this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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For a good review of the MFN case: https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=sjteil
If you want to say nobody's allowed to have exclusivity deals, and nobody's allowed to set most favorite nation pricing, I'm all for that. Let's get that through the legislature
Let's say games can list on both epic and steam at the same price. Epic could take a smaller commission, and the developers could bundle extra content, features, DLC with the game on epic. There's a lot of room for innovation here
From a consumer protection point of view steam is saying you can't rip our customers off. I.e. guaranteed low pricing. Just like Costco
What? How is saying "You can't sell cheaper elsewhere" not ripping customers off and anti competitive?
Quite simple really. As a customer you know if you buy a game from this platform you're not getting ripped off with a higher price. Low price guarantee if you like
What?
That's completely ridiculous
"You're guaranteed to get the best price because the main platform prevents other from selling the same product for less."
No buddy, it just means Valve's influence leads to the same effect as a monopoly, they set the price for the whole market if people want to sell on their platform and their platform is the biggest so people want to sell on it.
If I open a store, and I tell people I promise you this is the lowest price in the market. I'm not doing disservice to my customers.
There's a difference between "this is the lowest price on the market" and "I get to decide what is the lowest price on the market"
In this situation, the person who created the product can't enter into an agreement with another platform to sell for less, it's not the best price possible, it's the best price Valve agreed to.
I think I see where our disconnect is coming from. In none of the documentation I've read does Valve have any opinion about what the price is going to be. That is completely up to the publisher.
Haven't been affected by it. Got games like Nioh 2 and a bunch of other games during the last humble bundle choice for less than what Nioh 2 has gone on sale for by itself.
And games frequently see sales before launch and after launch at prices that Steam won't see for months from places like Fanatical. Isthereanydeals provides historical data on it tracking prices of games from launch across various stores.
Regardless of the wording it hasn't affected sales leading to most of my Steam games having been purchased outside of steam, and those sales are ones steam doesn't get a cut of on top of that. Only steam purchases I usually make are ones where the publisher either doesn't bother making keys, or it's the only way to get the steam version of the game, or the rare occasion the it is actually the historical low on steam.