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The publishers/developers are the ones who set the prices though.
You can delete your steam account, so that's not locking players into using Steam.
Valve hosts numerous sales, that said developers/publishers have the option of participating in.
This lawsuit is fucking stupid. It's so stupid, I actually went out of my way to dig up ways to contact this bitch and educate her some of how dumb this lawsuit is. I advise everyone to do the same.
alleges Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms.
Epic gives away games for free that cost money on Steam. The fuck is this person talking about?
Valve gives you free steam keys for your game on request, which you can sell off steam, without paying Valve a cut. This has a specific rule that disallows selling those keys for a lower price. However, not sure if it's this case, there was an email from a Valve employee submitted as evidence telling a game developer that selling their game for less in general would be undercutting steam, and something they wouldn't want. If the email is real and not a misinterpretation, Valve indeed was/is pressuring developers to not sell games cheaper elsewhere.
Also, sales and giveaways are exempt from the steam key price parity rule, which I would assume epic's free games would fall under, if you applied the rule to that despite not involving steam keys.
That doesn't conclude anything.
Are these the same games that are part of this lawsuit? If they are not, then what does Epic giving away different games conclude that this is a false premise for the lawsuit?
Critically think about that statement, it's not logical.
Valve forces price parity with all platforms. So if they have lower charges, that saving cannot be passed on to the customer and so stops price competition.
I thought that only applied to steam keys?
You can sell your game for whatever you want elsewhere, but if you want them to be able to install via steam, you can't undercut steam itself.
I did too but when I had a quick search around that's what I found. I think it'd be reasonable to apply steam keys, valve is providing the full service there.
I did too but when I had a quick search around that's what I found.
Source.
"You're company is too user friendly and everyone likes you. Its uncompetetive because we are trying to rip them off"
Am I the only one who finds this story laughable? As a mostly console gamer, if feels like Nintendo releases games for $70, and they NEVER drop in price.
If you can find a walmart that somehow still has PS2 and gamecube games, the PS2 game will probably be some sports game, and it's been reduced to $0.10.
The Gamecube game will be some kirby game, and still 2002 MSRP of $60.
Meanwhile over on steam, they're like:
"Ok, this is a AAA game, came out in 2025, MSRP is $60, but we're running a sale to pick it up for $5.
Also, here's a shitton of free games. Go nuts."
I don't think the example at the end of your comment is relevant, since to my knowledge it's the publisher deciding on pricing and doing sales, and steam is still taking the same cut.
I also think it's generally not a great thing, since it basically puts the value of the game at $5, making it not worth getting off-sale, while also creating urgency to do so during a sale. I respect Factorio developers' choice to just not do sales at all, and state so, so that buyers know exactly what the price is.
Yeah but don't publishers/developers also have the options to not partake in sales? I think they do, otherwise we'd see every game on the market all going for a sale.
I think Valve does get some say in the amount and timing of sales. It’s something they need to control to arrange the big seasonal sales, and something publishers must agree to, or set an acceptable range, when first signing up.
When you can't compete, sue.
Somewhat unrelated, but I have over 600 games on Epic Games. All free. Haven't played a single one on that platform.
I have over a thousand on Steam, most of them I paid for (usually heavily discounted) and I play those on that. There's a reason why I prefer Steam.
I don't know why people feel the need to weirdly flex about how they do this. What you're saying is, you've wasted time making an account at all, going through the process of checking what game will be free next, then processing the order to get free game.
So, good for you on wasting time and effort? While most of us just simply don't bother with Epic's launcher, market and them in general.
alleges Valve "forces" game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms.
As always, these moves are being perpetuated by scumbags who just want to make more money without putting in any additional effort.
If Steam is worth releasing a game on in the eyes of the developers, then they have to pay the price to do it. If it's not worth the price, then they are under no obligation at all to release their game on Steam.
Most games on Steam fail to gain any traction. If your game fails, it's not because it isn't on Steam; it's because it's a pile of shit and you're not special because you made something.
the main reason this lawsuit is even moving is that leaked emails that indicate valve has a price parity policy even for non steamkeys, I really doubt those leaked emails since I have seen first hand plenty of cases of games having different prices, sometimes even extreme differemce in pricing, for example, mindustry is paid ln steam but free on itch.io, google play store and fdroid
even if those emails are true, that only is proof of one case not a proof that there is systemic policy of doing that
many other, even more questionable claims are raised withour evidence or drawn very dubiosly in the law suit
this lawsuit is pure theatre
beyond this, plenty of companies have even more and clearly anti competitive with their practices extending beyond game selling and distribution, namely apple and google, who control respectively iOS' (very genericly poorly named) apps store and play store who clearly display anti competive behaviour and are clear monopolies
Mindustry is straight up open source, it is available on github under the GNU GPL v3
It's worth giving the dev his $5 though. Great game and open source
More like 3.33$ (or 3.33€ in my case) plus fees, but agreed
Plenty of great games are not immune to failing even when they're on Steam. The market is tough. But at the same time, it makes perfect sense that Steam has a rule preventing you from taking advantage of their infrastructure for marketing and communicating with customers while you make it available on Epic first for less money.
Valve got to where they are by simply being the option that offered the most convenience to end users.
All the things this lawsuit is challenging are true. Valve does have a defacto monopoly on PC games distribution, they do not let you buy DLC on other platforms for games you own on steam, and they do take a 30% cut of sales.
Having these be limited by government regulation is a good thing. It would increase interoperability and increase competition in the space.
If those things get changed, people will still continue to use Steam because they continue to offer a service that "just works". Every other storefront that has attempted to compete seems to either trip over itself by trying some anti-consumer behavior to increase short term profit(EGS, Uplay), lack discoverability features(itch), or not offer enough benefit to endure cost of change(GoG)
Every other storefront that has attempted to compete seems to either trip over itself by trying some anti-consumer behavior to increase short term profit(EGS, Uplay), lack discoverability features(itch), or not offer enough benefit to endure cost of change(GoG)
I'd argue that GoG also falls into the lack of discovery catagory.
That said, I'd argue that the lack of discovery isn't just a player issue, but ties back into the other side: publishers and devs. These storefronts/launchers are unessisary middle men. A software company can run its own store, and make its own launcher. Just look at so many of the big titles over the last two decades: Minecraft, League, Tarkov, War Thunder, Roblox, and more recently Hytale. Looking at players is only half the puzzle, the other half is how these storefronts compete against each other, and even against direct-to-customer sales for publishers.
So, for publishers/devs, what does Steam offer?
And at what cost?
Now to compare to, lets say, GOG:
Offers:
Costs:
Because of this, its no wonder that they can't get more of the market. Why would someone choose to sell there over Steam, or even over direct-to-consumer?
You left off the newer steam deck which opens your games up to a mobile audience.
Just to be clear, distributing on Steam adds nothing functional to a game's playability on the Steam Deck (afaik). A game from GOG can be played in a Deck just as well as one from Steam, albeit with slightly more effort.
That said, I know customers will flow toward the path of least resistance, so even a little more effort will push them towards a different source.
albeit with slightly more effort.
customers will flow toward the path of least resistance
I think that's the crux of it. It can be done, but I would bet the vast majority are just playing steam games on SteamOS
So if you launch on Steam, you can reach PC users and Mobile users, and someone might decide to buy the game on steam knowing it will work easily on both.
A software company can run its own store, and make its own launcher. Just look at so many of the big titles over the last two decades: Minecraft, League, Tarkov, War Thunder, Roblox, and more recently Hytale.
This is also survivorship and selection bias though. Not only would you not have heard of the ones that failed, but these are the games confident enough to not launch on Steam in the first place. Several of them are so old that Steam was in its infancy and not the de facto storefront when they came out.
Steam was the defacto storefront when all those games came out.
In 2005 when Roblox came out? No. League of Legends came out in 2009, and I had barely started shopping on Steam for non-Valve games back then. Most of us were still buying games on disc at Walmart. Minecraft was doing early access before Steam had the feature.
My point is that it is an option, and still a competitive one, when so many still use this option. If it wasn't, these games wouldn't have succeeded and/or would have died off. Its an option middlemen have to out-compete, and I'd argue many don't.
~~unessisary~~ unecessary
Just a little correction.
I'll be that guy and say that I do prefer buying from GOG, going as far as paying more money in doing so, so the issue isn't really 'friction' but 'mfs don't bother offering on GOG'.
My hate for drm has only grown over the last two decades, and so I'll get stuff wherever I can that isn't plastered with it. But it's not even a rounding error in comparing the number of games available of steam vs GOG. You'd have to go so far out with zeros that you fall off the page before encountering a positive value (0.00000[...]00001%). Which is upsetting and frustrating, since the other option is steam or piracy. And I do like rewarding developers for their work, so that leaves one option basically all the time.
Indeed, and now what GoG is pursuing stronger Linux offerings I may shop there more, but Valve had contributed more than just a shop and launcher. The Linux work with Steam Deck and Proton has been invaluable.
There are games on Steam that don't have DRM (since it's not a requirement from Valve). The most prominent examples I can think of are games from Toby Fox and Klei Entertainment.
Steam is a DRM system.
I am not being flippant or facetious. Steam is literally a DRM system with a shop grafted on top. That is what it has always been. If a game is on Steam, it be definition has DRM.
But for the games without DRM you can just download them and run the executable. Bypassing Steam
Sure, if you stop using steam you can't re-download or update the game, but if the game didn't have DRM, you can just keep copying the existing executable
I'd love to see this as an official tag on the store page.
In terms of straight numbers, isn't Steam's large "advantage" there it's offering of independent, mostly unregulated games from small time devs? Are those really using drm? Even if there are, I don't really think most users are choosing Steam over GOG for access to "Asset Flip #57354".
I thought the small indie devs were mostly on itch?
Itch is exclusively indie devs, afaik, but since Steam started their Greenlight initiative, the number of games released per year has rocketed up. 2012, the year Greenlight started, only 441 games were released on steam. Two years later in 2014, almost 1500 games were released. 2017 released 5600. 2021 released 10,200. And last year had over 21k. How much of that do we think is really DRM'd, AAA published software?
Steam is the reason I am buying so many games. They're way cheaper there than on other marketplaces. This lawsuit sounds like a shareholder from another company whining about not making as much as they wanted.