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Valve antitrust lawsuit reportedly reveals lengths Steam owner is willing to go to prevent cheaper prices elsewhere (www.eurogamer.net)
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[-] Bratosch@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I don't get it. Steam does not have a chokehold on supply of servers, hardware, software, personnel, investments, nothing. Steam has a huge base because people like their platform.

If the big publishers would pull out of Steam, you think it would survive? If Ubisoft and EA and Rockstar and all of the others decide hey, we're just gonna sell on our own platforms from now on, you think Steam would prevail anyway? Counter-Strike is not THAT profitable.

The CORE ISSUE is not Steam having a 30% fee, it is THE OTHER PLATFORM ARE CRAP and people rather not play your game than install Uplay.

And again, Valve are not setting any prices. They do 2 things,

  1. Set their fee
  2. Won't accept you using Steam as a free advertisement window

Look, I don't like the 30% fee either. They could lower it drastically and probably still be fine. But make no mistake; if, say, EA had launched an equivalent to Steam in the early 2000s, today it would be common practice to have Ads in the launcher, Subscriptions for "better deals", Fees for adding more games to your library, Spyware, and don't think they would have more generous fees for developers. If anything, they would have a HIGHER fee than 30% and if anyone tried to launch a competing game launcher they would buy it up and shut it down.

Stop acting like Valve isn't the best we could ask for out of all the alternatives.

[-] mabeledo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Stop acting like Valve isn’t the best we could ask for out of all the alternatives.

I'm going to stop right here, because this is absolute nonsense.

There are plenty of big tech companies out there that are the "best" at what they do, and still shouldn't be allowed to do shady and illegal stuff. Simple as that.

If we are going to forgive this behaviour just because "people want games", then I'm sorry to say, but this society might be more fucked up than I thought. Probably beyond salvation.

Panen et circenses with a side of billionaire cock.

[-] Bratosch@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

You want to punish Steam in favor of the shareholders of the likes of Ubisoft, who is really gagging on billionaire cock here?

[-] mabeledo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I couldn't care less about Ubisoft or their shareholders. But just so you know, Valve is roughly ten times bigger than Ubisoft, and this suit was filed by the founder of Humble Bundle. So go ahead and wipe your chin now.

[-] Bratosch@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Humble Bundle isn't even mentioned in the article shared my guy.

[-] mabeledo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Humble Bundle isn’t even mentioned in the article shared my guy.

A few years later, Rosen started his own game distribution program, allowing customers to pay whatever they wanted for a collection of indie games called Humble Bundle. The program, which Rosen ran with his brother, took only a 5% cut but, he says, was still turning a profit. Rosen started looking more closely at Valve in 2018, when it implemented a tiered system that gave rate reductions to large game makers, angering indie developers who were stuck paying the higher rates. Rosen reached out to the company again, this time to see how it would react to him selling Overgrowth, another Wolfire game, at a discount on Humble Bundle’s store. “They replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere,” Rosen wrote in a May 2021 blog post explaining why Wolfire decided to sue Valve. (In its response to Wolfire’s suit, Valve disputed Rosen’s description of what occurred on the call.)

https://archive.ph/YvHxF#selection-1867.0-1879.103

Just... Read it. I pasted this link three times already. It makes no sense for me to keep posting if you willingly ignore every single fact.

[-] Bratosch@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

My apologies! Genuinely.

Now, from what I understand, Rosen had his game in early access on Steam for like 5 years. And the game was hosted solely on Steam. Things that cost Rosen nothing. Then, Rosen wants to sell keys directly to the costumers rather than through the very service used to distribute the game, effectively bypassing paying Valve anything. Valve says that's not ok, Rosen sues them, and somehow Valve is the bad guy?

[-] Bratosch@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

and other online stores have rarely offered features compelling enough to lure people away.

The fear among some developers is that doing so can lead to penalties or even expulsion from Steam — a potentially devastating outcome for their game sales.

The US lawsuit Newell was deposed in, which has been certified as a class action, alleges that it “is not economically feasible” for game makers to leave Steam in favor of a rival store and that they are effectively “forced to comply” with Valve’s rules and high fees.

The above quotes all point to exactly what I've been saying: Other stores/platforms simply don't appeal to users.

“Customers have enormous choice,” Newell has testified. They can decide “where they purchase their products, whether they buy the game on an Xbox, whether they buy it on Steam, whether they buy it on Epic Games Store or whether they buy it directly from software developers.”

No one is forcing anyone to use Steam.

EA experimented with everything including opening its own PC store and stopping major releases on Valve’s marketplace, only to reverse course and eventually bring big-name titles such as The Sims 4 and Battlefield V back to Steam.

Competing marketplaces, meanwhile, have failed to match even Steam’s basic capabilities, never mind its emotional resonance with users. EA’s original store was filled with glitches and had nowhere near the number of third-party titles as Steam, while Epic’s rival launched without such standard features as user reviews and a shopping cart for purchasing multiple games in a single transaction.

They tried, and failed, to launch BFV and Sims on just their own platform because IT WAS A BUGGY MESS. Not because StEaM hAs A BiG MaRkEt ShArE.

Not even having a Cart in your online store is mind boggling. Also, if I have to go to Steam to see reviews I might as well buy it there.

In 2017, Kassidy Gerber, who works in business development at Valve, wrote to Warner Bros. executives that preorders for its new Middle-earth: Shadow of War game had been deleted from Steam because the price was “significantly higher than what was available at other retailers for the same version of the game.”

So Valve protected their own brand by not wanting to be associated with "significantly higher prices". Sounds like a sound business decision to me.

this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
349 points (85.5% liked)

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