Just for clarity: how would it do a disservice to players if a dev can sell their steam keys for any price, no matter which platform?
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This lawsuit build on a false premise. Steam doesnt have a price parity clause for other stores. What this lawsuit alleges applies to Steam keys that the developer generates through Steam. If the developer lists those keys for sale at a price lower than what the game is listed for on Steam, then the price of the Steam Store purchase price must match it, so that people visiting the store page on Steam get the same discount. It doesn’t matter if you list your game on GOG and discount it there.
Its literally helping players.
haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 3 months ago
RandomException@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
Steam is a service that costs money to keep running - lot’s of money actually in their scale. When you sell a Steam key outside of Steam, they don’t get their cut which goes toward running costs and whatnot. It doesn’t of course matter if it’s just some random few keys but if almost all devs started to do that, it could cause some serious funding problems to Valve. That could then lead to reduced service levels of Steam and that would hurt their customers - the players - the most.
So while it’s not a big problem currently, it could be if it wasn’t prevented properly in contractual level. People who think that is an unfair clause don’t probably understand what it actually takes to run a service like Steam or they are straight competitors trying to run them out of business in any way imaginable.
OrgunDonor@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Just think about how this works.
Steam currently allows you to generate keys and sell them for free, only stipulating that they must be sold for the same price as on steam.
Let’s say they are told that stipulation can’t be enforced.
Valve, will probably go with 1 of 2 options.
1 - you can no longer generate keys. So all the great key sites(GMG, Fanatical and so on) no longer exist, because no steam keys.
2 - Valve charge an upfront fee for keys generated. Now smaller pmdevs and publishers can no longer supply keys to sites, because they can’t afford the upfront costs.
What incentive does valve have to continue offering this free service? If it can be exploited for the detriment of steam, they will stop providing it.
haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 3 months ago
Let me try and understand this by altering the product.
Valve now produces cars and the devs are people who make these cars inside factories. Same as is currently the case, these employees get cars cheaper and are asked to not undercut the seller by holding onto the cars for a certain amount of time before selling them used.
It does make sense for me to view it that way. One could argue that the couple cars that get sold by employees doesnt do anything to hurt the brand and that pressuring them to keep the price high manipulates the market.
Also, doesnt the work of steam accumulate to hosting mirrors of a game and hosting a large website they get billions in revenue for?
OrgunDonor@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This analogy is so bad, it is not even close to what is happening.
I will try and adapt to cars for you(I dont know why), but this is just really really bad.
Say you have designed a car, you can produce them on a very small scale, but you have come to valve(they make cars now) to mass produce. They do so, for a 30% cut(that reduces the more they sell) for everything they sell from their direct sales at the price you have set. There is no material costs or labour costs, just that cut of the price you have set.
Now valve have a sales page and are selling, and you decide that actually I would like more people to see the car, and so you consider selling it at other dealers. Valve says, sure, you can even have the cars for free from us(no 30% cut) and you can have basically an unlimited supply of free fully built cars to sell else where. We only ask that you sell the car at the same price you have set with us if you are selling a car we made.
You want to go sell it new cheaper? You are more than welcome too, but you cant sell the car we produced.
Such a bad analogy, but that is closer to what is actually happening.
stardust@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
I already get games cheaper than steam though for steam versions of games all the time though. Does nobody use isthereanydeals to track price trends of games and see what places are selling the game the cheapest? Happens all the time at launch too where games can be gotten for cheaper than on steam for a steam key with places like GMG or Fanatical having discounts sometimes lowering to 10-20% for a steam key.
furikuri@programming.dev 3 months ago
Probably operates closer to corporate software licensing deals, i.e. “we might not catch you but if we do it’s over”