$843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players
$843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players
The lawsuit is said to represent 14 million UK gamers
Every time I see a post with this specific claim, targeted at Valve, i just can't help but laugh.
Yes. They take a cut.
Yes. Everyone else takes the same cut, so you're biased, if you don't understand this.
Yes. They are an undisputed leader in the market, but no, that's not called a monopoly.
The difference is that Valve, while taking this cut, and being as big as they are, are consistently investing that money into improvement of the platform, AND also paying people to directly contribute to OSS, that affects everyone else in the market too.
Not to even mention the regular, very considerable discounts, practically platform-wide. Show me a time when Nintendo have done the same. A 10 year old copy of MK8 is still 50$
This isn't even a bogus claim, but just a waste of everyone's time
And paying yachts for Gaben, you forgot to mention the money also goes to doing that.
Get that in your head people, if someone can sell you stuff and it makes them a billionaire then you got overcharged, you can find all kinds of excuses to defend them, they're still making more a day in interests with 1 billion invested than the median income over four years.
The cut they take is just one of the claims they have against Valve. Some of the other ones which another comment mentioned seem like fair arguments against Valve. The whole forcing pricing parity so game devs can't offer the games for cheaper somewhere else and DLC from other platforms isn't compatible with the Steam game and vice versa. And again you can say other platforms are doing that and worse too but that doesn't mean you shouldn't also go after Valve for it. Just cause they're a private company and because of that aren't as profit driven as other companies doesn't mean they still are gonna do things like this to increase their profits and maintain their majority market share on PC games.
I see what Vicky is attempting to do. But there's nothing stopping publishers from going over to the Epic Games Store for example and selling their content there. Valve does nothing to suppress competition (it can't really either), the competition is just bad.
Exactly. Epic's complaint is that steam has such a large user base that they can get away with the percentage they charge, but nothing is stopping people from having every game selling storefront at the same time. Steam doesn't do crappy stuff like exclusive deals with other companies to draw people in.
Now I only used Epic for a couple years, but I don't remember them doing sales. They did the free stuff which was mostly shovel ware crap, and their games stayed full price. I get games regularly at a discount on steam, which is a better deal as a user.
Epic is just whining that their terrible approach isn't as good as steam's.
They can and had done it before, see the link at the bottom of the article. Basically, game devs are forced to sell the game at the same retail price in all platforms regardless of the commission cut of the platform according to Steam license. BUT as a customer, usually other platforms are more expensive, so mileage may vary. I like Steam a lot and support it whenever I can but if there is evidence of wrongdoing I would change my mind, however, the complaint from the article smells strongly to cashgrab.
The price parity thing exclusively is for Steam key distribution. If you're going to distribute a steam license key via another platform, it must be priced the same as it is on Steam itself.
Nothing in that says they can't publish on multiple platforms independently and charge different prices on them, as long as the other platform isn't selling you a game you can unlock on your Steam library. It would have to unlock on, say, Epic's store library.
You also have sites like Humble Bundle that either get a special pass from Valve (I mean, isn't that a charity organization?) or the violation of distributing steam keys at different prices isn't enforced.
Do they? As a long time user of /r/gamedeals and isthereanydeals that is focused on game sales I've got tons of games cheaper than they were being sold directly through steam. Humble monthly being one of the best with sometimes price of like 8 game bundles being less than the cost of the cheapest price a single game went on sale.
Valve does nothing to suppress competition (it can't really either)
They at least used to have a rule that publishers can't sell cheaper on other platforms (outside of timed sales that is), meaning that consumers can't get a better price on other storefronts even when those platforms would take a smaller cut. That was very much suppressing the competition as them taking smaller cuts can't transfer into cheaper prices if the publisher also wanted to sell on Steam.
My understanding is that valve says publishers can't sell their games steam keys cheaper on other platforms but can charge whatever they want if steam is not the one providing the download. Network infrastructure isn't free and if steam is the one actually facilitating the download they get to take their share.
This is a bogus claim. Steam is by far the most compettitive of the bunch
There's a thread somewhere else on lemmy about this from a couple of days ago, I think the conclusion was that this was a law firm going for a cash grab and the claims were pretty flimsy, they're going after Sony too.
I am not a fan of the title the article uses. It seems more about Steam abusing their near monopoly in a way that hurts publishers. The overcharging aspect seems more like a byproduct
I bought Skyrim for $9.
I would much rather see this level of dedication aimed at an evil corporation. Save pestering the good guys for WAAAAAY later - like, after we've fixed everything else.
What's their claim? With the ridiculous number of sales I've always found steam to be cheap.
I literally just bought 3 games for $30 this morning.
I really wanted to see the effect of valve lowering their cut. It would be pretty funny IMHO since currently people are always talking about valve competition, especially Epic taking lower cuts. If valve started taking lower cut and developers flocked from Epic to valve, wouldn't it be epic? (Pun fully intentional)