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.
warm@kbin.earth 16 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 10 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.
warm@kbin.earth 9 hours ago
Do you have a source for that? All I can find on their Steamworks site is the rules on Steam keys being restricted, not other versions. Maybe I missed that email part in the news.
eli@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Yes this is a more apt description, sorry, this whole thing has been stupid tbh.