That’s exactly what they’re trying to say. It could have been cheaper if Valve didn’t have pricing clauses that doesn’t allow developers to price things cheaper elsewhere.
BigTrout75@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How can this be? All the games I buy on Steam are cheaper than on other platforms. Where are these cheaper games?
Donut@leminal.space 2 weeks ago
PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Which is deceptive, at best. Steam doesn’t have pricing clauses for developers’ games. The devs are free to sell their games anywhere they want, at whatever prices they want. But Steam does have pricing clauses for Steam keys. Basically, what allows you to register a game to your Steam account.
You can sell your game for whatever price you want, as long as it’s not the Steam version of the game. They don’t want you giving away Steam keys for cheaper than you can often buy them on Steam. And this makes sense; Steam has a vested interest in protecting their own game keys, and encouraging players to shop on a storefront that they know is reputable; Lots of steam key resellers are notoriously shady, for instance.
Basically, the dev can go sell it cheaper on GoG, or Epic, or their own storefront if they want. As long as they’re not selling Steam keys, they’re fine.
Donut@leminal.space 2 weeks ago
Yep, I was only summarizing their angle. Here are the specifics for anyone who wants to read the source documentation: partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3
The only thing that doesn’t sit right with me is developers stating Steam threatened to delist the game when they expressed wanting to sell elsewhere. I haven’t seen any proof except just the statements, but it would be weird for a developer to lie about that stuff. If anyone has any more sources on that, it would be appreciated
jalkasieni@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Given that said game is also for sale on the Humble Store, I find those statements dubious at best.
Kekin@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
The one example I can think of is the Remnant games, at least on for Remnant 2 on release it was cheaper on Epic Store than on Steam, by like 10 USD if I recall correctly
Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
I think that is the main point of the lawsuit, if developers sell their game on Steam they can’t sell it cheaper somewhere else. If Value gets 30% the developer has to raise the price a bit to compensate and they have to raise it everywhere. Outside of sales I don’t think most games that are not on Steam are much cheaper elsewhere, so not sure how this plays out.
samus12345@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So don’t sell the game on Steam? Either the huge boost in visibility is worth a 30% cut or it’s not.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Shut up.
If you have a point to make about why Valves is not abusing it’s monopoly position make it. Otherwise no one wants to hear your dumb ‘but the free market is always right argument’ statement.
trafficnab@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
As far as I know, this only applies to Steam keys: developers are allowed to generate Steam keys for free to sell on their website (Valve does not get 30% of these sales either) with the restriction being they cannot be cheaper than the price on Steam
I don’t think there’s ever actually been any proof that Valve disallows selling games for cheaper elsewhere as long as you’re not selling those freely generated Steam keys
masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Proof? What would proof look like?
Do you expect companies to just leak contracts they signed while under NDA?
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not the companies. But some anonymous whistleblower? Sure