Ironically this is actually an example of Valve using its dominant marketshare to suppress rivals - Steam’s ToS require devs to have equivalent pricing across all storefronts if they want to sell on Steam at all, so making it harder for cheaper storefront cuts to translate to lower prices to consumers, who might otherwise move to a different storefront.
Devs aren’t going to drop Steam as a store, so they’re stuck.
It’s not ideal, but I’d say the reason they require equivalent pricing is, so that people don’t just use Steam as a marketing platform, while diverting all sales to their personal website where they sell the game for $X cheaper.
It’s a perfect example of them abusing their position in the market. But since you’re a valve cultist, you make up a bunch of weak excuses for it. If epic or ms did the same thing you’d blow a gasket.
Plus, it only applies to base price, not sale price. If a platform states “you can have your game on sale 100% of the time”, and a game undercuts Steam that way, Steam wouldn’t do anything about it. Well, they wouldn’t have to anyways, it’s illegal to have goods on sale 100% of the time, but the point is there.
Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.
Ars Technica tries to spin it in favour of Steam, but if you read between the lines it is there:
Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.
IMO, it’s reasonable to say “If you want to sell Steam keys off Steam, you need to follow our pricing rules,” but it is not reasonable to say “If you want to sell your game, sans keys, off Steam, you have to follow our pricing rules to keep selling on Steam.” You’re talking about the former here, right? Or does that mean that the following situation is prohibited:
Your game is listed at $50 on Steam
You sell keys from your own site for $50
You sell your game directly from your site for $40
and if so, that the mitigation is to either stop selling Steam keys entirely or to raise the price on your own site to $50?
That’s somewhere in between the two but I dislike it. I suspect it’s more legally murky, too, like tied selling.
The article briefly talks about the latter (emphasis mine):
Wolfire’s David Rosen expanded on that accusation in a recent blog post, saying that Valve threatened to “remove [Wolfire’s game] Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website, without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.”
However, it also says “Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this ‘parity’ rule only applies to the ‘free’ Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn’t responded to a request for comment on this story.” I wonder if the lack of comment was because of Wolfire’s lawsuit?
I’m also now curious if the reason for Steam saying that was related to the in-between situation I talked about above.
@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works shared this ArsTechnica article from 2022 that covers an update on that lawsuit - I haven’t seen anything more recent. In it, Wolfire makes the same claim, in court, that they’d already made in their blog post, which was sufficient to convince the judge to re-open their case.
The ruling [to re-open the case] makes particular note of “a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].’” The amended suit also alleges that “this experience is not unique to Wolfire,” which could factor into the developer’s proposed class-action complaint.
The reason it’s the same price on Steam and Epic is that Steam prevents the sale on their platform if the game is sold for cheaper on other platforms…
I would also gladly increase the developer’s profit instead of the platform’s profit if the price is the same on both as I don’t use all the extra crap that Steam comes with…
Oh if you’re talking about exclusives then pricing is all over the place because they have exclusive in all categories (AAA to indie)…
There’s also more than them in the balance to determine the price at which games sell, 2K games won’t sell the new Borderlands for 60$ while other AAA titles are selling for 70$, they still need to maximise profit and if the market has determined that 70$ is a fair price then so be it.
Anyway I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want the devs to make more money so they’re able to produce more games instead of the launcher company making more money so they can develop “trading cards” as a way to make even more money.
Yes, that’s much more credible - thank you for sharing that. This part in particular is concerning:
The ruling makes particular note of “a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].’” The amended suit also alleges that “this experience is not unique to Wolfire,” which could factor into the developer’s proposed class-action complaint.
I wasn’t able to find any instances of Steam actually de-listing a game because it was listed cheaper elsewhere, but a credible threat to do so is almost as bad (possibly worse, really, since such a threat hints that Steam might have used other underhanded tactics when dealing with game devs). I wasn’t able to find any more recent news on the case, but hopefully we’ll learn if the issue was that particular Account Manager + lack of oversight or something more.
Which of these features do you actually use and why wouldn’t you want the devs to make more money so they can produce more games that you, as a user, can play?
Steam Input for use with my steam controller and playstation controller for gyro controls. Particularly love the dual touchpads for movement and camera controls and extra click inputs over a single joystick click. I can’t deal with default control schemes anymore when it comes to controllers after becoming reliant on the amount of customization Steam Input provides, since it goes beyond a simple remapping with layers, modeshifts, chords, touch menus, action sets, etc.
Linux support that reduces need to fiddle around with settings and mess with lutris type tools and more devs putting in the time to try to be Steam Deck certified. Even when it doesn’t run well on the Deck for more demanding titles there is still benefit for more powerful systems and future Steam Deck follow up.
Existence of Steam forums and guides has come in useful for help and has popped up on search results that I wasn’t able to find on pcgamingwiki, so reddit isn’t the main place I need to rely on. Been a way to also try to reach devs without having to use reddit or twitter.
Steam workshop. I do use nexusmods, moddb, etc. But, sometimes just having it integrated into Steam makes it convenient.
Other launchers are more like comparing a dumbphone versus a smartphone where if all someone wants to do is make calls and text that is fine, but for those that have become accustomed to Steam launcher features beyond launching games there needs to be more done by competitors. Having to use stuff like GLOSSI to try and utilize Steam Input when using third party launchers, or have to fall back to syncthing to try and sync saves from other launchers when using Steam Deck just makes the lack of Linux and custom controller support apparent.
Which of these features do you actually use and why wouldn’t you want the devs to make more money so they can produce more games that you, as a user, can play?
In case the question wasn’t targeted at them specifically: Play games on Linux and making sure the actual monopoly of Windows gets broken. Parts of Valve’s revenue goes into open source development, meaning that in the end more developers get paid: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Upstream-Everything-OSS
They are a monopoly because they…provide the best most fair platform. Also why would linux users support ubisoft or epic.
Most fair? 🤔 Epic’s cut on the sale is lower than Valve’s…
And yet they charge the same amount…
Seems they use that as a way to get developers to join them, then guilt consumers into using their less useful platform.
Ironically this is actually an example of Valve using its dominant marketshare to suppress rivals - Steam’s ToS require devs to have equivalent pricing across all storefronts if they want to sell on Steam at all, so making it harder for cheaper storefront cuts to translate to lower prices to consumers, who might otherwise move to a different storefront.
Devs aren’t going to drop Steam as a store, so they’re stuck.
It’s not ideal, but I’d say the reason they require equivalent pricing is, so that people don’t just use Steam as a marketing platform, while diverting all sales to their personal website where they sell the game for $X cheaper.
Yeah I do understand the reasoning and honestly can’t fault them for it - they are a for-profit company after all.
Doesn’t mean that it’s not a good example of them throwing their weight around (which is admittedly rare).
It’s a perfect example of them abusing their position in the market. But since you’re a valve cultist, you make up a bunch of weak excuses for it. If epic or ms did the same thing you’d blow a gasket.
Epic exclusives prove that developers are happy skipping Steam entirely.
Plus, it only applies to base price, not sale price. If a platform states “you can have your game on sale 100% of the time”, and a game undercuts Steam that way, Steam wouldn’t do anything about it. Well, they wouldn’t have to anyways, it’s illegal to have goods on sale 100% of the time, but the point is there.
Do you have a source for that claim that doesn’t reference the sale of Steam keys specifically?
Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.
Ars Technica tries to spin it in favour of Steam, but if you read between the lines it is there:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/
Thanks for sharing that!
IMO, it’s reasonable to say “If you want to sell Steam keys off Steam, you need to follow our pricing rules,” but it is not reasonable to say “If you want to sell your game, sans keys, off Steam, you have to follow our pricing rules to keep selling on Steam.” You’re talking about the former here, right? Or does that mean that the following situation is prohibited:
and if so, that the mitigation is to either stop selling Steam keys entirely or to raise the price on your own site to $50?
That’s somewhere in between the two but I dislike it. I suspect it’s more legally murky, too, like tied selling.
The article briefly talks about the latter (emphasis mine):
However, it also says “Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this ‘parity’ rule only applies to the ‘free’ Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn’t responded to a request for comment on this story.” I wonder if the lack of comment was because of Wolfire’s lawsuit?
I’m also now curious if the reason for Steam saying that was related to the in-between situation I talked about above.
@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works shared this ArsTechnica article from 2022 that covers an update on that lawsuit - I haven’t seen anything more recent. In it, Wolfire makes the same claim, in court, that they’d already made in their blog post, which was sufficient to convince the judge to re-open their case.
Hopefully we’ll hear more about that soon.
The reason it’s the same price on Steam and Epic is that Steam prevents the sale on their platform if the game is sold for cheaper on other platforms…
I would also gladly increase the developer’s profit instead of the platform’s profit if the price is the same on both as I don’t use all the extra crap that Steam comes with…
Games that are Epic exclusive aren’t cheaper either. This is a nonsense argument.
Oh if you’re talking about exclusives then pricing is all over the place because they have exclusive in all categories (AAA to indie)…
There’s also more than them in the balance to determine the price at which games sell, 2K games won’t sell the new Borderlands for 60$ while other AAA titles are selling for 70$, they still need to maximise profit and if the market has determined that 70$ is a fair price then so be it.
Anyway I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want the devs to make more money so they’re able to produce more games instead of the launcher company making more money so they can develop “trading cards” as a way to make even more money.
Do you have a source for that claim that doesn’t reference the sale of Steam keys specifically?
https://www.eurogamer.net/new-lawsuit-accuses-valve-of-abusing-steam-market-power-to-prevent-price-competition
https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1090663312814157824?ref_src=twsrc^tfw
Your best sources are a tweet by a competitor and a 2.5 year old lawsuit filed because of that tweet? Excuse me for maintaining my skepticism.
Is a lawsuit by Wolfire game more credible?
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/05/judge-brings-dismissed-steam-antitrust-lawsuit-back-from-the-dead/
Yes, that’s much more credible - thank you for sharing that. This part in particular is concerning:
I wasn’t able to find any instances of Steam actually de-listing a game because it was listed cheaper elsewhere, but a credible threat to do so is almost as bad (possibly worse, really, since such a threat hints that Steam might have used other underhanded tactics when dealing with game devs). I wasn’t able to find any more recent news on the case, but hopefully we’ll learn if the issue was that particular Account Manager + lack of oversight or something more.
As a user and not a developer, idgaf. Steam gives me features, EGS doesn’t.
What does your preference have to do with whether or not Valve is fair?
Developers are people too, do their opinion not count or something?
Which of these features do you actually use and why wouldn’t you want the devs to make more money so they can produce more games that you, as a user, can play?
Steam Input for use with my steam controller and playstation controller for gyro controls. Particularly love the dual touchpads for movement and camera controls and extra click inputs over a single joystick click. I can’t deal with default control schemes anymore when it comes to controllers after becoming reliant on the amount of customization Steam Input provides, since it goes beyond a simple remapping with layers, modeshifts, chords, touch menus, action sets, etc.
Linux support that reduces need to fiddle around with settings and mess with lutris type tools and more devs putting in the time to try to be Steam Deck certified. Even when it doesn’t run well on the Deck for more demanding titles there is still benefit for more powerful systems and future Steam Deck follow up.
Existence of Steam forums and guides has come in useful for help and has popped up on search results that I wasn’t able to find on pcgamingwiki, so reddit isn’t the main place I need to rely on. Been a way to also try to reach devs without having to use reddit or twitter.
Steam workshop. I do use nexusmods, moddb, etc. But, sometimes just having it integrated into Steam makes it convenient.
Other launchers are more like comparing a dumbphone versus a smartphone where if all someone wants to do is make calls and text that is fine, but for those that have become accustomed to Steam launcher features beyond launching games there needs to be more done by competitors. Having to use stuff like GLOSSI to try and utilize Steam Input when using third party launchers, or have to fall back to syncthing to try and sync saves from other launchers when using Steam Deck just makes the lack of Linux and custom controller support apparent.
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In case the question wasn’t targeted at them specifically: Play games on Linux and making sure the actual monopoly of Windows gets broken. Parts of Valve’s revenue goes into open source development, meaning that in the end more developers get paid: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Upstream-Everything-OSS
If game developers think the cut is too high, I’d be thrilled to see them distribute their games directly through Flathub: https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission/
Only because EGS is trying to take market share, not because of the goodness of their own hearts.
So what? That’s also the only reason valve supports Linux.
And thereby fighting the Windows monopoly.
Which they don’t do out of the goodness of their own hearts either.
Until we have proof that they increase their share of the profit when they reach a certain market share then that’s pure speculation on your part.