They have the highest market share because every other platform has been shit (until gog), and customers voted with their wallet. They aren’t squeezing competition out, everyone else needs to suck less.
If you think removing those abusive clauses will have an impact on the market you’re delusional.
Third party sellers have no reason to have a lower price on a different store, unless the store itself is paying them the offset of a lower price. That’s only going to suffocate smaller stores that don’t have money to burn.
And the stores with first party games can already create a bigger incentive for their store by keeping their games store exclusive because it would be the only place to play that particular game (it’s why streaming services have gone down the route of exclusivity). Also having the game with a higher price point on Steam would just lead to a controversy which will hurts sales and damage the reputation of the company.
So sell epic keys or some other store fronts keys and move on with your life? There are other digital store keys they could sell at literally any price they want. And that’s why this is bogus.
They don’t have to sell their game digitally with steam keys. They can create keys on other platforms to sell their game.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Market share has nothing to do with this.
Allegedly they can’t because confidential agreement prevents them. And they won’t move away from Steam because it’s a monopoly. Which is why this is illegal.
First filed back in 2024 by Vicki Shotbolt, the lawsuit claims that Valve charges “excessive commission charges” that lead to “an unfair price which is then passed on to consumers”.
These fees are 30% cut of profits per game key sold, not and extra fee on top of that. So selling the steam key costs the same amount and nets about the same profit as selling a PlayStation or Nintendo key.
Literally every other online store (Epic, GOG, Xbox, PlayStation, …) does the exact same thing when it comes to both game keys and DLCs. Seems frivolous on that point at least.
This has been alleged before. And it was a nothing burger then. There’s a whole pictograph floating around comparing the cut that other game sale platforms take and I think only like 2 of them take a smaller than 30% cut.
This compares physical games to electronic keys, and that’s also a nothing burger. The cost will be higher with those on the manufacturing side because of the cost of materials to make the physical copies, the logistics of delivery to retailers, and the cost of manufacturing them.
Steam isn’t a monopoly. You keep using that word but it has a very finite legal definition. That definition provides that through practices of the company that are anti-consumer or anti-competitve, or both, the company retains a significant majority of the market share.
So again I’m not even suggesting that these devs leave steam. But the crux of the matter is that they want to use steam keys on other store fronts etc and don’t want to pay steam 30% for the use of those steam keys. They can use a different store front with a different store front’s game keys and still provide steam keys through steam. They are not required to use steam keys on their own website or other digital store fronts.
You also aren’t required to launch games from or use steam for anything except downloading the game. You can launch them, update them, modify them, etc without even having steam running.
As I said before, DLC being tied to the store front that supplied the key makes sense and is a normal standard business practice.
If what you allege is true then literally no exclusive games on the Epic store could every be made available on steam (after the exclusivity contracted time ends), because I think what you’re trying to suggest is that Steam (through confidential agreement) is forcing these devs to only provide steam keys. Which is a pretty bogus claim.
Valve can’t enforce prices across other store by mandating they can’t be cheaper because they’re a monopolist. If this part of their agreement is true then they are out of the line, in breach of law, and should be punished. Being a monopoly isn’t illegal, how Valve got there doesn’t matter. Their behaviour as a monopolist matters. It’s literally the law in most civilised countries and those laws come from the times when people didn’t simp for monopolies.
It’s anticompetitive when you have 90% market share and you do this. Monopolies are generally legal but can’t do certain things regular companies can.
They have the highest market share because every other platform has been shit (until gog), and customers voted with their wallet. They aren’t squeezing competition out, everyone else needs to suck less.
And Valve has to remove abusive clauses from their agreements with the devs so that it can actually happen, yes.
If you think removing those abusive clauses will have an impact on the market you’re delusional.
Third party sellers have no reason to have a lower price on a different store, unless the store itself is paying them the offset of a lower price. That’s only going to suffocate smaller stores that don’t have money to burn.
And the stores with first party games can already create a bigger incentive for their store by keeping their games store exclusive because it would be the only place to play that particular game (it’s why streaming services have gone down the route of exclusivity). Also having the game with a higher price point on Steam would just lead to a controversy which will hurts sales and damage the reputation of the company.
Removing the price parity clause will do nothing.
So sell epic keys or some other store fronts keys and move on with your life? There are other digital store keys they could sell at literally any price they want. And that’s why this is bogus.
They don’t have to sell their game digitally with steam keys. They can create keys on other platforms to sell their game.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Market share has nothing to do with this.
Allegedly they can’t because confidential agreement prevents them. And they won’t move away from Steam because it’s a monopoly. Which is why this is illegal.
These fees are 30% cut of profits per game key sold, not and extra fee on top of that. So selling the steam key costs the same amount and nets about the same profit as selling a PlayStation or Nintendo key.
Literally every other online store (Epic, GOG, Xbox, PlayStation, …) does the exact same thing when it comes to both game keys and DLCs. Seems frivolous on that point at least.
This has been alleged before. And it was a nothing burger then. There’s a whole pictograph floating around comparing the cut that other game sale platforms take and I think only like 2 of them take a smaller than 30% cut.
This compares physical games to electronic keys, and that’s also a nothing burger. The cost will be higher with those on the manufacturing side because of the cost of materials to make the physical copies, the logistics of delivery to retailers, and the cost of manufacturing them.
Steam isn’t a monopoly. You keep using that word but it has a very finite legal definition. That definition provides that through practices of the company that are anti-consumer or anti-competitve, or both, the company retains a significant majority of the market share.
So again I’m not even suggesting that these devs leave steam. But the crux of the matter is that they want to use steam keys on other store fronts etc and don’t want to pay steam 30% for the use of those steam keys. They can use a different store front with a different store front’s game keys and still provide steam keys through steam. They are not required to use steam keys on their own website or other digital store fronts.
You also aren’t required to launch games from or use steam for anything except downloading the game. You can launch them, update them, modify them, etc without even having steam running.
As I said before, DLC being tied to the store front that supplied the key makes sense and is a normal standard business practice.
If what you allege is true then literally no exclusive games on the Epic store could every be made available on steam (after the exclusivity contracted time ends), because I think what you’re trying to suggest is that Steam (through confidential agreement) is forcing these devs to only provide steam keys. Which is a pretty bogus claim.
You’re missing the point.
Valve can’t enforce prices across other store by mandating they can’t be cheaper because they’re a monopolist. If this part of their agreement is true then they are out of the line, in breach of law, and should be punished. Being a monopoly isn’t illegal, how Valve got there doesn’t matter. Their behaviour as a monopolist matters. It’s literally the law in most civilised countries and those laws come from the times when people didn’t simp for monopolies.