SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 hours ago
What are they being sued for? I guess I missed this?
As per my understanding (which isn’t saying much), Steam takes a 30% cut of each sale. In UK, someone with a specific agenda claimed to represent gamers as a class and sued reasoning that the 30% cut inflates the price of games globally even beyond Steam’s store, harming everyone.
Did i understand it right? No idea. What’s the actual goal here? Also no idea. Is Steam the “good guy” in all this? Of course not.
Well that’s stupid. If Steam charged less, the price of games wouldn’t change.
Developers and publishers would just pocket the difference.
Best example is Ubisoft and EA when they took their games off Steam and Epic wasn’t around but didn’t sell their games any cheaper despite 0% cut. Or Final Fantasy 7 Remake released as an Epic exclusive, but was priced at $70.
It is weird. Every other product people know that companies want to charge as much as the market will take to maximize profits. Most noticeable examples being GPU prices over the years and now ram and storage.
But, gamers for some reason think companies want to price things lower as though game companies are so noble they escape the greed of capitalism to seek out exponential profits.
Is Steam the “good guy” in all this? Of course not.
Too bad a lot of people, even here or in other threads, don’t get it, so they willingly cheer for Valve simply because Tim Sweeney sucks.
I think devs actually get quite a bit for that 30%. Let’s present a hypothetical. What if Valve offered an option where you could list your game on Steam with no restrictions and they’d only take a 10% cut, but the tradeoff is, they won’t promote your game at all? Like, it won’t show up in any Steam storefront advertisements, can’t participate in sales, etc. - it’s still there if it’s linked to from off-Steam or if someone searches for it, but it won’t be promoted, period.
How do you think that would work out for developers? I’d argue not well, especially for small studios.
The promotion those games get applies to the game as a whole, not only through Steam - someone can see the promotion on Steam, then go shop around and buy it elsewhere. Why should Valve promote a game if they aren’t getting a cut of the sales?
eli@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
They are being accused of price fixing with the whole “can’t sell games for cheaper on other store fronts compared to the steam listing” thing
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 hours ago
Oh well that’s totally fair, honestly.
warm@kbin.earth 19 hours ago
It only applies to Steam product keys though, so developers cannot sell cheap Steam keys on other platforms while still taking advantage of Steam's services.
Cavemanfreak@programming.dev 13 hours ago
I believe the problem is that it isn’t just Steam keys. There’s apparently emails from Valve employees that state that it’s all versions of the game, and that seems to be the real crux here. And if that’s true it’s pretty shitty, and they might actually lose this.
eli@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Yes this is a more apt description, sorry, this whole thing has been stupid tbh.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
It only applies to steam keys though. Like if you want to sell on other storefronts for cheaper, it’s perfectly fine. You simply can’t sell steam keys on other storefronts for cheaper. It’s not really “price fixing” as much as it is “Steam ensuring their servers aren’t used unless they get their cut”…
Like imagine a company wants to sell more copies of their game. So they set up their own site to sell directly to consumers, and it’s cheaper than buying on Steam. This is totally fine. Consumers can still choose to add the standalone version as a non-Steam game to be able to launch it via Steam.
It’s only a breach of contract if they start offering steam keys for that same (cheaper) price, which allows the game to be downloaded via Steam, includes achievement integrations, includes Steam’s friend list “join game” multiplayer, includes Steam Deck/Steam Machine optimizations, etc… If they want all of those nice Steam integrations, they need an official Steam key. And that Steam key can’t be sold cheaper than on Steam’s official store.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
How does it do that?
GuerillaGorillas@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Which isn’t accurate and is more nuanced involving Steam keys like another user said. For instance, Prey is on sale for $6 on the PlayStation store but still $30 on Steam.
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SparroHawc@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
That’s because they can’t intimidate Bethesda with an email.
nogooduser@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I’m pretty sure that Amazon also says that you can’t sell things on Amazon for more than you sell the same item elsewhere.
I’ve certainly seen a video claiming that.
unknown1234_5@kbin.earth 17 hours ago
ah yes, they are price fixing by saying devs can't set the price on steam (which the devs control) higher than the price on other platforms (which the devs also control)
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
That’s not true, it only applies if you’re selling a steam key. Devs are free to set the price on any platform they want, want proof? Check out the currently free game on epic which has never been free on Steam.
Steam provides developers with infinite steam keys that they can sell outside of steam for 100% profit, however those keys cannot be sold at a lesser price than what it’s sold on steam. Which honestly sounds like common sense.
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
That itself is false too with a quick look at isthereanydeals showing lot of steam games being sold cheaper outside of the steam store.
Even the Steam key guidelines don’t explicitly state that steam keys can’t be sold cheaper.
partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Key word being comparable which is why if you are a user of isthereanydeals or /r/gamedeals you’ve likely gotten most of your steam games from outside the official Steam store.
I think some people just assume Steam sales must be the cheapest and don’t look beyond it.
I am puzzled why people believe Steam keys can’t be sold outside Steam unless they never looked outside the Steam store.
This is one example of a game that isnt too old.
isthereanydeal.com/game/silent-hill-f/info/
Historical low is $31.49 from Fanatical and Steam low is $41.99