285
That lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
285 points (91.5% liked)
PC Gaming
8683 readers
678 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
People who genuinely believe game prices will get lowered if stores take a smaller cut are delusional. You can literally look at the Epic Game Store and see that it isn't even remotely true. The only games on there that are cheaper than on Steam are the ones Epic invested in specifically to entice developers/gamers to use their services. The ones that don't have exclusivity deals are the same as on Steam.
Edit: changed "take a cut" to "take a smaller cut".
Tbf, any game that's on both steam and Epic Game Store will be priced the same, because anything other than steam having the lowest available price is against Steam's terms of service. You cannot be priced lower on another platform. GOG and a few others like it get around this by selling steam keys.
While that's in place, you definitely can not see prices go lower.
Nope, that's a misconception/misinformation. That's just for Steam Keys (i.e. you can't sell Steam Keys cheaper than on Steam). Everything else is fair game.
IMO the only way game prices will get lower is if people just stop buying them at the higher prices. If the price of a game goes from $60 to $100 and people complain but still buy the game, then the next one's going to be $100 too (or more.)
The wonderful side effect of buying cheaper games is you never have to worry about buying a game that is the result of a megacorp dropping $400 million into a metastasized web of sweatshop developers that comes with a "micro"transaction store where you can spend $240 on a new pair of shiny shoes for your avatar.
Bingo. We even saw price increases on the EGS instead of reductions lmao.
People are coping so badly because they want to hate valve or something, idk. It's cringe beyond believe. Of all the shitty semi-monopolistic companies you could hate, valve is at the bottom of the list.
You are in the wrong here, Steam have a term where you can't mark the sale cheaper on any other place, including your own website as you can generate your product keys.
Nope. This is, at best, a misconception. At worst, it’s an intentional misinterpretation. They have a term that prohibits the sale of Steam keys cheaper elsewhere. Game publishers are welcome to put their game up for sale on other sites for cheaper; They just can’t sell Steam keys cheaper. Basically, Steam wants to protect their own product keys from being undercut.
Ubisoft has their own storefront, and their own launcher. If you buy games on the Ubisoft Store, you get access to them via Ubisoft’s launcher, called Ubisoft Connect. Ubisoft is free to sell their games at whatever price they want on the Ubisoft Store, as long as they’re not granting access to the game as a Steam key. If you buy it on the Ubi Store and get access via Ubi Connect, then everything is fine. The only way it would be a breach of contract is if Ubi ran a sale on the Ubi Store, then gave players access via Steam. If you buy it cheaper than Steam on the Ubi Store, you won’t get a Steam key.
You can even sell DRM-free versions of your game for cheaper. As long as you’re not selling Steam keys, you’re fine.
It's a major part of the lawsuit itself.
http://blog.wolfire.com/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action
So before saying they are wrong, see what happens in the lawsuit alleging just that
I've joined one of the Steam Dev Days conference in Seattle. It's around time where people was still doing things like cross buy etc. (so buying the game on website unlocks both steam, dev's own drm free version, maybe even console version.) I do not know if any of the actual developer term is updated after that time, but during the conference, one dev asked question exactly like this, can he sell his version without the 30% cut from valve if it does not going through Steam while giving away the steam key for free. The answer is no.
During the time it was explained that if you sell on different platform, that gives better sale %, steam can also impost that sale % on it's platform. At the time EGS was still not a thing but people asked about can they have different price on different platform, I think the answer is also no or not recommended, as they can request you to match say the base price of itch.io but they don't mind if that sale and software never use anything from steam. They specifically mention if any steam feature, like invite steam friend is used, then no, even if your game are not downloaded or use any steam distribution feature.
Unless you can point us to that term, is it worth considering that you may be in the wrong here?
I've been searching for someone who can give me more than "yeah, but I saw someone say it online" for a while now... I've read the public facing docs and have found nothing that says you can't sell your game cheaper - though there is something that says you can't sell your free generated Steam keys cheaper without an equivalent deal on Steam ([here] (https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3)).
It's not even that strongly worded.
Even if there was a super secret policy, how do you think it is communicated to developers so they know not to do it?
I constantly see people saying this.
Explain the pricing on virtually every non-Valve-published game on IsThereAnyDeal at any given time. Steam is almost always being undercut by another legit store selling legit Steam keys.
Except those are grey market keys and Valve can just take the game away from you once they detect it.
ITAD only lists retailers that are fully legit. No grey market.
Incorrect, steam allows for lower prices and give aways if steam keys you request... As long as it's not the base price. That's how humble bundle works. That's how every dev give away works.
The "devs" in this case want to sell access to the steam version of their game for lower than the steam price, on a permanent basis. Which is against steams rules, because steam provides a service that needs to be paid for, one that is worth far more than the 30% cut.
I find your 30% cut being less than adequate a very opinionated response. Steam gets to double dip repeatedly with anything that gets sold on their platform. Got a steam key? Now be prepared to always open their app which is defaulted to land on the store page and give you multiple pop ups when logging in. We also harvest your data for "advertising purposes" and you will need to constantly keep our client running if you wish to enjoy your game.
Imagine you had to go into the IOS or google play store every time you wanted to open an app and it started with suggestions for other apps you could use instead. If you wanted to use your app account on another device, even a pc, you need to download the playstore and link your mobile account to it just to then login to the app. Everyone would be shitting bricks.
A) they don't double dip on the marketplace, developers (or publishers) get the steam tax on all items sold there.
B) maybe, but they provide unlimited nonrate capped downloads for eternity for your game, including free unlimited downloads and uploads of workshop items. Bandwidth isn't cheap at scale, you could spend >50% of your income as a small dev on distribution, or for 30% you get everything steam provides for eternity for all your players.