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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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[–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

But it says nothing in your link about selling games that work without steam key on another platform?

I do not see where steam keys are mentioned in the article? Why do you care so much about steam keys if that's completely irrelevant in this case?

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

    because that's what the lawsuit is about. valve has no problem with people selling games on their own store fronts, as long as what they're selling isn't just a steam key. ubisoft wants to sell games on their own store for online games which use steam as a backend without giving steam a cut. you can buy all the anno games for cheaper on uplay than on steam, and that's not a problem. but rainbow six siege uses steamplay.

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

    Not true. Games bought outside of Steam have no access to most Steam features outside of local based ones, e.g. Steam Input, Remote Play.

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

    sure, but rainbow six siege uses all of those things because it's an online game. otherwise there'd be a need to have separated server infra for steam and non-steam users.

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

    otherwise there'd be a need to have separated server infra for steam and non-steam users.

    That’s exactly how it works. There are companies whose focus is precisely that, e.g. EdgeGap, but UbiSoft have their own infrastructure.

    Why did you think you need an Uplay account to play UbiSoft titles?

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

    so you're saying that the steam version is not using sheam features?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    The steam version probably just uses steam features through some library/interface/whatever that simply implements calls to the relevant code depending on the game's build (steamworks for steam, Xbox live or whatever they changed it to again, PSN, epic online services, etc..) for platform-related stuff like rich presence, joining servers etc. I don't know the specifics of R6 but I've worked on multiplayer, multiplatform games, and I really doubt they have a specific network stack for Uplay, another one for PC, and then another one for each console. Especially if it has crossplay.

    More likely it's all going to ubi's servers (through their own crossplay solutions and servers, or through a third party like EOS) and just implementing the aforementioned platform specific stuff to make the experience smooth for the end user.

    I'm not a law guy but I don't think the other platforms pricing thing was ever about a "steam version" of the game, as that rule would be easily circumvented by releasing another "version" where the black background on the title screen is a slightly different shade of black than the steam version or whatever.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    well no, the integrations are what i'm talking about. not saying that valve is hosting their own r6s servers, just that by using steam features and having the same game (eg able the connect to the same server) on two stores it falls under their "parity" policy.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    I’m saying that the non Steam version, which is the one the article mentions, has no Steam features, and proof of it is that anyone with Uplay can play online.

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

    so they can't play against people on steam?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    It's more complicated than that. Technically, you're right, if the game entirely relies on steamworks for networking you can only play with people on steam. A lot of indies/AA actually just did that for a while because they just connected players P2P (so, no dedicated servers, which would necessarily be "outside" of steam's ecosystem) and crossplay was too complicated, so there are a lot of multiplayer games out there that you literally can't play crossplatform, at least in a user friendly way (shadow warrior 2 comes to mind, where you can actually connect the GOG version to the Steam version by entering a console command and knowing the other guy's IP).

    Big publishers like Ubisoft definitely had the developers and the money to roll out their own crossplay architecture and code very early though, and they absolutely did. Basically, if the game has dedicated servers it most likely has crossplatform.

    Nowadays a lot of UE games just rely on Epic Online Services for crossplay. I think you can actually use it with non-UE games too but there might be licensing shenanigans involved.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    r6s isn't unreal though, it's anvil.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (1 child)

    Yeah but you're not gonna see many AA or indie games made with anvil. My point was that your original assumption that a game using steam networking won't be able to "talk" to the same game using another platform's networking is somewhat correct, and basically still is the case for games that can't afford crossplay solutions, with the notable exception of EOS.

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

    They can.

    I’m not sure where your questions are leading to. The Steam version either uses the Steam network SDK or UPlay, I don’t know which one. The standalone version uses UPlay alone.

    This is nothing new. Crossplay is a thing. Baldur’s Gate 3 allows for crossplay between XBox, PlayStation, and PC, yet it sells on Steam too. But I’m 100% sure the PlayStation version does not use the Steam network.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    i was genuinely curious because i didn't know. but it does fall in line with what i thought, which is that: if ubisoft are charging lower amounts for dlc that can also be bought through steam, and that dlc shows up for people who are playing on steam, then they're using steam's services and valve are in the right. if the two versions of the game do not commuticate, then ubisoft are in the right.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    Any DLC bought outside of Steam, doesn’t work with a Steam game.

    A DLC bought in UPlay, might in some way be used by a third party on a crossplay online game, e.g. a map which both the buyer and their friend on Steam can access to, if the buyer creates a game in such map and invites their friend.

    And Steam doesn’t take a cut of such sale and cannot set the price, because it wasn’t sold on Steam. Plain and simple.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    okay, and you're sure of this? thanks for clearing it up in that case.

    but then surely it's against their tos, no? like, if a hat is 50¢ on uplay but 100€ on steam and players on steam can see uplay players wearing the hat, isn't that a case of price disparity in the product? it's not a steam key, true, but if ubisoft were allowed to set prices like that it would almost certainly count as anticompetitive practices, right?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    That "hat" bought outside of Steam, cannot be used by a player in Steam.

    but if ubisoft were allowed to set prices like that it would almost certainly count as anticompetitive practices, right?

    Are you really saying that Valve should be allowed to set the prices of Ubisoft products, but Ubisoft shouldn't be allowed to price their own products? What?

    Why stop there, then? Why wouldn't Steam go after, say, Playstation? Someone gets an exclusive DLC for Playstation that some players can "see" during games, what do we do in that case?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    no, obviously i'm not saying that. i'm saying that by having content in the game that costs different amounts for different players playing together on the same platform (pc), ubisoft aren't following the terms they agreed to for selling on steam.

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

    They are. Nowhere it says that a publisher cannot sell their games outside Steam at a different price. Valve employees then threatened Ubisoft with delisting the game if they did.

    In any case, none of the competing stores have dislodged Steam from its role as the most important sales channel for PC games, and Valve employee testimony and corporate records disclosed in the case illustrate the aggressive ways the company has interacted with the developers that rely on it. Emails indicate Valve employees once threatened to delist all editions of Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege “by end of day tomorrow” after they learned the publisher was marketing a separate $15 “starter pack” exclusively on its in-house Uplay store.

    From the Bloomberg article: https://archive.ph/YvHxF

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    i was reading through the court documents earlier (i linked them in a comment) and while i don't doubt that bloomberg knows better than me, that wasn't the feel i got from the emails. it started with valve employees asking internally if it was a tos violation, then reaching out to ubisoft, then the demand to change the price on steam to match. the docs are heavily redacted so some details escaped me but... idk.

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