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Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit

I was under the impression that the policy required a game’s price to be the same on all marketplaces, even if it’s not a steam key being purchased. I.e. a $60 game on steam must sell for $60 off-platform, including on the publisher’s own launcher.

I just went to double check my interpretation, but the case brief by Mason LLP’s site doesn’t really specify.

If it only applies to steam keys, as you say, then I agree they don’t really have a case since it’s Steam that must supply distribution and other services.

But, if the policy applies to independent marketplaces, then it should be obvious that it is anticompetitive. The price on every platform is driven up to compensate for Steam’s 30% fees, even if that particular platform doesn’t attempt to provide services equivalent to Steam.

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Rose@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
According to a Valve quote from the complaint (p. 55), it applies to everything:

In response to one inquiry from a game publisher, in another example, Valve explained: “We basically see any selling of the game on PC, Steam key or not, as a part of the same shared PC market- so even if you weren’t using Steam keys, we’d just choose to stop selling a game if it was always running discounts of 75% off on one store but 50% off on ours. . . .”

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- Excrubulent@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Wow, that’s some good research! I’ll edit my comment about this, I don’t think my glowing description of their policy should stand without this info.
  
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- Spedwell@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thanks, that clears it up. So yeah, I think Wolfire has a case to make, then.
  
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  - Maalus@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Does it though? It seems like Valve is targetting the fact, that you can’t run the same game on a different platform for different amounts. So if Valve gets 30%, and some other store gets less, then they ask you to not run it cheaper. I.e. you can’t sell on both stores for $40, and then set a permanent -30% sale there.
    
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    spark947@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What right does valve have to discriminate against devs and publishers who are selling their game on other platforms? They have to compete for their business, not punish them for having a game that is more successful on another store that gives a higher revenue cut to the dev and a lower price to the customer.
    
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    Spedwell@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes, that is problematic. Not by itself, but coupled with a large captive userbase it is. As an example:
    
    Let’s say you want to start a game marketplace, which simply runs a storefront and content distribution—you specifically don’t want to run a workshop, friends network, video streaming, or peer multiplayer. Because you don’t offer these other services, you keep costs down, and can charge a 5% fee instead of a 30%.
    
    With Steam’s policy, publishers may choose to:
    
    List on your platform at $45, and forego the userbase of Steam
    
    List on Steam and your platform at $60, and forego the reduced costs your platform could offer
    
    Obviously, pricing is much more sophisticated than this. You’d have to account for change in sales volume and all. Point is, though, that publishers (and consumers!) cannot take advantage of alternate services that offer fewer services at lower cost.
    
    The question the court has to answer is whether the userbase/market share captured by Steam causes choice (2) to be de-facto necessary for a game to succeed commercially. If so, then the policy would be the misuse of market dominance to stifle competition.
    
    And I think Wolfire might be able to successfully argue that.
    
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MrSqueezles@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is kind of necessary. You could open a store just selling Steam keys. You get Steam’s software distribution, installed user base, networking for free and pay nothing to them. Steam is selling all of those services for a 30% cut. Since your overhead is $0, you can take just a 1% fee and still turn a profit because Valve is covering 99% of your costs.

Steam could disable keys or start charging fees for them. As long as they’re being this ridiculously generous and permitting publishers to have them for free, some limitation makes sense.

I’m dubious, though. There must be a provision for promotional pricing. I’ve definitely bought keys for less than Steam prices.

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- Spedwell@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  As I said, Steam would be in their rights to enforce that pricing policy for Steam keys, because they provide distribution and platform services for that product after it sells.
  
  But as @Rose clarified, it applies to not just Steam keys, but any game copy sold and distributed by an independent platform. Steam should not have any legitimate claim to determining the pricing within another platform.
  
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spark947@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
David said in a blog post that the suit is specifically alleging price fixing tactics for other platforms that aren’t key sellers, but sell the whole game. Whether that holds up in court - we will see.

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