Are you joking? I’ve saved thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, by waiting for Steam Sales and buying games at a reasonable price for me(I’m poor) rather than paying $60 a game. Nobody else does this(When was the last time Nintendo put Mario Kart on sale?)
The statement “Steam overcharges gamers” is self-defeating and hilarious.
This lawsuit build on a false premise. Steam doesnt have a price parity clause for other stores. What this lawsuit alleges applies to Steam keys that the developer generates through Steam. If the developer lists those keys for sale at a price lower than what the game is listed for on Steam, then the price of the Steam Store purchase price must match it, so that people visiting the store page on Steam get the same discount. It doesn’t matter if you list your game on GOG and discount it there.
Its literally helping players.
Just for clarity: how would it do a disservice to players if a dev can sell their steam keys for any price, no matter which platform?
Just think about how this works.
Steam currently allows you to generate keys and sell them for free, only stipulating that they must be sold for the same price as on steam.
Let’s say they are told that stipulation can’t be enforced.
Valve, will probably go with 1 of 2 options.
1 - you can no longer generate keys. So all the great key sites(GMG, Fanatical and so on) no longer exist, because no steam keys.
2 - Valve charge an upfront fee for keys generated. Now smaller pmdevs and publishers can no longer supply keys to sites, because they can’t afford the upfront costs.
What incentive does valve have to continue offering this free service? If it can be exploited for the detriment of steam, they will stop providing it.
Let me try and understand this by altering the product.
Valve now produces cars and the devs are people who make these cars inside factories. Same as is currently the case, these employees get cars cheaper and are asked to not undercut the seller by holding onto the cars for a certain amount of time before selling them used.
It does make sense for me to view it that way. One could argue that the couple cars that get sold by employees doesnt do anything to hurt the brand and that pressuring them to keep the price high manipulates the market.
Also, doesnt the work of steam accumulate to hosting mirrors of a game and hosting a large website they get billions in revenue for?
Smells like a smear campaign. Some idiots try to get some fake-ass grass roots movement going.
Bold move, let‘s see how it plays out for them.
How can this be? All the games I buy on Steam are cheaper than on other platforms. Where are these cheaper games?
I think that is the main point of the lawsuit, if developers sell their game on Steam they can’t sell it cheaper somewhere else. If Value gets 30% the developer has to raise the price a bit to compensate and they have to raise it everywhere. Outside of sales I don’t think most games that are not on Steam are much cheaper elsewhere, so not sure how this plays out.
So don’t sell the game on Steam? Either the huge boost in visibility is worth a 30% cut or it’s not.
