Seems to me the only fixing they’re doing is fixing the prices lower than other clients.
Rather than what you usually hear with price fixing, where prices go up. Like Amazon with Levi jeans.
Comment on Dutch gamers file €220 million claim against Valve, operator of game platform Steam
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 day agoThey don’t limit competition, but it’s a more open question whether they are engaging in a form of price fixing.
THE_GR8_MIKE@lemmy.world 1 day ago
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 day ago
Well, no, it’s the opposite. The accusation goes that Steam strong-arms people into keeping prices on Steam the lowest (or tied for lowest) available if they’re selling the same game on another storefront. For example, Ubisoft cannot sell a game on their own platform for cheaper than they will also sell it on Steam.
Again, allegedly.
qarbone@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Of all the accusations against Steam, I’m most amenable to that one. I think devs should be able to sell on their personal storefronts for cheaper, if they’re going to the effort of setting up a storefront at all.
Selling on GOG or Epic for less does feel some type of way too, but I can’t say I’d block devs from doing that either.
HandMadeArtisanRobot@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I think that only applies to selling Steam keys on other platforms. They’re free to price the games however they want, but they can’t sell keys cheaper somewhere else.
Bratosch@lemmy.world 1 day ago
But wouldn’t that be malicious from the dev side? “Hey, don’t bother with Steam because it’s more expensive. Come buy it here instead”. Just don’t sell on Steam if that’s an issue, but we all know they want to piggyback on the exposure/trust associated with Steam.
CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
The thing is that this is in Steam’s TOS when it comes to steam keys. You can sell steam keys but not at a lower price than on Steam. Which is extremely fair – selling a steam key still means you’re using Steam’s infrastructure, you don’t have to manage the downloads & updates. It does not apply in a situation where you manage your own store with its own infrastructure
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 day ago
But that’s the crux. The accusation is that Steam has an unwritten policy that applies to non steam key sales, and uses their near monopoly to enforce it.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
The problem is if valve is price fixing then it would mean any company that limits the use of their service to others via fixed pricing agreements would also be price fixing.
If a company is no longer allowed to have control over their own service when used by others then functionally you cant have second or third parties anymore. It would basically break the very concept.
Cause yes valve does prevent you from selling your game on other platforms at a cheaper rate, so long as you are doing so via steam key or when valve servers will be the source of distribution. This keeps coming up over and over and its wild that people seem to think that valve should not be allowed to limit the abuse of their own servers.
The only example ever floated of them doing this with out steam keys or them being the distribution source was a single email from steam support to a developer. That has been proven over and over to have been a miscommunication and not actually an enforced policy.
Theres a lot of questions on how healthy it is for valve to be so dominate in the market and to have such a wide reach. But the fact is that other companies keep leaning on valve for distribution or build their entire company around it either legitly or though majority theft cough g2g cough.
Everyone else MADE valve into the market dominator either willing or via ignorance and bad business. It valve ever does turn fully evil we are fucked yes. But no one ever seems to want to actually try to fix the problem of everyone else being stupid as fuck. Instead just trying to legal valve into oblivion.
Einhornyordle@feddit.org 1 day ago
This is false. Even if I put the game up on my own server, letting you download a zip directly from there, cutting valve fully out of the picture service-wise too, I am still not allowed to sell it cheaper on my site then on steam.
barryamelton@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s quite demonstrably false. There’s so many games that do this, and are and have been part of steam for decades. i can think of is IL-2 sturmovik Battle of X series. They have sales almost every month on il2sturmovik.com and the account there is linked to the steam one. Same for other sims like Microsoft etc, selling through the Microsoft store…
Maestro@fedia.io 1 day ago
It's not about sales, it's about base price. And yes, Steam does consider "perpetual sales" a base price. They nearly kicked Ubisoft off Steam for that trick.
nore@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
So why is Mindustry $5 on steam, but free on itch?
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I agree with you that anything using Steam’s services should be subject to their terms. I don’t think a lot of people are arguing to the contrary about that. I have heard others accuse, though I don’t know with how much basis, that they apply the same control to games not using their infra.
If this is true, I definitely agree that they have done nothing wrong. Problem is with the many conflicting stories online and lack of solid info.
qarbone@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Which will hopefully come to light through discovery or a case.