I get this but, for what I know (I might be wrong tho), steam doesn’t get a cut from keys sold externally so they are technically selling them at better conditions elsewhere?
It is a grey area. But I think the key point is that humble bundle at least don’t distribute the games in the same way as epic does. They typically offer steam keys which they get from steam probably with a different license or agreement with steam. Valve seems to not care that much about how the game is sold as long as you can activate it on steam. It cares more about people buying games on a competing platform cheaper then they can get a steam key for.
I know that but that’s not really steam’s fault?
Whos fault it is is irrelevant. If you have effective monopolistic power you are effectively a monopoly. If you abuse that power then that is bad. Does not really matter if you got there because you mostly do things people like or bully your way there. If you abuse the power that is still bad. And they could arguably be abusing that power against game devs by setting a fixed 30% fee with the devs not having much if any power to argue for less.
It is a grey area. But I think the key point is that humble bundle at least don’t distribute the games in the same way as epic does. They typically offer steam keys which they get from steam probably with a different license or agreement with steam. Valve seems to not care that much about how the game is sold as long as you can activate it on steam. It cares more about people buying games on a competing platform cheaper then they can get a steam key for.
Whos fault it is is irrelevant. If you have effective monopolistic power you are effectively a monopoly. If you abuse that power then that is bad. Does not really matter if you got there because you mostly do things people like or bully your way there. If you abuse the power that is still bad. And they could arguably be abusing that power against game devs by setting a fixed 30% fee with the devs not having much if any power to argue for less.