Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?
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Valve is being sued because they are forcing others to follow policies that further entrenches Steam as the largest store.
Since Epic bought the game developer, it only applies to themselves. It is much harder to sue someone over a decision that only applies to something they own. How can a company be sued for not selling their product at a store? Should Valve be sued for not selling their own games on Epic or GOG?
Is Epic’s decision to only sell their games on their store annoying for users? Yes. But unfortunately, there is nothing illegal about. There would be a better chance of a lawsuit of Epic paying other game developers for exclusivity, but that would still not be easy as game exclusivity is still a significant factor on game consoles as well. Albeit much less than in the past.
They essentially removed games that I owned and made it so I could no longer play them by drippy Linux support.
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To be honest, Epic is doing a good job of tearing down walled gardens in places like mobile, and we'll probably be better off for it. But yeah, they've done a terrible job of competing with Steam.
They only did that because they wanted their walled garden to be there too. Tim Sweeney is just butthurt his walled garden isn't the biggest
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This would be like if someone sued Walmart for letting their local store go out of business.
More like the local store suing Walmart for putting them out of business, but only after they pushed away all of their customers with bad ideas and flashy gimmicks
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If Epic spent half as much money as they are suing organisations and instead funded developing their shop into a gaming community platform like Steam, they’d probably have caught up by now.
“Gaming community.”
Steam and Epic are both malware.
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You prefer Walmart instead of Walmart?
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Valve is being sued because they are forcing others to follow policies that further entrenches Steam as the largest store.
Since Epic bought the game developer, it only applies to themselves. It is much harder to sue someone over a decision that only applies to something they own. How can a company be sued for not selling their product at a store? Should Valve be sued for not selling their own games on Epic or GOG?
Is Epic’s decision to only sell their games on their store annoying for users? Yes. But unfortunately, there is nothing illegal about. There would be a better chance of a lawsuit of Epic paying other game developers for exclusivity, but that would still not be easy as game exclusivity is still a significant factor on game consoles as well. Albeit much less than in the past.
The only answer with an actual articulate explanation has 30% downvotes because the average gamer IQ is double digits.
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They only did that because they wanted their walled garden to be there too. Tim Sweeney is just butthurt his walled garden isn't the biggest
Of course, but...broken clock, you know? A large percentage of personal computers will be freed from Windows in large part because of Valve, even though they profit off of legalized child gambling addiction. And walled gardens in mobile will be broken down in large part because of Epic, which uses dark patterns to trick people out of their money in pursuit of a cultural hodge podge of nonsense that won't even exist in a few decades.
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So the entire problem is about restrictions on steam codes?
It’s a restriction on where you can get a DLC you paid for. The fact that you paid for it at Walmart shouldn’t matter.
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They are being accused of price fixing with the whole "can't sell games for cheaper on other store fronts compared to the steam listing" thing
warm@kbin.earth explains it better below:
It only applies to Steam product keys though, so developers cannot sell cheap Steam keys on other platforms while still taking advantage of Steam’s services.
I’m pretty sure that Amazon also says that you can’t sell things on Amazon for more than you sell the same item elsewhere.
I’ve certainly seen a video claiming that.
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This would be like if someone sued Walmart for letting their local store go out of business.
Walmart didn't let local stores go out of business, it deliberately undercut local stores in order to drive them out if business.
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If Epic spent half as much money as they are suing organisations and instead funded developing their shop into a gaming community platform like Steam, they’d probably have caught up by now.
I wish they'd just focus on fixing Unreal. It's a shit show.
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Because it's a patent troll who has attempted this a few times before.
Exactly.
And she's one of those who is doing it "for the children". So, one of those disgusting beings who hides behind children to get anything she wants done.
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I wish they'd just focus on fixing Unreal. It's a shit show.
Always has been
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There are laws that say that abusing a monopoly is illegal. Steam is objectively a monopoly in pc games. Sure, you don't have to use it, but it is basically impossible for indie developers to make a living without it.
Now, the question is if valve's actions are actually abusing the monopoly, or normal business practices.
I would say they aren't.
Because, they aren't like Epic, who has been going around and locking games behind exclusivity deals. Name me one game by one developer, who Valve went to and was like "hey, I'm going to give you a $5 Million exclusivity deal. I'd like for your game to be available on our Steam platform for 2 years before you're allowed to sell anywhere else!"
I'm sure nobody can find that game. Meanwhile, Epic has done this to Metro: Exodus, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 for the PC and outright buying studios going "hey, delist your game on Steam and only be available to our platform."
How the fuck can that broad be so stupid to not notice that? But it's all Valve's fault, somehow.
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Because Steam is the world's biggest games store on PC while Epic is statistically insignificant. What's the question?
Epic is irrelevant because Epic has not given anyone a single solitary reason to use their launcher and platform. Tim Sweeny loves the smell of his own shit in the morning after he takes a big wet dump in the toilet. So much so, he doesn't even flush for a while.
That launcher of theirs has a knack of sucking out all of your system resources, namely bandwidth and CPU, just to download games. Meanwhile, Valve gives you so many options to work around that.
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He's also Tencent's bitch too.
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Walmart didn't let local stores go out of business, it deliberately undercut local stores in order to drive them out if business.
It's not a perfect analogy, but you get my point.
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If Epic spent half as much money as they are suing organisations and instead funded developing their shop into a gaming community platform like Steam, they’d probably have caught up by now.
its not about making better product for epic. its about removing competition so they dont have to.
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hey, I'm going to give you a $5 Million exclusivity deal
This isn't something they need to.do, as they have a monopoly.
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Got any other modern examples than just the one game that had a massive following for the last 7 years of development?
Star Citizen I guess. If by "well" it is meant "making lots of money"
But yeah it's not realistic at all for 99+% of devs/games
