Valve Is Getting Sued For Abusing Steam To Keep PC Game Prices High

[DiceDsx]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/popular-gaming-platform-accused-of-abusing-market-power-through-contracts

Others also got sued: Ubisoft, CDPR, kChamp Games, Rust and Devolver Digital.

Thoughts?

[Tito Shivan]

DiceDsx の投稿を引用：

Tito Shivan の投稿を引用：

Epic couldn't with their 12% share:
https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1091025939109199879

This makes me think: have we seen any positive effects of a lower revenue share on customer?

These kind of changes usually mean little to consumers overall. Despite always being sold as the frontline for bigger changes for customers.

No, a reduced store share isn't going to result in cheaper games. As it didn't result when games were sold in cheap plastic CDs or when digital distribution promised getting rid of the physical production costs.

[Start_Running]

Togo の投稿を引用：

Reading the complaint, if this statement from Valve is true:

We basically see any selling of the game on PC, Steam keys or not, as a part of the same shared PC market- so even if you weren't using Stema keys, we'd just choose to stop selling a game if it was always running discounts of 75% off on one store but 50% off on ours. That stays true, even for DRM-free sales or sales on a store with it own keys like play or Origin

If true, that is very scummy, anti-competitive, and Valve abusing their market power to prevent other stores from gaining any real ground through pricing competition.

That's actually a standard practice in all forms of retail. Its basically to prevent their store from being used as the 'High water mark'.

Put yourself in the shoes of a retailer. Say you're selling toasters. A manufacturer approaches you and says you'd make good money selling their toasters. Sasys the MSRP is $80, and he'll sell them to you at $50 a piece if you order a 100 units. You do that and get them up on your shelves but then find that the manufacturer is now selling thiose same toasters directly to the consumers at $50 a piece. essentially undercutting you, and damaging your reputation in the same go since to the customers it looks like you're gouging them for selling at the MSRP the manufacturer indicated.

The manufacturer has used you andyour store rto establish a high water mark for the price so its easy to be lower by comparisson and thusly pocket all the sales. This is why any retailer that's been in business for a year aklways adds a pricing parity and/or and no competitiion clause in distribution contracts with suppliers.

And no this isn't anti competitive. The store itself is free to shave the prcie down as part of their own internal practice. This is how Store slike GMGm, Fanatical, and Humble, do it wuith their special bundles and what not.

It only prevents developers from setting one price in one stopre and another price in another. They have tos et the same price across all stores. Which means consumers will gravitate to the store with the better service.

It actually keeps the market competitive.

They also claim that Valve contacted publishers that were selling games cheaper on Humble and Discord, and demanded to have the same price or be removed from Steam.

Yup. That's legit. See the whole Pricing parity. Now its fair to not that the publisher has two choices there. Raise the bnase prices on the other stores,, or lower the base price on Steam.
FUnnily, the publishers don't seem to want to lower the steam price...

Humble worked with Steam to have direct integration of activating keys, so that keys were never exposed, therefore could not be resold on the grey market. Something that the publishers liked and made them more willing to be a part of Humble Bundle.

They did that for a while but they haven't done that for some years now.

Humble Bundle saw their revenue increase, as well as more into charity because of this keyless integration. When Humble Bundles distribution of steam enabled games began to scale, Valve abruptly ended the secure inegration with no explanation. It resulted in Humble sales growth declined, publishers became more and more reluctant, which resulted in the quantity and quality of the products on Humble Bundle. it also caused the grey market to grow.

Flase. You can still directly redeem keys through humble. THe way its down now however allows users more flexibility with gifting and more importtantly, which account they want to activate the game on. Going By Humble, their sales have been steadily increasing for years.

Hmm, yeah, if the plantiff can prove stuff like that above, then this is a serious lawsuit and might actually have some merit to it.

Nope...
As pointed oput. The Pricing Parity thing is a common practice and it is allowed by law. It basically a form orf retailer protection, because any retailer knows that their suppliers will screw them over if given the chance. The developer can choose to either raise the price on other stores to match the oprice they et on STeam, or lower the price on steam to matche the price they set on other stores. This is something ALL stores practice.

As for the other one. Afgain nothing wrong there. Developwers have not been any less willing to selll games through HS,. Same for Fanatical. Its not even that a game can't be discounted for less on another store . But if they notice a consistent pattern they're gonna ask questions.

[Start_Running]

Tito Shivan の投稿を引用：

DiceDsx の投稿を引用：

This makes me think: have we seen any positive effects of a lower revenue share on customer?

These kind of changes usually mean little to consumers overall. Despite always being sold as the frontline for bigger changes for customers.

No, a reduced store share isn't going to result in cheaper games. As it didn't result when games were sold in cheap plastic CDs or when digital distribution promised getting rid of the physical production costs.

Si.
Heck to this day opricing parity ensures that digital products have to keep step with physical products in pricing. If a retailer has a choice between selling a $60 game vs a $40 game. They'll go for the $60 game since that's a better profit for them. And when ever square metre of shelf space and every cubic metere of storage has to pay for itself every month...yeah you try to avoid the low margin crap.

[Tito Shivan]

Togo の投稿を引用：

Your toaster analogy does not work because Valve is not buying the products. If a dev/pub is selling a game cheaper on one store than on Steam because of the difference in revenue share, then Valve could simply become competitive by lowering their revenue share

You're assumning price difference would happen because of the share, while that's not exclusively true.

One Example. There's no way a storefront share can compete with the devl seeling the game by themselves. There's no Steam share that can beat EA getting 100% of the revenue by selling their games in Origin. Just like no store share can beat getting a big fat check for exclusivity rights.

Also a Storefront needs to protect themselves against 'freeloaders'.
For example a developer publishing their game in Steam then proceeding to sell Steam keys in their storefront, at a cheaper pricetag, keeping 100% of the revenue while making full use of the Steam infrastructure. (Reason why Steam now ties the generation of Steam keys with in-store revenue)

No one wants to be the store where brands come up to advertise where to buy the stuff you try to sell for cheaper.
And that has little to do with revenue shares.

[kitt]

In the end its a free world.. nobody is forced to use Steam..

[Start_Running]

Togo の投稿を引用：

Really, you are going to defend price fixing

It's not price fixing. It's price Parity.
The dev is free rto set whatever price they want. they just have to apply that price tio ALL stores they sell on. SImple as that.

Price fixing completely removes a competitive avenue, it does not help with a competitive market, it limits it.

It actually does.
If product X is selling $30 on STore A and $20 on STore B then people will shop at STore B more often.

If Product X is sold for $30 on both stores, then people will buy from the store that offers the best added value. Thuis basically means stores compete based upon the added value they can provide to their customers. Soubnds like a pretty competitive set up to me.

Your toaster analogy does not work because Valve is not buying the products.

The effect is more or less the same even if you're paid on commission. The manufacturer is using you to basically make the product appear expensive, so they can undercut and sell directly.

If a dev/pub is selling a game cheaper on one store than on Steam because of the difference in revenue share, then Valve could simply become competitive by lowering their revenue share take so the dev/pub will then make the price on Steam the same as it is on the other stores.

As Tito pointed out, no share is going to compete with not sharing.

But if the quote is true, Valve would be abusing it's market dominance to remove a competitive avenue, to keep itself at the top, to stifle new competition.

Nope. It simply ensures that competition is based on what the store adds. Thuis is as said literally something every store of any stripe has been doing for at least 50 years. You go to any retailler and they will basically enforce either a no compete or price parity clause.

If you do not agree to such, then they will not do business since it pretty much tells them right off the bat that you were basically intending to use them to peg a high price. pricing parity doesn't hurt the developer in any way since no matter what price they set their percentage remains constant and whichever store sells more will make up the bulk of the sales.

Humble Bundle saw their revenue increase, as well as more into charity because of this keyless integration. When Humble Bundles distribution of steam enabled games began to scale, Valve abruptly ended the secure integration with no explanation

Citation Needed. QUite sure there was some explanation.

It resulted in Humble sales growth declined, publishers became more and more reluctant, which resulted in the quantity and quality of the products on Humble Bundle. it also caused the grey market to grow.

Was that the reason?

You sure it wasn't say the rise in the number of bundle type sites in the same period giving competition to Humble's model?

I know I started spending less on Hyumble when I started going to GMG and BundleSTars/Fanatical. And to be fair Fanatical's bundles tend to be better that Humble's.
In short. Its competition.

You said this is false. But no, it really isn't. One of the plantiffs of this lawsuit ran Humble Bundle, so he would know what the outcome was for Valve removing the keyless system.

And again. There are other explanatuions. Not the least of which is an increase in competition, and the fact that developers themselves have become more wary of these sorts of things since they've learned it changes the perceived value of their product.

And what you said is absolutely false, because there is no direct activation on Humble Bundle, you are given a key where you can literally see the numbers/letters, and it is not keyless like it used to be.

It was always keyed, the only difference was that you couldn't see the key untill you activated. ANd If I recall the reason for that was just simple pragmatism. Tod do what they were doing every bundle and each of its teiers had to be registered as a unique product on Steam in order for that activation to work.

This was pretty much a dump for their database for what would be a limited time produc. Much simpler to just make individual keys for the already existing products in the system.

[Start_Running]

Togo の投稿を引用：

No ethical person would ever defend a company abusing their market dominance by threatening dev/pubs with removal if they don't keep the price the same as others just so they can keep their high fees.

Good thing that's not what's happening.
A store has the right to decide who they will or won't do business with. Just like any developer or customer does. Business is conducted under terms and and agreements. You do not agree to the terms, then there is no business done.

And considering that devs have the flexibility to either raise the prices on other stores or lower the price on steam to match other stores I don't know how you can say this maiontains STeam's fees. If the devs chose to lower the steam price then guess what They technically earn less per sale. But strangely devs never seem to want to do that.

Stop defending this crap. Valve is doing that; then that is beyond scummy. If they are doing it then hopefully they'll lose, and then other stores can have regular lower prices and if Steam wants to compete with those prices then they can lower their revenue share

And as said the revenue share has nothing to do with prices. And as epic found out,, lowering your cut to lower prices can get you in hot water with developers and publishers. COnsumers perceive price as an indicattion of value so a publuisher may not want the store chopping their $60 game down to $30, or even $40.

Though lets take it from the other point of view. Steam must be offering something to developers and publishers to make that 30% curt worthwhile...so why shouldn't they be fairly compensated for what they provide hmmm?

Competition through pricing is a legitimate competitive practice, price fixing, which is what the price parity through indimitadtion is, completely removes that form of competition.

Not all the time. I mean if a large multi billion dollar company decides to drop their prices to half that of a smaller local competitor a price that the local competitor cannot possibly match due to economies of scale, is that fair competition in your eyes. Is it fair competition when a multi billion dollar company prices its product so low as to operate at a loss just to force their smaller competitors ot of the market. After all.. they can tank a 500 million dollar loss . Their competitors however can't handly even a $100K loss for that period.

You might really want to consider looking into how the business world actually operates. Its not as simple as the movies and sitcoms you seem to be getting your understanding from.

If store B is getting more sales than Store A because Store A has higher prices due to higher revenue share take, then Store A can change their revenue share to be more competitive with Store B.

Except as said. the revenue share has literally nothing to do with it. Why do you think devs would rather raise the prices on other stores than lower the price on STeam. . SImpe:

Dev Sells a game on two stores

A takes a a 20% cut. B takes a 10% cut. So the dev could Theoretically sell the game on B for a lower price than A and make the same money....orrr....they could set the price for B equal to A and make More per sale.

Which would yo do hmm?

To flip this around to the consumer side. Why would you buy a game at a 50% discount when you could just as easily buy it for an 80% discount.

It's simple as that, instead of the scummy practice of indimitadtion to force the price fixing.

There is no intimidation. You want to do business with steam you agree to their terms. YOu don't want to do business with STeam you're free to not do so. There are other stores... , heck you could bypass any store and sell directly, but of course Steam has a larger market presense and so not selling on Steam would mean a tangible and measurable reductiopn in sales...which in turn means that Steam has every right to charge their commission since what they offer has such a tangible effect.

That is the objectively ethical way to do things.

So basically if yo were put in a line up fdor a position consideration but then fouund out they juust added you to make the guy next to you look more competent.. you'd consider that ethical.

have seen more than one developer talk about this, so I am inclined to believe Valve most likely used intimidation to keep their market dominance and to prevent other stores from becoming major competitors.

Yeah because here's the thing. Developers would love to have 100% of the monety. That's their best case scenario. Not having to share with anyone. All you have to do is look at what happens when developers do pull this off. Blizzacti has a full monopoly on Starcrafgt Diablo, and Warcraft. . They get 100% of those sales ... what are their prices like?

YOu may notice that inspite of not having to share anything those prices aren't much different from their contemporaries.

Same thing for EA. Microsoft, etc.

What Valve is doing is what every bsusiness does. being selective about who they do business with., aand making sure the people they choose to do buisness aren't manipulating or using them unfairly.

As said. Devs are free to lower the Steam price to match the lower price on other stores... but funnily enough they almost never want to do that.

[Zukabazuka]

Togo の投稿を引用：

No ethical person would ever defend a company abusing their market dominance by threatening dev/pubs with removal if they don't keep the price the same as others just so they can keep their high fees.

Stop defending this crap. Valve is doing that; then that is beyond scummy. If they are doing it then hopefully they'll lose, and then other stores can have regular lower prices and if Steam wants to compete with those prices then they can lower their revenue share

Competition through pricing is a legitimate competitive practice, price fixing, which is what the price parity through indimitadtion is, completely removes that form of competition.

If store B is getting more sales than Store A because Store A has higher prices due to higher revenue share take, then Store A can change their revenue share to be more competitive with Store B.

It's simple as that, instead of the scummy practice of indimitadtion to force the price fixing.

That is the objectively ethical way to do things.

I have seen more than one developer talk about this, so I am inclined to believe Valve most likely used intimidation to keep their market dominance and to prevent other stores from becoming major competitors.

Its kind of funny because in the early days when retail stores had more power over games sold they told steam that they would remove EVERY steam games that they sold on steam from their retail store if they decided to have a price lesser than their retail price.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

@Togo

Wtf you smoking... Steam, epic, etc don't control the price tag of games, that is clear, and we know that, but providing fair deal, means don't be a ♥♥♥♥, and overcharge one store over the other to promote one store on a store, then yea that a ♥♥♥♥ move idk why you want to support that badly, but no one believes consumers should pay more, or giving them a reason to force consumers to pay more, it's worse trying to support publishers to increase prices which they been trying to do to make consumers pay more, I mean how was it not clear what Take-Two, Sony, and etc trying to do this year....

Like I pointed out in the past, games that exclusive on Epic for 12% yet still $60.... Why... Think why they're not lowering prices at all that not even on Steam so again think about it, consumers getting shortend of the stick, and been two years, nearly half way to 3rd year, and climbing, sooo yea.

Now for your scenario example for Store A and B, despite A charging more sale cut, if more people willing to keep using A, over B, it makes sense publishers want to list on A as that give them more visibility, and higher sales. Sure they can get more money per sale on B store, but doesn't provide them the sales count in terms compare to A, that what going to count more towards publishers, they either will value higher sales numbers, or they value higher revenue per sale copy, there's a difference between being able to sell more, than making more per copy, hope that was clear. If price the same, then yes more people go for A over B, but if you over charge on A, then consumers will view it as anti-consumer movement, since this doesn't benefit them at all, having to pay same price tag either way on B, or pay much more on A this will only come back negative on the publishers that all there is to it. But keep in mind there's a difference between Real world and fantasy on-paper scenario.

Just like when Ubisoft try to push for exclusivity deal with Epic for their games, a lot of people just went for Uplay instead of Epic during 2019 for the new games that not on Steam, and yet prices didn't change, games didn't get improvements as one hoped for.

[Cherry]

I'm getting kinda worried about steam in the future.. (Venting)

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, but as the title says.. I'm getting a bit concerned about steam after what has been going on lately, especially with the Epic Games store with their 88/12 revenue split and now microsoft is doing 88/12 as well. And, then people have a huge and sudden hatred for steam.. And now steam is being sued by Humble Bundle because of Steam's revenue cut.
I know Epic doesn't stand a chance against steam right now.. but the thing I'm really worried about is what if, hypothetically, epic actually takes down steam in the future.. Sweeney seems to be very hellbent on taking down steam by buying out companies (like psyonix) and making them pull their games off steam, then there's epic constantly buying exclusives and such.. I feel the only way Steam is going to survive in the future is to match the revenue cut that epic and microsoft has..
But something tells me that they won't...
What do you all think? Should we be worried about this?

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/3114770913767653746/

[Spawn of Totoro]

Snickers の投稿を引用：

And now steam is being sued by Humble Bundle because of Steam's revenue cut.

Humble Bundle Creator, not Humble Bundle.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/04/humble-bundle-creator-brings-antitrust-lawsuit-against-valve-over-steam/

An Indi game developer.

[nullable]

Snickers の投稿を引用：

I'm getting kinda worried about steam in the future.. (Venting)

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, but as the title says.. I'm getting a bit concerned about steam after what has been going on lately, especially with the Epic Games store with their 88/12 revenue split and now microsoft is doing 88/12 as well. And, then people have a huge and sudden hatred for steam.. And now steam is being sued by Humble Bundle because of Steam's revenue cut.
I know Epic doesn't stand a chance against steam right now.. but the thing I'm really worried about is what if, hypothetically, epic actually takes down steam in the future.. Sweeney seems to be very hellbent on taking down steam by buying out companies (like psyonix) and making them pull their games off steam, then there's epic constantly buying exclusives and such.. I feel the only way Steam is going to survive in the future is to match the revenue cut that epic and microsoft has..
But something tells me that they won't...
What do you all think? Should we be worried about this?

You should worry about Epic. I don't think their store has made a profit yet.

Well, it's not like Epic's store is a secret. And that was two years ago. Where's the hate? And it's not like that revenue split amounts to lower prices for gamers. If you're paying the same price regardless you're just going to get it on your favorite platform and for a lot of people that means Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/2961646623386540826

Even if Steam lost half its users it would still be amazingly profitable and generate hundreds of millions in revenue.

I mean lawsuits aren't the worst thing ever either. Steam being sued doesn't mean they'll lose, or it will cripple them, or force them out of business. Sometimes it just means people have different opinions and they need an authority to settle the issue. Valve is probably being sued all the time. It's just not every lawsuit is automatically newsworthy.

[Tito Shivan]

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Dev Sells a game on two stores

A takes a a 20% cut. B takes a 10% cut. So the dev could Theoretically sell the game on B for a lower price than A and make the same money....orrr....they could set the price for B equal to A and make More per sale.

Which would yo do hmm?

If a lower store cut meant lower prices we would have seen EA games drop in price after they brought them all to Origin. But it didn't happen.
Likewise, they didn't raise prices wither after they brought those games back to Steam either.

Yet here comes Epic giving away a smaller revenue share and gamers all again eat hook, line and sinker. Lo and behold, devs still sell their games at the same pricetag there.

It's kind of amazing how magical thinking is ingrained in the gaming mentality.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Tito Shivan の投稿を引用：

If a lower store cut meant lower prices we would have seen EA games drop in price after they brought them all to Origin. But it didn't happen.
Likewise, they didn't raise prices wither after they brought those games back to Steam either.

Yet here comes Epic giving away a smaller revenue share and gamers all again eat hook, line and sinker. Lo and behold, devs still sell their games at the same pricetag there.

It's kind of amazing how magical thinking is ingrained in the gaming mentality.

Yep, like digital was supposed to lower the price of games as well.

Dug this up from 2007:
https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-sad-state-of-digital-software-distribution/

In this case, Valve is the distributor, so they're getting a healthy cut of the sale price (rumor says 50%). That's still a fantastic deal compared to retail software sales, where the authors will be lucky to get 10% of the sale price.