Comment by blazera@kbin.social on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit

So is the allegation just that Steam is too successful?

Legit, I’ve never heard of anti-competetive practices from Valve. Anti-consumer? Sometimes, yeah, though they do a lot more right than most

The argument seems to be that “30% cut is too high” but it’s not like there aren’t other options if you think that’s too high. Epic loves to pay for games to be exclusive there, humble and gog exist, one could even go the retro route and set up their own website (though that’s prolly the dumb idea), itch.io comes to mind…

If Valve HAS done some shady shit to ensure their major market share I’d be down to hear it, but to me as a PC gamer since '10ish (and had PC gamer friends since 06) it seems they got there through being a not complete garbage heap of a company that actually improved over the years on user feedback, which is supposed to be the good example of capitalism innit?

Escape from Tarkov has been very successful with their own site and launcher. I don’t see it ever going to steam and it’s regularly in the top 10 of twitch

That’s like saying racism doesn’t exist because there are black people in power.

No, it’s saying if you make a good game and launcher then you don’t need to rely on one of the storefront that take 30% like epic or Valve. Idk what GoGs cut is but I’ve also never bought anything from there

It’s survivorship bias. You’re looking at the success of Tarkov but you don’t hear about all the games that failed because they weren’t on Steam.

Thousands fail every day on the platform as well, is that survivorship bias as well or just evidence that trash fails and quality succeeds regardless of location

humble

~~That’s who’s suing Valve here.~~

Edit: I’m wrong, they created Humble Bundle but haven’t owned it since 2017.

Is Wolfire Games associated with Humble at all or am I missing something?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure both are run by the same dude. He got butt hurt by valve’s cut about the time he started Humble Bundle.

Wolfire Games created the original Humble Indie Bundle, but they’ve been divested from it for a few years now. From Wikipedia:

The Humble Bundle concept was initially run by Wolfire Games in 2010, but by its second bundle, the Humble Bundle company was spun out to manage the promotion, payments, and distribution of the bundles. In October 2017, the company was acquired by Ziff Davis through its IGN Entertainment subsidiary.

The comment above that Humble’s the ones suing Valve here is inaccurate.

No, humble bundle isn’t run by them anymore. They haven’t been run by the wolfire guys since 2017. If I’m wrong and they are then I’m probably not buying anything from humble again.

You’re right and I’m wrong. I guess I’m out of touch - what did the Wolfire guys do since then that makes you dislike them?

Suing valve. Like, valve is the only company I’m okay with having the amount of marketshare they currently have. I’m legit worried that if they go too hard on the lawsuit, it could result in the monkey’s paw curling (“I wish valve didn’t have so much marketshare” “granted: steam has been spun off into its own company. Without steam, valve goes under and “steamcorp’s” new management goes public”)

monkey’s paw

nailed it, I completely agree in this one instance.

They’re heathens, obviously.

I think there was some cross-pollination for a couple years beyond that. Sounds like they sold Humble off to be its own thing, but the Wolfire guys were still running it until 2019 (see Wikipedia quote below). Either way, they’ve got out of Humble well before they filed this suit.

Rosen and Graham, the founders of Humble Bundle [and the CEO and COO, respectively, of Wolfire Games], announced in March 2019 that they have stepped down as CEO and COO of the company, respectively, with Alan Patmore taking over the company operations.

Taking a high cut is the opposite of anti-competitive, that makes it easier for competitors to offer a better deal

…unless you have a policy that requires other marketplaces to sell at the same price as on Steam, undercutting the ability for “better deals” to exist at all.

Which is what the lawsuit is actually arguing is going on.

a policy that requires other marketplaces to sell at the same price as on Steam

or what?

Steam has such a policy. Valve may remove any games from Steam which are sold on other marketplaces for less than they are on Steam.

Hah if 30% is deemed too much the apple app store and pretty much any retail is going to be next. Steam is popular because they don’t pull this nonsense. At 70% growth p/a why bother too

As a consumer, the worst days of Steam were in its early years. It took hours to download the HL2 day 1 patch. But those days are long behind us.

I think this should be admissible in court.

I’m also curious what the allegations are. The only ones I ever heard were from Epic, which was basically making a big fuss to promote their own competitive platform (which was so shit it didn’t gain any traction apart from the free games).

I’ve tried all the online stores ever since the cloudification (remember Impulse?) but none have ever been able to compete with Steam in terms of features and value to the customer. Steam didn’t get to the top by being anti competitive, it got there by being competitive and offering a better product to all stakeholders, not just to shareholders.

And as you mentioned, there is plenty of competition for Steam. Don’t like the monoply? Get it on GOG or Itch instead.

You can read the complaint in full here.

Edit: Updated with a more recent version.

Valve devotes only a small percentage of its revenue to maintaining and improving the Steam Store, and dedicates very few employees to that effort.

Okay yeah I was annoyed that it took Epic’s store to make Valve update their ancient UI, but Proton has gone a long way to improving my opinion of them (and it’s open source to boot).

Also is a shame that the court won’t have the background to know that invoking EA’s complaints about anti-competitiveness and price gouging is so completely laughable.

Thanks. So TLDR:

PMFN (Platform Most-Favored-Nations clause): Valve forces publishers to price games on other platforms at the same price or higher than Steam. This is an anticompetitive monopoly because publishers can’t sell the game at lower prices on platforms with a lower cut than 30%, which would improve competitiveness. Very valid point
Keys that publishers can sell on other storefronts are limited. This point is moot. The fact that Steam allows you to activate a product that was purchased elsewhere and then use their infrastructure to download the game is way more than they have to do. They can completely make the rules here as this is basically a free service that you get from Valve.
Some murky points about Valve policing review bombing that isn’t explained properly.

If 30% we’re too high, surely just by offering a competitor that takes a lot less if a cut (say, 12,%), developers would flock to thst competitor because it saves them so much money, right?

Right, Sweeney?

People don’t buy games on the competitors, but yes may developers did flock to epic, which made everyone hate epic.

Eh, more like Epic approached them with a suitcase full of money, that’s very different.

Not even just that. They approached games that has already promised not to be exclusives, including kickstarter games that had already been funded with that promise, as well as buying games and removing them from other stores.

They were paying to have the games removed from better stores so they wouldn’t have to compete. That is an example of anti-competitive practices, not just making a better product and charging more for it.

People don’t hate on Epic because their store has content. They hate on Epic because they tried to buy market share with exclusivity deals. Nobody wants PC gaming to turn into the streaming services.

yeah, i think the 30% is fair enough, given the amount of stuff you get as a user by using steam, like

good cross-platform support
a working friendlist and chat system
remote play together
the workshop and community features
profile customisation stuff for those that like it
whishlists and gifts

i honestly feel like while they’re a monopoly, they don’t do anything other companies can’t do, their cut goes to fund features others simply don’t provide, so it’s entierly fair for them to be more expensive than the competition

a working shopping cart

To be honest Epic now has a shopping cart… After almost 5 years of wait, mind you.

Valve hasn’t done anything shady, but monopolies are still bad and unhealthy. Both things are true. And there are no other options for less of a cut if you want to actually make sales, pc gamers won’t purchase from other platforms.

Monopolies are bad, but is it a monopoly if they naturally gained market share because their product was first and better?

Honestly I’d be fine with them removing the “PMFN” clause, but I’d rather it be a law that it can’t be enforced because you know Valve isn’t the only one to include it. But even if they did get rid of it, I don’t think they’d see a major shift away from their platform.

Yes, it’s unhealthy for the undustry even if you enjoy it today. Gabe newel is old. He’s going to retire soon and likely sell the company. You won’t like what happens after that, and the fact that so much of the industry is provided via their product means they have a lot of agency to tighten the screws.

“OH but then we’ll just use something else”. That’s not how the monopoly works, you might, most won’t. Most of what you want won’t be on the something else.

Yes. Yes it is. It doesnot matter how a monopoly was created. It’s the definition of a current market state, not behaviour.

In many countries it although does not have be a true monopoly (aka a single object), but a undisputed, sizeable market portion.

They’ve had some shady situations, but they tend to walk them back when we lose our shit.

Yes. They sued Valve with allegation that they are too successful by providing good service. Sure 30% is too much for some developers, but solution is quite simple… don’t sell on Steam. Problem solved. Go to Epic, GoG, bunch of others. Hell every company now has its own launcher and store.

Nah, it’s mean old valve making it so people aren’t flocking to publish their games on UPlay.

What’s saddest of all is the fact they are willing to throw millions on this litigation instead of spending that money on improving the service. They claim it’s for the good of all users, but their actions tell different story.

Or even just make it more expensive on steam, if you really want 100% of the revenue for every sale. Pass the cost of using steam on to the user and offer the game on other (worse) markets at a markdown.

There could be a clause in terms of use that Steam won’t allow developers to make their games most expensive on Steam, or at least cheaper than elsewhere.

Developers already do that fairly often. Typically indie devs. They will sell their game directly for lower prices than listed on steam.

Pretty much. Meanwhile other stores engage in actual behaviour that deserves an anti-trust lawsuit like buying up developer studio’s and making their games exclusive to their own platforms. Or paying devs to make games exclusive to their store temporarily. You know, things that actually screw the consumer over.

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