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.

Ah yes. Massively unsuccessful games like... checks notes League of Legends. World of Warcraft. Fortnite: Battle Royale.

The magic part of the PC is that if your independently distributed game does fail, you can still, after the fact, decide to slap it on someone's storefront in a desperate attempt for eyeballs - see Overwatch 2. Why not double dip? It only costs you hypothetical money you haven't made yet. Am I supposed to be sad that E fucking A failed to install their shareholder value store on my computer?

What? That wording isn't even relevant to the case. That's just Valve saying they will do a review of the price changes on Steam. They set out no specific requirements (other than a minimum price of $0.99, but will try to catch errors based on their pricing recommendations). It's similar to how Valve reviews new store pages and provides recommendations to devs on how to improve them. They do have rules against games set up for card farming scams, but that makes sense.

Wolfire's case is about how Valve as an extremely large player is impossible to go around, so game devs have no choice but to accept their 30% fee if they want to reach most of the market out there. Valve then uses these fees to entrench this supposed monopoly position (Wolfire specifically cites the acquisition of WON back in the day, which Valve eventually shut down and merged with Steam).

Wolfire argues that a fair price is much lower than 30%, and that Valve should lower the fee and therefore have less funds to fight their competitors, creating a more competitive environment.

As far as I can tell, the lawsuit alleges that steam threatened pulling their (wolfire games) steam sales if they sold elsewhere for cheaper. Which would be bad if true. However, this does not appear to be anywhere in steam's actual seller agreement. The only clause in that agreement is about steam keys being sold for cheaper, which is why the other poster was focusing on that.

That allegation seems to be that steam in practice is threatening things that are outside of the contract itself.

Edit: I read the emails from the lawsuit discovery (page 160–) and it seems like most of them are about steam keys and their policy on that, which seems more reasonable. But there are definitely a few emails that explicitly go beyond that

"You can definitely participate in sales off-
steam, and we don’t want to discourage or prevent that. But in terms of promo visibility, regardless of Steam keys, we do try to think really hard about customers and put ourselves in their shoes. If the game is discounted down to $15 on Steam, and then it goes into a bundle or subscription with ten other games for $6 a few days or weeks later.., that really sucks for the people who bought at the way higher price! Why did you market me a $15 price if the game is actually selling for more like $1 somewhere else? For instance, we’d probably want to avoid running a 50% discount on a game if it was going to be a free giveaway on another store a week later, even if the giveaway had nothing to do with Steam Keys."

Which seems pretty straightforward. Some of the other emails also imply that they might choose not to sell the game at all on steam if you do that.

Until the case is concluded, all we have to go on is what Wolfire says. And considering who the head of that developer is, I would not take their word for anything.

Massively unsuccessful games like... checks notes League of Legends. World of Warcraft.

These games are both about as old as Steam itself. Their playerbase was created in a different market.

Am I supposed to be sad that E fucking A failed to install their shareholder value store on my computer?

No, you're just supposed to recognize why it failed.

there's a reason Steam is number 1

Monopoly, and Stockholmed G*mers

For me, it failed because I wasn't willing to install some shareholder-driven company's storefront app on my computer just to play Mass Effect 3, so I pirated Mass Effect 3. Then I got to watch it fail because it turns out I wasn't the only one willing to skip/pirate games because they came with Origin attached to them.

Epic's exclusives are the exact same.

I get my PC games from five sources. Steam, GOG's website, Itch's website, standalone launchers (I'd probably be okay with a "store" of games as small as the Riot launcher, but I don't use that because I don't install rootkit anticheat), and piracy. Launcherless Itch and GOG have convenience parity with piracy with the added benefit of the devs getting paid (and the ease of acquiring updates), and I'll usually use them over Steam if available. Itch could easily get bought by a corp like Humble did and CDPR is already a shareholder value company, but they sell DRM-free products that I can use even after the stores die / sell out.

A recent launch I paid for and didn't use Steam for is "The Bazaar" - it has a standalone launcher. The game went pay to win so I uninstalled it, but its lack of presence on Steam didn't keep me from playing it.

I'll use stuff other than Steam no problem. But I'll always cheer when a platform owned and operated by a shareholder backed company dies in favor of one that isn't. My experience in the hobby space of PC gaming is better when there aren't exclusives locked on EA Origin or UPlay or Microsoft UWP store or Epic, because I might want to play those games without installing a stock-ticker company's adware on my computer. Having the space "capitalism free" is unrealistic, unless we're talking "pirate everything". I'll settle for "profit driven" over "YOY growth driven" leaders in the space any day of the week.

Now, if Steam's position as the best distributor/launcher platform is a de facto "monopoly", what's the solution to that? Anecdotally I know plenty of people that play non-Steam games while not playing any Epic games. Epic tries to fight Steam by directly paying developers to not publish on Steam, and also effectively guaranteeing studios a financial success by cutting a deal to put their game up for "free" on the Epic storefront. Plenty of games have been "Free" on Epic while full price on Steam. Valve tries to fight Epic by... Acting like Epic doesn't exist. They don't chase exclusives or get into a price war with Epic.

Steam is the most popular platform for PC game releases. A subset of users will not consider ever using other platforms. If we accept this as the definition of "monopoly" the way we'd say Windows has a monopoly on x64 PCs, how would changing the revenue split for devs (which appears to be the issue this company's suing Valve over) alleviate this "monopoly"? Sounds to me like forcing Steam to explicitly allow "the game is more expensive on Steam" tactics would just make Steam even more of a no-brainer for devs over stuff like Epic or their own platform.

You could say that paying the devs/studios a better cut is the point, and I'd see the validity in the argument. But it's completely unrelated to whether or not Valve operates as a monopoly.

So can developers just 'create' steam keys out of thin air that can be used to activate their game on steam? Does Valve get paid when the keys are created or activated? Or not at all?

Seems fair maybe if it's using all of Steams infrastructure, considering developers can distribute the game themselves without steam keys.

Glad to see lawsuits against Valve.

I love them as a company and I buy my games on Steam first, (GOG is my second choice)... but we need their monopoly reigned in. If not by a viable competitor than by making Valve beholden to their clients and not vice versa.

The other competitors are kinda shit.

GoG is dope for giving install files and being DRM free.

But acting like steam isn't legitimately the best platform by a country mile is crazy.

Everyone is not you

If there weren't enough people put off by Origin and uPlay to not install them or use them to buy games, Origin and uPlay would still exist. Steam didn't kill them, all it did was exist and be a better platform that people actually wanted to use. There's a whole graveyard of companies that tried to make "our own Steam". Fucking Discord tried to do it. What's that going to do for a marketplace where you're selling "licenses" to users? What good's your licensed copy of Fallout New Vegas on Amazon Prime Games Launcher when that launcher no longer exists? Say what you will about Steam, most people are pretty confident it'll still be around in eight years.

If there weren't enough people put off by the Epic Games Store, the EGS wouldn't still be paying developers to put their shit on the store. Steam hasn't killed it, and isn't even attempting to kill it. It's just existing and being a better platform that people actually want to use. If EGS can't compete with Steam while giving shit away for free, that's not a "Steam monopoly" it's an indicator of how dogshit the opinion of Epic as a corporation and storefront is.

Origin failed because nobody wanted it. uPlay failed because nobody wanted it. The perks (being able to buy exclusives) weren't worth the downsides (literally just making another account and installing another program on your computer). I think that's beautiful. I hope it happens to Epic next.

Steam's existence as an IPO/enshittification-proof platform has prevented the PC gaming storefront market from going the way of Netflix. Remember that? We had cable channels, pay-per-views, piracy, and VHS/DVDs/blu-rays as the only way to watch movies at home. Then a Blockbuster-over-mail company started getting licenses to let you pay to watch movies at home with one subscription, which was a massive success. Then every other IP holder went "hey wait, why are we paying Netflix when we could just eat the whole pie ourselves" and now we have Netflix Disney+ Max Peacock AppleTV+ Amazon Prime Video Fandango Paramount+ AMC+ Philo Hulu Tubi Fubo Dippy Weeno Poob all trying to be the new Netflix. And because Netflix itself is a shareholder-value-driven company, it's putting ads in its paid product and jacking up prices and paying for exclusivity.

Y'know what people do seem to like? Microsoft Gamepass. I'll never install it myself, same reason I'll never install the Epic Games Store. But Microsoft is using an even less consumer friendly strategy (timed access to games with a subscription) to propose the same "upsides" as EGS (you don't have to pay full price for games).

What the fuck are you talking about? It's well known history that the right wing in the United States saw how successful the word was in leftist movements and aped it as their own word. If that's the kind of research you do you make people dumber. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

Libertarianism in the United States (1943 - 1980s)
H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock were the first prominent figures in the United States to describe themselves as libertarian as synonym for liberal. They believed that Franklin D. Roosevelt had co-opted the word liberal for his New Deal policies which they opposed and used libertarian to signify their allegiance to classical liberalism, individualism and limited government.[166]

LITERALLY YOU WERE INSULTING PEOPLE FOR NOT READING WIKIPEDIA

ITT: People saying Steam is bad and a monopoly, no I won't name reasons why. Do your research.

In what way are they not, or what actions should be taken?

Ok be honest you're trolling right?

Wait, not trying to be a "cultist" here, but if Valve requires devs/publishers to "offer Steam Keys on other stores at the same price that you offer the game on Steam", then why do I keep finding Steam Keys much much cheaper elsewhere? Like, all the time...

Storefront 101 supposedly yet it took steam almost a decade to implement and is largely useless due to being filled with jokes and sourced from people who don't actually understand how to review something.