So Steam protects you from scam games, publishers not honouring refunds, and hackers? And they're pushing for bans on shovelware and games with mandatory ads?
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.
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u/Skltlez 2d ago