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Not globally. I live in one of the few regions where Steam's prices are generally higher than those of other platforms. But even I think the lawsuit is stupid. It's ignoring a key point; publishers these days are free to set the price on Steam. If they chose to sell higher than on consoles (which in my region, they often do), it's their choice.
Valve hasn't told them to stop or forced the increase. Which also proves the claim of that pricing clause to be strenuous, too, as Valve aren't enforcing their pricing points or parity between platforms.
No surprise really.
If you're a small developer, you're just signing the pre-made contract and that's it.
If you're a large publisher, you're probably actually talking to a Steam representative at some point. I don't know what argument they'll make about "price parity", but just because they mention it, suggest it, favor it -- whatever they do, if it's not agreed upon then it doesn't matter what they would like to have. And they certainly do favor it -- or un-favor it, if the Steam price is the lower one. And, I'm pretty sure these are marketing experts -- they'll pitch price parity as the best invention ever and a huge boost to YOUR business.
In fact, I've recently seen -- smaller games again, so no talking with any rep -- slightly lower prices for Epic keys than the Steam key, for the same game in the same store. So it's quite the opposite of "parity" there (and, unfortunately, isthereanydeal notices there are two prices for the game, but lists both as "Steam"). This was a sale price, though, so both were better than the Steam store.
That's not the same thing, though -- console prices have always been slightly higher than PC; price parity is mostly about different distribution platforms on the PC (like Steam, Epic, GoG) because people could just decide to not get the Steam version and buy Epic or GoG instead, without too much hassle (personally, I don't -- I like to avoid even the last bit of hassle by actually having everything on one platform). It's not so easy to not get Steam and instead get the PS5 version -- it plays on entirely different hardware.
Americans maybe effectively pay half as much or even less for video games once salary after tax is taken account for compared to Europeans doing the same job at the same effort.
So is that fair?
The turn over is huge on hardware and devices, and a great example is new games expecting customers to buy the best hardware or newest platform device to play the game, which in most cases the actually game was created on a far less power system and ran just fine, simply compounded with needless processing to require a more beefy hardware.
What steams doing with the 30% rake on developers should actually be a warning to developers to disengage from creating games and software, simply because of the massive saturation on the market has made a majority of the games completely worthless, never getting played and ultimately failing.
If you make something, you sell it for what you want, no contract or legal choke hold is gonna stop someone for giving away there own product. Steam trying to strong arm prices is not gonna matter when most people don't actually buy the game off steam anyway.
In this region, it's the same thing. You'll also notice I said console pricing is often *CHEAPER* here than Steam. GOG doesn't count, they don't use our currency; so that automatically makes them several times more expensive than Steam due to that alone. But if we were to compare other stores that sold with the same currency on PC only, excluding Epic (which I don't bother with), the pricing can still be cheaper than the Steam price -- and that's with legitimate publisher supplied keys.
This exact lawsuit was already tried in the United States by Wolfire Games, and they lost.
So, nothing new. I hope it does go to UK courts, since would be hilarious to see what really happens.
Why? Since the UK is brutal against those who file and go forwards with false claiming suites. Their is no trial if they fail their suite with false claims, it's instant punishment.
In the context of the UK specifically. The wages in this field are not much higher in the US, if higher at all. In London, software engineers can make beyond £200k (256k USD) base if highly experienced. Naturally, its a very experience dependant field as salaries can range dramatically. But those in the top end jobs are making great money. Can't speak for the rest of Europe though, the UK is an outlier due to its wealth relative to size
Respectfully, Europe isn't a country, its a continent that contains around 50 countries each of which are quite different from one another
Its just their grift.
I am sure he will jump on it as soon as he sees the news.