478
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

Noticed this update got pushed just now.

Edit: Seems they’re doing this to prevent costs from arbitration. Read comment below.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I thought the lawsuit was about overcharging, but what you just described would make sales available to more people?

[-] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It wouldn't make them available to more people, it would make deeper sales available to certain storefronts. Right now, Valve says that if you want to do business with them, and you offer a discount on another storefront, that same discount must be reflected in the Steam price when it sold for a discount on Steam. What the lawsuit says is that Publishers should be allowed to publish whatever discount they want on whatever site they want. That sounds like a better deal to consumers, but what it does is open the door for anti-competitive loss-leaders.

It's the same strategy that companies like Wal-Mart have employed to gain marketshare. They come in, sell everything at a loss to drive out competition, and then raise the prices to the same price the competition was charging. They haven't given the consumers a better option, they've only ensured that they don't have another choice. If you look at Valve and you look at Epic, you can easily see who has the deeper pockets: Valve is worth a little over $3 Billion from what I can tell, while Epic is worth over $40 Billion. If Epic wants to sell at a loss to drive Steam out of business, they can, easily. As a matter of fact, they've already tried this by offering the free weekly games that they do.

I'd wager that if this goes through and Steam loses, we'll see that free weekly game go away, and then large doorbuster sales of everything on the site just to undercut every steam sale as it happens. Where are you gonna buy that new game at? Steam where it's full price, or Epic where it's half price? What about the Steam Winter Sale? Will you buy the game for 80% off, or go over to Epic offering it at 90% off with a $10 coupon for another game on the site? Pretty soon you'll only be shopping on Epic, and once Steam is gone, Epic can charge whatever they want. It's the long game. They don't need to be profitable today. They just need to show their shareholders the path.

[-] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 2 months ago

Valve just doesn't allow cheaper prices from other storefronts if it's a steam key being sold, where valve is the one footing the bill for the server costs. There are games for sale on epic all the time that are better deals than what's on steam. But when you buy a game on epic, you're using epics servers/bandwidth.

[-] bassomitron@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

This is the correct interpretation and the crux of the matter in Valve's view. Why should they be forced to allow other retailers to sell Steam keys at whatever price they want, effectively taking money out of Valve's pockets, when it's Steam providing all of the actual services for said key to function?

This should not be confused with gray market key resellers, by the way (e.g. G2A, Kinguin, etc) . Those aren't the same as retailers like Fanatical or GreenManGaming.

There was another case in 2021 that originated this complaint and some of these plaintiffs in the 2024 case actually broke off from that one to start this one. We'll see what evidence they actually end up bringing to court to argue their case and how legitimate it is. All I know, is this will likely end up with Valve stopping third-parties from selling steam keys entirely.

[-] FlowVoid@lemmy.world -2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Why should they be forced to allow other retailers to sell Steam keys at whatever price they want

Because those other retailers already paid Steam for those keys.

If Steam doesn't want to compete against third party key retailers then the solution is not to sell keys to third party retailers. Once Steam takes their money, they have to accept the competition.

[-] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 months ago

Which is all that would happen if third parties decide they don't like the terms that valve and them agreed to.

[-] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

You could very well be right, I haven't read the full suit or done a lot of research on it, so I'm just going off the scraps I've read. I did check out isthereanydeal to look at price differences between Steam and Epic on some major titles, and all of them had even pricing. I don't have a huge sample size, so if you want to look for some that have different prices, I'd be interested to see how much difference there is, and if, say, the lowest price on Epic has had a Steam sale after it where the game was priced higher on Steam.

[-] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

Presumably Valve's lawyers can make this case, so I guess we'll see if the judge is receptive to it.

[-] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago

Yeah, on the other hand, I'm also an idiot, and I could be completely off with what I'm talking about. IANAL, so we'll have to wait and see.

this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
478 points (99.6% liked)

Steam Deck

15043 readers
143 users here now

A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.

Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.

As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title

The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.

Some more Steam Deck specific flairs:
[Boot Screen] - Custom boot screens/videos.
[Selling] - If you are selling your deck.

These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.

Rules:

Link to our Matrix Space

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS