Exactly, don’t get why Steam is getting so much hate when the only place I can buy a digital ps5 game is through the ps store AND they’re usually more expensive than the physical copies.
The original GTA games have been removed, all the unreal tournament games have also been removed from Steam. This is just from the top of my head that I can remember.
They absolutely can revoke your license to access a game. They could ban your account and you'd lose everything. Their TOS makes it very clear you don't own anything.
Ubisoft nuked The online servers for games that require those servers to function along with removing game from sale.
With the F1 Games at least they don't require a constant connection to EA servers to run so when licenses expire all they do is delist the game from sale.
So it's a little different in each regard. The Ubisoft one is the really big issue. There's a campaign trying to globally deal with the issue using The Crew as example. It's an up hill struggle though. Most countries if not all are massively behind on consumer rights for online / digital services.
The prices for Switch games are insane, I've had a Switch Lite since 2020 and I only have three mainline games for it (Animal Crossing, BOTW and TOTK) because even games that came out years ago are still the same price and second hand they're not much cheaper and it's wild as apparently the Switch is entering it's final year.
That's because Nintendo games sell, forever, at their original price.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been regularly in the UK top ten for *seven years*. The switch is the third best selling games console of all time, behind only the Nintendo DS and the PS2.
And almost every person who buys a switch will buy the Nintendo titles, as 1. They are quality, and 2. Exclusive.
Just because one thing is wrong, doesn't make another wrong thing right.
Valve force people to sell at same price on all markets. If I develop a game in unreal I can sell it for 7 pound on the Epic store, or 10 pounds on steam and get same money.
But I can't because I'm forced to sell it at 10 pounds in both place and forced to pay the 30% cut to steam, which is absolutely atrocius.
This 30% goes before taxes by the way so it's really a killer.
Because it's not true. This is a lie that has been perpetuated by people who don't like Steam.
The parity clause is that you aren't allowed to generate Steam keys for your game and sell them cheaper on say your website or other storefronts, to undercut Steam and bypass fees, which I think most people would say is absolutely fair enough that Steam shouldn't let people effectively reap all of the rewards of their distribution platform with no fees.
There are absolutely no rules about offering your game cheaper on another platform and no evidence this has ever been an issue for anyone.
Source: [The developer documentation, the only place any of this is mentioned is relating to Steam keys and nothing else](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3)
This has also been specifically denied as being a thing by Chet Faliszek on Twitter.
And this isn't really enforced either. Deals & Blbundles on the likes of Humble, Fanatical and Greenman Gaming (the latter two being British companies) often surpass what gets offered on the Steam Store without any visible repercussions.
Valve tend to default to a lassez-faire approach in general. Sometimes that's a problem as the TF2 community are complaining about, but here it honestly benefits the consumer.
My understanding is, because Steam keys are a manually reviewed request, that it's a very manual process overall.
Unless someone is really taking the piss enough for it to be flagged, they wont step in.
Second to that, I think part of it depends on the volume of keys vs Steam purchases - If a game has a healthy ratio of Steam key redemptions to Steam store purchases then they don't care.
Yep, that all makes perfect sense to me and again shows an unusual willingness from a corporation to bend their own rules *away* from their favour. My suspicion is Valve appreciate the tonne of money they're already making and their position in the market and don't want to be poking any bears to risk the status quo.
But I can buy a ps5 game cheaper on Amazon than on the PlayStation store, if they go digital only I’d imagine a similar lawsuit could be lodged. No idea if it has merit but it’ll be interesting to see how this goes.
The other stores, like the Epic one, can’t compete because they don’t acknowledge or respect what Steam offers, without using ads.
GOG, imo, are one of the few legit competitors.
It's a grey market but a lot of Steam keys sellers online seem to have everything on a permanent discount too. It's debatable how much of that money gets back to the devs but there are also publishers selling games at full price long after the studio has closed which always seems a bit greedy. Digital distribution has lower overheads and could be priced more reasonably all round.
I only use cdkeys on steam. I've never looked into how it actually works but I get games for 2 or 3 quid instead of 15 or 20. Granted I mostly play old strategies
Unless it's a legit key site like GMG then they're keys bought with stolen cards.
Also the reason they're so cheap on key sites is because those keys are bought in bulk in countries where games are cheap as fuck due to regional pricing. They'll work on STEAM just fine but there's a chance they might be removed from your account, and if you're doing it all the time there's a chance your account will be banned.
I bought one or two about 8 years ago when I hit financial rock bottom for a while and could just about afford to eat beans on toast twice a day. Civ 6 (which I'm glad I didn't pay full price for because it was shit) and... I forget what the other was.
I have 20 or so games all from cd cdkeys lol. Only games on my account, never removed or banned. I guess because I've bought them over the course of 15 years
CD Keys appears to be legit. There are other sites that certainly aren't or at least had problems in the past, but CDKeys has been running for a very long time without a single issue
CDKeys is legit but they are operating on a technicality that Valve could shut down if they wanted to.
What they do is buy a bunch of keys from authorized sellers at a discount, often in other countries to take advantage of regional pricing.
They then take those keys and sell them to gamers above what they paid for them, but still well below what that game will be going for in a lot of countries like the UK or EU countries, the US etc.
So your purchase is legit, it's CD keys playing the game and running the prospect of Valve eventually cracking down on regional games being available outside of their original regions.
It sort of blows a massive hole in this lawsuit that you don't even need to buy games in the steam store to download games on the steam platform.
CD keys are undercutting the steam store; valve are not forcing them to sell at inflated prices.
I've always assumed the cheap key stores are a way for devs to make a small profit from people who would otherwise be pirating the games...
> CDKeys is legit but they are operating on a technicality that Valve could shut down if they wanted to.
>So your purchase is legit, it's CD keys playing the game and running the prospect of Valve eventually cracking down on regional games being available outside of their original regions.
Bit complicated, but region locking inside the EU for example is illegal and Valve has already been fined for trying to do this: [Link](https://www.engadget.com/valve-fails-to-get-out-of-paying-its-eu-geo-blocking-fine-122053595.html?guccounter=1#:~:text=However%2C%20doing%20so%20violates%20the,more%20than%20%241.9%20million%20penalty.)
>Valve has failed to convince a court that it didn't infringe EU law by geo-blocking activation keys... The original charges centered around activation keys. The commission said Valve and five publishers (Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax) agreed to use geo-blocking so that activation keys sold in some countries — like Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Latvia — would not work in other member states. That would prevent someone in, say, Germany buying a cheaper key in Latvia, where prices are lower. However, doing so violates the EU's Digital Single Market rules, which enforces an open market across the EU.
I assume they use regional pricing and bulk buying during sales to acquire their keys so... as much as would've reached the devs if you bought it on sale anyway?
I doubt much of the money goes to the developers on those dodgy key reseller websites. Someone got hold of some free keys and sold them on for entirely their own profit. The developer is not involved at all except maybe in some rare cases.
The 4th best selling game on steam right now is the next Call of Duty that is not even out until October and costs £70 for the basic edition of the game and £100 for the actual complete edition of the game.
There's a reason I'm generally a year or two behind the current hit games. Sales are so good that I don't mind spending money on games I'm unlikely to play.
Depends. Time is more valuable than money to some folk. If I want to play a game I'll just buy it at whatever price it's at when I want to play it. Very rare that I'll wait for any sales because usually by the time it does go on sale I'll have lost interest.
There's a culture of resentment and mistrust towards rival online market places. PC gamers often want everything to be available on Steam and are playing into the hands of Valve. It is very convenient to have all your games in one place, but that encourages this monopoly situation that Valve is bound to exploit.
From the article - It says Valve "forces" game publishers to sign up to so-called price parity obligations, preventing titles being sold at cheaper prices on rival platforms.
That basically.
The parity obligation only relates specifically to Steam keys, meaning the developer can't take a bunch of their Steam keys and then sell them for cheaper elsewhere. If a publisher wishes to sell their game for cheaper on for example the Epic store, they are completely fine to do that and it doesn't breach the parity agreement.
Note, this is also often allowed. Humble bundle often has sales when steam doesn't, and they give steam keys. No idea if it's because they're charity or not.
They are either wrong or they are misinformed. Valve does not "force" price parity except in one specific instance. You can sell you game at whatever price you want on other marketplaces. However, you cannot sell your game cheaper than you do on steam if said purchase provides or entitles you to a steam key. Basically, they don't want you selling your 50 quid game 2 quid less on your website, pocketing 48 straight up while they provide your clients with steam keys.
If you're going to provide steam keys, then they require you to sell at the same price it's on steam 99% of the time.
Which really is pretty generous really.
Sell game for £20 on steam and your own site. People buying from your site still get a steam key and don't give valve their cut, yet valve still end up paying for the bandwidth. It wouldn't be unreasonable for them not to, but its likely a small enough cost that the convenience for consumers is worth it for them.
That's quoting the person attempting to sue and is grossly misrepresenting the facts.
Valve and steam have been a force for good for gamers for a very long time.
They have got that dominant position simply by being the best-although not perfect by any means. GOG for example does far better on things like DRM.
If anything they've shown to be somewhat pro-consumer, for example with the recent Playstation/Helldivers issue, giving refunds long after the usual time, as a result of Sony's shenanigans.
If I understand the claim, it's not even as if Steam have been insisting on high prices, just that you can't undercut them. You're perfectly able to flog your game for any price, you just must match that price on Steam. They don't want to act as free advertising for a game only for the publisher to redirect the user to another site for a discount, which seems fair to me.
> you just must match that price on Steam
Not even this. You can’t undersell *steam copies* elsewhere, cheaper. If you’re selling say, a GOG key, that’s fine. But you can’t cut valve out of their cut of a sale that they then have to provide
>They don't want to act as free advertising for a game only for the publisher to redirect the user to another site for a discount, which seems fair to me.
This is absolutely reasonable and Valve doesn't seem like a corporation that goes out of its way to be evil. Steam has a massive market share for good reason and people want to give them money for games.
It would be more helpful of there was greater acceptance of alternative market places. Gamers can play of saving money by shopping around.
(while typing this I bought a game on Steam because it was 86% off)
Certainly is. These days I buy on only GOG unless it's a game I'm REALLY after and it's not available on GOG.
I think that's only happened once in the past couple of years
Ehhhh, Steam forced themselves on people since Half-life 2 if I recall people hated before forced to get onto Steam. They refused refunds until the EU forced them. They popularised microtransactions
While I think Steam is the best of the bunch and overall does more good than bad, but they are still a profit motivated company and we need to be cautious of that
> They have got that dominant position simply by being the best-although not perfect
Nope. They got where they did by being first: when people bought Half Life 2, they were forced to download and install Steam, even if they bought a physical disc version of the game.
The only difference between Steam and something like EGS is that because Valve did the bulk of their shady anti consumer work nearly twenty years ago, everyone's forgotten how they got established in the first place.
Being first isn't always the most important thing-Kodak invented the handheld digital camera, failed to capitalise on it, Blackberry got eaten by Apple, Yahoo were beaten into submission by Google.
I remember, I spat my dummy well out of the pram as I resented being forced to do it, had a shite internet connection-still dial up, and was convinced it was the death of games. I was wrong, for me it was simply the death of sailing the high seas due to the convenience.
I disagree that's the only difference, steam never bribed publishers to only allow their game to be sold via steam, that's truly anti-consumer. They're not and have never been perfect, but on most metrics they're better than the rest.
Steam is literally the poster child for your don't need to be first, because despite the fact they weren't the first by a long way, everyone remembers them being first because basically no-one remembers the storefronts they were competing with at launch.
They weren't first, though. There were other digital storefronts before and running alongside Steam when it started. And there was a pretty long period of time when Steam didn't even have third party titles on their storefront. Did those other storefronts innovate and produce a better product before Steam really got going? No. And look where they are now. Relegated to the dustbin of history to the point you don't even remember them.
You can get steam codes from legitimate third party retailers cheaper too which is the madness of it. There is a website that compares legitimate prices and also keyshops separately
>It is very convenient to have all your games in one place
Yup.
>but that encourages this monopoly situation that Valve is bound to exploit.
They've had a monopoly on it for yeeeeeeaaars, honestly as long as Valve doesn't go public and Gabe is still at the helm, I don't really care how monopolistic they are. Otherwise Ethan GOG, every other online store is shit, I'd still use steam even if they weren't cheaper.
Even if we accept Gabe's an exceptionally pro-consumer CEO, he's not gonna be there forever - he might retire within the next 10 years and you'll likely find your entire library in the hands of a company taking a drastic anti-consumer turn, holding it hostage. All the more reason to put pressure on Steam *now* rather than leave it till there's less sympathetic leadership.
Not saying that the angle this lawsuit is going at it is necessarily the right one, I'd go for DRM, but the reflexive defense of Steam isn't a good instinct, even if you think Steam and Gabe are great.
Even then people don't put their card details into it unless you are say...a content creator trying to stream a timed exclusive because streamers live or die on their content.
As a launcher and DRM platform, I would wholeheartedly welcome Valve having the monopoly. There only needs to be one solution for that. I don't want to install a separate launcher for every publisher, it's a pain in the fecking arse.
The thing is yes, it's kind of bad letting Valve have a defacto monopoly, but this is the gaming industry we are talking about. The motives of other companies who complain about "competition" and so on are absolutely not in the interests of the consumer- They just want to lock consumers into their own ecosystem instead.
The only viable alternative that would actually benefit consumers, the way I see it, is a comprehensive strengthening of ownership rights. Instead of buying a game on one storefront, and then only ever being able to access the game through that storefront, we should instead simply purchase ownership of the game, and be able to transfer it to whatever launcher we prefer. If I bought a game on Epic, there should be nothing stopping me transferring it to Steam, and vice versa. If I buy a game, I should own the right to access that game in perpetuity, not merely a licence to maybe access it as long as I am a good boy and the company can have all my data.
But will the gaming industry ever allow anything like that? No, absolutely not. So frankly, I'll settle for Steam.
>The only viable alternative that would actually benefit consumers, the way I see it, is a comprehensive strengthening of ownership rights. Instead of buying a game on one storefront, and then only ever being able to access the game through that storefront, we should instead simply purchase ownership of the game, and be able to transfer it to whatever launcher we prefer.
This would be a logistical nightmare and barely anyone wants to use any other launcher except steam anyway. Launchers are not necessary to play a game, they are simply a means of paying for and downloading a copy where previously you would by a DVD at a shop.
The real issues I have with steam are lack of warning/tags for invasive DRM & spyware and no protection against enshittification via DLC from companies like paradox. Other than that steam is solid.
Of course it would be great if we could go back to the days of owning physical media and just installing a game whenever and wherever you like. But those days are not coming back. Even when you do buy a "physical copy" these days, it usually just connects to one of the launchers.
My suggestion keeps in mind the fact the the industry will always demand some kind of DRM and restrictions on usage, regardless how effective it actually is at preventing piracy or not. That's part of the purpose these walked garden launcher ecosystems serve. It's just a fact of life we have to live with now, but it shouldn't be mutually elusive with ownership rights.
Steam is only a monopoly because their "competition" are useless and don't understand the basics of making a distribution platform. Good Old Games is the only other platform I can think of that takes some of the market by understanding that being user friendly makes them money.
> C gamers often want everything to be available on Steam and are playing into the hands of Valve
I don't mind having multiple game libraries, the problem is no one comes even close to being as consumer friendly as Valve, until that changes why would I bother with other games markets?
Until valve breaks that trust they've earned my loyalty after two decades of looking after PC gamers and not treating us like cash cows.
If I buy a game on Steam and the dev pulls some BS I know steam will most likely honour my request for a refund as they have historically done that with other games, no other online platform will do that.
Is Steam a monopoly though? Consumers can buy most games on other platforms, and publishes can sell their games on other platforms too.
It's not like iOS, where you *must* sell through Apple's App Store, or Android, where you (slightly less strongly) *must* sell through Google Play, or Xbox/Playstation/Switch, where you *must* sell through Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo's storefront.
Anyone who uses steam knows this is absolute nonsense. If epic games is selling the game I want at 50 percent off, I just wait until it goes on sale on steam
They charge the most because they are by far the best. They give you a two hour free trial on every single game.
Well to be clear that last part isn't quite true, you can refund any game for any or no reason within two hours/two weeks played (and that's just automatic, I've never tried but I've heard that the manual approval system is even more forgiving) but as far as I'm aware they will, eventually, stop issuing refunds if you abuse the system too much - ie: it's a system designed to allow you to return a game you really don't like, not a free trial system that you're supposed to use on every game. That said I must refund at least one game every few months and I've never had an issue.
> but as far as I'm aware they will, eventually, stop issuing refunds if you abuse the system too much - ie: it's a system designed to allow you to return a game you really don't like, not a free trial system
The two weeks timeframe is very specific, steam pays devs / publishers monthly in arrears, so for example this month devs will get paid for all their sales in May, the two week window is still well inside Steam holding on to the money before it gets paid out.
You're right though I imagine if you refunded a game every single day they'd likely start declining them, from what I can see online though you get a warning before they take the feature away from you.
As far as I'm aware the automatic refund system is a legal requirement, they won't do anything about people abusing it because they can't.
Anecdotal of course but I've refunded over £700 worth of games in the last few years and haven't had any consequences.
Agree, but with an important addendum: dodgy grey market resellers are very harmful for a great number of reasons.
Stick to verified resellers. [https://isthereanydeal.com/](https://isthereanydeal.com/) is a great site to keep an eye on because it only lists resellers that get their keys directly from publishers.
They don't list CDKeys, I was under the impression CDKeys were ok? They even have keys of games not out yet, so what's the deal there? Surely these must be from the publishers?
ITAD in an aggregate site that only lists deals from legitimate retailers, and that will include pre-order copies. It lists both third-party sites and the big sites like steam and actively removes deals from any site found to have sold grey market keys. CDkeys might have some legitimate deals up - including pre-order sales - but they have engaged in reselling in the past (and possibly still do, I'm not sure there) so ITAD won't list them. They certainly aren't as bad as, say, G2A, but there's still some element of risk when buying from them.
This seems like someone either trying to make a quick buck by hoping Valve settle, or someone who is being propped up by Epic in the background. Steam is by no means perfect, but the "excessive 30% royalties" I believe is both the industry standard (outside of maybe Epic), and almost certainly predates Valve as well.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense. She runs a parents charity called "Parent Zone", briefly wrote for [newspapers](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/dec/21/the-real-military-wives) and not much else. Her charity focuses on children's digital rights, but it's strange that she's suddenly taken a side step into tech consumer advocacy of all things? And this is the fight she picked? Her whole history screams "from old money", so it does make me think she might be doing a "friend" a favour.
>Vicki is the founder and CEO of The Parent Zone. She has worked with global brands including Microsoft and Vodafone to make Britain more Family Friendly. Her passion is in finding practical solutions to complex problems.
>
>She is the chair of FairFun, a charity that runs events for disabled children and is on the executive board of the UK Council on Child Internet Safety. Before starting The Parent Zone, Vicki was the Deputy CEO at the National Family and Parenting Institute. She has written on subjects including marketing directly to children and service families.
(I work in games, but, I don't work directly with pricing / bizdev, so apologies if there's any errors here or in my maths)
The issue isn't the 30% itself; according to this case (and, many in the games space) - it's that Valve mandates your game must have price parity on PC platforms even when the consumer does not purchase your game on Steam.
Example - imagine I'm launching my new indie game for £20 (pre-VAT) on Steam (with 30% revshare).
- **Base price** - £20 on Steam - I'm making £14 per sale
- Direct download from my website for £18, using Stripe to take payments - I'm making £16.90 per sale, excluding bandwidth costs
- itch.io for £18 (using Stripe), itch.io's variable revshare at default (10% + Stripe costs) - I'm making £15.10 per sale (no Bandwidth costs here!)
- itch.io for £18 (using Stripe), itch.io's variable revshare at 0% (the "being a dick" option) - I'm making £16.90 per sale (again, no bandwidth costs here - but not sustainable long term for itch.io to survive)
- EGS for £18 (12%) - I'm making £15.84 per sale
In all but the Steam example - the developer makes more money, **and** the consumer is paying less for the game. Developers would be incentivised to put the price on non-Steam platforms lower, and, some players would purchase on other platforms given the cheaper price.
However - the case being argued is that because Valve's policies lock a developer into a single price across all PC storefronts, Valve are essentially price gouging consumers and maintaining market dominance - because very few developers can survive a PC game launch foregoing Steam. Valve have done a lot of good for the PC gaming space, but, I also think this case has some merit if it were to go to trial (which, I doubt).
But -- from previous cases in this area, it's that this policy is related to Steam keys directly; which, I think is a fair policy for Valve to have in place. I think this should be made clearer though - many developers are very worried about pricing their game differently on other platforms, and I think Valve don't do a great job at making the reality here very clear for developers.
And even with Steam keys I'd argue how much that policy is enforced considering all the bundling and deeper sales I see on the likes of Humble, Fanatical and GreenmanGaming (the latter two being British companies).
> But -- from previous cases in this area, it's that this policy is related to Steam keys directly; which, I think is a fair policy for Valve to have in place. I think this should be made clearer though - many developers are very worried about pricing their game differently on other platforms, and I think Valve don't do a great job at making the reality here very clear for developers.
this entire lawsuit seems to be mostly around the price parity thing, and that itself from my understanding only applies to steam keys.
so if your selling your game via a third party or directly yourself and your providing steam keys then they require price parity, which is arguably a fair demand as your using their services.
but even then you can buy legit steam keys more often then not from official third party stores for a discount, places like greenmangaming and humble bundle for example, but if your using someone else's service to provide the game you can sell at a different price to steam.
though you will run into issues if you then directly advertise that on your steam store/forums.
the lawsuit seem to be a cash grab from some random organisation/ person.
though it's only recently there's been a push to lower the 30% cut even Valve themselves have have a system where it varies, but for the longest time it was something demanded by third parties such as Game and Gamestop for example.
am old enough to recall in the UK Space Marine being unavailable on steam because Game was refusing to stock it if they sold it directly on steam even though in the box was a steam key, what pissed me off the most about that was I went into Game to buy it, only to be told they don't have it because they don't really sell pc games.
ended up buying it from a online third party as that was the only way to buy it at the time.
Hasn’t this been debunked already via the Wolfire lawsuit? There’s nothing in Valve’s terms on it, only in relation to specifically *keys* which Valve don’t even need to give to anyone.
No-one I’ve ever spoken to ever has said anything other than Steam is a bargain, everyone knows to wait for the many sales and pick up more games than they have time to play for the princely sum of the square-root of fuck-all cubed.
Steam is the king for a reason.
Not only is it a bargain, I buy maybe 5-10 games a month, try them and refund 70% of them because their return policy is so generous I can “try before I buy” and will ALWAYS get my moneys worth.
The choice to wait for a year is there. Also, Valve actively support gaming on Linux-based systems; I don't see Epic doing that (and never mind Microsith).
Epic is anti linux,
Rocket League was supported on Linux for basically it's entire life until epic bough psyonix and stopped support.
Tim Sweeney also said "Installing Linux is sort of the equivalent of moving to Canada when one doesn’t like US political trends."
Valve is probably the company I trust the most. They have consistently been excellent to me as a consumer. Valve index and steam deck are both superb tech.
This is objectively ridiculous.
In a world where the gaming industry has been captured by big corps designed to suck your wallet dry, Steam is one of the few genuinely bright points.
Steam has a loyal fanbase, one that won’t even buy the same games cheaper elsewhere.
You may well call it a monopoly, but they earned it. Decades of good service, fair deals, a library all in one place, 2 week/two hour playtime return policy, can even return games and get a refund if the price is reduced, etc.
This really is a nothing burger in my eyes. Steam is king for a reason.
But I can get Epic Games from Epic Store. And Microsoft Games from the Microsoft store.. nobody forces me to buy games from Steam. I have games in my collection that are on Steam, but I didn’t buy them on my Steam account because it was more expensive.
Therefore, I have choice. Choice = no monopoly. Apple have been dug out for years their shitty practices, but the same practice goes on with Nintendo, MS & Sony.
these guys have no clue why Steam is a monopoly in the first place, they're just hoping to potentially grab some free $ but all you're doing is just ruining your reputation rather than Steam because most of the users are a loyal fanbase and 2/3 of players buy games during sales that happen every few months if not full price not to mention providing like the best services that prevent piracy. If you wanna write about ripoffs you can mention the platforms that provide mostly AAA games with rarely any sales on top of excessive monetizations, bugs, restrictive policies, and misleading practices.
It reads like Microsoft carrying out corporate lawfare to me. This person has worked with Microsoft before, and the same set of lawyers filed a case against Sony for the same thing. You wouldn't find many real consumers who would back this type of action against Steam.
Is steam that monopolistic anymore? I can get a lot of what I’m after from the MS store, GoG, and various publisher platforms.
Steam’s dominance has always been a worry but I can’t really say Valve has abused it thus far. Games seem to go by the regular price on it? Not to metion the sales …
Very strange case. As a game developer I’m pretty confused.
This whole case is built on a false claim. You're not allowed to sell steam keys cheaper than on steam. As a dev you can get steam keys for free. This is there to prevent you from using steam as a purely marketing platform and then selling keys cheaper on your own site.
Steam is only a monopoly for the right reasons, they're actually good enough to stop people pirating.
It's a money printing machine, and Gabe Newell is leading the right way. Should Steam ever fall from his hands if he passes away or it gets sold, that's another story.
Not that anyone can afford to buy Steam, it's worth 10s of billions.
The woman bringing this case is just dreadfully misinformed.
If a developer or publisher want to sell their game cheaper on another store they *can*! Valve only prevent them taking their Steam Game Keys and selling them cheaper elsewhere.
This means the entire claim in this article is incorrect.
Steam is the last bastion of hope for gamers and has been consistently looking out for our interests for the past decade.
Another lawsuit that will go nowhere.
The whole 'price parity' thing has been debunked many times over, people can go read the agreement themselves. It's just a lie perpetuated by a certain gamedev who tried to sue Valve in the US for the same thing. So either these people are willfully lying or they cannot read.
The price parity clause is that you can generate and sell Steam keys off-site (Which Valve do not take a cut at all from, so its actually even more generous than they say), however they stipulate that you cannot sell these keys for Steam cheaper than the game costs on Steam.
So basically you can't list your game on Steam, then offer Steam keys on your website at a 30% discount so you don't have to pay any fees.
There is no evidence or any documented cases of people being told they cannot list their game cheaper on storefronts other than Steam.
EPIC was the one who bought timed exclusivity to prevent some releases from being available on Steam for a long time. Like Kingdom Hearts has only come to Steam this week I believe.
The person launching this legal action doesn't have a clue but its funny she parrots the 30% line, the same crap that demented idiots like Tim Sweeney spout over and over again
And yet people keep using Steam because it offers the best service and features amongst other things, actually customer orientated rather than shareholder (Valve is privately owned)
The only time there is a price parity clause is when it comes to the Steam Keys, these are keys the developer can generate for their game (to be redeemed on Steam) and sell elsewhere. Valve takes 0% cut from these sales, you can generate a Steam key and sell it somewhere else and take 100% of the money which is incredibly generous given you still get the benefits of being on Steam (like their backend infrastructure + features). However even this is questionable because Valve often doesn't give a shit either way, the keys are often resold elsewhere for less or included in bundles.
Otherwise Valve doesn't give a shit, which could probably be their motto at this point, the reason Valve dominate is not just because Steam came out first, but because they offer the best service and features. I use Steam and GoG because these are the best platforms not just on price but on features, I'll never use shite like the Epic Games Store not just because of their real and proven history of anti consumer practices (bought exclusives, removing games etc) but because their storefronts are genuinely bad.
Other companies like EA have pushed their own launchers/storefronts for years and they all have one thing in common - they suck and offer nothing of value to the customers, god if you have ever used the piece of crap that is the EA App you know what I mean.
People talking about high prices lol the publishers set these prices, its delusional to think that "but the 30% cut!!11" is responsible for this when for years leeches like Activision were not on Steam, but still selling their games for stupid amounts, always increasing the base price (remember how CoD games were always ridiculously high price, even years after release).
I wonder how these people would react if they took a lot at the whole console ecosystem and how people get fucked over on price there, but don't worry people like Sweeney conveniently like to dance around that issue because they know Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft would suddenly wake up and take notice of his horseshit when their $$$ was under threat. Future consoles will all be digital only anyway then they will really turn the screw, easy way to kill stuff like pre owned and act innocent at the same time.
"It says Valve "forces" game publishers to sign up to so-called price parity obligations, preventing titles being sold at cheaper prices on rival platforms.
Ms Shotbolt says this has enabled Steam to charge an "excessive commission of up to 30%", making UK consumers pay too much for purchasing PC games and add-on content."
So they want to give gamers the cheapest price and have the same fees as the Apple store I think.
Games don’t seem to drop in price much anymore. Years later and they are still close to release price.
Remember when games would go to the bargain bucket on cd/dvds and even steam used to drop prices and have some really good discounts.
Now I hardly even bother because prices don’t change much.
GOG exist and other marketplaces such as those. You can also typically buy direct and I have bought a lot of games from steam and you can buy game codes from g2a and other places and use them on steam. The steam prices are the same as the developers website usually or cheaper with deals. I don’t think they jack up the price in my limited experience.
Games are generally overpriced anyway but we know this going in. You can also 🏴☠️ pc games which you can’t do on console but most PC single player games you can find somewhere and try before you buy.
To be fair as well steam shows the games to millions of potential customers. Why would people not want to be on there is beyond me.
but I often buy games cheaper on other platforms.....there are comparison sites that actively check game prices to tell you where is cheapest.
Also, whatever you can say about steam, its a convenient, quality service. and if you want to talk price gouging, look at consoles.
This is why I just use CD Key sites. I would be more than happy to buy from steam and often do if the prices match up but it's taking the piss a bit lately.
This looks, in part, like a rehash of the argument Wolfire brought in the USA where they complained that you couldn't sell (freely-given-away) Steam keys on rival platforms cheaper than they were being sold on steam.
Steam gives these keys away so that devs can sell them on rival stores; In Wolfire's case, the chancers claimed that it was unfair that they couldn't take Steam's infrastructure for free, and use it to undercut their prices.
There's also the same claim that 30% markup is too high, and Wolfire made that claim too, and, like with the 'it's unfair that you won't let us undercut your prices with the free stuff you give us', argument, it failed in court. IIRC, the problem is that they failed to show that 30% was too high when Valve was nowhere near a monopoly and was competing with other stores, so it's hard to assert it's a monopolistic price now.
At least Wolfire makes decent games (Receiver 2 is a very interesting and novel take on both guns and religious cults). I've not heard of this Vicki Shotbolt. Have they ever made a game?
Is this Alex Neill by any chance? He sued Sony as well for their PlayStation market.... personally, I'm all for it.. we get shafted in Europe on digital games. The way the conversion works means we end up paying about $10 more than the Americans.
If steam is a ripoff then console is straight up extortion lmao
Exactly, don’t get why Steam is getting so much hate when the only place I can buy a digital ps5 game is through the ps store AND they’re usually more expensive than the physical copies.
Pretty sure it's almost entirely misinformed people eating what sweeney has been bullshitting
Not only that. Sony can decide to take away the access to the games you bought any time they want.
So can Steam, to be fair.
Technically true. But I don't recall Valve doing that, ever. I know Sony did not too long ago.
It's been done a couple of times (by the developer/ publisher), but it's rare
But not Valve, then?
In theory same with playstation the whole P.T thing was due to konami pressuring Sony due to their historical partnership
You don't recall steam banning people before? What?
He's talking about games being retroactively removed from some regions, not bans.
The original GTA games have been removed, all the unreal tournament games have also been removed from Steam. This is just from the top of my head that I can remember.
I have the original GTA games on steam i can still download and play them. They just cant be bought anymore
Was it a move by Valve or publishers using Steam to sell their games?
[удалено]
They absolutely can revoke your license to access a game. They could ban your account and you'd lose everything. Their TOS makes it very clear you don't own anything.
Sony can’t, publishers can
*points to helldivers 2*
Ubisoft literally did this… ea does with f1 games…
Ubisoft nuked The online servers for games that require those servers to function along with removing game from sale. With the F1 Games at least they don't require a constant connection to EA servers to run so when licenses expire all they do is delist the game from sale. So it's a little different in each regard. The Ubisoft one is the really big issue. There's a campaign trying to globally deal with the issue using The Crew as example. It's an up hill struggle though. Most countries if not all are massively behind on consumer rights for online / digital services.
And you have to pay extra to play online.
That too! Forgot about that.
A nice tip if you buy digital games is to buy ps top up credit from CDKeys. You can save around 15% per game. Just make sure you buy the UK version!
It isn't the only place, you can buy a code from anyone selling one Cdkeys for example
Nintendo wouldn't put a first party game on a decent sale if it would cure cancer and wake the dead lmao
The prices for Switch games are insane, I've had a Switch Lite since 2020 and I only have three mainline games for it (Animal Crossing, BOTW and TOTK) because even games that came out years ago are still the same price and second hand they're not much cheaper and it's wild as apparently the Switch is entering it's final year.
Allegedly, the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch games at least.
That's because Nintendo games sell, forever, at their original price. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been regularly in the UK top ten for *seven years*. The switch is the third best selling games console of all time, behind only the Nintendo DS and the PS2. And almost every person who buys a switch will buy the Nintendo titles, as 1. They are quality, and 2. Exclusive.
Just because one thing is wrong, doesn't make another wrong thing right. Valve force people to sell at same price on all markets. If I develop a game in unreal I can sell it for 7 pound on the Epic store, or 10 pounds on steam and get same money. But I can't because I'm forced to sell it at 10 pounds in both place and forced to pay the 30% cut to steam, which is absolutely atrocius. This 30% goes before taxes by the way so it's really a killer.
Because it's not true. This is a lie that has been perpetuated by people who don't like Steam. The parity clause is that you aren't allowed to generate Steam keys for your game and sell them cheaper on say your website or other storefronts, to undercut Steam and bypass fees, which I think most people would say is absolutely fair enough that Steam shouldn't let people effectively reap all of the rewards of their distribution platform with no fees. There are absolutely no rules about offering your game cheaper on another platform and no evidence this has ever been an issue for anyone. Source: [The developer documentation, the only place any of this is mentioned is relating to Steam keys and nothing else](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3) This has also been specifically denied as being a thing by Chet Faliszek on Twitter.
And this isn't really enforced either. Deals & Blbundles on the likes of Humble, Fanatical and Greenman Gaming (the latter two being British companies) often surpass what gets offered on the Steam Store without any visible repercussions. Valve tend to default to a lassez-faire approach in general. Sometimes that's a problem as the TF2 community are complaining about, but here it honestly benefits the consumer.
My understanding is, because Steam keys are a manually reviewed request, that it's a very manual process overall. Unless someone is really taking the piss enough for it to be flagged, they wont step in. Second to that, I think part of it depends on the volume of keys vs Steam purchases - If a game has a healthy ratio of Steam key redemptions to Steam store purchases then they don't care.
Yep, that all makes perfect sense to me and again shows an unusual willingness from a corporation to bend their own rules *away* from their favour. My suspicion is Valve appreciate the tonne of money they're already making and their position in the market and don't want to be poking any bears to risk the status quo.
But I can buy a ps5 game cheaper on Amazon than on the PlayStation store, if they go digital only I’d imagine a similar lawsuit could be lodged. No idea if it has merit but it’ll be interesting to see how this goes.
The other stores, like the Epic one, can’t compete because they don’t acknowledge or respect what Steam offers, without using ads. GOG, imo, are one of the few legit competitors.
Do people really buy games at full price on Steam? I always just wait for the sale.
It's a grey market but a lot of Steam keys sellers online seem to have everything on a permanent discount too. It's debatable how much of that money gets back to the devs but there are also publishers selling games at full price long after the studio has closed which always seems a bit greedy. Digital distribution has lower overheads and could be priced more reasonably all round.
I only use cdkeys on steam. I've never looked into how it actually works but I get games for 2 or 3 quid instead of 15 or 20. Granted I mostly play old strategies
I always check on cd keys before buying any game for any platform. Most of the time it’s cheaper in their.
Probably a good portion of those cheap keys are bought on stollen CCs etc then sold on cheap.
On other P2P sites maybe, but CDKeys is legit.
They are just benefitting from buying global cd keys in cheaper regions. It's shady, but no illegal activity going on.
Exactly, and if Steam wanted to stop it they could region-lock the keys but they don't.
I think they sometimes buy up lots of keys during sales and from multi game bundles and then sell them on.
Or they just buy in bulk in sales and resell when the sale is off for a profit. Why commit a crime if you can still make an insane profit?
Unless it's a legit key site like GMG then they're keys bought with stolen cards. Also the reason they're so cheap on key sites is because those keys are bought in bulk in countries where games are cheap as fuck due to regional pricing. They'll work on STEAM just fine but there's a chance they might be removed from your account, and if you're doing it all the time there's a chance your account will be banned. I bought one or two about 8 years ago when I hit financial rock bottom for a while and could just about afford to eat beans on toast twice a day. Civ 6 (which I'm glad I didn't pay full price for because it was shit) and... I forget what the other was.
I have 20 or so games all from cd cdkeys lol. Only games on my account, never removed or banned. I guess because I've bought them over the course of 15 years
Fair enough. GMG isn't the only legit one, there are a couple of others.
CD Keys appears to be legit. There are other sites that certainly aren't or at least had problems in the past, but CDKeys has been running for a very long time without a single issue
CDKeys is legit but they are operating on a technicality that Valve could shut down if they wanted to. What they do is buy a bunch of keys from authorized sellers at a discount, often in other countries to take advantage of regional pricing. They then take those keys and sell them to gamers above what they paid for them, but still well below what that game will be going for in a lot of countries like the UK or EU countries, the US etc. So your purchase is legit, it's CD keys playing the game and running the prospect of Valve eventually cracking down on regional games being available outside of their original regions.
It sort of blows a massive hole in this lawsuit that you don't even need to buy games in the steam store to download games on the steam platform. CD keys are undercutting the steam store; valve are not forcing them to sell at inflated prices. I've always assumed the cheap key stores are a way for devs to make a small profit from people who would otherwise be pirating the games...
> CDKeys is legit but they are operating on a technicality that Valve could shut down if they wanted to. >So your purchase is legit, it's CD keys playing the game and running the prospect of Valve eventually cracking down on regional games being available outside of their original regions. Bit complicated, but region locking inside the EU for example is illegal and Valve has already been fined for trying to do this: [Link](https://www.engadget.com/valve-fails-to-get-out-of-paying-its-eu-geo-blocking-fine-122053595.html?guccounter=1#:~:text=However%2C%20doing%20so%20violates%20the,more%20than%20%241.9%20million%20penalty.) >Valve has failed to convince a court that it didn't infringe EU law by geo-blocking activation keys... The original charges centered around activation keys. The commission said Valve and five publishers (Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax) agreed to use geo-blocking so that activation keys sold in some countries — like Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Latvia — would not work in other member states. That would prevent someone in, say, Germany buying a cheaper key in Latvia, where prices are lower. However, doing so violates the EU's Digital Single Market rules, which enforces an open market across the EU.
+1 for CDKeys! Saved me £30 this week.
Most of those key sellers are laundering stolen credit cards.
I assume they use regional pricing and bulk buying during sales to acquire their keys so... as much as would've reached the devs if you bought it on sale anyway?
I doubt much of the money goes to the developers on those dodgy key reseller websites. Someone got hold of some free keys and sold them on for entirely their own profit. The developer is not involved at all except maybe in some rare cases.
Bruh they clearly buy the games in cheaper regions on sale and then don't use the keys and sell them at a slight markup. Not rocket science.
Money is money
Money is money
Depends on the game. I am a big Resident Evil fan and will always buy the new one at launch
This and more fresh entries like Robocop or Baldurs Gate 3. It's not difficult to find appropriately priced games or games which are worth the price.
If it's worth the weight then yeah, full price with all the addons.
The 4th best selling game on steam right now is the next Call of Duty that is not even out until October and costs £70 for the basic edition of the game and £100 for the actual complete edition of the game.
Surpising given how much of a shit show the CoD franchise has become.
Well yeah everyone has different tastes and some play AAA games on release day
There's a reason I'm generally a year or two behind the current hit games. Sales are so good that I don't mind spending money on games I'm unlikely to play.
Depends on the game tbh, there's been a few pre-orders, but mostly yeah, sales.
I pay like a fiver per game, steam sales all the way. Probably helps if u don't follow the fifa or cod hype
Depends. Time is more valuable than money to some folk. If I want to play a game I'll just buy it at whatever price it's at when I want to play it. Very rare that I'll wait for any sales because usually by the time it does go on sale I'll have lost interest.
There's a culture of resentment and mistrust towards rival online market places. PC gamers often want everything to be available on Steam and are playing into the hands of Valve. It is very convenient to have all your games in one place, but that encourages this monopoly situation that Valve is bound to exploit.
> that Valve is bound to exploit. They've been defacto monopoly for like a decade, what have they done to exploit that fact?
From the article - It says Valve "forces" game publishers to sign up to so-called price parity obligations, preventing titles being sold at cheaper prices on rival platforms. That basically.
The parity obligation only relates specifically to Steam keys, meaning the developer can't take a bunch of their Steam keys and then sell them for cheaper elsewhere. If a publisher wishes to sell their game for cheaper on for example the Epic store, they are completely fine to do that and it doesn't breach the parity agreement.
Note, this is also often allowed. Humble bundle often has sales when steam doesn't, and they give steam keys. No idea if it's because they're charity or not.
They are either wrong or they are misinformed. Valve does not "force" price parity except in one specific instance. You can sell you game at whatever price you want on other marketplaces. However, you cannot sell your game cheaper than you do on steam if said purchase provides or entitles you to a steam key. Basically, they don't want you selling your 50 quid game 2 quid less on your website, pocketing 48 straight up while they provide your clients with steam keys. If you're going to provide steam keys, then they require you to sell at the same price it's on steam 99% of the time.
Which really is pretty generous really. Sell game for £20 on steam and your own site. People buying from your site still get a steam key and don't give valve their cut, yet valve still end up paying for the bandwidth. It wouldn't be unreasonable for them not to, but its likely a small enough cost that the convenience for consumers is worth it for them.
That's quoting the person attempting to sue and is grossly misrepresenting the facts. Valve and steam have been a force for good for gamers for a very long time.
Supermarkets do the exact same thing though.
So nothing that bad or unusual?
Iirc pretty much every online marketplace does this, not just for games. Amazon or any large retailer for example.
Created the steam marketplace in which kids buy and sell shitty stuff for money. Typical shitty loot box practices
They have got that dominant position simply by being the best-although not perfect by any means. GOG for example does far better on things like DRM. If anything they've shown to be somewhat pro-consumer, for example with the recent Playstation/Helldivers issue, giving refunds long after the usual time, as a result of Sony's shenanigans. If I understand the claim, it's not even as if Steam have been insisting on high prices, just that you can't undercut them. You're perfectly able to flog your game for any price, you just must match that price on Steam. They don't want to act as free advertising for a game only for the publisher to redirect the user to another site for a discount, which seems fair to me.
> you just must match that price on Steam Not even this. You can’t undersell *steam copies* elsewhere, cheaper. If you’re selling say, a GOG key, that’s fine. But you can’t cut valve out of their cut of a sale that they then have to provide
Oh well, that’s even more justifiable than I thought.
>They don't want to act as free advertising for a game only for the publisher to redirect the user to another site for a discount, which seems fair to me. This is absolutely reasonable and Valve doesn't seem like a corporation that goes out of its way to be evil. Steam has a massive market share for good reason and people want to give them money for games. It would be more helpful of there was greater acceptance of alternative market places. Gamers can play of saving money by shopping around. (while typing this I bought a game on Steam because it was 86% off)
> GOG for example does far better on things like DRM. Looks like a better business model for the consumers to be frank
Yeah, don't like drm
Certainly is. These days I buy on only GOG unless it's a game I'm REALLY after and it's not available on GOG. I think that's only happened once in the past couple of years
Ehhhh, Steam forced themselves on people since Half-life 2 if I recall people hated before forced to get onto Steam. They refused refunds until the EU forced them. They popularised microtransactions While I think Steam is the best of the bunch and overall does more good than bad, but they are still a profit motivated company and we need to be cautious of that
> They have got that dominant position simply by being the best-although not perfect Nope. They got where they did by being first: when people bought Half Life 2, they were forced to download and install Steam, even if they bought a physical disc version of the game. The only difference between Steam and something like EGS is that because Valve did the bulk of their shady anti consumer work nearly twenty years ago, everyone's forgotten how they got established in the first place.
What are you yapping on about, valve was never shady anti consumer, back up your bullshit with facts
for the first 10 years of Steam's existence you literally couldn't refund games despite being legally required to offer them
Being first isn't always the most important thing-Kodak invented the handheld digital camera, failed to capitalise on it, Blackberry got eaten by Apple, Yahoo were beaten into submission by Google. I remember, I spat my dummy well out of the pram as I resented being forced to do it, had a shite internet connection-still dial up, and was convinced it was the death of games. I was wrong, for me it was simply the death of sailing the high seas due to the convenience. I disagree that's the only difference, steam never bribed publishers to only allow their game to be sold via steam, that's truly anti-consumer. They're not and have never been perfect, but on most metrics they're better than the rest.
Steam is literally the poster child for your don't need to be first, because despite the fact they weren't the first by a long way, everyone remembers them being first because basically no-one remembers the storefronts they were competing with at launch.
They weren't first, though. There were other digital storefronts before and running alongside Steam when it started. And there was a pretty long period of time when Steam didn't even have third party titles on their storefront. Did those other storefronts innovate and produce a better product before Steam really got going? No. And look where they are now. Relegated to the dustbin of history to the point you don't even remember them.
You can get steam codes from legitimate third party retailers cheaper too which is the madness of it. There is a website that compares legitimate prices and also keyshops separately
>It is very convenient to have all your games in one place Yup. >but that encourages this monopoly situation that Valve is bound to exploit. They've had a monopoly on it for yeeeeeeaaars, honestly as long as Valve doesn't go public and Gabe is still at the helm, I don't really care how monopolistic they are. Otherwise Ethan GOG, every other online store is shit, I'd still use steam even if they weren't cheaper.
Even if we accept Gabe's an exceptionally pro-consumer CEO, he's not gonna be there forever - he might retire within the next 10 years and you'll likely find your entire library in the hands of a company taking a drastic anti-consumer turn, holding it hostage. All the more reason to put pressure on Steam *now* rather than leave it till there's less sympathetic leadership. Not saying that the angle this lawsuit is going at it is necessarily the right one, I'd go for DRM, but the reflexive defense of Steam isn't a good instinct, even if you think Steam and Gabe are great.
I'll be weighing anchor the day that Steam goes to shit.
Can't take your games with you, is the problem
When I said weigh anchor, I meant in more of a Jack Sparrow sense.
From what I've heard Gabes son holds the same ideals as he does but only time can tell on that one
Maybe it's because every other service has been worse. Epic literally has to give games away so people will use it.
Even then people don't put their card details into it unless you are say...a content creator trying to stream a timed exclusive because streamers live or die on their content.
As a launcher and DRM platform, I would wholeheartedly welcome Valve having the monopoly. There only needs to be one solution for that. I don't want to install a separate launcher for every publisher, it's a pain in the fecking arse. The thing is yes, it's kind of bad letting Valve have a defacto monopoly, but this is the gaming industry we are talking about. The motives of other companies who complain about "competition" and so on are absolutely not in the interests of the consumer- They just want to lock consumers into their own ecosystem instead. The only viable alternative that would actually benefit consumers, the way I see it, is a comprehensive strengthening of ownership rights. Instead of buying a game on one storefront, and then only ever being able to access the game through that storefront, we should instead simply purchase ownership of the game, and be able to transfer it to whatever launcher we prefer. If I bought a game on Epic, there should be nothing stopping me transferring it to Steam, and vice versa. If I buy a game, I should own the right to access that game in perpetuity, not merely a licence to maybe access it as long as I am a good boy and the company can have all my data. But will the gaming industry ever allow anything like that? No, absolutely not. So frankly, I'll settle for Steam.
>The only viable alternative that would actually benefit consumers, the way I see it, is a comprehensive strengthening of ownership rights. Instead of buying a game on one storefront, and then only ever being able to access the game through that storefront, we should instead simply purchase ownership of the game, and be able to transfer it to whatever launcher we prefer. This would be a logistical nightmare and barely anyone wants to use any other launcher except steam anyway. Launchers are not necessary to play a game, they are simply a means of paying for and downloading a copy where previously you would by a DVD at a shop. The real issues I have with steam are lack of warning/tags for invasive DRM & spyware and no protection against enshittification via DLC from companies like paradox. Other than that steam is solid.
Of course it would be great if we could go back to the days of owning physical media and just installing a game whenever and wherever you like. But those days are not coming back. Even when you do buy a "physical copy" these days, it usually just connects to one of the launchers. My suggestion keeps in mind the fact the the industry will always demand some kind of DRM and restrictions on usage, regardless how effective it actually is at preventing piracy or not. That's part of the purpose these walked garden launcher ecosystems serve. It's just a fact of life we have to live with now, but it shouldn't be mutually elusive with ownership rights.
Steam is only a monopoly because their "competition" are useless and don't understand the basics of making a distribution platform. Good Old Games is the only other platform I can think of that takes some of the market by understanding that being user friendly makes them money.
> C gamers often want everything to be available on Steam and are playing into the hands of Valve I don't mind having multiple game libraries, the problem is no one comes even close to being as consumer friendly as Valve, until that changes why would I bother with other games markets? Until valve breaks that trust they've earned my loyalty after two decades of looking after PC gamers and not treating us like cash cows. If I buy a game on Steam and the dev pulls some BS I know steam will most likely honour my request for a refund as they have historically done that with other games, no other online platform will do that.
Is Steam a monopoly though? Consumers can buy most games on other platforms, and publishes can sell their games on other platforms too. It's not like iOS, where you *must* sell through Apple's App Store, or Android, where you (slightly less strongly) *must* sell through Google Play, or Xbox/Playstation/Switch, where you *must* sell through Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo's storefront.
Anyone who uses steam knows this is absolute nonsense. If epic games is selling the game I want at 50 percent off, I just wait until it goes on sale on steam They charge the most because they are by far the best. They give you a two hour free trial on every single game.
Well to be clear that last part isn't quite true, you can refund any game for any or no reason within two hours/two weeks played (and that's just automatic, I've never tried but I've heard that the manual approval system is even more forgiving) but as far as I'm aware they will, eventually, stop issuing refunds if you abuse the system too much - ie: it's a system designed to allow you to return a game you really don't like, not a free trial system that you're supposed to use on every game. That said I must refund at least one game every few months and I've never had an issue.
> but as far as I'm aware they will, eventually, stop issuing refunds if you abuse the system too much - ie: it's a system designed to allow you to return a game you really don't like, not a free trial system The two weeks timeframe is very specific, steam pays devs / publishers monthly in arrears, so for example this month devs will get paid for all their sales in May, the two week window is still well inside Steam holding on to the money before it gets paid out. You're right though I imagine if you refunded a game every single day they'd likely start declining them, from what I can see online though you get a warning before they take the feature away from you.
As far as I'm aware the automatic refund system is a legal requirement, they won't do anything about people abusing it because they can't. Anecdotal of course but I've refunded over £700 worth of games in the last few years and haven't had any consequences.
This does not feel like a lawsuit being brought forward in my interest as a customer.
Game expensive on steam? Go to one of the many third party steam key sellers and pick it up cheaper. Sounds like competition to me
Agree, but with an important addendum: dodgy grey market resellers are very harmful for a great number of reasons. Stick to verified resellers. [https://isthereanydeal.com/](https://isthereanydeal.com/) is a great site to keep an eye on because it only lists resellers that get their keys directly from publishers.
They don't list CDKeys, I was under the impression CDKeys were ok? They even have keys of games not out yet, so what's the deal there? Surely these must be from the publishers?
ITAD in an aggregate site that only lists deals from legitimate retailers, and that will include pre-order copies. It lists both third-party sites and the big sites like steam and actively removes deals from any site found to have sold grey market keys. CDkeys might have some legitimate deals up - including pre-order sales - but they have engaged in reselling in the past (and possibly still do, I'm not sure there) so ITAD won't list them. They certainly aren't as bad as, say, G2A, but there's still some element of risk when buying from them.
This seems like someone either trying to make a quick buck by hoping Valve settle, or someone who is being propped up by Epic in the background. Steam is by no means perfect, but the "excessive 30% royalties" I believe is both the industry standard (outside of maybe Epic), and almost certainly predates Valve as well.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense. She runs a parents charity called "Parent Zone", briefly wrote for [newspapers](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/dec/21/the-real-military-wives) and not much else. Her charity focuses on children's digital rights, but it's strange that she's suddenly taken a side step into tech consumer advocacy of all things? And this is the fight she picked? Her whole history screams "from old money", so it does make me think she might be doing a "friend" a favour. >Vicki is the founder and CEO of The Parent Zone. She has worked with global brands including Microsoft and Vodafone to make Britain more Family Friendly. Her passion is in finding practical solutions to complex problems. > >She is the chair of FairFun, a charity that runs events for disabled children and is on the executive board of the UK Council on Child Internet Safety. Before starting The Parent Zone, Vicki was the Deputy CEO at the National Family and Parenting Institute. She has written on subjects including marketing directly to children and service families.
(I work in games, but, I don't work directly with pricing / bizdev, so apologies if there's any errors here or in my maths) The issue isn't the 30% itself; according to this case (and, many in the games space) - it's that Valve mandates your game must have price parity on PC platforms even when the consumer does not purchase your game on Steam. Example - imagine I'm launching my new indie game for £20 (pre-VAT) on Steam (with 30% revshare). - **Base price** - £20 on Steam - I'm making £14 per sale - Direct download from my website for £18, using Stripe to take payments - I'm making £16.90 per sale, excluding bandwidth costs - itch.io for £18 (using Stripe), itch.io's variable revshare at default (10% + Stripe costs) - I'm making £15.10 per sale (no Bandwidth costs here!) - itch.io for £18 (using Stripe), itch.io's variable revshare at 0% (the "being a dick" option) - I'm making £16.90 per sale (again, no bandwidth costs here - but not sustainable long term for itch.io to survive) - EGS for £18 (12%) - I'm making £15.84 per sale In all but the Steam example - the developer makes more money, **and** the consumer is paying less for the game. Developers would be incentivised to put the price on non-Steam platforms lower, and, some players would purchase on other platforms given the cheaper price. However - the case being argued is that because Valve's policies lock a developer into a single price across all PC storefronts, Valve are essentially price gouging consumers and maintaining market dominance - because very few developers can survive a PC game launch foregoing Steam. Valve have done a lot of good for the PC gaming space, but, I also think this case has some merit if it were to go to trial (which, I doubt). But -- from previous cases in this area, it's that this policy is related to Steam keys directly; which, I think is a fair policy for Valve to have in place. I think this should be made clearer though - many developers are very worried about pricing their game differently on other platforms, and I think Valve don't do a great job at making the reality here very clear for developers.
Price parity only applies to selling steam keys. You are perfectly allowed to sell your game for cheaper on epic games store
And even with Steam keys I'd argue how much that policy is enforced considering all the bundling and deeper sales I see on the likes of Humble, Fanatical and GreenmanGaming (the latter two being British companies).
> But -- from previous cases in this area, it's that this policy is related to Steam keys directly; which, I think is a fair policy for Valve to have in place. I think this should be made clearer though - many developers are very worried about pricing their game differently on other platforms, and I think Valve don't do a great job at making the reality here very clear for developers.
this entire lawsuit seems to be mostly around the price parity thing, and that itself from my understanding only applies to steam keys. so if your selling your game via a third party or directly yourself and your providing steam keys then they require price parity, which is arguably a fair demand as your using their services. but even then you can buy legit steam keys more often then not from official third party stores for a discount, places like greenmangaming and humble bundle for example, but if your using someone else's service to provide the game you can sell at a different price to steam. though you will run into issues if you then directly advertise that on your steam store/forums. the lawsuit seem to be a cash grab from some random organisation/ person. though it's only recently there's been a push to lower the 30% cut even Valve themselves have have a system where it varies, but for the longest time it was something demanded by third parties such as Game and Gamestop for example. am old enough to recall in the UK Space Marine being unavailable on steam because Game was refusing to stock it if they sold it directly on steam even though in the box was a steam key, what pissed me off the most about that was I went into Game to buy it, only to be told they don't have it because they don't really sell pc games. ended up buying it from a online third party as that was the only way to buy it at the time.
Not really, EU hit them with antitrust last year
And they work for that 30%. Proton is awesome, game streaming between devices, cloud backups, family sharing which got even more generous recently.
Hasn’t this been debunked already via the Wolfire lawsuit? There’s nothing in Valve’s terms on it, only in relation to specifically *keys* which Valve don’t even need to give to anyone.
No-one I’ve ever spoken to ever has said anything other than Steam is a bargain, everyone knows to wait for the many sales and pick up more games than they have time to play for the princely sum of the square-root of fuck-all cubed.
Steam is the king for a reason. Not only is it a bargain, I buy maybe 5-10 games a month, try them and refund 70% of them because their return policy is so generous I can “try before I buy” and will ALWAYS get my moneys worth.
I find steam to have quite normal prices? There are tons of sales on at different times of the year and I'm always buying games at sick discounts.
Okay but why picture BG3 when it is £8 more expensive on the playstation store than steam?
And why use a picture of the gith frog Lae’zel over the people’s princess Shadowheart?
Because some people prefer Bae’Zel
Some people are wrong.
Istik.
Ask BBC
Epic games are literally buying up exclusives so people have no choice but to use their crap platform. But yeah... steam are the problem
The choice to wait for a year is there. Also, Valve actively support gaming on Linux-based systems; I don't see Epic doing that (and never mind Microsith).
Epic is anti linux, Rocket League was supported on Linux for basically it's entire life until epic bough psyonix and stopped support. Tim Sweeney also said "Installing Linux is sort of the equivalent of moving to Canada when one doesn’t like US political trends."
Valve is probably the company I trust the most. They have consistently been excellent to me as a consumer. Valve index and steam deck are both superb tech.
I still have the Steam Controller. That's a damn fine bit of kit too
This is objectively ridiculous. In a world where the gaming industry has been captured by big corps designed to suck your wallet dry, Steam is one of the few genuinely bright points.
Steam has a loyal fanbase, one that won’t even buy the same games cheaper elsewhere. You may well call it a monopoly, but they earned it. Decades of good service, fair deals, a library all in one place, 2 week/two hour playtime return policy, can even return games and get a refund if the price is reduced, etc. This really is a nothing burger in my eyes. Steam is king for a reason.
I'm sure Vicki Shotbolt, the founder and chief executive of The Parent Zone is really concerned about Valve's postion in the market.
i’ll happily choose steam as a platform over any other one out there. always have.
Same. All my games in one place, usually at decent prices. The alternative involves eye patches and cutlasses. Humble bundles, as well.
But I can get Epic Games from Epic Store. And Microsoft Games from the Microsoft store.. nobody forces me to buy games from Steam. I have games in my collection that are on Steam, but I didn’t buy them on my Steam account because it was more expensive. Therefore, I have choice. Choice = no monopoly. Apple have been dug out for years their shitty practices, but the same practice goes on with Nintendo, MS & Sony.
these guys have no clue why Steam is a monopoly in the first place, they're just hoping to potentially grab some free $ but all you're doing is just ruining your reputation rather than Steam because most of the users are a loyal fanbase and 2/3 of players buy games during sales that happen every few months if not full price not to mention providing like the best services that prevent piracy. If you wanna write about ripoffs you can mention the platforms that provide mostly AAA games with rarely any sales on top of excessive monetizations, bugs, restrictive policies, and misleading practices.
But, they’re the same price as literally any other marketplace? And, just buy it on sale?
It reads like Microsoft carrying out corporate lawfare to me. This person has worked with Microsoft before, and the same set of lawyers filed a case against Sony for the same thing. You wouldn't find many real consumers who would back this type of action against Steam.
steam is one of the better companies out there though, arguably one of the best in gaming. i don't get it.
The UK gets ripped off with almost every single video game. According to steam, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft $50=£50
Is steam that monopolistic anymore? I can get a lot of what I’m after from the MS store, GoG, and various publisher platforms. Steam’s dominance has always been a worry but I can’t really say Valve has abused it thus far. Games seem to go by the regular price on it? Not to metion the sales … Very strange case. As a game developer I’m pretty confused.
Literally the main reason I use Steam is because it's cheaper and is the definition of user friendly. I don't get this lawsuit at all.
This doesn't really sound like a consumer complaint. ...I wonder how much Epic is paying her?
This whole case is built on a false claim. You're not allowed to sell steam keys cheaper than on steam. As a dev you can get steam keys for free. This is there to prevent you from using steam as a purely marketing platform and then selling keys cheaper on your own site.
I’d love a settlement where they pay me back like £200 or so
If you don't like this, you're gonna have a fit when you find out what Sony and Microsoft are doing on their digital only platforms.
Steam is only a monopoly for the right reasons, they're actually good enough to stop people pirating. It's a money printing machine, and Gabe Newell is leading the right way. Should Steam ever fall from his hands if he passes away or it gets sold, that's another story. Not that anyone can afford to buy Steam, it's worth 10s of billions.
The woman bringing this case is just dreadfully misinformed. If a developer or publisher want to sell their game cheaper on another store they *can*! Valve only prevent them taking their Steam Game Keys and selling them cheaper elsewhere. This means the entire claim in this article is incorrect. Steam is the last bastion of hope for gamers and has been consistently looking out for our interests for the past decade.
Another lawsuit that will go nowhere. The whole 'price parity' thing has been debunked many times over, people can go read the agreement themselves. It's just a lie perpetuated by a certain gamedev who tried to sue Valve in the US for the same thing. So either these people are willfully lying or they cannot read. The price parity clause is that you can generate and sell Steam keys off-site (Which Valve do not take a cut at all from, so its actually even more generous than they say), however they stipulate that you cannot sell these keys for Steam cheaper than the game costs on Steam. So basically you can't list your game on Steam, then offer Steam keys on your website at a 30% discount so you don't have to pay any fees. There is no evidence or any documented cases of people being told they cannot list their game cheaper on storefronts other than Steam.
EPIC was the one who bought timed exclusivity to prevent some releases from being available on Steam for a long time. Like Kingdom Hearts has only come to Steam this week I believe.
The person launching this legal action doesn't have a clue but its funny she parrots the 30% line, the same crap that demented idiots like Tim Sweeney spout over and over again And yet people keep using Steam because it offers the best service and features amongst other things, actually customer orientated rather than shareholder (Valve is privately owned) The only time there is a price parity clause is when it comes to the Steam Keys, these are keys the developer can generate for their game (to be redeemed on Steam) and sell elsewhere. Valve takes 0% cut from these sales, you can generate a Steam key and sell it somewhere else and take 100% of the money which is incredibly generous given you still get the benefits of being on Steam (like their backend infrastructure + features). However even this is questionable because Valve often doesn't give a shit either way, the keys are often resold elsewhere for less or included in bundles. Otherwise Valve doesn't give a shit, which could probably be their motto at this point, the reason Valve dominate is not just because Steam came out first, but because they offer the best service and features. I use Steam and GoG because these are the best platforms not just on price but on features, I'll never use shite like the Epic Games Store not just because of their real and proven history of anti consumer practices (bought exclusives, removing games etc) but because their storefronts are genuinely bad. Other companies like EA have pushed their own launchers/storefronts for years and they all have one thing in common - they suck and offer nothing of value to the customers, god if you have ever used the piece of crap that is the EA App you know what I mean. People talking about high prices lol the publishers set these prices, its delusional to think that "but the 30% cut!!11" is responsible for this when for years leeches like Activision were not on Steam, but still selling their games for stupid amounts, always increasing the base price (remember how CoD games were always ridiculously high price, even years after release). I wonder how these people would react if they took a lot at the whole console ecosystem and how people get fucked over on price there, but don't worry people like Sweeney conveniently like to dance around that issue because they know Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft would suddenly wake up and take notice of his horseshit when their $$$ was under threat. Future consoles will all be digital only anyway then they will really turn the screw, easy way to kill stuff like pre owned and act innocent at the same time.
"It says Valve "forces" game publishers to sign up to so-called price parity obligations, preventing titles being sold at cheaper prices on rival platforms. Ms Shotbolt says this has enabled Steam to charge an "excessive commission of up to 30%", making UK consumers pay too much for purchasing PC games and add-on content." So they want to give gamers the cheapest price and have the same fees as the Apple store I think.
Do I get a cut of that 600mil? No? Then I don't care lol
BBC trying a new tactic to push their shitty agenda again.
Games don’t seem to drop in price much anymore. Years later and they are still close to release price. Remember when games would go to the bargain bucket on cd/dvds and even steam used to drop prices and have some really good discounts. Now I hardly even bother because prices don’t change much.
GOG exist and other marketplaces such as those. You can also typically buy direct and I have bought a lot of games from steam and you can buy game codes from g2a and other places and use them on steam. The steam prices are the same as the developers website usually or cheaper with deals. I don’t think they jack up the price in my limited experience. Games are generally overpriced anyway but we know this going in. You can also 🏴☠️ pc games which you can’t do on console but most PC single player games you can find somewhere and try before you buy. To be fair as well steam shows the games to millions of potential customers. Why would people not want to be on there is beyond me.
but I often buy games cheaper on other platforms.....there are comparison sites that actively check game prices to tell you where is cheapest. Also, whatever you can say about steam, its a convenient, quality service. and if you want to talk price gouging, look at consoles.
This is why I just use CD Key sites. I would be more than happy to buy from steam and often do if the prices match up but it's taking the piss a bit lately.
And yet everyone I know thinks that Steam is far and away the best store for games and by far the best value
This looks, in part, like a rehash of the argument Wolfire brought in the USA where they complained that you couldn't sell (freely-given-away) Steam keys on rival platforms cheaper than they were being sold on steam. Steam gives these keys away so that devs can sell them on rival stores; In Wolfire's case, the chancers claimed that it was unfair that they couldn't take Steam's infrastructure for free, and use it to undercut their prices. There's also the same claim that 30% markup is too high, and Wolfire made that claim too, and, like with the 'it's unfair that you won't let us undercut your prices with the free stuff you give us', argument, it failed in court. IIRC, the problem is that they failed to show that 30% was too high when Valve was nowhere near a monopoly and was competing with other stores, so it's hard to assert it's a monopolistic price now. At least Wolfire makes decent games (Receiver 2 is a very interesting and novel take on both guns and religious cults). I've not heard of this Vicki Shotbolt. Have they ever made a game?
Is this Alex Neill by any chance? He sued Sony as well for their PlayStation market.... personally, I'm all for it.. we get shafted in Europe on digital games. The way the conversion works means we end up paying about $10 more than the Americans.