yesssssssss, but the second hot-dog vendor wants to offer customers lower prices, and the first says they can’t because otherwise those hot dogs will be banned from their stand, and the second responds by attempting to throw piss water-balloons at any passers by, or something
Nope, you are wrong, this is a common mistake that Epic keeps spreading as missinformation. Valve does NOT enforce price parity on other platforms, there are games that are sold cheaper on other stores, this is up to the publisher to decide, but most publishers find it easier to have the same price across the board. If this was true games that are exclusive on Epic would be cheaper until they come to Steam years later, but they aren’t.
The mistake happens because there is one specific case in which Valve enforces price parity, but for this you need to know three things:
- Valve gives away for free infinite steam keys to publishers
- Those keys can be sold by the publisher elsewhere
- If they do that the publisher keeps 100% of the revenue of that sale
That sale of that free steam key for which Valve is not charging anything is regulated and can’t be sold cheaper than Steam on regular basis, it can be in a sale for cheaper, but the regular price must match Steam and if it goes on sale outside of Steam eventually it needs to do a similar sale on Steam (but not necessarily at the same time).
So one thing that’s amazing that Valve does for people who publish their games with them is getting them hate because of Epic, please stop spreading missinformation.
But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.
In that link you have one person making a claim without any backing or evidence. Even if that did happen there are multiple possible explanations:
- The email was not clear about the other stores not selling keys
- The person who answered the email did not understand that they weren’t talking about steam keys
- The person answering the email doesn’t know what they’re talking about
- Etc
And in that same link you have multiple persons in the comments describing the exact opposite experience providing the same amount of evidence, so if the text on that link is evidence that Valve does that, then the comments there are even more evidence that they don’t.
If only there was a way of knowing… Well, they did say they opened a lawsuit, and those are public record so the email would be there since it’s crucial to the case, without it they would have no case, right? Feel free to read the entire complaint here and you’ll notice the email is suspiciously missing, their claims are that Valve wouldn’t give them more keys to resell, which is directly opposite to what the blog claims.
I can do you one better, Overgrowth is a sequel to Lugaru, which is paid on Steam but free if you install via your package manager on Linux, therefore completely disproving the fact that Steam enforces price parity even for games from this company
the second hot-dog vendor wants to offer customers lower prices, and the first says they can’t because otherwise those hot dogs will be banned from their stand
It’s more accurate to say that the plain hotdog vendor wants to sell the other vendor’s hotdogs at a lower price at his own stand, thereby undercutting the sales of the first vendor for their own hotdogs.
not really, unless you’re implying the fancy hotdog vendor paid for the development of said hotdogs, which they didn’t
games don’t belong to valve
The keys that put the game in your Steam library are. And that’s what those pricing guidelines are about; Steam keys, not the actual game.
