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Steam owner Valve accused of ripping off 14m UK gamers
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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Steam very much makes that 30% worthwhile with the support and features they provide for free. They can't be forced to host games, prices are set by publishers/devs, steam takes 0% of steam key sales.
The price parity is the part that might be argued, but I doubt it will go far. I'm not seeing very good arguments for this being anti-consumer, which is the key point.
I think 'anti competitive' is here framed as 'anti consumer'
This rule ensures that Steam doesn't have to compete with their 30% cut. If competitor was selling a game for 5$ cheaper, many consumers would rather buy it from that competitor instead, potentially forcing Steam to lower their 30% cut.
Now Steam at the moment is very good for us gamers, but it should not be taken for granted and can change in future.
Except it's bogus, Steam doesn't require price parity UNLESS you sell a steam key, so as long as you don't want your customers to have the game on Steam you can sell it for cheaper than on Steam.
I had gifted a game while there was a sale but the person i gifted it to never got on their pc within the next month so i just got refunded and they never got the game. I complained that i still want them to have the game and they essentially just said that i need to now pay full price or suck it. They just didn't seem to understand that this was an issue at all and were just fobbing me off. I guess technically since i didn't lose money it's not the worst thing. But it's massively annoying because we were about to play that game together until we realised they never received it due to this so to me it felt very anti consumer.
That's a fair argument and a decent case, but not one that strongly backs an anti-competition legal action.
True on the legal front but just wanted to share my anectode on how they're not always the best for customers because usually you just see the good stuff when it comes to steam and valve