This is the kind of thing that can happen when a company is privately owned, and pretty much can't when it's publically listed. One of the last great holdouts.
Yeah, gaben says that piracy is a service problem.
But somehow people paying less isn't a service problem since gaben doesn't allow even non-steam versions of games that are sold on steam to be sold for less in another stores.
You really can’t see why it would be unfair to leverage Steam’s platform features and demonstrably paying user base for free advertising and then funnel sales away by lowering prices at a different storefront?
Steam is already being generous by letting game keys be sold outside of Steam where Steam gets ZERO revenue and still have them redeemable on Steam. A dev can literally peddle Steam keys on their website and Steam gets nothing.
Steam never tried to force third-party exclusives. All they ask is you play fair by them and not conduct business in bad faith.
Gaben doesn't allow even non-steam versions of games that are sold on steam to be sold for less in another stores.
Pretty sure this just isn't true. The RRP has to be consistent but discounts and sales are totally chill. And ironically "discounted to $30" sells more than "is $30"
That's part of the suit. David Rosen explains in the original blog post that the reason for the suit is that valve is also stifling competition by disallowing lower prices on other stores.
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. This would make it impossible for me, or any game developer, to determine whether or not Steam is earning their commission. I believe that other developers who charged lower prices on other stores have been contacted by Valve, telling them that their games will be removed from Steam if they did not raise their prices on competing stores.
You can sue for anything, it only means something if they win
Yeah, you can sue for anything but for it to become class action it has to go through extra scrutiny.
So when is the class action being started against Apple and Google for their 30% cuts for purchasing in their platforms. Or is Valve special because they aren't publicly traded, and suing them won't piss off the normies.
Maybe Steam should just let them sell for lower on other platforms, and then just disable all the Steam features that they don't want to pay for on their game.
I think Valve are greedy pieces of shit like everyone else, but that doesn't mean they should just give their platform and services to anyone that wants to use it for free. They still have costs to pay for.
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. This would make it impossible for me, or any game developer, to determine whether or not Steam is earning their commission. I believe that other developers who charged lower prices on other stores have been contacted by Valve, telling them that their games will be removed from Steam if they did not raise their prices on competing stores.
My understanding is that this is a bit misunderstood. Publishers can sell steam keys for their game on other sites, but can't sell the steam key for less than it is on steam. If a game is on itch or gog and you don't get a steam key with your purchase, the game publisher can sell it for less even if that game is on steam as well, but not if that purchase allows for it to be downloaded from steam. Imo that is fair, otherwise valve are hosting all the infrastructure and never getting paid for some games.
It's the convenience for me. If you make it easy to pay for a game I will pay for the game. I pirated back in the day for convenience. I could A: trek around the city for hours trying to find a physical copy of a very obscure game that most stores wouldn't waste shelf space on or B: pirate it and have it within whatever the download time is.
I love how you stated can, because we all know the hard truth. The only reason we get a decent product is because the people who run Steam aren’t fuckwits. When you get shit people with zero oversight running things…everyone gets fucked but the very top.
That's it. No doubt private companies can be every bit as villainous as publically owned, but at least they've got the option to not be.
Another dude replied to my comment with some info on the dark side of steam, and now that comment has been deleted for some reason, but I've written a reply to it and may as well post it here because it's relevant:
To deleted comment:
let's not pretend it's all good pro-consumer stuff.
Sure, let's not 👍
[Some interesting information about some mean stuff that valve have done]
That's interesting, and good to know. I didn't know, but if it's all true I'm not especially surprised, either.
Absolutely every industry of any decent size is throughly infested with staff who have gone through their entire careers (and lives) knowing nothing but the golden rule of "fuck as many dollars out of customers as you possibly can, everything else is secondary".
It's the driving force of managers, accountants, PR, you name it, and these people have a collective influence through their every action that is impossible to resist.
This principle has been the guiding ethos of business for so long now that frankly it's astonishing when there's any pushback at all, or any desire to prove something better than you can get away with, even though it's leaving money on the table.
I don't think any medium-sized or larger company can escape it anywhere near entirely, but the only ones who are effectively permitted to say "let's hold off on [specific article of enshittification] because we're in business to provide the [particular goal] and that has to come first" are private companies, because publically owned companies have a duty to shareholders which, in practice, translates to the thing I said before about fucking all the customers over in exchange for all the dollars.
Boards get replaced and shareholders bring lawsuits when there's money at stake, and the whole system is so entrenched in that pattern that no-one ever tried to push back any longer.
It's pretty wretched all round, I'll take any win we can get.
I don't know where you're getting this "privately owned companies are better" crap. I mean private companies can get away with way more malicious bullshit than publicly listed ones because unlike publicly listed companies, privately owned companies don't have to disclose their shit to anyone. Theranos was privately owned. Almost every major scam company was privately owned and that's why they were able to get away with it for as long as they did.
Bit of a rude way to speak to people. Did you already play out a whole argument in your head before commenting, and get yourself wound up, or what?
Anyway, from the start I've acknowledged, implicitly (I stressed that they can be better - and agreed with the person who said that they can be shit when the leadership is shit) and explicitly ("No doubt private companies can be every bit as villainous as publically owned,") that privately owned companies can be rotten to the core.
My point was never that they are necessarily more wholesome, just that they are under less pressure and are less effectively obligated to be increasingly awful, and that the difference hinges on ownership structure. They can be better.
Now that that's been addressed, your point is that privately held companies can be worse, because of a lesser degree of transparency.
I don't doubt that there are some opportunities for wrongdoing made available by lack of mandatory transparency in certain areas.
I do suspect there's a limited range of misdeeds that can hide in those shadows, though. That is to say, you can only get away with it for so long, because once the harm is done.. well, it's known at that point, at least but those who are harmed. The concealment works well for the kind of companies you mention - hit-n-run one-shot scams.
In terms of scope, I think the capacity for harm is generally going to be larger for the listed companies, just because they're (mainly) able to be larger companies (because of the funding source), and thus more able to lobby for favourable regulations, more able to afford fines, and able to screw more people at once.. and more enduring, so they're able to screw more people, cause more environmental and legislative damage, etc, over time.
Of course, neither form of company is allowed to break the laws, but one form of company has a demonstrated capacity for getting the laws to bend in ways they benefit from.
And.. there is no shortage of examples of truly heinous shit perpetrated by listed corporations. Think oil, tobacco, Nestlé, you aren't gonna run out of stories.
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u/SatansFriendlyCat 1d ago
This is the kind of thing that can happen when a company is privately owned, and pretty much can't when it's publically listed. One of the last great holdouts.