Blame the gray resellers. If the world courts had found those sites illegal, then devs could likely still set regional prices without having 90% of them getting resold to the outside world.
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
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
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
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.
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”)
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.
…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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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
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. 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.
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.
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.
Lmao Valve made a service so good at what it does, it’s fucking over all these other business ghouls like Tim Sweemey who are actively trying to dominate the market without actually competing; just look at Epic’s store, it’s d o g s h i t. They give out free games and still no one I know wants to use it. It’s the same across the board, these companies do not want to make good services, they want to legally strongarm the consumer.
I’ll tell you a secret) nowadays ALMOST all corporations regardless of what they make business into wanna strongarm the consumer, for quick example look up denuvo and baldurs gate, if product is good then people will buy and denuvo won’t be needed
GOG has shown that drms are never needed. More often than not, denuvo causes issues to the player, and gets bypassed by a pirate easily. It is simply there because gamedev companies think they get something out of it, when in reality they don’t.
Yeah. I don’t even know that much about the whole thing, just what I learned when going to look for a game a while back, and even from that little it was like, wtf is with this person?
this is very true, its not like they saying no to other stores like apple for example, they just cant compete so they sue instead, really show how pathetic they are.
I recently got Alan wake 2 on EGS because I’m a huge Remedy head and huge fan of the first game and couldn’t contain my excitement to wait for a steam release and potentially see spoilers, and damn dude that store really is the most bare bones half assed thing ever. Even EAs store on their launcher is nicer.
They’ll never release HL3. They are not a developer anymore. They are just a game store/directory. HL3 has been overhyped so much that anything released would be a disappointment. The gaming market has changed too much from when they made a game engine and released half life to showcase that game engine.
I can probably list a million more reasons why they’ll never release, but those are the big points.
Half-life Alyx was HL3, just it was better to name it not HL3, because fans would lose their minds.
On the one hand, yeah. On the other hand, HL:A ended with an obvious sequel hook, and that hook was the ending of HL2:E2. Spoilers, I guess, but the game’s been out for a while.
Of course, that doesn’t mean another game is coming, but it does mean that HL:A doesn’t mean another game isn’t coming, either.
For those being happy that valve is in this position, don’t. Any company that gets into a monopoly position, accidentally or not, will turn. Google too had “do no evil” in their manifest, until they didn’t
While I agree, it is important to note that Valve is a private company. When you don’t have to please shareholders and do absolutely everything to increase revenue, there is possibility for a level-headed leader that keeps the company customer friendly.
But if anything changes (greed takes over or leadership changes), it could still turn.
Valve is a private company right now. But Gaben is 61 and it goes without saying that Valve is at the top of every predatory tech capitalist’s wishlist. Can you even imagine what Microsoft or Google or Meta would pay for Valve? Steam is great, but that probably won’t last forever. GOG is waiting in the wings if Steam ever becomes enshittified, but most of your library cannot be transferred over.
Yeah. I don’t have a lot of negative things to say about Steam, and there’s a lot of high-value stuff. The mod workshop is great. Linux support is top-tier. There’s a lot of good stuff. The only major bad thing from my point of view is lock-in. Having a vast library of games tied to one account isn’t great. And having publishers and mod-makers etc essentially forced to rely on that platform is not good. Steam itself is good - but consolidation of power is generally a bad thing.
For that reason, most of my new games have been coming from GOG over the last couple of years. GOG’s DRM free policy means there’s basically no lock-in effect. That’s a major strength, even if some of their other features aren’t as strong as Steam.
I have mixed feelings on GOG. I want to like them, but the lack of Linux support is a real thorn in my side… Having DRM free stuff is great and I’d love if more games had DRM free versions, but currently steam actually supports me and GOG wants to pretend I don’t exist… And realistically, I’m not totally sold on GOGs promise of always having access to your games… If GOG explodes you’re probably going to lose access to your games too? I mean, of course it’s easier to archive a game for yourself if it doesn’t have DRM, but unless you do that religiously for each game on GOG you won’t be able to acquire them after GOG hypothetically explodes either… Hopefully you get enough warning to archive what you care about, I guess?
I do totally respect that DRM free copies can make a big difference but everybody argues that GOG means you’ll always have access to your games, and I’m not sure it’s substantially different than steam in that respect for “normal” people, you know? If either store kicks the bucket people are going to be out of luck. I kind of just want to throw Steam and GOG in a closest until they make out, though. Would be nice to get the best of both worlds.
Where did this rumor come from? Private companies have shareholders, too, and they have as much say in the profit direction of the company as the shareholders of any public company.
You’re not wrong, but shareholders look at their investment very differently than stockholders. Private shareholders can’t necessarily cash out whenever they want because the sale of private equity is usually tightly controlled by the company. This means they need to be interested in long-term growth and success. While public stockholders can also hold their shares for a long time, there’s much more ability and incentive to buy and sell quickly to make a quick profit.
Anecdotally, I worked for a publicly traded company for 6 years before they got bought and taken private by a private equity group. The way profitability and trends are measured is night and day. As a public company, everything was hyper focused on quarter by quarter results. One underperforming quarter meant a tank in stock prices, hiring freezes, and a general sentiment to the employees of “quit spending money on expenses if you want to have a job next quarter”. Being controlled by private equity, they’re most concerned with year over year growth and the long-term stability of our operations.
Valve has been the market leader for years and still hasn’t let the consumer down. Their business strategy comes down to offering us the best possible service. Meanwhile crappy stores like Epic Games try to lure you in with free games and timed exclusives and I still gave up on their featureless mess of a platform.
Gaben will then slowly drop his head and whisper into the microphone with a wry chuckle - “You fool. You have just activated my trap card.”
Immediately, the Half Life 3 release will drop. Gaben has been holding it back, continuously updating for decades, awaiting exactly this moment. The judge, completely flabbergasted at the proceedings will immediately declare a mistrial. Legal scholars will then study the “Gaben defense” for decades.
Forget HL3; where’s HL2: Episode 3? I wanna know what the fuck happened to that garden gnome I carried all the way from the beginning to the rocket at the end.
If this happened I think Gabe would just say “it’s not happening, not at least the way you all want” and then we get some half life cyberchip augmented reality game in another 15 years (it is good though)
Outdoors with proximity to 1-3 other people, where he can move at will and distance himself vs indoors, courtroom full of people and he’s sitting while people move around. Probably not the same. If the guy has risk factors for developing complications with COVID, which we can see he has one which is being overweight, I don’t think it’s reasonable for the court to force him to attend when he could attend remotely.
He was mere feet away from total strangers who may or may not have been masked when he opened the door (taking the video at face value, and assuming he didn’t send the production team up there to tell the residents to mask up first). Much more dangerous than a courtoom of people with N95s on, none of whom he would need to get as close to as he did for those Deck deliveries.
Interacting with maybe a dozen people outside with a mask on for a few minutes at a time is almost certainly much lower risk than being in a courtroom with, likely, many more people and stale air for hours. It’s certainly helpful if everybody is masked up in the courtroom, but people are notoriously bad at wearing masks properly, they’re going to require Gabe Newell to unmask for questions, and there’s a lot more factors you don’t control in that scenario… outside delivering stuff you can always walk away if somebody isn’t giving you the space you’re comfortable with… Regardless, all risk is cumulative and you may want to limit the number of times you do higher risk things as much as possible. Even if you rarely do some riskier things, it doesn’t mean you’re okay with that level of risk all of the time. I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to want to manage and minimize your exposure if you’re high risk.
Going door to door in fresh air is something else than sitting in a room with lots of other people and “you’ll be fine” is an insane argument. You’ll be fine until you aren’t. Every person should be able to make that risk assessment for themselves and courts should not be able to force someone to risk exposure to anything.
It amazes me that covidiots still don't understand the difference between inside and outside spaces for that matter. If people breath and cough around the outside, shit will just be swept away by the wind. If people do that in enclosed spaces, then they'll just start to saturate the air with germs over its prolonged time. And then you even expect them to take off the mask when they're in the witness stand? Do you think that's like a germ free zone? lol
My family refers to vaxxed people as covidiots. So I tend to associate it with antivax people. I will accept my negative number either way. Apologies for the confusion.
I wouldn’t say I’m hurt. More embarrassed that I accepted a definition without further scrutiny.
My philosophy is to always be learning. Sometimes trauma impedes it and a wake up call is necessary. So I appreciate your time and thoughtful response and will take this lesson as an opportunity to do better for myself.
I wasn’t strictly talking about the definition of covidiot, I was referring to the virus’ transmissibility; indoors vs outdoors.
There has been a lot of misinformation during covid, from both sides, and virtually everyone needs to accept that they were wrong about certain things.
For example, I was forced to change my mind about the safety of the vaccine. I still personally believe most people should have been vaccinated, but we need to accept that it didn’t do what was expected.
At the end of the day, Covid is a respiratory virus, and the consensus of indoors vs outdoors transmissibility had been reached decades ago.
I appreciated the measured response, it’s rare to see people sincerely reflect on their beliefs so quickly without feeling condescended.
Others have explained to you why it’s different, and that that happened 2 years ago and a lot of things health related can change in that time. But even if he had done that yesterday, even if it was the same, he should be able to choose to attend remotely, he’s not asking to be excused, he’s not asking to change anything, all he’s asking is to be able to do it from his home, and I wouldn’t deny that to anyone unless there’s a reason to be physically there, which there isn’t.
Yeah, I don’t really think anybody should have to go to court in person, and I can definitely empathize with somebody wanting to avoid COVID (even if they’re not super high risk, you never know how it will affect you it seems). I kind of understand the bias towards in person things, but I really wish people would get over it. Sometimes it’s just a lot more practical to do things remotely, and while a video call isn’t quite the same as being there in person I think it’s something we can deal with. It certainly doesn’t seem like it would be that much worse for testifying tbh.
I mean, yeah, if you drop those two as the alternative, every time, fuck those guys every day and twice on sunday. But… Gaben’s got a very different record.
I’m of the opinion that he should have to testify like anyone else just to preclude Trump and their ilk from trying to get out of testifying in person.
Court is boring AF, he’s just using covid for an excuse to avoid having to go. I can’t really blame him for trying, but I’m not surprised it didn’t work.
Actually no, I’d let the science speak for itself. Being outdoors with a mask on significantly reduces your chances of contracting COVID-19. Being in a crowded room with lots of other people significantly increases your risk. Gabe is right, just like any other CEO would be right if they said the same thing.
Is this why they were giving away all free steam keys on 4chan yesterday? I thought it was just Black Friday deals, shoulda known those anons don’t do anything for the sake of being nice.
What monopoly? If I have to choose between GOG, Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Rockstar, EA, and others I am going with the least user-hostile, and the one that has Linux support.
Steam is the only one that actually cares about the quality of a service, so maybe look at that instead of crying monopoly.
I can see why Steam seems to have a monopoly on PC gaming. Pretty much everybody uses Steam as a launcher and store, and Valve has seen success with the Steam Deck so thats the hardware field also covered. They even managed to upset Nintendo when the Switch emulator was showcased lol.
A good size of the fanbase are also massive Valve fanboys, so there is a lot of brand loyalty, making the service have a larger presence than others.
At the end of the day, the fact remains is that there are other storefronts, launchers, and Valve has even opened up the Steam Deck’s specs and OS. Theres like, no monopoly there. I hope the parent commenter can eventually see that.
How would they even break up Steam? Separate their software and hardware development from the store? Can’t imagine that making any real impact on their practices.
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