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.

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.

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.

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.

PC gamers are stuck because Steam is a self-perpetuating monopoly. If your entire library is on Steam, and Steam has almost all of the games you’ll just keep on buying there for convenience (and that’s what happens, analysts estimate 90% market share). Alan Wake 2 wasn’t profitable until EGS exclusivity expired because gamers opted to wait rather than buy this gem of a game on a different platform (that gives away games like candy).

Even if you think that Valve are just the best, aren’t you worried that having one good option is being one good option away from having no good options?

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

No, I think you deserve to be insulted because you are talking out of your ass about something you didn't read. Again, this is about the price veto policy. This is not about Steam Keys (here's me hoping italics help with your dyslexia).

And yeah, I thought you meant runescape on the EGS not on their site. It doesn't matter because it has zero bearing on the discussion, I only addressed it because you didn't read the thing you're talking about.

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.

CDPR judges that selling on Steam is enough of a boost that it's worth the cost.

I literally just explained this in the comment you just replied to.

Want your game on Windows PC? Upload an EXE somewhere. Sell a disc. Run your own launcher. Or license out to Steam/Epic/whoever.

You can upload it wherever you want and create whatever launcher you want, you will be unsuccessful. Fucking EA did this for 8 years, failed, and went back to Steam. As did Ubisoft. You simply won't be successful without Steam. That's what a monopoly is.

I know you didn't google anything or you would have said "nothing I found substantiates your point" instead of "these specific two articles don't say what you said".

But let's assume you're not lying and you did look up the situation. What's your claim then? That Steam has no price veto policy or that they don't abuse it? Because one is wrong and the other is incredibly naive. Talk about taking unfounded claims at face value.

Also, why do you keep bringing up Steam Keys? That has nothing to do with anything. Focus.

No, it's not. That's an entirely different policy that you keep bringing up for no reason. That policy is also anti-consumer bullshit but I digress. What I'm referring to is the following shady wording:

Initial pricing as well as proposed pricing adjustments will be reviewed by Valve

You started in with being extremely rude so I'm just gonna move to ignoring your other commentary now.
Shocking I know.

You don't know shit. My search turned up nothing more concrete than your own apeing of the plaintiff's claims as though those were evidence, so I didn't bother.

Meanwhile, the subject at hand quite literally revolves around Steam and Steam-Keys. We don't even have to get into third-party distribution without Steam-Keys to disprove your argument, although that market also remains alive and well as ever.

The rest was just me matching your energy, but I'm not exaggerating when I say I should have just blocked your belligerent ass a while ago. You can't be bothered to prove your own points, yet keep pretending to be the most "mature" and "focused" person here. It's painful to watch the trolling this far off the rails.

It’s maybe a poor example, but it is what the plaintiff is alleging, so I think it is a good analogy

Valve will never IPO, yes! I don't care why. That automatically makes it better than any other launcher/storefront platform that'll exist in my lifetime, barring one that commits to staying private, succeeds as a private company, and is content with "staying profitable" for x years. Platforms that IPO universally get worse and worse as they wring every drop of shareholder value from their users to feed the infinite growth machine. We're having this conversation on Lemmy instead of on Reddit for presumably this reason. Platforms that have shareholders (which includes Epic and CDPR's GOG) have a primary motive of "being more profitable than last year". If, let's say, Epic made ten billion dollars in profit last year but also made ten billion dollars in profit in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, it'd be a failed company.

I'll happily take the only company in the PC gaming space that's content with one money printer over every other option that's always thinking about how to make a second one, or reduce the ink costs, or blah blah blah. It's just a happy coincidence that in the PC gaming space (unlike pretty much every other space), the shareholder-free thing is also the most popular, and best thing. I'd use the worse less-popular thing if that thing were the only thing free from growth capitalism.

If a game dev doesn't value their presence on the Steam store higher than the cost of Steam's service, they don't list on Steam. Simple as. It's just that a lot of dev studios consider "visible on the Steam store" to be very valuable indeed. That's what they're paying for, not the stuff about Steam that benefits the user (client features like Input, Workshop, Cloud, Community, etc).

Your search turned up nothing because you searched for nothing. Steam Keys are irrelevant here, you only keep bringing them up to derail the discussion to a greyer area where you can better defend your beloved corporate overlord. This was always about the price veto policy. Very telling how you flat out refuse to even address anything regarding that topic. Grow up.

Bye now.

Sorry that my mean words hurt you more than Valve abusing you.

Alan Wake 2 wasn’t profitable until EGS exclusivity expired

Well yeah, because EGS sucks.

If you look at Steam's competitors, none of them are really developing their feature set. So even if customers were dissatisfied w/ Steam, who is actively trying to earn their business?

aren’t you worried that having one good option is being one good option away from having no good options?

Sure, I'd love it if another platform stepped up to actually compete w/ Steam.

My expectations are fairly low: it needs to work well on Linux. Heroic largely resolves that for EGS and GOG, but I'm not particularly interested in supporting a platform that only works because some community project has done the work for them. So if GOG supported Galaxy on Linux as a first class citizen, I'd probably still use Heroic, but I'd buy a lot more games from them. But as it stands, GOG is one update away from blocking access to my games through a launcher, and dealing w/ WINE/Proton directly is a pain. EGS is so far away from what I care about that I don't think they could ever earn my business, but who knows, maybe they'll surprise me.

But the fact that we're even having this discussion is a testament to Steam's success. Heroic probably wouldn't be a thing w/o Valve's investment into Proton/WINE, so GOG/EGS wouldn't even be a consideration for me at all. But since that work was done, I now have more options. I've played some GOG and EGS games through Heroic, so it's not even theoretical, they are realistic alternatives.

It's important to note that at every turn, Valve has earned my trust. When games are pulled from their store, owners of those games still have access (e.g. I bought Rocket League on Steam, and when they went EGS exclusive, I still had the old version of the game). They have a solid refund policy, and they have gone out of their way to make things more pleasant for their customers. Even if they didn't have a dominant market position, I'd probably still choose them just based on the user experience. So yeah, not having a realistic alternative isn't great, but I don't think it's because of anything nefarious Valve has done, but instead lack of interest by their competitors.