ByteOnBikesThat lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit
SternMy extremely Baby’s First Monopoly take is that whatever your feelings about specific aspects of Steam’s service, or Valve in general, no individual company should exert this much power over the fortunes and overall culture of an artform. As such, I welcome efforts such as Wolfire’s to challenge Valve and Steam, even if I may not agree with the detail of the suit in question.
What a stupid take. Valve isn’t doing anything anti competitive, they just provide an objectively better service which is why everyone uses it. Anyone can put their game up on Steam, Gog, Epic, Uplay, and Origin at the same time. Valve doesn’t own the space, and tbh we’re probably getting the best deal we can get with them being the top dog, cuz you know Microsoft and the like would never treat us that well.
The closest thing I can think of wrt competitive rules is their price parity rule, where if you sell your steam keys (note that. not epic or uplay, just steam.) yourself, the price can’t be noticeably lower (or a sale can’t happen) without a comparable discount/sale on Steam within a reasonable timeframe.
The closest thing I can think of wrt competitive rules is their price parity rule, where if you sell your steam keys (note that. not epic or uplay, just steam.) yourself, the price can’t be noticeably lower (or a sale can’t happen) without a comparable discount/sale on Steam within a reasonable timeframe.
That’s pretty anti-competitive, unless I’m misunderstanding it.
If Epic takes a smaller cut, a developer might be willing to sell it at a lower price than on Steam. But if Steam says that the sale on Steam needs to be the same, then that means the developer can’t put out the same sale on Steam (since Steam takes a bigger cut).
So instead, they’d have to make the sale price equal to the price they’d be willing to accept after taking Steam’s cut into consideration…which would be higher than the price they’d be willing to sell for on Epic.
That’s bad for developers AND consumers.
lime!it’s only applicable if you sell steam keys.
We should be seeing lower All-Time-Lows off of Steam than on Steam then, right?
Do we regularly see that?
i mean, i guess? i know gog regularly host sales when steam doesn’t, but i’m not actively price matching. hell, gog even gave away games for free if you already had them on steam for a while.
Just because they’re not on sale at the same time doesn’t mean Steam doesn’t get the same sale price.
And if GOGs sales aren’t going lower than Steam’s sale prices, then that’d be evidence in favour of what I’m saying.
…but that’s what the clause is about? if you sell steam keys, you can’t have a sale if the game is not also cheaper than normal on steam at that time.
gog doesn’t sell keys, so it doesn’t affect them.
Then let’s look at Epic, who also doesn’t sell Steam keys, but takes a much lower cut.
Does Epic regularly have lower All-Time-Lows than Steam?
Do you actually know the answer yourself? Just say what you want to say, back it up with data, and PROVE YOUR FUCKING POINT ALREADY. Or keep playing smug coy games and pretend like the downvotes mean you won or something.
well, do they?
if they did, that would be weird, right? lower cut plus lower price equals no benefit for the dev. lower cut plus same price would mean more money.
They actually do in some regions! But I couldn’t see anyone talking about it about any North American currency.
i can’t help but notice that you stop responding every time you get asked to back up your claims
Nah, it was because I stopped using Lemmy for the day…lol
Why should we? Why should publisher charge less when they can just charge the same amount and make more money?
If you look back in history:
- EA removed their Games from Steam and only sold them on their own Storefront (essentially 0% fee) for the same price.
- the price on digital vs physical stores stayed the same even though it’s way cheaper to sell digital
It’s no surprise that big-name publishers suck. Though over time, it does seem like digital prices fall lower than physical prices. Especially if we look at those who can’t mass produce physical copies. Look at indie devs, for example.
There are lots of indie devs and games released on multiple e-stores. But at least in NA currencies, I don’t think we see lower prices on Epic.
DeconceptualistI track prices with isthereanydeal.com and yeah pretty often a new historical low is set by a Steam key reseller like Fanatical. It’s usually only by a few bucks (like maybe $5 max, though still not a bad discount if the previous price was like $25).
Of course if I buy the game, I stop caring about its price so maybe the same sale happens directly on Steam sometime after. I’m not sure on that so ymmv.
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
I’m curious if the same thing happens on the Epic store. I’d seen some people discussing Epic being a lot cheaper in certain currencies, but not in North America anywhere.