PC Gaming

In his blog, David claimed that steam reps were threatening to pull his game if he listed lower on other stores.

Feel like that is never actually enforced with my frequent use of isthereanydeals to check current and historical pricing before buying a game.

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/riskofrainreturns/info/

Right. Valve is claiming they didn't, and that they only demand price parity for steam keys. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Honestly, I am not sure what game valve would play to do this. Devs could just make a red and green version of their game to sell on different platforms and price them differently. Meanwhile, to customers, a games price is a games price and developer publisher and distributor are always incentivized to find the highest price a customer is willing to pay through game theory. The market has definitely proven that customers don't care about what percentage of the cut goes to devs. So there is no incentive for anyone to post a game at a lower price than what a customer is wiling to pay on steam as long as steam retains the highest volume. Telling devs to not price the way they want seems very counter productive to being a good retailer, so who knows.

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/

It will be interesting to watch the suit unfold. David is claiming that Valve de-facto forces the pricing through the threat of de-listing on steam. So he will need to prove it. We don't see many games sell below steam price, but I do think that there is kind of an incentive for devs to have one consistent price across all retailers. At the end of the day, there is a price customers are willing to pay for a given game, and you don't want to lower it on the platform that give you a higher cut of revenue. It's why it would kind of be silly for Valve to engage in this price fixing behavior, but there are plenty of instances where for-profit companies and employees do silly (and illegal) things, so we will see as this case plays out.

The only way steam falls off is if another store beats them on volume, which also means provides a better customer experience than steam. It's a really tall order - how do you get people to move to your game libary management sytem? The only real way is to have an exclusive game that players can't get on steam. That is the core of EGS - the place where you play fortnite. EGS actually makes a lot of sense as long as epic making the hottest game on earth. Half Life 2 was essentially why Valve was able to launch Steam. The issue is that Fortnite is on the decline and EGS just loses money. I don't know how you make enough money to outdo Valve in the near term.

Steam's hardware survey gathers a narrow set of hardware info, shows you what it finds, and asks permission before sending. It is completely ~~transparent~~ forthcoming and optional. That is not hoovering up your data.

At least the hardware survey is voluntary.

Well that sucks

Free being the only other option.

An entire third, or zero. Other numbers don't exist. Valve obviously needs every cent they take, to do the bare minimum you smugly rub in my face, as though I've never even heard of their service. All that value just goes right back to the game-makers! Aaand all the hardware research and development they do for themselves but nevermind that.

And I guess GOG is a clear counterexample of your own point but uhhhhhh smokebomb!