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Gabe Newell ordered to make in-person deposition for Valve v. Wolfire Games lawsuit
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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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They have a monopoly but that's because they're just the best service. It's not just that they were the first, they're just consistently the best. Everybody who has spun up another ancillary launcher and DRM service has always made an inferior product to Valve's.
Epic games bribes you with free games, launched without a functioning cart, and hoovers your data.
EA has gone through Origin and the EA app, both of which are awful; Origin being the butt of jokes for years and the EA app being an unstable piece of garbage that logs you out every day with "a particularly annoying bug".
Ubisoft. Self explanatory.
I could keep going on, but Valve earned their position in the market. Could they reduce the cut and still exist with a good profit? Absolutely, but that's the only thing I'd really want them to change - treat the devs a bit more fairly.
It doesn't matter. The suit is alleging that valve threatened to ban games if they were cheaper on other stores. Thats monopolistic price manipulation, and it's illegal. Valve even pro.ises not to do this in its terms of service - their price parity policy is only supposed to apply to steam keys. That would be fair, because otherwise they couldn't give out keys in the first place. But you can't force devs to list games at the same price and then decide on the cut you will take if you are a monopoly. They will have to prove Valve violated its ToS.
Have they actually done any banning or such? I have seen Phantom Liberty on sale repeatedly since it launch on GOG, but haven't seen it once on Steam.
Games like Risk of Rain Returns is selling cheaper than it's ever been on Steam. I use isthereanydeals often to check current and historical pricing before buying a game.
https://isthereanydeal.com/game/riskofrainreturns/info/
You have to remember that allot of these sales are from key retailers that will do stuff like buy keys wholesale. I'm not completely sure how that market works honestly, but that generates a lot of sales.
The case is really going to depend on David proving that Valve engaged in the alleged behavior. Games go on sale all the time, so there is a difference between a game being temporarily cheaper on one site because of a sale or key resell market demand, and valve using their influence to fix prices.
Isn't that what sale is with it being sporadic? Retail price is for people who can't wait for sales and need it now.
Not sure how retail price would be used. Permanent price drops are rare for pretty every purchasable good out there beyond digital games with companies saying something is X% off leading to more purchasing with consumers thinking they are getting a deal.
Publishers I believe are also the ones with power to fill the market with Steam keys to then have it priced however they want and including them in bundles that are sometimes less than the price of just the game alone during a sale. Some publishers opt to not make steam keys available at all.
As consumer it's just unusual to see accusations of price fixing, since I can so easily get steam keys for cheaper. And only times I usually go buy direct from Steam these days is if a company doesn't offer steam keys, so the only way to buy a steam copy is through steam. And prices for games feel like they've been so cheap that it's the one thing I have no complaints about.
What devs would like to do is push gamers to buy their games on platforms where they get a higher revenue cut. The logic is that 15 dollar game could be 12 dollars on GoG and a dev makes the same amount of money. The issue with this approach is the game theory doesn't work out for the customer - if a customer is willing to buy a game on steam for more money, than the dev has no reason to offer it on another store for less money when they actually have a higher cut of the revenue, and a higher incentive to price higher. There are non-price reasons a customer would like to buy on steam. Cloud syncing, integrity verification, easy steam deck client, and most importantly parity with the rest of their library. So it is very favorable to Valve as long as its the preferred place to buy games.
The issue is that while it is fair for steam to compete on service, it definitely is unfair for them to try to dictate to devs and publishers where they can sell their games and how they price them, especially if it isn't a part of their ToS. You don't get a steam key from GoG, and you aren't using Steam's servers. If Devs get more of the revenue, AND they were theoretically able to achieve more volume on GoG, why would you ever sell your game on steam and give up more revenue? Steam has to compete - which they claim they do, and David is alleging they don't in their suit.
The suit isn't about key reselling.