Oh!
Well RIP Steam I guess, better download all my games as long as I can
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Steam is being sued for monopolistic behavior
- Thread starter Deleted member 1839
- Start date
Well RIP Steam I guess, better download all my games as long as I can
Cant publishers release their games on Steam (with 30% cut) and then get an unlimited number of keys that can be redeemed on Steam without ay cut at all? You can literally release a game for 60 on Steam and sell it for 1 cent outside of it and Steam wont give a fuck.
Depending on the region I even remember the exact opposites for game which were available for preorder on steam ( and steam keys on other stores ) then becames exclusives to EGS. For example Metro Exodus a steam key before the game became exclusive : 39.5€; EGS price in europe after the exclusivity deal : 59.99€ ( there was a discount but limited to north america ).
Which still never prevented people to spout the 'it's just another launcher' nonsense.
What part of Devolver Digital being monopolistic is hard to understand?
So if I'm understanding this right, the Steam agreement prevents you from setting the base price for products lower somewhere else, but doesn't stop you from selling the game / keys at an arbitrary discount somewhere else? I can kinda see the argument but it also feels like splitting hairs. How is GMG for example able to operate if this MFN contract is that horrible?
The argument seems to basically be that publishers would totally want to lower their prices for us if they could while also taking advantage of EGS's better cut. I guess this is plausible, but it also just sounds like believing in trickle down economics.
Shouldn't the developers being suing Valve and not some random customer if their business was being harmed by Steam's agreements? It seems like CDPR should be angry about this, but they're named in the suit too as if they're co-conspirators or something.
The argument seems to basically be that publishers would totally want to lower their prices for us if they could while also taking advantage of EGS's better cut. I guess this is plausible, but it also just sounds like believing in trickle down economics.
Shouldn't the developers being suing Valve and not some random customer if their business was being harmed by Steam's agreements? It seems like CDPR should be angry about this, but they're named in the suit too as if they're co-conspirators or something.
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Person who's released a few Steam games here, Valve put a policy in place several months ago that while you get 100% of profits from Steam Keys you may be able to sell on your own, that you don't sell Steam Keys yourself for a price that much lower than is available on Steam. I haven't seen other storefront deals, but I know there's a mention of this when you generate keys, basically the agreement to them giving you infinite keys for you to sell yourself is you don't price cut deeply the price of the game on Steam.
That was seemingly in the Steam Agreement for years tho, it only surfaced late last year cause someone actually started to read the Agreement.
The better way to word it is Valve emphasized it when they redid the Steam Key Generator system last year. when the Steam Store got an update, so did the innter workings of Steam, and Steam Key Generation came with more reminders (though overall a more simple-to-the-point key generator tool).
So the deal being referenced here only applies to the price of Steam keys being sold and not the price of the game on other storefronts?
This suit isn't about steam key sellers, it's alternative platforms like Epic Store, Window Store (which they claim only has 15% cut, despite it having same 30% as Steam) and Discord (accusing Valve of killing Discord because of their 10% cut).
I thought at first this was Ubisoft suing valve but actually one rando is trying to sue both and more rofl.
Good to know, though as their claim has no evidence outside of I guess Sweeny's tweet, they're making assumptions this happens without much proof, which I can't see getting very far.
i know its already pretty far away from the point in this thread already, but is that part of the agreement there from when you put a game on steam and theyre just reminding you at the generator or is it only when you generate keys that it kicks in?
It isn't in agreement.
They're probably hoping to get to discovery somehow. (maybe be forcing Tim Sweeney to appear as witness? but as I understand, Tim probably won't be able to lie in court like in Twitter, unless Epic actually has such agreement with Steam, that I wouldn't know).
User banned (2 weeks): encouraging internet sleuthing
Anyone is bored enough to gather info on these people?
Why? That sounds awfully close to doxxing. They are just random people involved in a lawsuit, what would be the point of "gathering info" on them?
Listen I sued for 100 billion in hopes that Gabe is too busy with his toys and decides on a 1% settlement.
Why the fuck is Rust LTD named in this suit?
These idiots probably think Rust LTD made the game Rust, instead of the reality being a tiny collective of people including the like one guy who works on H3VR.
These idiots probably think Rust LTD made the game Rust, instead of the reality being a tiny collective of people including the like one guy who works on H3VR.
As far as I'm aware, the only thing Steam has that even remotely resembles this, is a section in the Steamworks documentation about key generation, referred to as fair pricing. Basically that if you make Steam games available elsewhere through key generation, then whatever discount you apply to those keys should, in some reasonable timeframe, also be made available to Steam users, so as to ensure some proportion of people do still buy games from Steam itself (and thus give Valve some money).
I have no idea how stringently it is enforced, but considering how often I see Steam games available for much cheaper outside of Steam, my guess is "not very".
I have no idea how stringently it is enforced, but considering how often I see Steam games available for much cheaper outside of Steam, my guess is "not very".
This has always given me the impression that the real rule is "if you're selling Steam keys, then you must sell your game on Steam in good faith".
Valve doesn't seem to care what you do with keys as long as you're not blatantly trying to scam Valve out of their ability to sell copies of your game. So a special 20% sale at launch on key sites is apparently okay, but if you do something stupid like permanently price your game at $100 on Steam while charging a perfectly normal $60 for Steam keys elsewhere, then maybe Valve steps in to stop you. At least, they could. I can't think of an example of it actually happening, off the top of my head.
Valve's leniency in this matter makes me doubt that they are engaged in a huge price-fixing scheme across multiple stores. The pieces don't fit well.
More so than the
Indeed. The key generation system seems to work the same way as well - I'm sure the actual sales to keys ratio at which you'll start getting looked at is firmly defined somewhere internally, but all you get in the guidelines is "please use this service judiciously". Just basically don't abuse the hell out of our offering, and be fair to us and our customers. They do reserve the right to stop you from generating more keys, and to revoke keys you've generated, obviously, but it seems... fair?
I've never published a game on Steam so I don't know if there is any additional contracts you need to enter into and what the phrasing used there is, but from what I'm seeing in the "Steamworks Partner Documentation" it's all just centered around providing a fair service to customers. And no word at all about pricing on different platforms, just pricing of generated keys - which can be discounted as deep as you want, even given away for free, "so long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers in a reasonable amount of time". That's all there is. That one phrase is the only thing that can be misinterpreted here, and it talks specifically about Steam keys.
If there was a legitimate grievance here I might agree with you, but the lawsuit has some fundamental issues that make anyone supporting it look like they're either ignoring the details, or they have an agenda.
Ill never understand why people are rushing to defend a baseless lawsuit
Tell us how this is an actual legitimate legal and business complaint, and maybe we'd think differently.
And aside from the other posters' reasons, said multibillion company is one of the only, if not the only, major gaming company that customers still have any significant trust for, and that has accrued any noticeable amount of customer goodwill and hasn't burned much if any of it in recent memory.
No matter how much cut they get, even ~95-100% like Sony gets digitaly for their first party they still sell as expensive as they can. But there are some people on this forum that want games to cost more, because poor companies need more money to develop them.
Also somehow I doubt indie studios also sued are multibillion :P
The concept of a vexatious litigant (list) exists in some juristictions, but it's rarely used.
Like disbarment, it's probably under-utilized IMO.
please tell us what part of the lawsuit you think is legitimate