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That lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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It's kinda funny to read through this thread ngl.
Everyone claiming: "OH WOW PRICES WILL BE LOWER" or "OH MAN DEVS WILL PROFIT SO MUCH MORE!!!!!"
You know who profits? Publishers. The ones already taking 80 - 90% of a games revenue. Devs don't see shit of that. And for indie devs that don't have a publisher, the 30% cut is a godsend considering that steam is handling everything in the distribution chain.
You guys are fighting for corpos that want to buy their 5th luxury yacht.
People who genuinely believe game prices will get lowered if stores take a smaller cut are delusional. You can literally look at the Epic Game Store and see that it isn't even remotely true. The only games on there that are cheaper than on Steam are the ones Epic invested in specifically to entice developers/gamers to use their services. The ones that don't have exclusivity deals are the same as on Steam.
Edit: changed "take a cut" to "take a smaller cut".
Bingo. We even saw price increases on the EGS instead of reductions lmao.
People are coping so badly because they want to hate valve or something, idk. It's cringe beyond believe. Of all the shitty semi-monopolistic companies you could hate, valve is at the bottom of the list.
Tbf, any game that's on both steam and Epic Game Store will be priced the same, because anything other than steam having the lowest available price is against Steam's terms of service. You cannot be priced lower on another platform. GOG and a few others like it get around this by selling steam keys.
While that's in place, you definitely can not see prices go lower.
Nope, that's a misconception/misinformation. That's just for Steam Keys (i.e. you can't sell Steam Keys cheaper than on Steam). Everything else is fair game.
You are in the wrong here, Steam have a term where you can't mark the sale cheaper on any other place, including your own website as you can generate your product keys.
I constantly see people saying this.
Explain the pricing on virtually every non-Valve-published game on IsThereAnyDeal at any given time. Steam is almost always being undercut by another legit store selling legit Steam keys.
Except those are grey market keys and Valve can just take the game away from you once they detect it.
ITAD only lists retailers that are fully legit. No grey market.
Unless you can point us to that term, is it worth considering that you may be in the wrong here?
I've been searching for someone who can give me more than "yeah, but I saw someone say it online" for a while now... I've read the public facing docs and have found nothing that says you can't sell your game cheaper - though there is something that says you can't sell your free generated Steam keys cheaper without an equivalent deal on Steam ([here] (https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3)).
It's not even that strongly worded.
Even if there was a super secret policy, how do you think it is communicated to developers so they know not to do it?
Nope. This is, at best, a misconception. At worst, it’s an intentional misinterpretation. They have a term that prohibits the sale of Steam keys cheaper elsewhere. Game publishers are welcome to put their game up for sale on other sites for cheaper; They just can’t sell Steam keys cheaper. Basically, Steam wants to protect their own product keys from being undercut.
Ubisoft has their own storefront, and their own launcher. If you buy games on the Ubisoft Store, you get access to them via Ubisoft’s launcher, called Ubisoft Connect. Ubisoft is free to sell their games at whatever price they want on the Ubisoft Store, as long as they’re not granting access to the game as a Steam key. If you buy it on the Ubi Store and get access via Ubi Connect, then everything is fine. The only way it would be a breach of contract is if Ubi ran a sale on the Ubi Store, then gave players access via Steam. If you buy it cheaper than Steam on the Ubi Store, you won’t get a Steam key.
You can even sell DRM-free versions of your game for cheaper. As long as you’re not selling Steam keys, you’re fine.
It's a major part of the lawsuit itself.
http://blog.wolfire.com/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action
So before saying they are wrong, see what happens in the lawsuit alleging just that
I've joined one of the Steam Dev Days conference in Seattle. It's around time where people was still doing things like cross buy etc. (so buying the game on website unlocks both steam, dev's own drm free version, maybe even console version.) I do not know if any of the actual developer term is updated after that time, but during the conference, one dev asked question exactly like this, can he sell his version without the 30% cut from valve if it does not going through Steam while giving away the steam key for free. The answer is no.
During the time it was explained that if you sell on different platform, that gives better sale %, steam can also impost that sale % on it's platform. At the time EGS was still not a thing but people asked about can they have different price on different platform, I think the answer is also no or not recommended, as they can request you to match say the base price of itch.io but they don't mind if that sale and software never use anything from steam. They specifically mention if any steam feature, like invite steam friend is used, then no, even if your game are not downloaded or use any steam distribution feature.
To be fair, Gaben himself already has a ton of luxury yachts.
Taking money away from one billionaire and giving it to another billionaire is completely irrelevant.
Also, of all the billionaires we have, gaben is one of the few I like. Steam has brought linux gaming ahead like nobody else ever did before, and there was no profit incentive until the steam deck which was like 5 years after the first release of proton, and that's something I'm genuinely thankful for.
Valve had a Steam Machine before the Steam Deck which went down like a lead balloon but did get enough indie interest to continue to support a Linux version of the client. The Steam Deck is basically a continuation of that in a small form factor. I wouldn't be surprised if Valve ever decide to offer cloud gaming that it is also derives from some of these efforts, if for no other reason than to avoid a Windows license fee on the server.
The steam machine was good in concept, the problem was that the software was not ready at ALL and the market was too niche. Most people alrady had a PlayStation or XBox for couch gaming and most games back then that were available on steam were not that well optimized for controllers.
They basically built the foundation over the past few years with steam input and proton so they could bring it all together to make an amazing handheld device.
You gotta fail somewhere to be succesful, and valve did just that.
I think another problem with the Steam Machine was that it was still trying to be like a PC ecosystem, so there wasn't a universal Steam Machine. It was just a PC running a specific OS, and everyone who was making Steam Machines had wildly different builds. It didn't make it any easier for a non-tech consumer to get, and there was nothing to get excited about as a tech-minded person other than the software.
The Deck is a perfect entry level PC, and, aside from the added bonus of portability, should have been what a Steam Machine actually was.
you aren't wrong, but I don't even view them as failures so much as future investments.
Valve already does cloud gaming. It's called Steam Cloud Play (not to be confused with cloud saves) and they currently work exclusively with GeForce Now.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming
Agreed on Gaben. So what if he hasn't given us the third [pick game]. At least he hasn't gone out of his way to fuck over society for another penny.