While I agree that it shouldn’t be allowed to enforce price matching, I don’t believe for a one second that 99% of publishers would pass what they’re saving onto the customer. A big AAA title priced at £59.99 would still cost £59.99 even if Valve suddenly decided taking just 15% was enough.
Valve does have a very dominant market position, but at least the PC (whether it runs Windows or Linux) is a very open platform that doesn’t discriminate between storefronts. So a publisher can always decide to not agree to Steam’s terms and only release their games via another store or even release it standalone. I agree that this would likely lose them sales over releasing their game on Steam, but if it’s marketed well and the storefront they chose doesn’t suck, customers will still come to them.
The main reason Steam is as popular as it is, is because it’s the best from a customer experience standpoint, not because they have an enforced monopoly like the storefronts on console platforms. The Epic Launcher, Uplay and Origin (or whatever they’re all called now after renaming on what feels like a yearly basis) lack a lot of features in comparison (depending on the launcher that includes properly working cloud saves, hassle-free Linux compatibility, easy mod integration (Steam Workshop), sharing your screen to play local co-op games online, just to name a few).
Valve is not the one setting the prices. The publishers/developers are. One could argue that they are increasing their prices becauses of Valve’s cut, but they aren’t. A Ubisoft game for example costs the same on Steam as it does on the Ubisoft store, which is obviously not taking any cuts for its own games.
Also, 30% is the industry standard. Here is a nice overview IGN made in 2019. https://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2019/09/GameRetailerCuts_infographic-1.png
Edit for the price parity argument: If the parity would have increased game prices to include Valve’s cut, AAA games would have gotten 30% more expensive many years ago. But they didn’t.
Ubisoft is a good example because they have withheld their games from Steam so plenty of samples to look at to see how they priced games themselves.
Have you seen the price of Square Enix games?
They need to pull their fucking heads in.
Very interested in how people in the fediverse will react to this news. I know some of us have soft spot for Steam.
I don’t know enough about the UK laws and regulation to pick sides as of now.
Valve has been dealing with frivolous lawsuits for stuff like this for a while now, Epic Games just made it very public. I’d put it on par with copyright trolls.
Steam very much makes that 30% worthwhile with the support and features they provide for free. They can’t be forced to host games, prices are set by publishers/devs, steam takes 0% of steam key sales.
The price parity is the part that might be argued, but I doubt it will go far. I’m not seeing very good arguments for this being anti-consumer, which is the key point.
I had gifted a game while there was a sale but the person i gifted it to never got on their pc within the next month so i just got refunded and they never got the game. I complained that i still want them to have the game and they essentially just said that i need to now pay full price or suck it. They just didn’t seem to understand that this was an issue at all and were just fobbing me off. I guess technically since i didn’t lose money it’s not the worst thing. But it’s massively annoying because we were about to play that game together until we realised they never received it due to this so to me it felt very anti consumer.
That’s a fair argument and a decent case, but not one that strongly backs an anti-competition legal action.
True on the legal front but just wanted to share my anectode on how they’re not always the best for customers because usually you just see the good stuff when it comes to steam and valve
I think ‘anti competitive’ is here framed as ‘anti consumer’
This rule ensures that Steam doesn’t have to compete with their 30% cut. If competitor was selling a game for 5$ cheaper, many consumers would rather buy it from that competitor instead, potentially forcing Steam to lower their 30% cut.
Now Steam at the moment is very good for us gamers, but it should not be taken for granted and can change in future.
I don’t mind it. The Aussies gave us that two hour refund window through their courts. Valve had this kinda turn into an asset, because people felt that they had purchase protection vs say, nintendo. Where you are kinda out of luck if something isn’t fun.
Consumer protections make products even better when the protections are well-crafted. (Some, like the dummy disk on bikes, maybe not so much).
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The owner of Steam - the largest digital distribution platform for PC games in the world - is being sued for £656m.Valve Corporation is being accused of using its market dominance to overcharge 14 million people in the UK.
Ms Shotbolt says this has enabled Steam to charge an “excessive commission of up to 30%”, making UK consumers pay too much for purchasing PC games and add-on content.
The case is what is known as a collective action claim, which means that one person goes to court on behalf of a much larger group of people.
Ms Shotbolt - who accuses Valve of breaching UK competition law for at least six years - says she is bringing the claim “to stop this unlawful conduct and help people get back what they are owed.”
The claim is backed by legal firm Milberg London LLP, which brings group action cases against large companies.
"It is the latest in a series of collective action legal cases against big tech.Other claims lodged at the Competition Appeal Tribunal have sought compensation from Facebook, Google and Sony.
The original article contains 375 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 52%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
