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Steam owner Valve accused of ripping off 14m UK gamers (www.bbc.com)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Valve Corporation is being accused of using its market dominance to overcharge 14 million people in the UK.

"Valve is rigging the market and taking advantage of UK gamers," said digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt, who is bringing the case.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The lawsuit doesn't imply that Steam forces their piece to always be cheaper than the competition. Sales can happen on different stores at different times, thus a game can be $50 on Steam and $40 on Epic today.

But Steam forces sellers to offer "the same offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time" - source (sorry, Shitter link) from this article, which is about a similar lawsuit from 2021.

And the language used means that, while this only applies to devs who make use of Steam keys, it doesn't apply to the Steam keys themselves - if you want to use Steam keys, you also can't offer discounts on competing storefronts. From the source:

Rosen said he ran into that issue when he decided to release Overgrowth at a lower price on other storefronts in order to take advantage of their lower commission rates. "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," Rosen wrote.