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Valve antitrust lawsuit reportedly reveals lengths Steam owner is willing to go to prevent cheaper prices elsewhere (www.eurogamer.net)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] -4 points 3 months ago (8 children)

If you had actually read the article, instead of stepping in to blindly defend the corporation that is actively causing you to pay more money for games, you'd know this was not about steam key seller sites.

Uplay featured a $15 USD Rainbow Six Siege Starter Pack, but this version was not available on Steam, making the cheapest option on Valve's platform much more expensive. It's claimed Valve insisted Ubisoft swiftly remedy the discrepancy, giving the publisher "until the end of day tomorrow" to change that.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Lowering the price on steam would have been a remedy and would have benefitted players, just like all of the sales on steam that it actively promotes where the publisher drops the price.

    This is about Ubi trying to be anticompetitive in pricing on their store and steam choosing to not go along with it. Steam consistently lowers the prices of games overall and always has.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    It's an odd one.

    If a game cannot be sold cheaper elsewhere, publishers have two options, lower the price on Steam (which benefits consumers) or increase the price on the other platform(s) (which benefits the publisher).

    It benefits Valve no matter what. It can also benefit the consumer. It can also harm the consumer.

    Publishers have every right to not use Steam. Ubisoft had success with UPlay in the past, they just wanted even more money, so went back to Steam.

    Will be interesting to see what happens with the lawsuit.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Ubisoft had success with UPlay in the past

    What?

    The whole case is about Valve forcing other storefronts to sell at the same price as these publishers sell in Steam. Key point is that allegedly Valve requires this even if the game is sold not with a Steam key, but publishers own. Allegedly. Time will tell if they actually do it or not.

    So far Ubisoft and WB hasnt had a great reputation in gaming community, so there should be no surprises why most gamers side with Valve.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Of course. Ubisoft sold their games on UPlay and not Steam for a while. People still played their games and they had some big releases.

    Did they sell the games any cheaper? Of course they didnt.

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  • [–] -5 points 3 months ago

    Those is literally about valve being anticompetitive. How are you mentally twisting this into being Ubisoft being the bad guy here for selling their own product.

    Steam is artificially keeping prices higher with this practice. Their larger cut % keeps the price floor high, because valve is threatening these developers to not lower prices on lower cut % stores (that don't use valve infrastructure or keys). There's zero leg to stand on claiming steam is lowering prices with this well known policy.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I like how you think I was "blindly" defending them and that this wasnt related.

    Say valve lose this, things could hopefully trundle on. Or, Valve throw their weight around and lock the steam consumers to steam. You want to sell and distribute a game as someone not being a big publisher? Now you have to deal with all the servers and distribution, and payment processing. Yea, someone like Ubi or EA have their own store, but lets be real, no one really uses or likes using them. There is a reason Ubi and EA both came back to steam.

    In the end this hurts consumers, and really badly.

    Obviously this is a worse case hypothetical. But it is a potential problem caused by this law suit. And this all started because valve was actually trying to get equal treatment for their customers, instead of them being ripped off by Ubisoft

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