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.
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.
That is only true specifically for Steam keys and is a very important distinction. You can't sell your game cheaper with your free Steam keys on another store cheaper than Steam without giving Steam customers the same discount within a 'reasonable amount of time'.
Publishers/Developers are free to undercut Steam with non-Steam keys on other stores.
It's OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
I wonder what would be said if isthereanydeals is pulled up as evidence, and shows games listed cheaper than steam on other stores. Pretty much reason a majority of my Steam games have been bought outside of the Steam stores, since I'm able to consistently get the games cheaper with better earlier discounts.
Is it listed retail price that is being talked about as opposed to sale price?
I don’t really know how I feel about steam or valve. I’m kind of nervous about how dominant they are… like it would really suck if they suddenly disappeared or started acting more maliciously. I get why people like the promises from GOG and stuff. But that said… Valve and Steam do so much good stuff and I really respect all of the Linux work they’ve done. I don’t really trust them long term, but they seem to currently be in the position where open platforms benefit them and they’re leaning into that… and that’s actually really cool.
Honestly, the fact that the steam deck isn’t locked down and you can install games from other sources, or even blow away the operating system and put windows on it is kind of incredible and I’m really glad they’ve done things like that. I’m not sure how relevant it would be to these lawsuits, but I feel like the lack of a walled garden gives them a significant brownie point for me. I hope they keep doing awesome stuff like this and don’t completely squander any good will I have towards them.
Regardless, I hope small developers can get a better cut on steam in the future… 30% seems pretty steep. It’s probably worth it for the value that steam adds, but I could see it being juuuust enough that some small game developers can’t quite eek out a living on a niche game.
Steam has a pretty sustainable business model but If steam goes evil, their first step will be going public, until then they can continue making long term decisions. Them going public will be a long enough run way for me to move off the platform at least.
What worries me is gamepass, which is definitely trying to trap users right now, eating steams lunch. They will definitely become complete shit, that's their whole business model.
I mean, the launcher part of the argument hardly matters anyway. Launchers aren't required to sell games. Its the storefront that matters, but in terms of having an online software store, Valve isn't even that dominant. Even limitting it to just selling games on Windows, while yes, Steam is the go-to, Microsoft (or prehaps more significantly Mojang), Riot games, Blizzard, and Roblox are all massive games that have their own stores (and launchers for that matter). There are also numerous other smaller games with their own pages, and more generalized storefronts that don't require the use of Valve's storefront or launcher such as Itch.io, Humble (they don't just sell Steam Keys), and GOG.
Even before Origin, EA offered online sales with their EA Downloader app and it was a freaking nightmare. Terrible speeds, and you could only download a game so many times, and any purchases didn't transfer to Origin.
You can leave “share email with (company that owns game you’re buying)” unchecked at checkout
Games on Epic are by default DRM free but game companies can turn DRM on, unfortunately it doesn’t tell you prior to buying the game if you can play it without the launcher or not
Edit: people can correct me instead of downvoting but you should also look at using heroic games launcher. I’m not sure but it should help hide your data
I don't mind their market position. I do mind them taking an entire third of revenue, straight off the top. That's bullshit enough when console manufacturers do it - and they claim that's to subsidize the hardware platform that they built and control.
They offer a hell of a lot more per dollar for their 30% (which isn't actually 30%, and increases your sales volume by way more than enough to make up the difference) than Epic does for their cut.
Do you believe it’s free to host downloads, support matchmaking services, and the near endless other services steam provides? Or did considering why other online gaming retail platforms (besides GOG we love GOG) suck major ass just skip your mind?