, they have a good interface, but they take a ludicrous portion of game revenue. Epic has a shit interface, but they take well-under half of the fees Steammdoes for the same game.
Gabe is not your friend. He's a billionaire yacht-collector. Half-Life 2 wasn't designed to be a great game. It was designed to launch a digital storefront that allowed Valve to rake in 30% of all revenue for games sold on the platform - which is often a larger percentage than is paid to the actual people making the games.
Why are we defending a system where the fucking checkout system is valued as much as the people making the games?
Half-Life 2 wasn't designed to be a great game. It was designed to launch a digital storefront that allowed Valve to rake in 30% of all revenue for games sold on the platform - which is often a larger percentage than is paid to the actual people making the games.
Those things aren't mutually exclusive. It was used to launch Steam, but it was also an objectively great game because Valve cares about their craft.
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A software company can run its own store, and make its own launcher. Just look at so many of the big titles over the last two decades: Minecraft, League, Tarkov, War Thunder, Roblox, and more recently Hytale.
This is also survivorship and selection bias though. Not only would you not have heard of the ones that failed, but these are the games confident enough to not launch on Steam in the first place. Several of them are so old that Steam was in its infancy and not the de facto storefront when they came out.
Steam was the defacto storefront when all those games came out.
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Valve forces price parity with all platforms. So if they have lower charges, that saving cannot be passed on to the customer and so stops price competition.
I thought that only applied to steam keys?
You can sell your game for whatever you want elsewhere, but if you want them to be able to install via steam, you can't undercut steam itself.
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There are games on Steam that don't have DRM (since it's not a requirement from Valve). The most prominent examples I can think of are games from Toby Fox and Klei Entertainment.
Steam is a DRM system.
I am not being flippant or facetious. Steam is literally a DRM system with a shop grafted on top. That is what it has always been. If a game is on Steam, it be definition has DRM.
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I don't think the example at the end of your comment is relevant, since to my knowledge it's the publisher deciding on pricing and doing sales, and steam is still taking the same cut.
I also think it's generally not a great thing, since it basically puts the value of the game at $5, making it not worth getting off-sale, while also creating urgency to do so during a sale. I respect Factorio developers' choice to just not do sales at all, and state so, so that buyers know exactly what the price is.
I think Valve does get some say in the amount and timing of sales. It’s something they need to control to arrange the big seasonal sales, and something publishers must agree to, or set an acceptable range, when first signing up.
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I thought that only applied to steam keys?
You can sell your game for whatever you want elsewhere, but if you want them to be able to install via steam, you can't undercut steam itself.
I did too but when I had a quick search around that's what I found. I think it'd be reasonable to apply steam keys, valve is providing the full service there.
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But for the games without DRM you can just download them and run the executable. Bypassing Steam
Sure, if you stop using steam you can't re-download or update the game, but if the game didn't have DRM, you can just keep copying the existing executable
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Steam was the defacto storefront when all those games came out.
In 2005 when Roblox came out? No. League of Legends came out in 2009, and I had barely started shopping on Steam for non-Valve games back then. Most of us were still buying games on disc at Walmart. Minecraft was doing early access before Steam had the feature.
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The publishers/developers are the ones who set the prices though.
You can delete your steam account, so that's not locking players into using Steam.
Valve hosts numerous sales, that said developers/publishers have the option of participating in.
This lawsuit is fucking stupid. It's so stupid, I actually went out of my way to dig up ways to contact this bitch and educate her some of how dumb this lawsuit is. I advise everyone to do the same.
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Somewhat unrelated, but I have over 600 games on Epic Games. All free. Haven't played a single one on that platform.
I have over a thousand on Steam, most of them I paid for (usually heavily discounted) and I play those on that. There's a reason why I prefer Steam.
I don't know why people feel the need to weirdly flex about how they do this. What you're saying is, you've wasted time making an account at all, going through the process of checking what game will be free next, then processing the order to get free game.
So, good for you on wasting time and effort? While most of us just simply don't bother with Epic's launcher, market and them in general.
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I don't think the example at the end of your comment is relevant, since to my knowledge it's the publisher deciding on pricing and doing sales, and steam is still taking the same cut.
I also think it's generally not a great thing, since it basically puts the value of the game at $5, making it not worth getting off-sale, while also creating urgency to do so during a sale. I respect Factorio developers' choice to just not do sales at all, and state so, so that buyers know exactly what the price is.
Yeah but don't publishers/developers also have the options to not partake in sales? I think they do, otherwise we'd see every game on the market all going for a sale.
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I did too but when I had a quick search around that's what I found. I think it'd be reasonable to apply steam keys, valve is providing the full service there.
I did too but when I had a quick search around that's what I found.
Source.
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It's more nuanced than that.
Choosing not to release on Steam isn't easy because it's not a balanced market, at all. It's trying to release a Disney-style animated movie, but only in adult theatres.
Steam is the 900-pound gorilla. Yes, they have a good interface, but they take a ludicrous portion of game revenue. Epic has a shit interface, but they take well-under half of the fees Steammdoes for the same game.
Gabe is not your friend. He's a billionaire yacht-collector. Half-Life 2 wasn't designed to be a great game. It was designed to launch a digital storefront that allowed Valve to rake in 30% of all revenue for games sold on the platform - which is often a larger percentage than is paid to the actual people making the games.
Why are we defending a system where the fucking checkout system is valued as much as the people making the games?
Choosing not to release on Steam isn't easy because it's not a balanced market, at all.
It's not Steam's fault that the majority of the competition sucks ass.
but they take a ludicrous portion of game revenue.
It's a standard cut for online storefronts, even today. And they even reduce their once game sales hit certain mile stones. It gets down to around 20%. The only reason anyone talks about it is because Tim Swiney harps on it nonstop because he wants to be the one with the monopoly
