If the allegations were just about steam keys, that would be one thing, but it looks like they’re leveraging their large market share to essentially fix prices on other stores, even outside keys. For example, even though Epic charges a much smaller cut, 12% vs Steam’s 30%, publishers are prohibited from selling at a lower price on Epic (or Steam will delist their game, blocking the vast majority of the game’s potential audience).

I personally don’t find buying a publisher to make some game exclusive to be all that scummy. Is it really so different from Warcraft being exclusive to Battle.net ? But I’m not to try to convince you that my reasons are more valid. I respect your reasons, I just ask you to also respect mine.

I mean this isn’t ideal, but you can understand why they might make that a lower priority. Probably 90% of my gaming purchases are for 1 item.

And I find it hard to believe that you anti Epic people are arguing in good faith when your first complaint is that you can’t more easily buy multiple games on a platform you seem to dislike so much.

Why does the reason for the exclusivity matter?

You don’t like Epic because their store is not fully featured. I understand that. I’m concerned about Valve because, among other things, certain damning allegations made in their recent class action lawsuit.

You can much more easily avoid Epic because of exclusives than I can avoid Steam.

From a consumer’s point of view, does it matter if the exclusive is de facto or de jure? If I have no choice but to do business with Valve and Steam to play a game on PC, it seems to me that that game is a Steam exclusive. And there are thousands of Steam exclusives, but only a handful of Epic exclusives.

Right, so you’re just conceding you lied about being able to set a price lower than Steam on a reseller.

The main issue is not Steam keys. I personally think the Steam key situation is fine, even with their limitations. The reason they’re included in the lawsuit, is to reveal Valve’s hypocrisy. Valve forces publishers to offer the same price as Steam on Epic, GoG, etc, stores which have nothing to do with Steam’s “software and their multiplayer framework”. Despite those stores being lighter weight and taking smaller cuts.

Also, if your issue is that steam is a monopoly, then go make accounts in other places and stop supporting that monopoly you’re mad about…

I have accounts on several other storefronts, as should all gamers, but the issue is that Valve’s anti-competitive behavior is making every store (including Steam) worse for consumers. I can’t get a lower price on Epic, despite that store taking a 12% cut compared to Steam’s 30% cut. If Steam’s platform is so expensive and awesome and well developed, it’s natural for a game to cost more on Steam. But Valve doesn’t like its competition to be able to compete the best way they can – on price.

I’ve also gotten steam keys through Itch.io.

Cool, but myself and I bet most others don’t bother making accounts on other sites for the same price as Steam.

So you can sell your games at steam sale prices 100% of the time and have a higher price on steam. So you’re literally just wrong.

Source or example of someone doing this (regular price on reseller is lower than regular price on Steam)? The legal documents contain plenty of examples of Valve even complaining when there’s a sale on another platform but no comparably priced sale on Steam recently. I can’t imagine they’d tolerate basically a permanent sale.

Same for basically every full featured game for years.

Evidence please. In order for me to be correct that some publishers want to offer lower prices, I don’t need it to be the case that every game off Steam goes on sale for less than “full price” at the time. I just need it to be the case sometimes. If sometimes, a publisher wants to offer the game cheaper, but can’t because they’d lose all of their Steam sales, then Valve is harming consumers by leveraging their market dominance to dictate prices on other platforms.

You mentioned a handful of games without doing any research on them, and one of them accidentally proved my point. I guess I should say at least one of them, because it was the very first one I actually bothered to check.

it also has yet to turn a profit, with most revenue coming from titles that aren’t exclusive to epic

I’m not sure what your point is here. They set the $50 price tag to maximize revenue. Raising prices doesn’t always raise revenue, if it did, why not sell for $99 or $999?

Whether they were right or wrong that $50 was a better price, and whether they made a profit or a loss, is irrelevant from a consumer’s point of view. We got a AAA GoTY nominated game for $50. I guess we can be thankful that Sony and Microsoft’s 30% cut console stores apparently don’t have anti-competitive policies like Steam does.

Of course it’s not necessarily in consumer’s interest if they go out of business in the long run, but it looks like they at least broke even as of November, so it seems it’s a sustainable model: https://gameranx.com/updates/id/515494/article/alan-wake-2-is-not-profitable-yet-but-it-just-about-broke-even-by-the-end-of-september/

You still haven’t convinced me that they are price fixing

I linked you a 200 page legal document with dozens of examples of them engaging in anti competitive bullying amounting to price fixing. Valve attempted to get the suit dismissed, and this failed, proving the court deems the suit to have merit. But lemmy user ricecake isn’t convinced. You sound a lot like Google bootlickers 10-15 years ago. This isn’t going to end well for you when Valve becomes as openly evil as Google.

Your attempted proof of your claim that publishers don’t want to offer lower prices using games like Alan Wake 2 was actually proof of my argument, which you still have failed to acknowledge, because they definitively offered their game at launch at a lower price on the lower cut storefront.

Full feature games on steam are still around the same price console games are

This alone is highly sus. Console manufacturers initially subsidize their consoles by selling hardware at a loss. Sony probably lost money to get your PS5 into your hands. Valve didn’t lose money to get your PC into your hands, and (theoretically) doesn’t run a monopoly store. Why should their prices be comparable to console monopoly stores?

If the allegations in the current lawsuit are true, and they are still being tested, then Valve is leveraging its market dominance to keep prices fixed at a higher level. If you have bought more than 0 video games in recent years, this is most certainly interfering with things in your life.

If you don’t like giving money to rich assholes, I have some bad news for you about Valve.

🙄 That would make sense if valve set the prices or adjusted their cut in real time.

🙄 I’m well aware that they don’t do this, I’m asserting that the reason is at least partially because they don’t have to, because of their anti-competitive practices.

Games don’t have to be on steam to be successful.

Finding a few examples of successful games not on Steam doesn’t prove that Steam’s market dominance and price fixing aren’t hurting consumers.

You can’t be mad epic isn’t “allowed” to compete when they’re actively competing.

They’re competing so hard they’re not turning a profit after 5 years (Source IGN). They’re competing so hard that social media explodes in a circle jerk about Fortnite or lootboxes or some bullshit every time there’s an Epic exclusive. Epic is despised and not doing so well as a platform. A market without a massive anti competitive juggernaut dictating everyone else’s terms would make Epic’s store better, and it would make Steam better too.

How much does Diablo cost? How much did StarCraft 2 cost? Alan wake 2 ? Every Nintendo game? PlayStation or Xbox console exclusives?

I don’t know. Do you want me to do your research for you? Interesting that you list Nintendo and consoles who take 30% cuts from their monopoly stores.

But checking your example of Alan Wake 2, looks like it launched at $60 on consoles (30% cut) and $50 on Epic (12% cut). Huh, funny how that works.

Here’s an example of a communication from a court document:

A Valve employee informs [redacted] in an email that Valve will be delisting one of its games due to discrepancies between Steam and other platforms. When describing Valve’s decision, Valve states, "Ultimately [redacted] retail strategy is yours to control in whatever way you see fit. However, it is our job as stewards of the platform is [sic] to protect Steam customers and to ensure that they are being treated fairly. We will not knowingly invite customer regret by offering your game at a premium to other retailers.

There are dozens of examples like this. This is not behavior of a company that’s not price fixing. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59859024/348/1/wolfire-games-llc-v-valve-corporation/

Some games choose to skip steam and use epic. Epic pays them to do so, and the publisher doesn’t lower prices.

Evidence? Even if we went down the list of launch Epic exclusives and somehow determined that the price is equivalent to what it would launch at on Steam, the economics of an exclusive launch on a smaller platform are going to be completely different.

If you’re a publisher, why would you want to offer a lower price elsewhere?

Maybe ask the publishers who got together to sue Valve for the ability to do this, and check their many examples of comms with Valve where Valve was upset that publishers were offering lower prices on other platforms.

The appeal to a lower cut to you is higher revenue, not equivalent revenue.

There is a phenomenon called price elasticity. Example, a 5% price cut might result in 10% more units sold, giving you higher revenue.

epic. All of which are perfectly successful without using steam.

This entire lemmy post is about someone being upset that Epic is successful enough to have an exclusive. If a few large players can still succeed without Steam, it’s not proof that Steam’s practices aren’t making the market worse for consumers.

If they can’t make sufficient revenue without valves advertisement and distribution network, then maybe the service is worth the price valve charges for it.

Listing your product on Steam isn’t advertising. They’re not promoting your game unless you pay them.

Let’s make an analogy. Is it reasonable for Nordstrom to go after a company selling the same product at Wal-Mart cheaper?

Valve has done nothing to stop consumers from using other stores

If we lived in a world where Epic was allowed to compete with Steam on the only way it can, with lower prices, we might have cheaper prices on Steam, and a more robust competitive market. This is why Valve is doing this price fixing. They know that consumers are price sensitive, and a $55 price tag on a new game going for $60 on Steam would be a disaster for them. They know their price fixing department would have to become a “watch for prices on other platforms and adjust our prices / cut to be competitive” department.

The lawsuit already has several public examples of communications between Valve and publishers where Valve is all “whoah whoah you can’t be selling that cheap on another store!”. Publishers want to offer lower prices. The economics make sense, passing on some of the savings to consumers will result in an increase in revenue, this is also what the expert economists in the lawsuit are going to be testifying.

If you’re big enough to not be using Steam, you’re what, Ubisoft or EA? (and even these are using Steam these days.)

They don’t offer lower prices on Epic because Valve bullies publishers into matching the price with Steam. Valve threatens to delist the game from Steam if a lower price is available elsewhere, using their market dominance to prevent smaller stores from competing the only way they realistically can – on price.

they are totally cool with you making the sale elsewhere and giving a steam code out which means steam makes nothing on that sale

And they can afford to do this because they still require price matching, so all it does is create an inconvenience for the user to sign up for another site (something Steam fans don’t have a problem noticing in other contexts). They still get the game at the same price. I personally have hundreds of games on Steam and I don’t think I have ever purchased a Steam code this way, and I expect it’s the same for the majority of Steam users.

Steam is single handedly the most pro-consumer and pro-developer platform on the market

The lawsuit wants to create a world where a new game can come out for $60 on Steam and $55 on Epic. Valve doesn’t want this. Valve wants you to be required to pay the same price on Epic and Steam. This doesn’t seem very pro consumer.

It’s great that Steam is investing in their platform and Proton and Steam Deck. But they shouldn’t be requiring publishers to pretend that that stuff is free, to make consumers pay other storefronts like Epic as though Epic is also investing in these things.

It’s not illegal to have a better product, only to use your market position to keep other products from trying to compete.

That’s exactly what the lawsuit alleges though. The only way smaller featured storefronts have to compete with Steam is on price. Valve uses its market dominance to prohibit offering a better price on smaller stores. If you offer a better price on Epic, Valve will kick you off Steam.

If it’s only on Steam and no other PC platform, it’s exclusive. I don’t see the relevance from a consumer’s point of view whether money changed hands for that exclusivity. You could even argue that no money changes hands, Epic just doesn’t take its cut from the game’s sales is how I believe that works.

If Steam has the better store, then it should have no need to require publishers to match their prices. Of course if you’re buying a game on a fully featured, 30% cut store, it should cost more than on a less fully featured 12% cut store. Steam is using their large market share to bully publishers into not passing on savings to consumers from lower cut stores.

Steam keys can be generated, but the product can’t be discounted, ie again the 0% cut savings cannot be passed on to consumers. So all this does is create an extra inconvenience for the consumer to sign up to some publisher’s storefront to get the same product at the same price.

They’re in a class action lawsuit now over price fixing. They’re kicking games off Steam if their publishers offer games at lower prices on cheaper stores. They’re trying to be a monopoly.