this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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How can this be? All the games I buy on Steam are cheaper than on other platforms. Where are these cheaper games?
I think that is the main point of the lawsuit, if developers sell their game on Steam they can't sell it cheaper somewhere else. If Value gets 30% the developer has to raise the price a bit to compensate and they have to raise it everywhere. Outside of sales I don't think most games that are not on Steam are much cheaper elsewhere, so not sure how this plays out.
So don't sell the game on Steam? Either the huge boost in visibility is worth a 30% cut or it's not.
If you have a point to make about why Valves is not abusing it's monopoly position make it. Otherwise no one wants to hear your dumb 'but the free market is always right' statement.
As far as I know, this only applies to Steam keys: developers are allowed to generate Steam keys for free to sell on their website (Valve does not get 30% of these sales either) with the restriction being they cannot be cheaper than the price on Steam
I don't think there's ever actually been any proof that Valve disallows selling games for cheaper elsewhere as long as you're not selling those freely generated Steam keys
Proof? What would proof look like?
Do you expect companies to just leak contracts they signed while under NDA?
Not the companies. But some anonymous whistleblower? Sure
Like the anonymous whistleblower who went to a lawyer and triggered this lawsuit?
This suit seems to just be vaguely, "30% is too high", along with requiring that DLC for a game bought on Steam also be bought on Steam, it was the Wolfire case back in 2021 that alleged they're not allowed to sell their game for cheaper on other platforms
This is true and public knowledge though as I said (details seen here in the "Steam Key Rules and Guidelines" section), if anything Valve is giving devs a lot of leeway by allowing them to do that at all, not only are they giving up their 30% cut but are also then distributing and committing to updating those copies of the game for free
The allegation says nothing about steam keys. The lawsuit is alleging that they are contractually prevented from selling the game cheaper elsewhere.
That's exactly what they're trying to say. It could have been cheaper if Valve didn't have pricing clauses that doesn't allow developers to price things cheaper elsewhere.
Which is deceptive, at best. Steam doesn’t have pricing clauses for developers’ games. The devs are free to sell their games anywhere they want, at whatever prices they want. But Steam does have pricing clauses for Steam keys. Basically, what allows you to register a game to your Steam account.
You can sell your game for whatever price you want, as long as it’s not the Steam version of the game. They don’t want you giving away Steam keys for cheaper than you can often buy them on Steam. And this makes sense; Steam has a vested interest in protecting their own game keys, and encouraging players to shop on a storefront that they know is reputable; Lots of steam key resellers are notoriously shady, for instance.
Basically, the dev can go sell it cheaper on GoG, or Epic, or their own storefront if they want. As long as they’re not selling Steam keys, they’re fine. But players like having games registered to their Steam accounts, because it puts everything in one place. So devs may feel shoehorned into selling Steam keys (which would invoke that pricing clause) instead of selling a separate version that isn’t registered to Steam. But that doesn’t mean Steam is preventing publishers from selling elsewhere, or controlling the prices on those third party sites. It just means Steam has market pull, and publishers know the game will sell better if it’s offered as a Steam key.
Yep, I was only summarizing their angle. Here are the specifics for anyone who wants to read the source documentation: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3
The only thing that doesn't sit right with me is developers stating Steam threatened to delist the game when they expressed wanting to sell elsewhere. I haven't seen any proof except just the statements, but it would be weird for a developer to lie about that stuff. If anyone has any more sources on that, it would be appreciated
Given that said game is also for sale on the Humble Store, I find those statements dubious at best.
The one example I can think of is the Remnant games, at least for Remnant 2 on release it was cheaper on Epic Store than on Steam, by like 10 USD if I recall correctly