this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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Amazon got slapped with a substantial fine (in the EU) for having basically the same "rule" in their contracts, that forbid cheaper listings elsewhere. So yes, in the EU hanging that rule is illegal. But if it applies to digital licensing is another matter.
You do know you're only renting access to the game with a one-time fee, not buying it, right?
Edit: the original comment left it unclear if the price rule only applies to copies sold that include a steam key, or if copies that work completely without steam can be arbitrarily priced. If the latter is the case, it's obviously fine. If it includes any game version, it isn't OK.
amazon's case is different. if you're selling the steam version of your game it needs to match the price on steam. if you have a separate non-steam version you can charge whatever you want.
the reason places like gog follow steam pricing is, why wouldn't they? makes them more money.
This is the part that was unclear from the original comment. If that's in fact the case, that's obviously fine (and different from the Amazon case).
it's called "competetive pricing". If I'm a customer and have a steam account holding most of my games (like most PC gamers), why would I even consider buying it anywhere else if it isn't even cheaper and now I got games in like 3-5 stores with at least 2-3 launcher/downloaders/apps. No, this most likely won't make them more money but much much less with fewer people buying it there.
I pay the same or sometimes a bit more for GoG games because they are DRM free. Id like better client support on Linux, but DRM free is a value proposition thats usually worth it.
I do appreciate the ability to download a fully offline installer from gog and the requirement that games be drm free. But people keep making statements similar to yours as if steam games have to include some form of drm. There is no such requirement. Steam can simply act as a downloader and patcher. Integrating stream services and failing to start if there is no steam or the active account doesn't own the game is completely up to the developer.
So if they have a drm free build on gog, but the steam hype includes drm, that's cause the developer actively decided it should be like that.
Popular game examples that do not include any drm in the steam version are Factorio and (the original) Kerbal Space Program. Once downloaded, you can freely copy the installation around, and just start the exe. These games start just fine.
I know, i know there are also some utilities to back up steam games. Ive used them years ago. I dont hate Steam by any means, but i really like GOGs philosophy and requirements so I support them where i can, though i will borrow games from the family library if someoen else bought it on steam for the achivements
gog is running mostly on rep, to be fair. don't know about many other stores that don't just sell steam keys.
There have been several lawsuits about this policy, and the more recent class action one is about whether steam is actually enforcing this policy for steam keys only or also for games sold on other platforms without relying on steam keys. I don't think there is any actual written rule about this because it's probably illegal in several jurisdictions but there have been rumors about this since basically the beginning of third party games on steam.
Did you read the article? This is about a completely different version of the game that was not even sold on steam.
i did. here's what it says:
emphasis mine.
a "starter pack" is a collection of dlc for a game. all the dlc is on steam. the starter pack was not, making the dlc cheaper on uplay than on steam. rainbow six siege uses the steam backend for online play, meaning that the dlc in question is connected to steam, but available elsewhere for less money.
Ok. The rule is, actually let me link it...
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
"Steam Key Rules and Guidelines"
"You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam.** It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers."**
Just read that paragraph. It should be pretty clear what the whole thing is about.
"It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers."
That's a very fair way of phrasing it and should make sense to anyone saying "but what if they want to sell it cheaper elsewhere?" Seems most people don't even understand the actual issue, they just are butthurt over headlines
Yep. Sell your game for whatever you want wherever you want. If you want to distribute your game via Steam (Steam keys), you can't sell them cheaper than they are sold on Steam because you aren't handling the distribution (which costs money).
Otherwise a competing company (like Ubisoft) could just make a 20TB game, list it on steam for a crazy price, then sell Steam keys for it on another storefront cheap; Steam will have to cover the distribution costs without making anything in return.
But it says nothing in your link about selling games that work without steam key on another platform?
I do not see where steam keys are mentioned in the article? Why do you care so much about steam keys if that's completely irrelevant in this case?
because that's what the lawsuit is about. valve has no problem with people selling games on their own store fronts, as long as what they're selling isn't just a steam key. ubisoft wants to sell games on their own store for online games which use steam as a backend without giving steam a cut. you can buy all the anno games for cheaper on uplay than on steam, and that's not a problem. but rainbow six siege uses steamplay.
sure, but rainbow six siege uses all of those things because it's an online game. otherwise there'd be a need to have separated server infra for steam and non-steam users.
so you're saying that the steam version is not using sheam features?
so they can't play against people on steam?
It's more complicated than that. Technically, you're right, if the game entirely relies on steamworks for networking you can only play with people on steam. A lot of indies/AA actually just did that for a while because they just connected players P2P (so, no dedicated servers, which would necessarily be "outside" of steam's ecosystem) and crossplay was too complicated, so there are a lot of multiplayer games out there that you literally can't play crossplatform, at least in a user friendly way (shadow warrior 2 comes to mind, where you can actually connect the GOG version to the Steam version by entering a console command and knowing the other guy's IP).
Big publishers like Ubisoft definitely had the developers and the money to roll out their own crossplay architecture and code very early though, and they absolutely did. Basically, if the game has dedicated servers it most likely has crossplatform.
Nowadays a lot of UE games just rely on Epic Online Services for crossplay. I think you can actually use it with non-UE games too but there might be licensing shenanigans involved.
r6s isn't unreal though, it's anvil.
Yeah but you're not gonna see many AA or indie games made with anvil. My point was that your original assumption that a game using steam networking won't be able to "talk" to the same game using another platform's networking is somewhat correct, and basically still is the case for games that can't afford crossplay solutions, with the notable exception of EOS.
i don't know if that was ever the question. rather it was whether they've chosen to split them up or not.
Steam version probably uses steam networking and Uplay, with the latter being responsible for basically all the online features, and the former only for interfacing with steam.
i was genuinely curious because i didn't know. but it does fall in line with what i thought, which is that: if ubisoft are charging lower amounts for dlc that can also be bought through steam, and that dlc shows up for people who are playing on steam, then they're using steam's services and valve are in the right. if the two versions of the game do not commuticate, then ubisoft are in the right.
okay, and you're sure of this? thanks for clearing it up in that case.
but then surely it's against their tos, no? like, if a hat is 50¢ on uplay but 100€ on steam and players on steam can see uplay players wearing the hat, isn't that a case of price disparity in the product? it's not a steam key, true, but if ubisoft were allowed to set prices like that it would almost certainly count as anticompetitive practices, right?
no, obviously i'm not saying that. i'm saying that by having content in the game that costs different amounts for different players playing together on the same platform (pc), ubisoft aren't following the terms they agreed to for selling on steam.
i was reading through the court documents earlier (i linked them in a comment) and while i don't doubt that bloomberg knows better than me, that wasn't the feel i got from the emails. it started with valve employees asking internally if it was a tos violation, then reaching out to ubisoft, then the demand to change the price on steam to match. the docs are heavily redacted so some details escaped me but... idk.
The steam version probably just uses steam features through some library/interface/whatever that simply implements calls to the relevant code depending on the game's build (steamworks for steam, Xbox live or whatever they changed it to again, PSN, epic online services, etc..) for platform-related stuff like rich presence, joining servers etc. I don't know the specifics of R6 but I've worked on multiplayer, multiplatform games, and I really doubt they have a specific network stack for Uplay, another one for PC, and then another one for each console. Especially if it has crossplay.
More likely it's all going to ubi's servers (through their own crossplay solutions and servers, or through a third party like EOS) and just implementing the aforementioned platform specific stuff to make the experience smooth for the end user.
I'm not a law guy but I don't think the other platforms pricing thing was ever about a "steam version" of the game, as that rule would be easily circumvented by releasing another "version" where the black background on the title screen is a slightly different shade of black than the steam version or whatever.
well no, the integrations are what i'm talking about. not saying that valve is hosting their own r6s servers, just that by using steam features and having the same game (eg able the connect to the same server) on two stores it falls under their "parity" policy.