Comment on New Steam Agreement gets rid of forced arbitration and waivers for class action lawsuits
bassomitron@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
They’re only doing this because of the class action being brought against them. It’s cheaper to let this go to court than to try and settle tens of thousands of individual arbitrations. In fact, there are plenty of companies now reversing course and realizing how badly forcing arbitration can backfire.
Ah that makes sense, it’s oddly suspicious they’d do this out of the blue. Though I am curious at the arbitration. Can they not include a clause that just says that the forced arbitration can be waived by them when they so choose? I feel like they would make carve outs for these big cases if they could to where they can still arbitrate on smaller cases which costs them less.
(Also updating my post text, thanks!)
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 weeks ago
It’s a little hard to square “steam is over charging for games” with “look at all these games I bought for 80% off ($5) off”, but I guess there’s more to it.
Daxter101@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
After a short read, the case is specifically “Steam is prohibiting developers from selling their games to other platforms, at a price lower than that of steam, and then pockets the 30% platform cost, due to effective monopoly power”.
Which, if true, is super bullshit.
Orygin@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
It’s false if I remember correctly. Steam prohibits you from selling steam keys outside the store for less than the price on steam. They don’t forbid you from selling cheaper elsewhere
cybersandwich@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
And that seems entirely reasonable to me. Unless I am missing something
Grenfur@lemmy.one 5 weeks ago
Its this one. And the reason is that if steam sells a game at $10 and humble sells you a steam key at $5, steam gets no profit and is 100% responsible for the bandwidth when you donlload it, for hosting the page, for the market, etc etc. Basically steam doesn’t want to assume all the work with none of the reward. Which I don’t really see an iissue with.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I think part of the issue is steam allows publishers to set region specific prices and lock users into a region.
You pay $89 for an annual subscription package, somebody in brazil pays equivalent to $32.58.
By definition it is discriminatory.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It’s actually kinda the opposite. It’s claiming that Valve makes deals with publishers that use Steam forcing them to maintain price parity with other storefronts. So, if you want to discount a game on something like Fanatical, you’d have to run the same discount on Steam, you can’t just have one or the other. I don’t want to put on the ol’ tin foil hat, but it reeks of Epic. Epic wants to run cheap sales through their storefront that Steam won’t get, so they can pull users away from Steam. If they both have the same discounts, then Epic can’t get the upper hand. That is complete conjecture on my part, but it fits with Epic’s shit strategies. Instead of making something that brings people to them, they want to kill off the competition through anti-competitive practices. It’s the same thing they are doing by signing exclusivity contracts with third-party developers.
sep@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Price parity with other store fronts is only for steam keys tho? Right? I think the publisher can charge whatever on the other store front if they use the other storefronts infra.
It is just when you in effect sells steam infra, (steam carry the cost) you have to have the same price on steam.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
Except that’s not really true. Or at least a half truth.
Steam prevents publishers from selling steam keys through other sites and means for less money. Publishers and other distributors are able to sell their games as cheap as they want anywhere they want. They just can’t sell it dirt cheap somewhere and then use valves steam program and bandwidth to download and play the game.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I thought the lawsuit was about overcharging, but what you just described would make sales available to more people?
jerakor@startrek.website 5 weeks ago
Discrimination only applies if the two parties are similar. In this case the location makes these parties dissimilar due to the inability to just go from one place to the other legally. Brazil gross national income is 1/3rd the US. It makes sense to price things at 1/3rd the US price.
Steam taking 30% is a better deal than any other form of media gets by a mile. It’s crazy folks complain when it is so easy to self distribute a video game, people have been doing it for years and years. Steam doesn’t even require you to sign up for exclusivity like basically every other distribution/marketing service does for all media including other video game services.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The game company can afford to sell digital goods and services to Brazil at a fraction of the cost and profit.
If they sold redeemable codes on cards and cardboard locally it would solve their issue.
They should have to offer any two people online the same price when they list things.
UnityDevice@startrek.website 5 weeks ago
You realise that if that were to be “fixed”, you wouldn’t end up paying the low price, Brazil would end up paying the high price. One they can’t afford because they make as much in a month as you do in a week, or worse.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
If that were to be “fixed” it would be “unethical.”