Are you joking? I’ve saved thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, by waiting for Steam Sales and buying games at a reasonable price for me(I’m poor) rather than paying $60 a game. Nobody else does this(When was the last time Nintendo put Mario Kart on sale?)
The statement “Steam overcharges gamers” is self-defeating and hilarious.
Totally agree, steam is one the big players that stills offers a quality service both for consumers and for developers
Maybe this lawsuit is founded by this dodgy lawyer group on behalf of a competitor under the table, who is pissed at exactly the fact steam sales are too generous and others cannot compete
Would said competitor be the one who successfully trained their users to only look at their store once a week for a free game or two then close the store again? 😉
I recently got my first current-gen game console a couple of years ago (Nintendo switch) and was floored at how expensive all of the games are and how meager the sales are. PC gaming is shockingly cheap when you get down to it
Right?! Having moved off of consoles entirely this generation, I’ve hoovered up amazing games during the countless Steam sales at prices CEX can’t even beat.
I hope this gets thrown out as hogwash.
Can we not go after one of the few good guys in gaming? Please? If you want to hound someone Nintendo is right over there.
No. It's easier to go after the "good guys" than the bad guys because they're easier to beat. They won't use all kinds of slimy, underhanded tactics to fuck you over.
Edit: I don't approve of the lawsuit against valve, but that's the way of the world. Scummy companies and people have many tools they can use to drag you down to their level.
"Charges 30% fee" "That's too high! You're ripping us off"
"Charges 10% fee" "That's too low! No other platforms could hope to compete against you with that!"
This is nothing but people bitching about nothing for the price gouging. I will give merit to the anti competitive nature if game makers aren't allowed to have their games listed for less at other stores. As far as add on game packages locking you in goes....that might be a technical minefield to ensure compatibility.
Conspiracy theory here...
Maybe this is an initiative by competing platforms? Epic? Ubisoft?
Stir some shit, hope to get valve in legal issues so that they're legally forced to become less competitive and therefore creating a chance for these other platforms?
Of course it is.
All those large online action/claim sites are commercial in underlying nature. When you saw all the small farmers protest in Germany it was primarily driven as an action by about 5 large farming conglomerates because they are the ones getting ~85% of the grant money that was being cut. The whole point of the cut was to not funnel money that was supposed to go to small farmers to large megacorps after all. Who in turn instrumentalized the small farmers to protest it.
Probably what's going on here, too. You can bet somewhere deep deep down, this is something Tim Sweeney cooked up.
This lawsuit build on a false premise. Steam doesnt have a price parity clause for other stores. What this lawsuit alleges applies to Steam keys that the developer generates through Steam. If the developer lists those keys for sale at a price lower than what the game is listed for on Steam, then the price of the Steam Store purchase price must match it, so that people visiting the store page on Steam get the same discount. It doesn't matter if you list your game on GOG and discount it there.
Its literally helping players.
How can this be? All the games I buy on Steam are cheaper than on other platforms. Where are these cheaper games?
I think that is the main point of the lawsuit, if developers sell their game on Steam they can't sell it cheaper somewhere else. If Value gets 30% the developer has to raise the price a bit to compensate and they have to raise it everywhere. Outside of sales I don't think most games that are not on Steam are much cheaper elsewhere, so not sure how this plays out.
So don't sell the game on Steam? Either the huge boost in visibility is worth a 30% cut or it's not.
As far as I know, this only applies to Steam keys: developers are allowed to generate Steam keys for free to sell on their website (Valve does not get 30% of these sales either) with the restriction being they cannot be cheaper than the price on Steam
I don't think there's ever actually been any proof that Valve disallows selling games for cheaper elsewhere as long as you're not selling those freely generated Steam keys
Smells like a smear campaign. Some idiots try to get some fake-ass grass roots movement going.
Bold move, let‘s see how it plays out for them.
Sue Meta or Google instead geez
Tim Sweeney, is this you?
I'll reiterate here that I think it would be funny to see steam actually lowering their cut to 20-10% or something and the mass migrations of developers from other competing stores to steam, and finally making the other store even more insignificant. That's what they want isn't it? And even more funny when after the changes are applied there is no difference in price because after all, publishers get more money for free, why should they lower their profit? If anything, when the policy is reversed/back to when it was, we will only see an increase in game price lol.
Why is the 30% publishing cut of dev sales thing even part of a CLA of players? It literally doesn't affect them.
My favorite recent example:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1493640/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/ (50 EUR)
https://www.playstation.com/de-de/games/banishers-ghosts-of-new-eden/ (60 EUR)
PS5 game on sale did cost 2 EUR less than the regular price on Steam. I don't think Steam overcharges me. It's not like the game is cheaper somewhere else on PC either: https://store.epicgames.com/de/p/banishers-ghosts-of-new-eden-f9e3f2?lang=de (50 EUR)
What a load of rubbish.
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