indog

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.

But why should this matter to a consumer? If you don’t like Steam or Valve’s business practices, it’s much more difficult to avoid Steam because of its exclusives.

There’s a class action lawsuit against Valve now, over Steam’s practices similar to price fixing. Part of the reason Epic has to pay for exclusives is that Steam prohibits publishers from offering lower prices on lower cut stores like Epic. If publishers could pass on part of the savings to consumers from the smaller cut, Epic could be more successful without exclusive contracts. Anyway, hopefully what comes out of the suit will be better for consumers in the end.

You’re parroting the line of dumb conspiracy theories known as Gamergate 2 pushed by a bunch of grifters farming engagement on YouTube.

Narrative consultancy companies like SBI don’t force you to hire them, and if you choose to hire them, you don’t have to follow all of their advice.

If you’re interesting in curing yourself of the mindworms the YouTube algorithm has planted in your brain, please check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGmESJM6BFQ

SoTN is available on ps4 in a collection called Castlevania Requiem (with Rondo of Blood). It often goes on sale for 5 bucks or so. Though I understand the frustration of gamers without a ps4 or ps5.