Games

32570 readers

1525 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

Submissions have to be related to games
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No excessive self-promotion
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

253

Gearbox founder says Epic Games Store hopes were “misplaced or overly optimistic” (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

117 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nope, you are wrong, this is a common mistake that Epic keeps spreading as missinformation. Valve does NOT enforce price parity on other platforms, there are games that are sold cheaper on other stores, this is up to the publisher to decide, but most publishers find it easier to have the same price across the board. If this was true games that are exclusive on Epic would be cheaper until they come to Steam years later, but they aren't.

The mistake happens because there is one specific case in which Valve enforces price parity, but for this you need to know three things:

Valve gives away for free infinite steam keys to publishers
Those keys can be sold by the publisher elsewhere
If they do that the publisher keeps 100% of the revenue of that sale

That sale of that free steam key for which Valve is not charging anything is regulated and can't be sold cheaper than Steam on regular basis, it can be in a sale for cheaper, but the regular price must match Steam and if it goes on sale outside of Steam eventually it needs to do a similar sale on Steam (but not necessarily at the same time).

So one thing that's amazing that Valve does for people who publish their games with them is getting them hate because of Epic, please stop spreading missinformation.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nope, you are wrong

But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove 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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

In that link you have one person making a claim without any backing or evidence. Even if that did happen there are multiple possible explanations:

The email was not clear about the other stores not selling keys
The person who answered the email did not understand that they weren't talking about steam keys
The person answering the email doesn't know what they're talking about
Etc

And in that same link you have multiple persons in the comments describing the exact opposite experience providing the same amount of evidence, so if the text on that link is evidence that Valve does that, then the comments there are even more evidence that they don't.

If only there was a way of knowing... Well, they did say they opened a lawsuit, and those are public record so the email would be there since it's crucial to the case, without it they would have no case, right? Feel free to read the entire complaint here and you'll notice the email is suspiciously missing, their claims are that Valve wouldn't give them more keys to resell, which is directly opposite to what the blog claims.

I can do you one better, Overgrowth is a sequel to Lugaru, which is paid on Steam but free if you install via your package manager on Linux, therefore completely disproving the fact that Steam enforces price parity even for games from this company

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Um, I've read the complaint from top to bottom and it claims way more than just 'Valve wouldn't give them keys to resell' if they're not at the same price as on steam. It also claims Valve puts a 'Price Veto' clause which allows them to delist games from Steam if the publisher gives bigger sales on other platforms, even if they do not using steam keys, which does sound super uncompetitive to me.

Although I'll agree the evidence listed in the complaint seem a bit on the light side. Do you know if the trial happened yet? And if so, do you know where I can find what resolution they reached?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it does, but the only claim for which they present any evidence is the keys thing, showing a couple of screenshots.

I haven't read it all, but it seems that here is a ruling for most of the stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for the link! It helped putting things into proper nuance and context (indcluding throwing away that ridiculous notion that the 'Steam Store' and the 'Steam Gaming Platform' are two completly different things in different markets).

However, reading the whole thing, it sounds to me like while the court dismissed some of the claims (1 to 4 and 7 apparently), they agreed that Wolfire and the other plaitiffs had the right to 'plausibly allege unlawful conduct' about the 'Most-favored-nations restraints' (the part where Steam forces publishers to set prices on all stores without steam keys being involved) without mentioning anything more on the subject.

I'm not americain so I'm not sure if I understand correctly, but that means the ruling isn't over and it'll go into an appeal court, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I'm also not American (well, technically I'm, but you meant from the USA not from the American continent) but yeah, I think it's still ongoing, although I remember hearing a while back that Valve settled some case, not sure if this one (notice that settling doesn't mean admitting guilt or that they were going to lose, but sometimes it's just cheaper to settle than to keep defending yourself (the problem is that on the long run this sends a message that you're a good target).

Also I believe they would have won the claim that they don't enforce price parity just by pointing at the other game from Wolfire (Lugaru) which is paid on Steam and free outside of it, and Valve never did anything about it.