Are you joking? I’ve saved thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, by waiting for Steam Sales and buying games at a reasonable price for me(I’m poor) rather than paying $60 a game. Nobody else does this(When was the last time Nintendo put Mario Kart on sale?)
The statement “Steam overcharges gamers” is self-defeating and hilarious.
Totally agree, steam is one the big players that stills offers a quality service both for consumers and for developers
Removed by mod
Would said competitor be the one who successfully trained their users to only look at their store once a week for a free game or two then close the store again? 😉
I recently got my first current-gen game console a couple of years ago (Nintendo switch) and was floored at how expensive all of the games are and how meager the sales are. PC gaming is shockingly cheap when you get down to it
FYI go walk your local target from time to time. They’ll sometimes have random sales on the big switch games with no online listing of the sale. I got the last pokemon game 6 months or so late for $20 off
Nintendo doesn’t reward super patient gaming though like other consoles where I didnt pay more than over $20 for any PS4 first party exclusives. It is actually on the weird side where sometimes physical prices actually go up with Nintendo seeming to be more conservative about number of physical copies they make to keep prices high compared to Sony where brick and motor stores look to offload physical inventory. So leads to used market for Nintendo games going crazy compared to downward trend of other consoles.
Oh that’s good to know! Too bad my nearest target is 20 miles away and a very annoying drive over a poorly designed arterial road
Sales of physical copies of games is where consoles truly shine. It’s not as great as a few years ago (getting surplus steelbook games for like $10 sometimes), but you can still regularly pick up AAA games that are a handful of months old for $20 or sometimes less.
Check sites like dekudeals and psprices (steamDB is great too for making sure you’re not being over charged on Steam).
It’s just being a savvy consumer.
But yeah, when it comes to Nintendo hardware, the only reason to have it imo is the first party games, and those will never go on sale so you might as well just pony up. You can do the voucher thing and save $10 on each if you get two games (dunno if that’s still a thing).
I remember a couple of years ago when my little brother saved up for a switch for like a year, and then didn’t have any money left for games because of the prices.
Right?! Having moved off of consoles entirely this generation, I’ve hoovered up amazing games during the countless Steam sales at prices CEX can’t even beat.
I hope this gets thrown out as hogwash.
Removed by mod
I mean literally everything could be cheaper. Welcome to a capitalist society.
Removed by mod
the solution to that is taxes, not suing successful business one at a time.
Removed by mod
And you want to start with Valve, which is one of the smaller game companies and is one of the few players not guilty of buying up their competition, instead of Sony, Microsoft, other Big Tech players, media conglomerates like Disney, ISPs like Comcast or AT&T, or meat distributors who are price fixing algorithmicly?
Removed by mod
Why even buy games period? Why risk giving money to any of them since things that become popular risk making the people selling them to become wealthy? Not like indies are immune to it looking at Minecraft becoming too popular that too many people wanted to buy it making one person then a corporation wealthy, so why not just not buy period to prevent the issue from even becoming a possibility?
The best solution is prevention. Don’t buy anything.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
bruh, don’t lump me with this idiot.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
What would be the solution here that could drive the prices down? Limit profit levels per company?
I feel like it’s not even capitalism itself being the problem alone, but also the entry cost for all these services. Building a competitor to Steam is pretty much equal to building a competitor to Youtube which means it’s almost impossible due to the running costs of the service AND you would have to be somehow wildly better as in not gather as much money from your customers. It would be lovely to see some resolution to these problems without going full communism first.
Removed by mod
Okay, but who gets to decide what’s the maximum profit margin allowed? How would it be determined so that it wouldn’t also prevent new competition from growing up because that 30% is the only thing that allows the companies to make some money from their service and use that money to develop said service.
Removed by mod
Nothing really. Publishers already all want to go up to 70 base price, and most bigger games already effectively cost 100-200 between pre-orders, deluxe editions and mtx (I don’t know the designed price point, but years ago I was talking to the team of an in-dev game who planned for 110 being spent on average per buyer for their game).
If there was no method by which people could ever profit from a system like Steam, why bother building it?
Removed by mod
Let’s play ball here too. So by definition there’s always going to be a richest person in the world - let it be with a difference of 100 dollars to the median or a billion dollars or 100 billion dollars. Who gets to decide who is the richest person and by what means? Clearly it shouldn’t be a business person so would it be a politician, a dictator, a president or who? And how should we restrict entrepreneurs getting there without destroying every company and therefore making everyone unemployed because there’s no incentive to run a business anymore? How would we balance risks with gains if we are not allowed to make a profit?
You’re definitely right that you picked apart their argument because ackshually there will always be a richest person. But clearly the sentiment is that someone shouldn’t get excessive wealth past their threshold.
How do we define excessive wealth and how do we limit it? Well there are lots and lots of proposals I would suggest reading up on some (you can Google that question to get 10 op eds that suggest 20 different solutions). I wouldn’t mind defining it as a certain percentage higher than the median wealth of the country. It would be funny to give Gabe Newell a “you won capitalism” trophy and taking excess wealth he gains.
As for motivation. It’s a much murkier subject than you imply. In an economy where the state takes every penny of a successful business’s wealth, yeah it makes sense that there’s no motivation to make a successful business. But if one could still get rich off of running a business (just not god-tier level wealth) I’m sure there would be plenty of motivation. And hell, if we give them prestige like we do now there’s tons of people who do what they do just for the fame with no profit. There’s tons of evidence that people aren’t purely motivated by the infinite profit of business people all over the world work their asses off in jobs they enjoy or respect that will never pay them Gabe Newell bucks.
Removed by mod
They absolutely could. If only there was any serious competition and not just some quick cash grabbers like EA and others. As long as Steam is providing most value to users (=players) without even restricting competition like other tech companies do in other areas (cough Apple), they are able to take the 30% cut without a complaint.
The only reason EA and others aren’t serious competition is because of their lack of effort.
Every time the topic comes up, PC gamers don’t bother with their services because they’re shoddily written and slow. The complaint of “They don’t have millions of games on there to amass in one library” is a minority one.
Exactly. Why should they succeed if they don’t even try to win the competition?
Streaming platforms for TV series and movies went into the direction of every large movie company running their own streaming platform and only limiting their own content to their own platform which lead into a bad customer experience when you just wanted to see the latest Disney or HBO or whatever thing. I think it’s a good thing EA and others didn’t succeed doing the same in gaming industry and only limiting their games to their own stores even though they did try really hard. That’s not even competition, it’s just being greedy.
A true competitor to Steam would try to sell and serve games of their own and also made by others. I guess Epic tries to do that in a sense but they also lack the actual effort of making a good product and instead tries to win some market share by just throwing lots of money at it. I know it’s hard to build an actually good software product (because I work in the industry) but I also know it’s not impossible. Somehow the companies that have the means to compete just aren’t able to get their shit together and for some reason that’s the reason why we shouldn’t like Valve either?
I mean, if Epic actually did what shills like @[email protected] promote - that is, reflect lower cuts in a cheaper price to consumers, then we would all be flabbergasted how big their market percentage is.
But they’re not doing that, that’s the thing. Because Tim Sweeney does not want storefronts to take a smaller cut. Quite the opposite. His problem is that the cut is only 30%, and worse, does not go into his pockets!
But there is always an excuse. Epic tried that. Companies complained.
Their sales used to give you a reusable $10 off coupon. That didn’t change the amount the companies got when someone bought their game. It only changed how much they paid. When one of the Witcher games had that coupon applied to it, the developer got pissed off and changed the price of the game so that it was a cent or two below the threshold to activate the coupon, and then fans of the dev were excusing it claiming that they couldn’t let the price be lower because it would ‘devalue’ the game.
if a game was $30 on Steam and $25 on Epic (as a regular price), or some other service, you’d undoubtedly hear the same rhetoric.
Epic’s cut is 12% not 30%. They also waive the 5% royalty fee over $1 million for sales on the Epic Store if you use Unreal. Epic doesn’t control the prices. Devs set the prices. They leave the price the same on Epic so that they can actually get a little more for each sale.
What the should do on a $60 game though is to set the price at like $56 on Epic, it would encourage people to save a couple bucks there, while still getting them more than steam after the cuts.
Removed by mod
I do, and I feel like the real intent is something completely different here than what is said out loud.
E: So Epic Games Store is actually giving out games for free and they still can’t gain traction because their platform sucks so bad otherwise. My guess is someone just wants to try and get a tough competitor driven out of one country so that they could bring their own, worse, service there instead and take the market share without actually competing.
Removed by mod
I brought Epic just as an example of an actual competitor actually trying to compete against Steam, sorry if I I was a bit unclear about that.
So lots of entrepreneurs get rich when they make a product that solves people’s problems in one way or another and it sells with a profit - let it be a small profit or a large profit. The thing with capitalism is, if you make your profit too large, eventually a competitor will come and provide an equal or better product with slightly smaller profit or they figured out a way to make the product cheaper and still maintain the same profit margin with a lower price gaining a market share.
The problem with Apple, other large tech companies or some grocery chains in some parts of world (this is the case where I live actually) is that they are not allowing a healthy competition in the first place. If a competitor appears on the market, they will buy them before gaining too much traction, or if that’s not possible, they will do everything they can in their power to drive them out of the market by lobbying politicians, or if they control some valuable aspect of the market, restrict access to said market.
Valve hasn’t practiced any of those shady tactics as far as I know of and that’s why people actually think of them as one of the “good guys” even if it is somewhat unhealthy. You shouldn’t try to beat down the people playing with a friendly rule set of capitalism because they are the ones driving the competition forward.
Removed by mod
As evidenced by games costing less on stores where the cut is lower!
Oh… wait…
Removed by mod
But it doesn’t need to be sold for more? As evidenced by not being sold for more despite the cut Valve takes? If that were an issue the games would cost say 70 on Steam but 60 elsewhere?
Removed by mod
I find it absolutely wild that you seem to think Steam’s 30% cut is the sole reason AAA games cost $70. Have you ever looked into how much it costs to sell a game at a retail store? From what I’ve seen Steam takes roughly the same cut as most retailers do and then the publisher still has to produce the physical copies and distribute them. They would make the same amount on Steam if and only if they printed, burned, packaged, and distributed their physical copies for free, not to mention the promotional materials they’re sending out to retailers.
Everything I’m seeing indicates that compared to a physical copy (which is given for a majority of AAA games) a major publisher would earn far more money per copy on Steam than at GameStop, Target, Walmart, or any other retailer where they’re charging the same $70 price at. But Steam is the real problem that’s hurting their RoI, apparently.
I’ll agree I think Steam’s cut is high and they could earn a lot of favor by turning it down a bit, but your argument seeming to insinuate that their 30% cut is the sole reason games cost $70 is absolutely wild to me.
Removed by mod
In a world where Sony and Embracer are running around saying we need to be paying $70+ for games (while tipping the devs and buying micro transactions like a good like wallet)… You’re mad at the storefront?
Yeah, go into Walmart and demand they take less of a cut so… The publisher can take more from the devs?
Gabe is rich because he spearheaded a good service (which I’ll admit I thought was a scam back when I was forced to make an account way back when I had dial up) but… 30% is standard. For the price of games? Be mad at Embracer. Be mad at EA. You’re free to not like or use Steam but they let the publishers set the price. Their cut is a drop in the bucket. The whole ‘cut’ debate is just EGS propaganda.
…(which I’ll admit I thought was a scam back when I was forced to make an account way back when I had dial up)…
Oh man, I cursed Valve and Steam back then. It effectively made LAN parties of the time impossible since you could no longer share media and needed Internet access to play. Back then, only business had the “fast” Internets while everyone else had 56k baud modems. Hard to do much when your max download speed for the entire connection was 5kb/s.
Removed by mod
Epic with a lower cut has the same game prices. Additionally Valve lowered their cut ahead of a launch of Epic Games Store
Removed by mod
This is just a description of a standard business model. Most percentage-based revenue or sales systems have lower prices for higher quantities.
It’s called the “bulk discount” for a reason.
They lowered the cut for people who didn’t need it. Massive publishers selling tons of games. Arguably indie games that only sell a few copies need a larger cut than EA on their latest blockbuster.
There isn’t much in the way of scale here. Their bandwidth isn’t monitored on a per game basis, and if that was a factor in the cost they’d be basing the cut on the size of your game. Some 1 gb indie game pays the same cut or larger than a 100gb mammoth from EA. Valve is also way more strict with that indie game in getting itself published than they are with the EA game as well.
You’re poor but have possibly spent hundreds of thousands on games?
No, I’ve saved hundreds of thousands. Between Steam sales and Humble Bundle, always being a patient gamer, I’ve amassed over 300 games id like to play but haven’t spent more than $500 on Steam over my entire life. I’m poor but $500 over a couple years I can do.
For comparison, at $60 a game, that would buy me 8 console or Nintendo games at full price plus a little DLC.
It’s the best price, bar none.
You’ve saved hundreds or thousands, but you’ve not saved hundreds of thousands.
Is that in American dollars?
If those 300 games were even US $70 each which is exceedingly generous, you’d only scratch $21,000 as the cost of everything. Unless Steam was literally giving you $180,000+ for using their store, you’ve not saved hundreds of thousands.
Unless you’re referring to hundreds of thousands of pennies.
It’s possible they have more games in their library as they did say 300+ games they want to play, but yeah the numbers they gave don’t add up to hundreds of thousands. Unless they were taking phrases like “a $700 Demon Souls machine” very literally.
My mistake, I thought you’d literally saved thousands from sales pricing
Different guy but I’ve got over 2,700 games on Steam thanks to sales… So I’ve probably saved at least one thousand… Maybe not two, unless we count not buying for Star Citizen as a savings!
Which is totally reasonable, but 100x that raises an eyebrow
yen
Playstation and Xbox regularly put games on sale. And their base prices almost always go down over time. I assume Steam is more steep discounts. But you can absolutely get by without paying full price on consoles if you wait.
You can usually snag items for 75% or more off about 1-2 years after launch on Steam (and by extension all other PC game sales platforms) and it’s consistent enough that you can count on it (and I do!). I’ve never seen discounts go that deep on consoles, at least not for games I actually play.
Also GOG will just decide at random that a game is infact 1 dollar for no reason.
Nintendo doesn’t tho
Epic also does this
Can we not go after one of the few good guys in gaming? Please? If you want to hound someone Nintendo is right over there.
No. It’s easier to go after the “good guys” than the bad guys because they’re easier to beat. They won’t use all kinds of slimy, underhanded tactics to fuck you over.
Edit: I don’t approve of the lawsuit against valve, but that’s the way of the world. Scummy companies and people have many tools they can use to drag you down to their level.
Removed by mod
Let’s replace “good guy” with “one of the few actually good services in gaming”, would you still disagree?
Removed by mod
I mean I get what you’re saying, but Valve is actually one of the few large tech companies that are providing an actually good service (Steam). People should be allowed to make money by providing value to their customers because that’s the motivation of building such services and products in the first place.
The hatred should go towards the companies abusing their position and violating customers and then just cashing excessive amounts of money for a crap product/service that has no real competition. If Valve had started making their competitors lives harder, by generating lots of nonsense lawsuits for example, they should absolutely be blasted down to hell by everybody. As long as they are just earning lots of bucks by providing a service people want to use without restricting using other services and playing with healthy rules otherwise as well, it’s all fine and everyone working on the great service SHOULD earn more than average.
Removed by mod
Steam didn’t get to where it is because of market abuse but because of providing a good service, or at least a service that was better than anything else at the time by far. Valve are reaping the rewards now, but are also still providing an arguably better service than it’s competitors. It’s a bit odd that you want to punish a company just for being successful.
Valve isn’t perfect and they’re profit driven, but they’re privately owned and the goals isn’t maximizing profit, which isn’t something you can say about most of their competitors.
Removed by mod
I guess steam could have avoided making billions if they had never improved their launcher since Half Life 2. Not improving products and keeping it as crappy as possible so people stay away from it is one business strategy of ensuring people are deterred from using it.
Shame they kept improving and made something people want to use.
Removed by mod
I mean Valve has a game store called Steam, but what’s the actual position they have? There are competing game stores - both digital and physical - and Valve isn’t trying to run their competition out of business with shady business tactics? Just by being good at something and therefore running a successful business shouldn’t be illegal or hated by itself - it’s the way the business is being conducted that actually matters. Gaben is free to have yacht or two as long as his company is being run with a healthy mindset, their employees are being paid a fair salary (which I guess is another discussion in it’s own who decides that) and they are not screwing their competition nor their customers up.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Isn’t that the discussion though? Take the time and money spent on this to fight someone more deserving.
Removed by mod
Shame you’re getting so downvoted. People are so determined to believe in good philanthropic billionaires that they forget the system that allows the accumulation of such ridiculous wealth doesn’t work for nice philanthropic people. It was like this with Elon musk, before he sacked his publicists (my guess) before the cave diver thing. People were saying he was going so save humanity or some shit. All he’s done is fuck up twitter. Same with this guy. I use steam and I think my steam deck is a cool little machine but that doesn’t inspire me to tongue the sweaty arsehole of an obscenely rich guy.
Removed by mod
Even if you believe that all privately owned capital is intrinsicly evil, you still ought to go after companies from most to least problematic within a specific category, no?
That is, for digital storefronts, start with the likes of Epic or in a broader digital gaming space in general, Microsoft or Ubisoft. Go after Steam when you’ve cleaned up the rapists, backroom dealers and collusionists.
Removed by mod
Such a simplistic view of the world.
Removed by mod
Companies are never your friend.
Valve is like any other company. They’re as good as your money is good.
Its still going after the LEAST shitty company and expecting your life to get better when the competition is FAR WORSE
Fair, but not-shitty companies eventually become shitty companies in almost every circumstance. I hate making the argument that someone is fine because they only hurt a few people compared to the guy who hurts lots.
“Charges 30% fee” “That’s too high! You’re ripping us off”
“Charges 10% fee” “That’s too low! No other platforms could hope to compete against you with that!”
This is nothing but people bitching about nothing for the price gouging. I will give merit to the anti competitive nature if game makers aren’t allowed to have their games listed for less at other stores. As far as add on game packages locking you in goes…that might be a technical minefield to ensure compatibility.
Conspiracy theory here…
Maybe this is an initiative by competing platforms? Epic? Ubisoft?
Stir some shit, hope to get valve in legal issues so that they’re legally forced to become less competitive and therefore creating a chance for these other platforms?
Of course it is.
All those large online action/claim sites are commercial in underlying nature. When you saw all the small farmers protest in Germany it was primarily driven as an action by about 5 large farming conglomerates because they are the ones getting ~85% of the grant money that was being cut. The whole point of the cut was to not funnel money that was supposed to go to small farmers to large megacorps after all. Who in turn instrumentalized the small farmers to protest it.
Probably what’s going on here, too. You can bet somewhere deep deep down, this is something Tim Sweeney cooked up.
Of course it is. There is a similar case in the US right now, or was, by the dude behind the fighting rabbits game and parts of the humble bundle that was being bankrolled in his lawsuit by epic games.
This of course. Any reduction in fee would not go the people. Studios would raise their prices.
Yes, if Valve limited the price games could have in other stores that would be anti-competitive, but that’s not the case. Their price parity clause is just for selling steam keys.
Then the entire lawsuit hope is pretty much bs.
This lawsuit being funded by a Epic Games shell company would not be surprising in the least. They have done so much and stooped so low to try to not have to actually do work and create a good platform.
This lawsuit build on a false premise. Steam doesnt have a price parity clause for other stores. What this lawsuit alleges applies to Steam keys that the developer generates through Steam. If the developer lists those keys for sale at a price lower than what the game is listed for on Steam, then the price of the Steam Store purchase price must match it, so that people visiting the store page on Steam get the same discount. It doesn’t matter if you list your game on GOG and discount it there.
Its literally helping players.
Seems like that’d be hard to track with so many stores selling steam keys just looking at isthereanydeals.
Weird thing is it is the publishers themselves that are able to set the price so they are choosing not to put the game on sale same as it is elsewhere. Probably to not devalue the price of their game like the Nintendo strategy when it comes to certain storefronts.
Probably operates closer to corporate software licensing deals, i.e. “we might not catch you but if we do it’s over”
Just for clarity: how would it do a disservice to players if a dev can sell their steam keys for any price, no matter which platform?
Steam is a service that costs money to keep running - lot’s of money actually in their scale. When you sell a Steam key outside of Steam, they don’t get their cut which goes toward running costs and whatnot. It doesn’t of course matter if it’s just some random few keys but if almost all devs started to do that, it could cause some serious funding problems to Valve. That could then lead to reduced service levels of Steam and that would hurt their customers - the players - the most.
So while it’s not a big problem currently, it could be if it wasn’t prevented properly in contractual level. People who think that is an unfair clause don’t probably understand what it actually takes to run a service like Steam or they are straight competitors trying to run them out of business in any way imaginable.
E: And actually if Steam still allows selling the Steam keys in external services but only requires the price to match the price in Steam, it’s already a quite charitable policy. I guess they count on not too many people buying the key externally for the same price than in Steam store.
Just think about how this works.
Steam currently allows you to generate keys and sell them for free, only stipulating that they must be sold for the same price as on steam.
Let’s say they are told that stipulation can’t be enforced.
Valve, will probably go with 1 of 2 options.
1 - you can no longer generate keys. So all the great key sites(GMG, Fanatical and so on) no longer exist, because no steam keys.
2 - Valve charge an upfront fee for keys generated. Now smaller pmdevs and publishers can no longer supply keys to sites, because they can’t afford the upfront costs.
What incentive does valve have to continue offering this free service? If it can be exploited for the detriment of steam, they will stop providing it.
Let me try and understand this by altering the product.
Valve now produces cars and the devs are people who make these cars inside factories. Same as is currently the case, these employees get cars cheaper and are asked to not undercut the seller by holding onto the cars for a certain amount of time before selling them used.
It does make sense for me to view it that way. One could argue that the couple cars that get sold by employees doesnt do anything to hurt the brand and that pressuring them to keep the price high manipulates the market.
Also, doesnt the work of steam accumulate to hosting mirrors of a game and hosting a large website they get billions in revenue for?
This analogy is so bad, it is not even close to what is happening.
I will try and adapt to cars for you(I dont know why), but this is just really really bad.
Say you have designed a car, you can produce them on a very small scale, but you have come to valve(they make cars now) to mass produce. They do so, for a 30% cut(that reduces the more they sell) for everything they sell from their direct sales at the price you have set. There is no material costs or labour costs, just that cut of the price you have set.
Now valve have a sales page and are selling, and you decide that actually I would like more people to see the car, and so you consider selling it at other dealers. Valve says, sure, you can even have the cars for free from us(no 30% cut) and you can have basically an unlimited supply of free fully built cars to sell else where. We only ask that you sell the car at the same price you have set with us if you are selling a car we made.
You want to go sell it new cheaper? You are more than welcome too, but you cant sell the car we produced.
Such a bad analogy, but that is closer to what is actually happening.
First of all, people sometimes use analogies that dont make sense to you. No need to be a dick about it. You could just make a better example.
Staying with cars, I see my mistake. Valve is not producing the cars in this example, valve is doing the car sales for the (small) manufacturer. They dont provide any part of the car, only the exposure and surrounding community. Its not nothing but has zero to do with the product.
What they are asking is „you can sell cars from our showroom, just dont sell them for cheaper than we do“. Which does make sense.
Smells like a smear campaign. Some idiots try to get some fake-ass grass roots movement going.
Bold move, let‘s see how it plays out for them.
I actually was sort of on board after I read the article. Why should a publisher be penalized if they offer a lower price on a different platform?
They don’t really though. They’re talking about selling steam keys in a different platform, not selling the game on a different platform (like Epic Games for instance). You can sell the game for cheaper on Epic or GOG if you want to.
When new video game stores were opening that charged much lower commissions than Valve, I decided that I would provide my game “Overgrowth” at a lower price to take advantage of the lower commission rates. I intended to write a blog post about the results. But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.
From the source cited by the article.
Removed by mod
So why is the game still on steam then if that “cited” information was accurate?
Because Steam is the largest storefront with the biggest userbase and forfeiting those sales is a death sentence for developers.
Removed by mod
The source makes a claim that selling off platform at a lower price than Steam would get them delisted. You linked the Steam page ($19,50) and the Wolfire.com page ($19,99), so what’s your point? Reread the post.
[…] they [Steam] replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.
Do they? Haven’t felt like that s the case as a long time user of /r/gamedeals and isthereanydeals which is all focused on game sales.
They don’t. The thing most people who have never published a game on steam don’t know is that valve gives you infinite steam keys (for free) that you can give or sell as you wish. This is to allow studios/publishers to give keys to whoever they want, and also allows them to sell those keys on their own or third-party websites. This is a HUGE deal, Valve is letting studios/publishers sell games on a separate site without charging anything while hosting the game themselves. The only condition to those keys is that they can’t be sold cheaper than on Steam.
That’s a completely different thing from what you’re claiming. This means that games can be cheaper on GoG, Epic, etc as long as they don’t give you a steam key together (which they could, for free).
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
According to Shotbolt, the developer and digital distribution company is “shutting out” all competition in the PC gaming market as it “forces” game publishers to sign off on price parity obligations - supposedly preventing them from going on to offer lower prices on other platforms.
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
Sue Meta or Google instead geez
Tim Sweeney, is this you?
I’ll reiterate here that I think it would be funny to see steam actually lowering their cut to 20-10% or something and the mass migrations of developers from other competing stores to steam, and finally making the other store even more insignificant. That’s what they want isn’t it? And even more funny when after the changes are applied there is no difference in price because after all, publishers get more money for free, why should they lower their profit? If anything, when the policy is reversed/back to when it was, we will only see an increase in game price lol.
My favorite recent example:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1493640/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/ (50 EUR)
https://www.playstation.com/de-de/games/banishers-ghosts-of-new-eden/ (60 EUR)
PS5 game on sale did cost 2 EUR less than the regular price on Steam. I don’t think Steam overcharges me. It’s not like the game is cheaper somewhere else on PC either: https://store.epicgames.com/de/p/banishers-ghosts-of-new-eden-f9e3f2?lang=de (50 EUR)
Console prices aren’t really relevant to Steam. Consoles always tend to run higher.
Yes, but they sue Steam that has competitors selling games for the same price instead of literal monopolies. Even Apple was forced to open up to other app stores.
Removed by mod
Your point is valid but this kind of lawsuit isn’t really the way to go about the change you’re describing
Removed by mod
yes you’re right this is a lawsuit about too much profit and it will directly set a precedent where companies aren’t allowed to have too much profit.
Pretty smart, as a leftist maybe I’ll sue every corporation for being privately owned, this is a whole new avenue for systemic change. You opened my eyes
I saw some stats the other day that if you remove the top 1000 incomes in the united states the average drops to around 35k. So that average of 75k is bullshit.
Median != Average.
The median is an average. But it isn’t the mean, which is presumably what the other comment was using.
Wealth is not money.
Removed by mod
You have confused the two numbers. Again, what is NOT money.
Removed by mod
What a load of rubbish.
How is Lemmy so anti corporate, but bends over backwards to defend steam as an immaculate corporation. I love steam, and 90% of my game purchases or from their store. 5% are from stores that let me redeem steam keys.
I think their market position should have some scrutiny.
A few reasons:
-
I feel like any other major company with Steam’s marketshare would be far less consumer friendly than steam.
-
Steam funnels a lot of money into Linux, and Linux is very popular on Lemmy. If you use Linux, you are benefiting from Steam’s success.
-
Steam is just nice to use, and has good deals. It’s nice to have my games in one place, and I don’t know if any other storefront with as many nice user benefiting features as steam.
I agree with all these things. But I dont understand the hail corporate mentality of being upset or knee jerk defending steam. I’m curious to see where the suit goes and evaluate if I should consider joining a class action suit as I learn more.
I think theres also the secondary unstated factor some of us have, that being that Steam is working as a solid buffer against more malignant groups. The fact that Steam is for a lack of a better term incorruptible is frankly very useful, especially with groups like the Saudis and China investing a lot of money and influence into gaming recently. Better a flawed but ultimately decent corporation than whatever the fuck the Saudis or China would replace it with.
Its more we’re defending against Steams competition and dont want to see them gain any ground (Except itch and GoG, they’re cool)
-
Mainly because Steam actually provides a really good quality service. Most corporations over time charge more while getting worse on quality. People can sell their games for cheaper on Epic which only has a 12% fee, but Epic’s service is much worse.
Yup. If Steam wasn’t around I’d have the joy of choosing between Epic, Origin, GOG (actually not bad but no official Linux client can be annoying), or GFWL (which would probably still be around in this situation)
They’re not immaculate. They used to outright deny people the right to refund their games, but they turned that around after a massive lawsuit from a government agency. Good change! I support that. But they’re not behaving in an anti-competitive manner. What, are they supposed to intentionally make themselves worse in the hopes that other stores pop up? That’s not how any of this works.
Lemmy is not a monolith.
Obviously. I’m Lemmy and against that. But there are dominant pov’s on Lemmy that saturate threads and are reflected in up votes and down votes
We’ll let their position have some scrutiny when the PC marketplace has some actual decent competition, I’d rather not shoot the PC gaming sphere in the foot just because Lemmy hates corporations.
deleted by creator
I won’t say no to cheaper games. The 30% cut was settled upon in the days where physical copies were the norm and Steam was still under heavy development. Given how established Steam and digital distribution in general is, it’s not really fair to developers to dedicate almost a third of the price of the game to a hosting platform. Yes, exposure is important, but that’s a service provided passively due to the fact of being the largest platform. Reducing Steam’s cut hurts no one except maybe Gabe’s ability to buy another yacht (and even then, not likely). Even if customers don’t see lower prices if Steam were to reduce their cut, it’d be great to see the actual developers getting more money from the games they put all the effort into making.
They being the largest platform because the consumer wanted their service, not out of obligation. Epic provides cheaper cut for the developer and is steadily building up their library. But why don’t users flock there? Heck, they even have some actual exclusive titles there. EA and Ubisoft too got their own store, and they too got a few exclusive title. So why does steam is still being chosen? Maybe there is other value provided besides hosting, like, idk, remote play? Controller remap? Family sharing? Opening linux gaming market? Social feature? Forum? Modding?
Momentum. Steam was among the first on the scene and provided the best experience. Thankfully Steam has kept the momentum going instead of enshittification (thanks to being a privately held company), but almost a third of the price of the game is still ridiculous if you consider the effort that goes into making a game vs maintaining a mature platform.
Its not momentum, its that the competition is garbage
I mean, did the competitor even make an announcement to have at least feature parity with steam? Last time I heard, GOG doesn’t have regional pricing, Epic is not supporting linux just because, and EA/Ubisoft is just a glorified ad
deleted by creator
Somehow production costs increased exactly as much as valve’s cut got reduced. Crazy, ain’t it?
The end of my post is where I address this. Publishers have the option to use their bigger cut to reduce prices, but even if they don’t, money is moving closer to the people actually making the games possible instead of a platform provider. There are also a lot of indie developers. It’s not just all greedy publishers.
