Finally an article that actually goes through anticometitive behavior. Its europe so I get it. If it was the us I would be a bit miffed since its long standing behaviour amazon and walmart has been doing so they should go after them first rather than this niche thing. I am of course assuming europe either does not have amazone and walmart or has already restricted them from insisting suppliers give them the lowerst or equal to pricing on their platform.
remind me again how Gaben is a GoOd BiLlIoNaIrE?
I want to make something clear about the Valve Anti-trust lawsuit currently making its way through the court system.
This case is predicted on the idea that Valve’s “Price Parity Clause” in its contracts with Game Devs is anti-consumer and anti-competitive.
The original lawsuit filed by Wolfire before this became a class action Anti-trust lawsuit is available online and it alleges a couple of things.
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Steam is two separate services that are lumped together in an effort to maintain its market share.
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It uses this market share to enforce a Most Favored Nation Clause.
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The Price Parity Clause does not only apply to Steam Keys but to all e-shop sales outside the Steam store.
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The Price Parity Clause is actually a Most Favored Nation Clause, aka a Price Veto Provision.
The reason that people are claiming this is about Steam Keys is because the original lawsuit filed by Wolfire says that it is. This is what most of the articles that are actually written about this exempt from their writeup and since they don’t provide source documentation (from the filing), they lack this context.
The lawsuit is literally about whether or not Valve applies and enforces their Price Parity Clause to not just Steam Keys but also to non-steam storefronts that do not at all use Steam Keys.
If you are arguing that this isn’t about Steam Keys, your information is inaccurate and based not on the court filing but on articles that exclude information from the court filing.
If you’re saying it’s solely about Steam Keys your information is contextually right to some small degree but just as incomplete and therefore just as incorrect.
Because of the nature of the claims in the Wolfire lawsuit (some of which are actually demonstrably false), it does not lend creedence to the other claims being made by Wolfire (on which the class action is relying).
One of the most notable discrepancies between what Wolfie claim and what is legally proven to be true thus far is that Steam does not make a 30% commission on Steam Keys. In point of fact, Valve do not claim any percentage of sales figures from Steam Keys at all. Only sales made directly on the steam e-shop are charged the 30% fee.
The second major one is that the clause in their contract with Steam on which this is predicated is specifically about Steam Key availability and use.
So far as I can tell, there is not a difference in these particular parts of the lawsuit between the class action and the original lawsuit that was dismissed in 2021. So Wolfire’s original lawsuit and the Class Action still state that Valve does these things and this lawsuit is as much about Steam Keys as it is about Price Parity/Most Favored Nation type market tactics and clauses.
I believe they have not changed this wording because they cannot remove their Steam Key argument from the lawsuit because without it they do not have a written Steam Policy on which to rely.
So far as I can tell Wolfire and the Class Action claim that the Most Favored Nation Clause is only spoken of in person and is not part of the official contract they signed or any such contract that Valve offers for Steam services. It is unclear if this is their own claim or something they point to as being true based on alleged Microsoft Employee statement.
If I come across more information on this I will try to post it, but I might not remember.
I do wish we could stop posting articles with sensationalized claims and horribly clickbait titles that don’t actually providing even a link back to the sources of their information and claims.
I believe there is a separate lawsuit happening in Europe and I haven’t delved into that one to this degree.
There’s also a separate lawsuit alleging price fixing between Microsoft and Valve. I have not looked into that one at all though I did come across it in my rabbit hole dive.
If anyone can direct me to a non-account required court filing for the two video game developers that sued Valve I would like to see them. So far it looks like the court filings were originally separate but have been combined into a single court filing and that court filing doesn’t use the same language as Dark Catt’s singular filing did.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754.1.0_1.pdf
https://lawfold.com/valve-lawsuit/
https://www.classaction.org/media/wolfire-games-llc-et-al-v-valve-corporation.pdf
https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/14/sweeney-vs-steam-cut-epic-tirade-gaben-emails-revealed
https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/revealed-tim-sweeneys-epic-rant-to
https://aftermath.site/gamers-sue-microsoft-valve-steam-antitrust-lawsuit/
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.300801/gov.uscourts.wawd.300801.1.0.pdf
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/it/ip_21_170
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What? I made a purchase from Epic instead of Steam since they didn’t make the MENA currency change and as a result many older games are significantly cheaper on Epic in my country.
For example Celeste’s base price on Epic is 66 cents in my country with no discount (currently on %75 discount) versus 10 USD with no sale and 2.5 USD currently on Steam.
Celeste is based
It’s so hard later game though. And you better not ever take a break for more than a day or two!
Celeste is the ultimate anti-troll game. I have never had a game so brazenly show me something that clearly seems impossible and then go “Don’t worry, try as many times as you need. And don’t just try until you succeed; try until you can’t fail.”
And it does this, like, 5 times, and every time I go “literally no way will I ever do that” and then several minutes later I can do it. It really is a game about climbing a mountain.
That last sentence hits!
I’m a huge souls borne lover, and when first playing sekiro I got to the classic road block and just spent a few hours every night after work headbutting that wall until it
crackedcrumbled. Like you’re given the opportunity to fight him again without consequences, and I did it without having to use even one heal.Exactly! Maybe I should play a soulslike…
You promise me to beat dark souls, and I’ll promise you to finally surmount the epic challenge that is Celeste.
Next time I’m looking for a new game I might pick it up!
Why is Anno 2070 still not on GOG?
What if we turn it on it’s other side and say: In the interest of its customers, Valve prohibits publishers from selling for a higher price on Steam than somewhere else.
I love valve as much as the next PC gamer, but I agree their rules should not affect what publishers do entirely on other platforms.
that’s some fucked up logic.
steam is simply saying, “if you want to sell your product through us you must not sell it elsewhere for cheaper”. don’t like it? don’t sell your product on steam. simple as that.
valve has a fiscal responsibility to ensure that developers aren’t siphoning customers away from the platform and requiring equal pricing for the same product across all platforms ensures a level playing field for both devs and resellers.
ask yourself, why would Ubisoft sell a game on steam for $60 and then attempt to sell the same game on their platform for $40? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not out of the goodness of their heart.
Valve takes 30% of all sales. What’s 30% of $60?
That’s why Ubisoft could sell their games for 30% cheaper on their own platform - they make the same amount of money as selling for $60 on Steam.
That’s why Ubisoft could sell their games for 30% cheaper on their own platform
good for them. they can fuck off and sell their shit on their platform exclusively.
that 30% that valve takes? that’s the cost of business working with valve. that’s the fee to have access to their delivery platform, their inventory control system, their large consumer base.
it melts my brain to attempt to comprehend how anyone can complain that a company is literally charging for their services AND have TOS to back it up.
TOS aren’t just legal by default. If Valve are indeed saying that they will delist Ubisoft games if they sell their own games elsewhere for cheaper than they do on Steam, that will absolutely get them in trouble with the law. That’s classic anti-competitive behaviour. It’s abusing their market position.
that will absolutely get them in trouble with the law
Did you happen to notice the title of the topic you’re in?
A fiscal responsibility to who?
- their employees
- the developers that use the platform to sell products
- the customers that use the platform to buy products
Valve has a fiscal responsibility to maintain solvency. if they allow their competition to undercut them while at the same time abuse the system to sell products at a higher price, they risk opening a rift for consumers to flood to a cheaper platform and thus weakening their solvency and profitability.
if their competition wants to sell from their own platform at a cheaper rate, they need to make their products exclusive to their own platform.
this is marketing 101.
tired of people claiming Valve has a monopoly when it’s very clear that this is manufactured because competition is unable or unwilling to develop a better solution than Valve. that’s not monopolistic, that’s just business.
Nobody said Netflix had a monopoly when they put blockbuster out of business. nobody claimed monopoly when Walmart put your local grocery chains out of business. nobody claimed monopoly when Nintendo put atari and Sega out of business. know why? because a monopoly requires exclusive rights to sell a commodity or service. can you buy games outside of Steam? YES! then it’s not a monopoly.
antitrust my ass. Google had an antitrust suit. why? because the OS they maintained locked down app access to only their delivery platform. THAT’S a monopoly.
They aren’t. If Ubisoft wants to release a game on their own platform steam can do nothing about it.
Did you even read the article? That is exactly what the to lawsuit is about?? Do you have any insider knowledge or why are you starting this as fact???
No, Ubisoft tried to offer a partial game for free, distributed via Steam, but sold paid full access for cheap on Uplay. Basically, a “purchase full access to this Steam game on our storefront so we don’t have to pay the fee we’d normally pay to get Steam to distribute the game for us”.
It’s like if I download an app from Google Play Store, and then go to that apps first party website, and pay for your subscription to the app service there , in order to bypass the Google Play Store transaction and thus the developer fee.
I’m trying to figure out why I’m okay with circumventing this to amazon, apple, and every other publicly traded company offering a platform or marketplace, but feel that my favorite privately owned and operated platform should get a pass and be able to restrict the off network transactions.
Steam can delist all of Ubisoft’s games from their storefront in retaliation to what Ubisoft does on their own independent store
Yes
Sure, and ubisoft can decide to not sell their property on steam at all, that mechanic goes both ways.
I forgot the issue at hand while writing that, oh bother
ubisoft can decide to not sell their property on steam at all
they used to have that policy
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ubisoft-explains-why-it-doesnt-release-games-on-st/1100-6469502/
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/ubisoft-comes-crawlin-back-to-steam/
there’s more to it than that.
Not really no. Ubisoft agreed to these terms in order to sell their game on steam. If they sold their game on any third party platform, they would agree to the same or even more severe terms. They even made their own storefront specifically so they would have the option to not sell on a third party platform.
They now cry foul because they got all the benefits from selling on steam, but they don’t want to pay for any of those benefits.
Yeah it’s particularly weird in this case because Ubisoft and Valve both have publisher, developer, and distributor departments within each company. So the agreements they signed and put into place are probably somewhat complex.
Looking at the Steam page though it says
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
So in this case it’s whatever Ubisoft as a publisher signed / agreed to with Valve when they accepted their distribution terms. These are probably not the same boiler plate terms an indie dev would sign if self publishing.
Yeah but it’s fairly simple.
You can generate Steam keys using the Steam developer tools. This allows a game key to be purchased on any storefront that supports selling them, which can then be activated on Steam.
The main requirement? You can’t price those steam keys on a 3rd party store cheaper than on Steam itself.
For that, it means if the 3rd party store takes a smaller cut than Steam itself would take, the developer makes a bit more profit through almost no additional effort. Steam is the system users use to download and update the game, and cloud save syncing, and community guides, forums, workshop, etc.
The developer is, afaik, more than welcome to also sell a UPlay key if they partner with Ubisoft at any price point they want (regardless of the Steam price) because Ubisoft is the taking on the burden of distribution, etc.
The only price requirement Valve imposes is on selling Steam keys on 3rd party storefronts. Not UPlay keys. Not Xbox keys. Not Epic Store keys.
Edit: and I read the article, while albeit short (can’t access the linked Bloomberg article sadly), they claim exactly that, that the version on UPlay was significantly cheaper than the version on Steam for essentially the same game. Valve was arguing that Rainbow Six Siege needs to change their pricing on UPlay or they would be delisted.
Yes it’s a very short article and apparently you completely hallucinated a paragraph where it’s about steam keys?
I do not see any mention of steam keys in the article. They wanted to sell a version that wasn’t even on steam. Only on Uplay. This has nothing to do with steam keys. And valve was still complaining.
So yeah. It’s fairly simple and you still got it wrong.
You should probably read the lawsuit instead of an article before you act so sure on this lmao
Try reading the actual lawsuit. The article is absurdly misleading. It is actually about steam keys.
This isn’t about steam keys, it’s about Valve throwing their weight around.
Valve was arguing that Rainbow Six Siege needs to change their pricing on UPlay or they would be delisted.
It’s the equivalent of Amazon telling a manufacturer that they can’t sell their product at a lower price on their own website if they want to sell it on Amazon.
None of this should be defended.
No, it would be like Amazon saying that a manufacturer cannot use Amazon to ship goods sold on their own website if they’re going to sell at a lower price. That is reasonable. Steam keys are a means of distribution. If steam is going to provide the file transfer, cloud saves, multiplayer server hosting, community page, and workshop page for your game, then don’t sell your steam keys for less than the game on steam.
If you want to sell a key for epic for less than you list the game on steam, they do not stop you from doing so.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT STEAM KEYS
Read the article, jfc
The crux of the case is whether Valve is applying that rule to non-Steam keys or not. Lawsuit says they are, Valve says they aren’t. If Valve is telling the truth, they’ve done nothing wrong. If Valve is lying however that is an anticompetitive practice that should be punished. We won’t really know until the trial concludes though.
Personally I think the most likely answer is that some junior support people at Valve misunderstood the policy and told some people the wrong thing. There’s a decent chance that when those accusations first surfaced a decade or so ago (yes this has been a thing for that long) Valve probably sent some internal memos to clarify what the rule actually covers and what it doesn’t and hopefully that was that.
Valve probably sent some internal memos to clarify what the rule actually covers and what it doesn’t and hopefully that was that.
Speaking from my company experiences as an employee:
If it’s not written in a clear language (e.g. ONLY keys generated and distributed by Valve need to follow the same price on other storefronts. We do not care about 3rd Party key generator/distributors like uPlays own infra) and somewhere accessible it will be forgotten or misinterpreted by employees.
I can’t even count the amount of “With this email we inform you of policy X and order Y”.
This email will be lost and new employees will never receive it.
And employees will repeat the rules in a flawed way.
I like Valve as a company, but this is exactly what antitrust laws are for. I hope the due course of justice is followed and the appropriate consequences result if any impropriety is found.
FYI: Eurogamer is owned by IGN who is owned by Ziff Davis.
IGN has been known to write hit pieces against competition for Ziff Davis and their partners.
Article comes from Bloomberg.
it’s wild how those letters spell “Bloomberg” and not “Eurogamer”. how does that work?
It’s wild that you didn’t even bother to read the article.
those are emails, you said the article. there’s a huge difference there.
further, why wouldn’t valve attempt to stop developers like Ubisoft from undercutting the products they sell. If Ubisoft doesn’t like it, they can just not sell their products on steam.
exclusivity of products isn’t abnormal to commerce. you didn’t complain when Death Stranding was exclusive to PlayStation. you didn’t complain when Super Mario was exclusive to Nintendo. you didn’t complain when Bigmacs were exclusive to McDonald’s.
so why complain now?
those are emails, you said the article. there’s a huge difference there.
You cannot be this obtuse. The emails are mentioned in the Bloomberg article. Eurogamer is just publishing a summary.
further, why wouldn’t valve attempt to stop developers like Ubisoft from undercutting the products they sell. If Ubisoft doesn’t like it, they can just not sell their products on steam.
What you are saying is that Valve should have the authority to set prices for products they don’t make. That’s insanity.
you clearly are attempting to set a narrative.
enjoy the blocklist, you’re among your peers.
Do you add anyone who corrects you to your blacklist?
Must be a pretty long one.
you can get cheaper prices elsewhere all the time. look at humble bundle (idk if they’re still around but thats where a lot of my games came from a while back), green man gaming, or any of the console app stores. depending on who has sales when games are cheaper all the time. y’all are falling for propaganda trying to discredit one of the only decent companies left in gaming written by their competitors and their competitors’ friends. try thinking a little before just following the social media hive mind because you’ve spent the last couple decades seeing proof that this is a blatant lie.
And do you seriously think Valve doesn’t require discounts that are as deep or greater during its own seasonal sales? Did your brain really think “Hey, I saw a sale somewhere once!” and instantly conclude from it that you could somehow disprove an antitrust lawsuit based on internal communications from Valve employees doing exactly what they are accused of?
People have tracked this. They have literally made whole tracking websites just for this. This is a verifiable thing. This isn’t just someone making this up based on anecdotal evidence. There are websites dedicated to this.
You should read the article. That’s not what these suits are addressing.
You should try thinking a little before blindly defending this price fixing behavior which directly harms your wallet.
Thread number 768 wherin Lemmy users pretend not to know what a monopoly is cause they love Steam so much.
can’t be doing that steam.
stopping people from undercutting you by selling steam key cheaper elsewhere and avoiding steams cut, sure.
mandating price parity in other situations, no bueno. gonna lose this one probably
Ah, I see the valve bootlickers are already here. Lemmings hate companies, unless it’s Valve.
Valve is one of the few billion dollar companies that hasn’t screwed me.
Seriously. Gabens ass is clearly big enough for all these billionaire dick riders to eat at once.
It’s weird how people who haven’t even researched Steamworks are suddenly professionals.
If you speak to actual developers who use steam, they’ll point out that with a few lines of code, they can turn a game into multiplayer, and add features which allow them to compete against larger publishers, whose business models are often just buying other gaming studios. Of course companies like Ubisoft and warner bro’s would be pissed. They’re not known for improving things at all for gamers lol.
If you speak to users like me, i don’t give a shit about the pricing that much honestly. There are games I own on XBOX, Steam and meta, some duplicates.
I use steam because I can play games I bought 10 years, and Steam have even allowed them to work on Linux by integrating proton (you can no longer identify what platform they were designed for). And my saved games work on my Rog Ally, computer, and I can still load saved games from ages ago.
I can use pretty much any controller, and load Emudeck on a Steam Deck.
I’d actually argue that recently, Steam is the best thing that has happened to linux. If we didn’t have them, we’d be screwed.
But hey, you go pretend you’re an anarchist protecting gamers by fighting back against a company that has been good for gaming… Maybe go install epic store or uplay or whatever lol. Then, maybe you’ll understand why actual gamers defend steam.
It’s crazy how valuable decades of really good karma is
Add Proton to the list as well.
You know, this reminds me of a little story. There was a small family owned supermarket. They wanted to expand. What better way to do that than offer better prices than your competitors? And what better way to prevent competitors than opening up that store in a small city. So, that’s what they did. The government let them. And then that store drove local business out. That allowed them to raise prices and continue that business model until they were the largest employer in America.
This seems to me, that Ubisoft wants to play, but has nothing unique to offer other than their games. The store front is terrible. There’s no community. And there’s always issues when I’m trying to play with friends. Never any issues on Steam. I don’t know y’all, this just seems stupid. I hate Ubisoft though.
Oh look, yet another example of the very thing that most of Lenny is denying happens in that other thread from yesterday.
