if you don't like a distribution platform taking 20-30% of the sale then don't use that distribution platform

Excuse my frank speech but that's absolute bollocks and lacks any understanding at all of how a monopoly works.

E: It's so hilarious to watch the Lemmy idiots be like "lEaVe ThE mUlTiBiLlIoN dOlLaR cOmPaNy AlOnE!" when it comes to Nintentdo but when it's Valve, then it's totally cool for some reason.

So Battle.net started selling third party games when? Man, think your argument through before committing to paragraphs.

Valve supports Linux just to safeguard their monopoly. They killed native ports because they pushed Proton so hard. Alyx supported Linux natively even but check now.

All of this is pointless for most of the consumers. You’re making an argument that because they care for this niche it’s worth paying 30% cut. Most people would be fine with something to download and update their games with.

It is true. Valve does not enforce price parity for non Steam keys. Here is an example where the dev says that they are offering a better price on EGS because of the better cut:

https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/

Pretty clear example of the same game having a lower base price on Epic than on Steam.

Wolfire claiming Valve does this is something different from Valve actually doing it, and that's where the dispute lies. According to Valve, Wolfire's explanation of the price parity policy is incorrect.

Here's the policy itself: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3

You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. **It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers. **

The policy is pretty leanient regarding the "worse deal" aspect. You're allowed to have a sale on one platform but not on Steam, as long as you offer "something similar" at a different moment to Steam users too.

It's OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.

Even if you violate this policy, Valve will still sell your game, they may just stop providing you with Steam keys to sell.

I don't see Wolfire winning this tbh.

It is where it is because it was the first.

If tomorrow someone made a better Steam you’d still buy everything there because that’s where all your games are. Be honest with yourself.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

That's the policy on steam keys. If you are not using their steam keys it's not covered by their contract agreement at least.

The lawsuit is not yet finished and while we can take their complaints into account we can't take them for fact.
The case was already dismissed once because they argued the 30% was controlling the market but it's been there since day 1 of their storefront and has not changed to force game price changes. Beyond that they argue that Valve bought servers to take them offline to push players to them but... That's not really on this point of price controlling or the ability sell non steam keys.

Literally RuneScape does this by offering memberships not available on steam.

If you see something I am missing from the lawsuit please let me know, preferably without the hostility if you can manage.

Nobody said anything about Steam keys. They don't let you sell games at lower prices, period.

Also, there is no mention of said policy in either the OP article, nor the separate article about the lawsuit it links to.

Are you being serious, right now? The source isn't 2 clicks away so therefore it doesn't exist? Lawsuits are literally public knowledge. You should inform yourself about a topic before you get into a conversation about it.

Here. Perhaps you can stop defending the billion dollar company now.

If tomorrow someone made a better Steam, how many years would you have to wait to be reasonably secure that it's not fueled by venture capital and serving as a loss leader foot-in-the-door scheme? It's not impossible that Steam itself would enshittify and open an IPO, but the fact that the option's been on the table for decades and Valve hasn't taken it is better evidence than any other platform could muster. Valve has proven that it's profitable and that it doesn't need to care about YoY growth. Let's overestimate their operations costs (CDN, R&D, employee salaries, hardware production, licensing, etc etc) at 5 billion a year. If they made ten billion in revenue last year and only make seven billion this year, Valve is fine. Think about that. Think about what a sixty percent drop in profits would do to literally any shareholder-backed company. It'd be apocalyptic.

That's the main reason I'll use Steam happily but never install another storefront on my PC. I'll buy games on GOG or Itch as DRM-free installers, and store the installers locally, and I'll buy and play games that distribute without a storefront launcher, but the only "storefront platform" anyone's gonna get me to install in the next decade is Steam. If "better Steam" happens, it needs to demonstrate immunity to being bought out by Microsoft/Elon Musk for eighty morbillion dollars. And that can't be demonstrated in a day.

That's without any mention of actual "features" like reviews or remote play or proton or steam input or anything that actually makes Steam as a program good/bad. It's all about the company's refusal to go shareholder-driven. If Gabe sells Valve or his successors do, I'm off the ship and scraping the DRM off of my library. What I won't do if that happens is go to someone else's shareholder-value-generating storefront.

Gabe Newell is a man who, for the past decade at least, has had a big red button on his desk. This button, if pressed, will deposit eleven or twelve figures directly into his wallet to distribute however he likes, at the cost of letting some company gain control of how Valve operates. Make all his employees multimillionaires! Race Musk and Bezos for biggest number! Buy a small country! Whatever! Gabe Newell has not pressed this button, and has signaled that after his retirement or death that no successor to the company is going to be allowed to press it either. If Newell's managed not to press it for this long, I'll "trust" him as far as it goes. His successor hasn't earned that trust yet, so is only coasting on "trusting Newell to pick the right guy" which isn't guaranteed - a lot of guys would sacrifice a lot to press that button.

The PC is an open platform. Even more so with Linux. Steam doesn't force exclusivity, you're free to host your game on Steam for discoverability while also self-distributing or using other storefronts. Valve's 30% is a price that a studio chooses to pay, because they know that a ton of PC gamers like buying games on Steam.

If all you want out of a storefront is a payment processor, CDN, and possibly DRM, you can release on Steam, Epic, Itch, GOG, or all at once. You pick Steam (or Steam+others) instead of others because you know that enough PC gamers are willing to pay for your game on Steam, because they like Steam. Epic can tout its small cuts or exclusivity bonuses or "zero percent cuts on the first $x" deals, but game devs know that 100% of revenue on an Epic launch week is going to be a lower absolute number than 70% of revenue on a Steam one.

Hell, if Steam did lower their cut to undercut Epic (which they absolutely could do, especially since they don't have any shareholders and thus just need to be profitable instead of demonstrating YoY growth), that would be a more "monopolistic" move in the PC gaming space. Remember, the alleged monopoly is over devs, not users. As a dev, the only reason you'd ever consider Epic instead of Steam for your game is that generous profit-share ratio. Steam could remove that only advantage overnight if it wanted to "compete", and doesn't. Valve will settle for winning exclusively on the merit of "being a platform that doesn't suck, and hasn't sucked for 20 years, and doesn't have financial motivation to start sucking now".

The allegations of the plaintiff are not necessarilly the written or enforced policies of the defendant. Please consider linking something of substance when accusing others of being un-serious/insincere.

You made a claim without linking to it in the first place. Its not my job to substantiate your arguments.

It was proposed, but Blizzard rejected it:

Schreier reports in the book that a few years before Steam launched, a group of employees pitched the company on a plan "to turn Battle.net into a digital store for a variety of PC games."

Battle.net basically approached the same problem as Steam but from the multiplayer side, whereas Steam approached from the distribution side.

Valve supports Linux just to safeguard their monopoly.

I wouldn't put it like that. They support Linux to safeguard against Microsoft pushing their monopoly, and they did seem to be gearing up to do just that. Epic had similar concerns, hence the lawsuits against Google and Apple.

All of this is pointless for most of the

How is Linux support pointless? Having more options to play your games is a good thing! I don't think Heroic would've had as much of an impact w/o Valve's investment into Proton/WINE, and that gives customers a choice on which platform to buy and play their games on. It also allowed for the Steam OS market, and competitors are absolutely welcome to create their own spin with their own store, they just don't for whatever reason.

Downloading and updating games, for me, is actually the least important part of what Steam offers. I care far more about Linux support (I was a Linux user before I was a Steam user), Steam Input (Steam Deck, and I prefer controller on PC), and consolidating sales to one store. Whether I need to launch it separately or whatever isn't a big deal.

Again, this is not about Steam Keys, it's about Steam using shady contracts to bully developers into price parity on completely unrelated stores. Yes, runescape is cheaper on Epic, the incredibly broad nature of these rules that allows for selective wishy-washy enforcing is also part of the lawsuit.

If you see something I am missing from the lawsuit please let me know, preferably without the hostility if you can manage.

The whole thing because you didn't read it and, given that you keep bringing up Steam Keys, which is not what we're talking about, I'm skeptical that you can read at all.

Ah, the classic spoon-feed me the answer or it doesn't count as a source. Learn to use the internet, you're not a child.

So because Battle.net failed to predict market correctly 100% of PC gamers are stuck with Steam until the end of the world. That doesn’t change the fact that Valve lucked into the position they are in and was paid billions for this already.

PC gamers aren't "stuck with Steam," they very much have options. And Steam is likely way better than whatever Battle.net would've become, so I'm quite happy with how things turned out.

And yeah, Valve was quite lucky in nailing the timing, however, that was also a very conscious choice since they filled a need they saw. Valve is perhaps the best company you could ask for to have such a dominant position, pretty much any other company would've resulted in a way worse situation for gamers.

Yes, Valve enforcing price parity only when it's convenient for them is also addressed in the lawsuit.

The rest of your comment refers to Steam Keys. That's literally not what we're talking about.

So, you think a good way to correct someone is to directly insult them because you find their points unrelated but yours perfect? Rude.
And the only thing steam controls via contract is the ability to sell your games via steam keys for price parity.

And you misunderstood my point. RuneScape isn't even on the epic game store so you aren't reading my words carefully. You are projecting your own hypocrisy.

Valve's 30% is a price that a studio chooses to pay

No its not. Its a fee they have to pay because they have no other option, because Steam is a monopoly. Even CDPR, who literally owns their own game store, lists their games on Steam, because there's no way they could ever be successful without it.

CDPR judges that selling on Steam is enough of a boost that it's worth the cost. Riot (for example) doesn't. If you think every game company or indie studio feels mandated to use Steam, that's a hugely consolebrained take. Nintendo has a monopoly. Want your game on Switch? Follow Nintendo's terms and list on Nintendo's store. Apple has a monopoly, challenged recently. Want your app on iPhone? Follow Apple's terms and list on Apple's store. Want your game on Windows PC? Upload an EXE somewhere. Sell a disc. Run your own launcher. Or license out to Steam/Epic/whoever.

The only reason you get more sales on Steam is because the PC gaming userbase overwhelmingly prefers Steam. Hell, I play Guild Wars 2, a 12 year old MMO that "launched" on Steam a couple years ago. You can still buy and play that game without any third parties getting involved at all, and always could. It doesn't have any Steam achievements, doesn't benefit from any Steam features, and has a decade old community in spaces other than Steam ones. ArenaNet decided that exposure via Steam recommendations was worth losing $x/player to list on Steam.

If Steam had an exclusivity clause, that'd be another matter entirely. As it stands, listing on Steam doesn't prevent you from also listing your game elsewhere or bypassing the entire storefront middleman scheme.

You honestly think I didn't do a google search before reading the two relavent articles reachable from the OP? Nothing I found, nor the fact that I regularly buy games/steam!keys cheaper than via steam, meshes with the plaintiff's claims.

Telling others to act like grown-ups while accepting un-founded claims that happen to reflect your argument at face-value, how very mature of you.

But that is what the policy is about. Steam doesn't have a price parity policy regarding general game sales.