• Zorque@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    And yet they charge the same amount…

    Seems they use that as a way to get developers to join them, then guilt consumers into using their less useful platform.

    • Paradoxvoid@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      Ironically this is actually an example of Valve using its dominant marketshare to suppress rivals - Steam’s ToS require devs to have equivalent pricing across all storefronts if they want to sell on Steam at all, so making it harder for cheaper storefront cuts to translate to lower prices to consumers, who might otherwise move to a different storefront.

      Devs aren’t going to drop Steam as a store, so they’re stuck.

      • Aosih@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It’s not ideal, but I’d say the reason they require equivalent pricing is, so that people don’t just use Steam as a marketing platform, while diverting all sales to their personal website where they sell the game for $X cheaper.

        • Paradoxvoid@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          Yeah I do understand the reasoning and honestly can’t fault them for it - they are a for-profit company after all.

          Doesn’t mean that it’s not a good example of them throwing their weight around (which is admittedly rare).

        • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It’s a perfect example of them abusing their position in the market. But since you’re a valve cultist, you make up a bunch of weak excuses for it. If epic or ms did the same thing you’d blow a gasket.

        • DrQuint@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Plus, it only applies to base price, not sale price. If a platform states “you can have your game on sale 100% of the time”, and a game undercuts Steam that way, Steam wouldn’t do anything about it. Well, they wouldn’t have to anyways, it’s illegal to have goods on sale 100% of the time, but the point is there.

      • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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        1 year ago

        Do you have a source for that claim that doesn’t reference the sale of Steam keys specifically?

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.

          Ars Technica tries to spin it in favour of Steam, but if you read between the lines it is there:

          https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/

          • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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            1 year ago

            Thanks for sharing that!

            Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.

            IMO, it’s reasonable to say “If you want to sell Steam keys off Steam, you need to follow our pricing rules,” but it is not reasonable to say “If you want to sell your game, sans keys, off Steam, you have to follow our pricing rules to keep selling on Steam.” You’re talking about the former here, right? Or does that mean that the following situation is prohibited:

            • Your game is listed at $50 on Steam
            • You sell keys from your own site for $50
            • You sell your game directly from your site for $40

            and if so, that the mitigation is to either stop selling Steam keys entirely or to raise the price on your own site to $50?

            That’s somewhere in between the two but I dislike it. I suspect it’s more legally murky, too, like tied selling.

            The article briefly talks about the latter (emphasis mine):

            Wolfire’s David Rosen expanded on that accusation in a recent blog post, saying that Valve threatened to “remove [Wolfire’s game] Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website, without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.

            However, it also says “Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this ‘parity’ rule only applies to the ‘free’ Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn’t responded to a request for comment on this story.” I wonder if the lack of comment was because of Wolfire’s lawsuit?

            I’m also now curious if the reason for Steam saying that was related to the in-between situation I talked about above.

            @[email protected] shared this ArsTechnica article from 2022 that covers an update on that lawsuit - I haven’t seen anything more recent. In it, Wolfire makes the same claim, in court, that they’d already made in their blog post, which was sufficient to convince the judge to re-open their case.

            The ruling [to re-open the case] makes particular note of “a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].’” The amended suit also alleges that “this experience is not unique to Wolfire,” which could factor into the developer’s proposed class-action complaint.

            Hopefully we’ll hear more about that soon.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      The reason it’s the same price on Steam and Epic is that Steam prevents the sale on their platform if the game is sold for cheaper on other platforms…

      I would also gladly increase the developer’s profit instead of the platform’s profit if the price is the same on both as I don’t use all the extra crap that Steam comes with…

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Oh if you’re talking about exclusives then pricing is all over the place because they have exclusive in all categories (AAA to indie)…

          There’s also more than them in the balance to determine the price at which games sell, 2K games won’t sell the new Borderlands for 60$ while other AAA titles are selling for 70$, they still need to maximise profit and if the market has determined that 70$ is a fair price then so be it.

          Anyway I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want the devs to make more money so they’re able to produce more games instead of the launcher company making more money so they can develop “trading cards” as a way to make even more money.

      • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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        1 year ago

        Do you have a source for that claim that doesn’t reference the sale of Steam keys specifically?