A new Dutch class action has been filed against Valve Corporation, the company behind Steam. The case is brought by the Stichting Consumenten Competition Claims (CCC), which has launched the proceedings under the name GameClaim. The foundation acts on behalf of all Dutch PC gamers who have purchased games through Steam or other PC distribution platforms since 2013, IGN Benelux reports.
They don’t limit competition, but it’s a more open question whether they are engaging in a form of price fixing.
The problem is if valve is price fixing then it would mean any company that limits the use of their service to others via fixed pricing agreements would also be price fixing.
If a company is no longer allowed to have control over their own service when used by others then functionally you cant have second or third parties anymore. It would basically break the very concept.
Cause yes valve does prevent you from selling your game on other platforms at a cheaper rate, so long as you are doing so via steam key or when valve servers will be the source of distribution. This keeps coming up over and over and its wild that people seem to think that valve should not be allowed to limit the abuse of their own servers.
The only example ever floated of them doing this with out steam keys or them being the distribution source was a single email from steam support to a developer. That has been proven over and over to have been a miscommunication and not actually an enforced policy.
Theres a lot of questions on how healthy it is for valve to be so dominate in the market and to have such a wide reach. But the fact is that other companies keep leaning on valve for distribution or build their entire company around it either legitly or though majority theft cough g2g cough.
Everyone else MADE valve into the market dominator either willing or via ignorance and bad business. It valve ever does turn fully evil we are fucked yes. But no one ever seems to want to actually try to fix the problem of everyone else being stupid as fuck. Instead just trying to legal valve into oblivion.
This is false. Even if I put the game up on my own server, letting you download a zip directly from there, cutting valve fully out of the picture service-wise too, I am still not allowed to sell it cheaper on my site then on steam.
So why is Mindustry $5 on steam, but free on itch?
That’s quite demonstrably false. There’s so many games that do this, and are and have been part of steam for decades. i can think of is IL-2 sturmovik Battle of X series. They have sales almost every month on il2sturmovik.com and the account there is linked to the steam one. Same for other sims like Microsoft etc, selling through the Microsoft store…
It’s not about sales, it’s about base price. And yes, Steam does consider “perpetual sales” a base price. They nearly kicked Ubisoft off Steam for that trick.
and yet, these games have a monthly sale. If that’s not perpetual sales, I don’t know what it is. And some are just linked to the Steam account, not just a separate competing store. Basically you buy the game cheaper in a different place, and then play on steam.
I agree with you that anything using Steam’s services should be subject to their terms. I don’t think a lot of people are arguing to the contrary about that. I have heard others accuse, though I don’t know with how much basis, that they apply the same control to games not using their infra.
If this is true, I definitely agree that they have done nothing wrong. Problem is with the many conflicting stories online and lack of solid info.
Which will hopefully come to light through discovery or a case.
Seems to me the only fixing they’re doing is fixing the prices lower than other clients.
Rather than what you usually hear with price fixing, where prices go up. Like Amazon with Levi jeans.
Well, no, it’s the opposite. The accusation goes that Steam strong-arms people into keeping prices on Steam the lowest (or tied for lowest) available if they’re selling the same game on another storefront. For example, Ubisoft cannot sell a game on their own platform for cheaper than they will also sell it on Steam. This is not good for consumers.
Again, allegedly.
Of all the accusations against Steam, I’m most amenable to that one. I think devs should be able to sell on their personal storefronts for cheaper, if they’re going to the effort of setting up a storefront at all.
Selling on GOG or Epic for less does feel some type of way too, but I can’t say I’d block devs from doing that either.
I think that only applies to selling Steam keys on other platforms. They’re free to price the games however they want, but they can’t sell keys cheaper somewhere else.
That is what everyone takes wrong about the case. Two points I want to mention
allegedly, they force other storefronts to match the price on steam or their storefront regardless of what type of key it is (Valve claims it is only for Steam keys)
Nobody stops Ubisoft or EGS or whatever to sell their games on their storefront. OR even 3rd party publishers can avoid selling on Steam (look up EGS and Borderlands 4/Metro Exodus case). Literally nobody says they should sell on Steam.
What annoys me that everyone took “they force them even with own keys to match the price” as a factual truth just because of EGS, Ubi and some other company claimed so. The case is not closed yet. There is no verdict. Nothing is ruled out. And somehow tons of people are angry at Valve?!
Who do we trust more out of the box? Valve or EGS/Ubi? Sharpen your pitchforks only after the fact are known, people…
That’s basically the crux of the accusations. Valve says it’s only for steam keys, other devs say they’ve been told not to sell their game for less elsewhere, even if they don’t include a steam key. I guess we’ll see as the case continues.
If it were only about Steam keys, I think I would agree with Steam. Selling Steam keys elsewhere is still making full use of Steam to fulfill distribution of their game.
It’d probably just lead to Steam not allowing devs to get free keys of their games. You lock into Steam and, if you want a Steam version of the game, you have to buy one.
Did the devs provide proof?
But wouldn’t that be malicious from the dev side? “Hey, don’t bother with Steam because it’s more expensive. Come buy it here instead”. Just don’t sell on Steam if it’s an issue, but we all know they want to piggyback on the exposure/trust associated with Steam.
I’m seeing it as “pay the Steam price for Steam integrations like achievements, if you care about that” and “pay the cheaper price for just the game.” People could “abuse” it for free marketing but I don’t think most people would do that.
And you just gotta eat those costs; sorta like how there will be some level of public aid fraud, but that doesn’t mean you cancel food stamps.
How is competition that benefits consumers in the form of lower prices “malicious”?
It’s not going to result in lower prices for consumers. It’s going to result in higher prices on Steam.
It’s also going to fragment the game market on PC. That may or may not be a good thing depending on who you ask, but personally, I like not having to hunt around for the best store to purchase my game in. I go to Steam and I know I’m not getting completely shafted. This is essentially going to allow scummy corps like Ubisoft and EA to implement a “Steam tax” because I don’t want to use their shitty, bloated, spyware riddled miserable excuse for a storefront.
The thing is that this is in Steam’s TOS when it comes to steam keys. You can sell steam keys but not at a lower price than on Steam. Which is extremely fair – selling a steam key still means you’re using Steam’s infrastructure, you don’t have to manage the downloads & updates. It does not apply in a situation where you manage your own store with its own infrastructure
But that’s the crux. The accusation is that Steam has an unwritten policy that applies to non steam key sales, and uses their near monopoly to enforce it.
I’ve read about that, afaik we don’t know how much of a policy it is vs. some random employee going rogue. Hopefully it all comes to light with these lawsuits