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$843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players

⁨301⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Dadifer@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.gamesradar.com/platforms/pc-gaming/dollar843-million-lawsuit-against-valve-already-has-its-own-website-the-steam-claim-accuses-the-biggest-store-in-pc-gaming-of-overcharging-players/

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Comments

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  • Coelacanth@feddit.nu ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Can we not go after one of the few good guys in gaming? Please? If you want to hound someone Nintendo is right over there.

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    • MossyFeathers@pawb.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      No. It’s easier to go after the “good guys” than the bad guysn because they’re easier to beat. They won’t use all kinds of slimy, underhanded tactics to fuck you over.

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    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Oh fuck off with the good guy thing, it’s a private company trying to make money, there’s no good people even profit is the goal, there’s no good billionaires and Gaben is one.

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      • RandomException@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Let’s replace “good guy” with “one of the few actually good services in gaming”, would you still disagree?

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      • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Okay, but is Gaben more deserving of this than white replacement supporter, anti-trans fearmonger and apartheid diamond mine baby Musk? Than makes people piss in bottles in warehouses Bezos?

        Is what steam does more predatory than basically every major music publisher (the big three), than MPAA? Than OpenAI? Than Meta? Than the streaming services? Than Nintendo? Than Apple? Than Google? Uber?.. And so on and so on.

        So why pick on Valve? I’d go after fucking taco bell before Valve. Make it make sense.

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      • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Shame you’re getting so downvoted. People are so determined to believe in good philanthropic billionaires that they forget the system that allows the accumulation of such ridiculous wealth doesn’t work for nice philanthropic people. It was like this with Elon musk, before he sacked his publicists (my guess) before the cave diver thing. People were saying he was going so save humanity or some shit. All he’s done is fuck up twitter. Same with this guy. I use steam and I think my steam deck is a cool little machine but that doesn’t inspire me to tongue the sweaty arsehole of an obscenely rich guy.

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      • Carighan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Even if you believe that all privately owned capital is intrinsicly evil, you still ought to go after companies from most to least problematic within a specific category, no?

        That is, for digital storefronts, start with the likes of Epic or in a broader digital gaming space in general, Microsoft or Ubisoft. Go after Steam when you’ve cleaned up the rapists, backroom dealers and collusionists.

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      • SaltySalamander@fedia.io ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Such a simplistic view of the world.

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    • Stovetop@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Companies are never your friend.

      Valve is like any other company. They’re as good as your money is good.

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      • Kedly@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Its still going after the LEAST shitty company and expecting your life to get better when the competition is FAR WORSE

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  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “Charges 30% fee” “That’s too high! You’re ripping us off”

    “Charges 10% fee” “That’s too low! No other platforms could hope to compete against you with that!”

    This is nothing but people bitching about nothing for the price gouging. I will give merit to the anti competitive nature if game makers aren’t allowed to have their games listed for less at other stores. As far as add on game packages locking you in goes…that might be a technical minefield to ensure compatibility.

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    • Shard@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Conspiracy theory here…

      Maybe this is an initiative by competing platforms? Epic? Ubisoft?

      Stir some shit, hope to get valve in legal issues so that they’re legally forced to become less competitive and therefore creating a chance for these other platforms?

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      • Carighan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Of course it is.

        All those large online action/claim sites are commercial in underlying nature. When you saw all the small farmers protest in Germany it was primarily driven as an action by about 5 large farming conglomerates because they are the ones getting ~85% of the grant money that was being cut. The whole point of the cut was to not funnel money that was supposed to go to small farmers to large megacorps after all. Who in turn instrumentalized the small farmers to protest it.

        Probably what’s going on here, too. You can bet somewhere deep deep down, this is something Tim Sweeney cooked up.

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      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        This of course. Any reduction in fee would not go the people. Studios would raise their prices.

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    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes, if Valve limited the price games could have in other stores that would be anti-competitive, but that’s not the case. Their price parity clause is just for selling steam keys.

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      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Then the entire lawsuit hope is pretty much bs.

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    • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This lawsuit being funded by a Epic Games shell company would not be surprising in the least. They have done so much and stooped so low to try to not have to actually do work and create a good platform.

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  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨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.

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    • stardust@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨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.

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      • furikuri@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Probably operates closer to corporate software licensing deals, i.e. “we might not catch you but if we do it’s over”

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    • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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?

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      • RandomException@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨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.

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      • OrgunDonor@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨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.

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  • BigTrout75@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How can this be? All the games I buy on Steam are cheaper than on other platforms. Where are these cheaper games?

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    • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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      • samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        So don’t sell the game on Steam? Either the huge boost in visibility is worth a 30% cut or it’s not.

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      • trafficnab@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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    • Donut@leminal.space ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • Kekin@lemy.lol ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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  • Franconian_Nomad@feddit.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Smells like a smear campaign. Some idiots try to get some fake-ass grass roots movement going.

    Bold move, let‘s see how it plays out for them.

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    • Dadifer@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I actually was sort of on board after I read the article. Why should a publisher be penalized if they offer a lower price on a different platform?

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      • SuperIce@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        They don’t really though. They’re talking about selling steam keys in a different platform, not selling the game on a different platform (like Epic Games for instance). You can sell the game for cheaper on Epic or GOG if you want to.

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      • stardust@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Do they? Haven’t felt like that s the case as a long time user of /r/gamedeals and isthereanydeals which is all focused on game sales.

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      • Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        They don’t. The thing most people who have never published a game on steam don’t know is that valve gives you infinite steam keys (for free) that you can give or sell as you wish. This is to allow studios/publishers to give keys to whoever they want, and also allows them to sell those keys on their own or third-party websites. This is a HUGE deal, Valve is letting studios/publishers sell games on a separate site without charging anything while hosting the game themselves. The only condition to those keys is that they can’t be sold cheaper than on Steam.

        That’s a completely different thing from what you’re claiming. This means that games can be cheaper on GoG, Epic, etc as long as they don’t give you a steam key together (which they could, for free).

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  • Delonix@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Ea & Ubi madd

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  • bitfucker@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ll reiterate here that I think it would be funny to see steam actually lowering their cut to 20-10% or something and the mass migrations of developers from other competing stores to steam, and finally making the other store even more insignificant. That’s what they want isn’t it? And even more funny when after the changes are applied there is no difference in price because after all, publishers get more money for free, why should they lower their profit? If anything, when the policy is reversed/back to when it was, we will only see an increase in game price lol.

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    • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The thing is when people put games on Steam they account for the fee that they take. So in a sort of way the lawsuit is right, Valve are effectively causing players to get overcharged for games.

      But if I put the same game on both Steam and GoG And make the gog one 20% cheaper, I still get more sales on the Steam page. If I only have it on GOG people actually complain even when you point out that it’s cheaper that way.

      So Valve are causing players to get overcharged but players are forcing publishers to put their games on Steam. So play is it causing players to get overcharged, can you do?

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      • bitfucker@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Alright, I don’t have the data nor time to research it now. But just try to check the pricing on EGS when a game was exclusive there AND after the exclusive deals run out AND the game is then sold on steam. Did the price increase? Or if that feels flawed (which I get it, maybe the dev has no intensive to change the price), try to get the average cost of those exclusive AAA games from other stores and compare it with average AAA games on steam. See how different it is.

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  • Rayspekt@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Tim Sweeney, is this you?

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  • Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why is the 30% developer thing even part of a CLA of players? It literally doesn’t affect them.

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    • magi@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
      [deleted]
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      • Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        If games on Steam were 30% more expensive than anywhere else, you might have had a point.

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      • Carighan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Certainly not the players, given current costs - where Steam is virtually always cheaper than elsewhere.

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  • cheddar@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My favorite recent example:

    …steampowered.com/…/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/ playstation.com/…/banishers-ghosts-of-new-eden/

    PS5 game on sale did cost 2 EUR less than the regular price on Steam. I don’t think Steam overcharges anyone. It’s not like the game is cheaper somewhere else on PC either: …epicgames.com/…/banishers-ghosts-of-new-eden-f9e…

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    • crossmr@kbin.run ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Console prices aren't really relevant to Steam. Consoles always tend to run higher.

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      • cheddar@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yes, but they sue Steam that has competitors selling games for the same price instead of literal monopolies. Even Apple was forced to open up for other app stores.

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  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In 2022 the median household income in the USA was $74 580, that means 50% of households had less than $74 580 in income.

    A person that has at least a billion in wealth (like Gabe Newell) owns at least the equivalent of 13 409 times the median income.

    I would love to illustrate it by copy pasting $74580 13409 times, but it creates a comment too long Lemmy.

    No one deserves that kind of wealth and anything that’s fine too prevent it is a good thing.

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    • jorp@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Your point is valid but this kind of lawsuit isn’t really the way to go about the change you’re describing

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      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Suing them because they’re making too much profit isn’t the way to go to make it so they’re preventing from making too much profit in the future…

        Eh…

        Ok

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    • MehBlah@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I saw some stats the other day that if you remove the top 1000 incomes in the united states the average drops to around 35k. So that average of 75k is bullshit.

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      • lYlantis@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Median != Average.

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    • Aux@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Wealth is not money.

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      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That’s why I included both numbers

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  • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What a load of rubbish.

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  • Copernican@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How is Lemmy so anti corporate, but bends over backwards to defend steam as an immaculate corporation. I love steam, and 90% of my game purchases or from their store. 5% are from stores that let me redeem steam keys.

    I think their market position should have some scrutiny.

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    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      A few reasons:

      • I feel like any other major company with Steam’s marketshare would be far less consumer friendly than steam.

      • Steam funnels a lot of money into Linux, and Linux is very popular on Lemmy. If you use Linux, you are benefiting from Steam’s success.

      • Steam is just nice to use, and has good deals. It’s nice to have my games in one place, and I don’t know if any other storefront with as many nice user benefiting features as steam.

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      • Copernican@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I agree with all these things. But I dont understand the hail corporate mentality of being upset or knee jerk defending steam. I’m curious to see where the suit goes and evaluate if I should consider joining a class action suit as I learn more.

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    • SuperIce@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Mainly because Steam actually provides a really good quality service. Most corporations over time charge more while getting worse on quality. People can sell their games for cheaper on Epic which only has a 12% fee, but Epic’s service is much worse.

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      • furikuri@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yup. If Steam wasn’t around I’d have the joy of choosing between Epic, Origin, GOG (actually not bad but no official Linux client can be annoying), or GFWL (which would probably still be around in this situation)

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    • the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They’re not immaculate. They used to outright deny people the right to refund their games, but they turned that around after a massive lawsuit from a government agency. Good change! I support that. But they’re not behaving in an anti-competitive manner. What, are they supposed to intentionally make themselves worse in the hopes that other stores pop up? That’s not how any of this works.

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    • catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Lemmy is not a monolith.

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      • Copernican@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Obviously. I’m Lemmy and against that. But there are dominant pov’s on Lemmy that saturate threads and are reflected in up votes and down votes

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    • Kedly@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      We’ll let their position have some scrutiny when the PC marketplace has some actual decent competition, I’d rather not shoot the PC gaming sphere in the foot just because Lemmy hates corporations.

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  • hark@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I won’t say no to cheaper games. The 30% cut was settled upon in the days where physical copies were the norm and Steam was still under heavy development. Given how established Steam and digital distribution in general is, it’s not really fair to developers to dedicate almost a third of the price of the game to a hosting platform. Yes, exposure is important, but that’s a service provided passively due to the fact of being the largest platform. Reducing Steam’s cut hurts no one except maybe Gabe’s ability to buy another yacht (and even then, not likely). Even if customers don’t see lower prices if Steam were to reduce their cut, it’d be great to see the actual developers getting more money from the games they put all the effort into making.

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    • bitfucker@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They being the largest platform because the consumer wanted their service, not out of obligation. Epic provides cheaper cut for the developer and is steadily building up their library. But why don’t users flock there? Heck, they even have some actual exclusive titles there. EA and Ubisoft too got their own store, and they too got a few exclusive title. So why does steam is still being chosen? Maybe there is other value provided besides hosting, like, idk, remote play? Controller remap? Family sharing? Opening linux gaming market? Social feature? Forum? Modding?

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      • hark@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Momentum. Steam was among the first on the scene and provided the best experience. Thankfully Steam has kept the momentum going instead of enshittification (thanks to being a privately held company), but almost a third of the price of the game is still ridiculous if you consider the effort that goes into making a game vs maintaining a mature platform.

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    • asexualchangeling@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
      [deleted]
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      • Rayspekt@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Somehow production costs increased exactly as much as valve’s cut got reduced. Crazy, ain’t it?

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      • hark@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The end of my post is where I address this. Publishers have the option to use their bigger cut to reduce prices, but even if they don’t, money is moving closer to the people actually making the games possible instead of a platform provider. There are also a lot of indie developers. It’s not just all greedy publishers.

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  • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    yay billion dollar lawyer paycheck

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