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.
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
This is the worst comment I read today, congrats. What in the world…
Valve prints money doing next to nothing. Hundreds of people spend years of their lives building a fun game, and almost a third of the revenue just goes to the company who owns the server in the corner that said Dev team loaded it onto, themselves. Dev team sets the prices, Dev team makes all promotional material. What does valve do? Makes a couple graphics for their bimonthly big sales events theme.
What race to the bottom?
This was a game developer that made their own drm that was so successful they basically just stopped making games. They’re charge retail margin prices despite being able to sell thousands of times more copies from the same building footprint.
Epic games is losing money because they’re giving away hundreds of games instead of selling them. They’re trying to buy market share from the monopoly. Not from running the store itself.
in what world demanding price parity equals raising the price of video games artificially?
It’s called a cartel, it’s illegal, look it up, and stop being a fanboy for some corporation
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
deleted by creator
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.
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.
“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
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?
deleted by creator
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Steam can delist all of Ubisoft’s games from their storefront in retaliation to what Ubisoft does on their own independent store
Yes
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/
If you can buy from GOG do it. Need to make sure viable competition sticks around plus they actually let you own the game
they actually let you own the game
Let’s be clear. Both Steam and GoG sell you the same licence for a game.
Steam comes with optional DRM that requires you to use the Steam client. Whether or not this DRM is present on a game is the publisher’s decision, not Steam’s.
Steam could certainly be criticised for providing the functionality but it’s not mandatory.
Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam for instance has no DRM and can be run without Steam. Even if a game has Steam DRM it’s usually trivial to bypass it.
The official Stean documentatikn even says Steam DRM should not be used as antipiracy because it’s easily bypassed
I really wanted GOG to be a viable competition, but their years and years of broken promises are not going to make me leave Steam.
…such as…? Whenever I’m shopping for a game, I check GOG (and 3rd party sites for steam keys via ITAD) before I buy from steam. If it’s available on gog and drm-free, that’s where my money goes.
The only issue I see with gog is that devs don’t give a shit. One and done, one pump chump. Why give customers choice, when you can be jerking it with their money already instead?
They can’t even keep their original promise of DRM free games.
For example, they thought they could get away with selling latest Hitman with its always-online DRM, and only changed their minds after the backlash.Also, from the beginning they’ve been promising to support Linux.
Nothing but empty promises so far, they didn’t even have the decency to publicly admit it’s never happening.Valve, meanwhile, didn’t promise anything, but quietly funded the development of Wine and all kinds of related open source software.
Thanks to their work I’ve been able to completely ditch Windows a few years ago.For this reason alone I’m glad to buy from Steam whenever I can.
GOG isn’t really competing in the same market as Steam.
Most importantly, GOG games don’t include Steam keys, which is what’s the issue here.
Steam lets publishers include Steam keys if they don’t sell them for cheaper than on Steam.
These suits have nothing to do with steam keys.
I read that elsewhere. Maybe it’s fake news, maybe it’s not all cases. Idk
Yeah the valve boot licking brigade is out spreading that falsehood for who knows what reason. I’ve heard of 3 lawsuits. None of them are about steam keys.
Steam lets publishers include Steam keys if they don’t sell them for cheaper than on Steam.
Then how come official retailers like GMG are consistently able to sell Steam keys at 10% discount for nearly every new AAA release on launch?
Cause they’re key retailers without a platform. Steam already got paid for those keys.
GMG also publishes games. They’re like the only games with the same price on both sites.
I don’t know what I have to do to get a game listed on GOG though. I don’t buy a lot of games but I think the last three I tried to buy were all unavailable on GOG. There’s that page where you can wish for a game on GOG but I’ve no idea how effective that is.
GOG only sells DRM-free games. If a game isn’t there, it’s probably because the developer/publisher refuses to allow that, requiring DRM in their game.
GOG takes the same 30% cut though and they have less features and dont improve linux compatibility like Steam does with proton. I dont see the benefit of using GOG
GOG uses GenAI for marketing.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, let’s do that too.
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.
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.
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
They can by all means list their games elsewhere and price it however they want.
Again, the suit is happening because valve is threatening them to prevent exactly this.
Terms that force prices on other services (that didn’t involve steam keys) are illegal price fixing behavior and cannot be enforced.
The thing they’re doing is not written in their terms of service. No one agreed to be under this racketeering effort.
I meant list it elsewhere and not on steam. You can list it as many other places as you want that don’t have that policy and price it however you want. Nothing stopping you. But if you agree to the terms steam has long had set for listing it on steam then that’s how it be
Who taught you to read?
Again, the suit is happening because valve is threatening them to prevent exactly this.
The thing happening is not covered by the terms (which even if they were, is not legal, and is very much price fixing cartel behavior)
Holy shit. How many times does it have to be repeated for you to understand?
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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?
Civil suit. Not criminal. Learn the difference.
Stop being deliberately obtuse. The point stands.
Cookiewalled article. Pay with your data or pay with money.
Ah, I see the valve bootlickers are already here. Lemmings hate companies, unless it’s Valve.
Add Proton to the list as well.
Valve is one of the few billion dollar companies that hasn’t screwed me.
Yet!
Gabe has to die some day.
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!
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).
with a few lines of code, they can turn a game into multiplayer
lol, wtf are you talking about? I have no idea how that would even work. I am a game dev. I can add the API calls to connect to the servers, sure. That doesn’t make the game function correctly as a multiplayer game.
So either you have no idea what you are claiming here, or you’re misrepresenting things on purpose.It makes me not trust a single thing you say and think you’re just a Valve shill.
They have done good things for Linux. Doesn’t mean their anti competitive practices aren’t anti competitive.
EDIT: To be clear, I am referring to converting a offline game to online multiplayer. However, it could be argued that in some games, that integration could be as half-arsed as allowing mouse control for the other player (there was one game I played where that was the case, but can’t remember which one).
This isn’t a hidden feature AT ALL. It’s extremely well known.
- Remote Play together. It’s literally on the FRONT of the steamworks feature page https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/remoteplay#2
- There is a literal store page for supported games. https://store.steampowered.com/remoteplay_together
- I don’t develop games (other than uni). And, apparently, I know the steamworks feature set better than a “game dev”, because i find it interesting
- When I was told this by a game dev and how it was so easy, my first reason was to look it up and confirm it. I guess as a developer, I find stuff like this interesting. Some I guess don’t…
- If you can be arsed looking up the API in the link I posted, it should be completely obvious how it works to even non-devs (steam input is yet another good thing on Steamworks).
I guess that confirms though, that they’re not a monopoly though, if you’ve been operating fine without touching steamworks.
Maybe now is a good time for you to actually check the steamworks API, since it clearly has features that benefit you.
I have used that feature in Steam, and I thought it was neat. Also I did not think you could possibly mean that when you said multiplayer. Because as others have pointed out already that is not turning it into what one would generally describe as multiplayer. It turns it into remote coop, or chaos, or, if the game already has local multiplayer, it can turn it into remote multiplayer.
Nice for some games, but not generally applicable, and not what most people unfamiliar with it would expect after reading your statement.
deleted by creator
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).
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.
No. SteamWorks only provides matchmaking and listing, not hosting.
I don’t know where you got this but it’s very wrong.
Play together.
You can get it direct from the features page of the steam works api
That’s not multiplayer.
If you say so. Lol
No. SteamWorks only provides matchmaking and listing, not hosting.
And streaming/shared screen apparently. And input control over the internet (which addresses 2 major issues). So, you were wrong… You just didn’t anticipate it would change the context of the game so you only need to deal with it on a local level (which is actually brilliant)
Just admit its a cool feature. You don’t need to give a shit about steam to admit that.
What do you call it when 2 different players are controlling a game… The term is multiplayer. And I even gave examples of games (like Proverb), where real multiplayer would be very trivial to add using this. Not every multiplayer game needs to be split screen, or totally independent (particularly casual gaming).
You moved the goalpost towards streaming, and you know damn well that couch multiplayer with streaming is not multiplayer.
Steam does not provide the infrastructure, i.e. servers, to run a multiplayer game, less so by adding “a few lines of code”, which is what you claimed in your previous post.
Well fuck
I grew up on games which shared the same monitor playing with my brother. Some were shared control where mouse and keyboard were simply split to do slightly different things
Apparently they weren’t multiplayer though. Despite there being 2 players controlling the same game.i literally have examples of games where nobody needs to compete
Nevermind the fact that the API allows entirely independent handling of controls too so it’s not the same as pure streaming.
It’s a great idea to anyone who knows about it
I’m not responding again… At the end of the day , people can check the links I sent to get the actual facts.
The only thing that happened is that I widened the goalposts because I thought of it more and games I have played to include even more things other than the original things I thought of.
Good luck with your crusade.
Seriously. Gabens ass is clearly big enough for all these billionaire dick riders to eat at once.
they’re saying that publishers can’t take a higher price on steam than on other platforms. basically they don’t want their customers to pay a premium for using their platform.
What if we turn it on it’s other side and say: In the interest of its customers, Valve prohibits publishers from selling for a higher price on Steam than somewhere else.
well, steam probably takes a share of what the player pays (let’s say 10%), so it makes sense if the devs want $15 for it, they offer it on steam for $16.50; meanwhile if they sell it directly on their own store, they don’t have to add that fee.
That would be corporate speak.
you can get cheaper prices elsewhere all the time. look at humble bundle (idk if they’re still around but thats where a lot of my games came from a while back), green man gaming, or any of the console app stores. depending on who has sales when games are cheaper all the time. y’all are falling for propaganda trying to discredit one of the only decent companies left in gaming written by their competitors and their competitors’ friends. try thinking a little before just following the social media hive mind because you’ve spent the last couple decades seeing proof that this is a blatant lie.
You should read the article. That’s not what these suits are addressing.
You should try thinking a little before blindly defending this price fixing behavior which directly harms your wallet.
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.
remind me again how Gaben is a GoOd BiLlIoNaIrE?
How many non-game related ads have you seen on Steam?
How many actual ads have you seen on every other platform you used?
How many ads have you seen in the game released on Steam in general?
Does that answer your question?
Just because Steam doesn’t have ads, doesn’t mean that Gaben is a good billionaire. For a large chunk of the existence of Valve, they wouldn’t even give you a refund. They had to be mandated for them to give you a refund.
While the rest of us starve to death, Gabe is sitting pretty on over a billion dollars worth of boats
Seems like people should get off their lazy asses and quit playing video games all day.
Your name means untrue in my native tongue; how fitting
There are no good billionaires, true, but if you compare refunds during the times you speak of with other companies, youll quickly find out that him and Valve clearly are among the least bad ones. Gabes boat isnt going to magically disappear just because of a lawsuit like this, and you should probably go outside and do something if youre currently starving to death in front of your computer.
and you should probably go outside and do something if youre currently starving to death in front of your computer.
Yeah, because obviously i was being serious. Not at all hyperbolic.
The suit, which is ongoing, centers on what the developers alleged was a tacit company policy designed to punish them for offering discounts at competing online stores. But instead of defending the purported rule, Newell just denied it existed. “Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms,” he said, according to a previously unreported transcript of his deposition. Presented with internal communications in which Valve employees appeared to be enforcing the rule, Newell repeated his denial, at times verbatim, again and again. When an attorney pressed him on how Valve would react if a developer did charge less money for a game on a competing store, Newell demurred. “I’m confused by your question,” he said, before later adding, “Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we’re providing.”
from the bloomberg article.
maybe that explains why epic started peeling some quality games at half price yesterday until the 11th.
Thread number 768 wherin Lemmy users pretend not to know what a monopoly is cause they love Steam so much.
But the features! Gaben is one of us! /s
Thread 768 of wherin a Lemmy user thinks they are very smart, but unlikely read the article.
If steam wants lower prices, they should subsidize the cost of games for their users. The problem is solved.
Why is Anno 2070 still not on GOG?
Requires UbiSoft DRM and TAGES bullshit dependign in the platform. GOG is strictly no-DRM.
