Bloomberg cites two high-profile cases referenced in the ongoing lawsuit, one involving Ubisoft, and another Warner Bros.
First of all, I trust Ubi and WB way less than valve.
Valve allegedly threatened to delist all editions of Rainbow Six Siege after Ubisoft offered a cheaper option on its Uplay store.
Yeah.
Because it violates their policy. That’s not a “threat”, those are the terms of the contract Ubi and WB agreed to. Terms that everyone has to follow.
Heck, Ubi and WB should be hit with a counter suit for trying to leverage their market position to exert control over valve and getting unusually favorable terms.
Clown suit. Ubi and WB are mad they can’t break their contract with valve in a one sided way.
edit: I forgot some context:
The deal between valve and a publisher or dev is: they can sell on steam and elsewhere if steam is at least tied in price, or cheaper, but when they sell somewhere else, that includes the steam key and access to steam and steam’s distribution at no cost.
What the devs and publishers wanted to do was leverage other features of steam and the steam ecosystem, while undercutting steam’s price.
They are always free to just not sell on steam for a cheaper price. That’s not what this is about.
I’m inclined a little to agree with you, but it’s not like he made his money because Gabe refused to be run by anyone. He pays his employees really well. My dad’s friend still is working at Valve after going there 20 some odd years ago. He rakes in money like no ones business. But they are all benefitting from the work they have done.
Secondly, nobody knows how charitable he is in his private life. The fact that he’s so private about it, inclines me to believe he’s probably a decent guy, who just doesn’t like the spotlight. He may be a billionaire, but how many billionaires have their employees love them like at Valve?
Lastly, most of his money is tied up in shares of the company, as he is 50%+ owner. He may use that to leverage cash loans, but he’s also just smart. He doesn’t really do that all that much, except when he’s buying his research yachts. And those shares are only accessible by the workers, as it’s a private company. Why? Because the money belongs to the laborers who produce the goods.
Now, I’m willing to change my view if there’s ever a situation in which Gabe Newall is intentionally trying to avoid paying taxes, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Bezos, Musk, Gates, Trump, Zuckerburg, Page, Brin, Ellison, Dell, Huang, the Waltons, Blomberg, Thiel. There’s so many worse people out there. I do agree wealth is bad, but what the aforementioned are doing is significantly worse.
So much wrong with this. Gabe pays his extremely small workforce very well while keeping the lions share for himself. At 300-400 employees getting paid 300k on average, that is only around one hundred million in total payroll compared to 17 billion in revenue.
Gabe is in no way a good guy here. He could afford to pay his workers a cool million a piece and his payroll would still be a fraction of revenue.
Wild conjecture about how much Gabe is trickling down his wealth has got to be one of the lamest excuses I have ever seen. There is no such thing a good billionaire despite your wish Gabe is.
We already determined Gabe is not giving the money to the people who do the work, he is giving them a small fraction, less than 1%.
If you think for a second Gabe is not taking advantage of every tax loop hole his high paid accountants can find you are fucking crazy. He is definitely doing everything he can to avoid paying taxes.
Gabe has a monopoly. He has not used this to increasingly provide cheaper services like a corporation in competition would. Steam’s cut should have went down over time if there was good competition. I personally think anything above 10% for a digital platform is crazy.
Yes, salaries whatever. Who gives a shit about salaries when there are stocks available for employees. Employees get dividends from those stocks.
If there was $17B in revenue, and just $1B of that went through dividends, that means $500M is going to the employees. Because Gabe owns half, because he founded the company. Depending on how many shares someone has, which is most likely tied to how long you’ve been at the company, you rake in money. I know, cause I worked for a large corporation that did that same thing. My buddy who’s still there is pulling $30k/year alone on that. Granted, that company has a much lower revenue:employee ratio. Valve is at the top of this category. So yeah, people who invest time and work into Valve make bank. As they should.
Hold up, they are not the ones making the content. While a digital distribution network deserves a cut they certainly do not deserve 30%. This is just a form of monopoly rent at this point extracting far more than they are worth taking advantage of developers.
Not sure why you want to defend a monopoly, but it is your perogative I guess. Cheers!
Damn, got me. I didn’t realize Steam was the only place to buy games and they’re using their market share to inflate prices and gouge customers. You’re so right. That’s what monopolies do. Specifically, it’s when one business owns the sole source of a good. PC gaming is an oligopoly and the other businesses in the oligopoly are mad Valve is doing it better. There is nothing stopping anybody else offering a better deal with the features customers want from Steam.
Market Share =/= monopoly. Answer this, what prevents a person, such as yourself, designing and coding a marketplace that meets the feature request of current Steam users?
Now, I’m willing to change my view if there’s ever a situation in which Gabe Newall is intentionally trying to avoid paying taxes, but that hasn’t happened yet.
What about exploiting child gambling? Valve’s value, and thusly Gabe’s value, skyrocketed after introducing lootboxes to TF2, CSGO, DOTA2, etc. He can be as charitable as he fucking wants, but he still defends lootboxes while taking little to no efforts to ensure that children aren’t gambling on his platform. He’s had… how many years to fix this problem now? Too many. He’s not fixed the problem, and continues to reap the rewards in the meantime.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s just as much of a piece of shit as any other billionaire. The only difference is that he makes toys that a lot of us really, really like; toys that we apparently like so much so that we’re willing to handwave child gambling as long as it doesn’t get in the way of making it moderately convenient to download DRM-infested games.
Mate, I did not know parents were not responsible for their own children. That is on me. I’m glad to hear all the work I’ve done on my network and computers to make them safe for my children was a moot point.
Adults like gambling. It’s not Valve’s fault that children are using it cause their parents are ignorant of their own child.
As far as the DRM stuff goes, that’s all based on the publisher. And it’s not that difficult to bypass. Valve has shown time and time again, that they are a business for their customers. Their customers like a solid platform that works and is easy to use and has a community.
Let’s take a look a Linux real quick. If it wasn’t for Valve, Linux gaming wouldn’t be what it is today. They did that and gave it to the community. I’m sorry other platforms can’t be bothered to put in that kind of effort. If you wanna play with the big dogs, you gotta get off the porch. And Ubisoft wants to take the easy way out through a lawsuit. They need to do better with their storefront. Offer good exclusives. Try to actually appeal to your customers.
I still remember when everybody bitched about Steam when half-life 2 came out. It was kinda bad, and people were mad about it. But Valve was just ahead of the curve. It allowed them to publish updates, patches, anti-cheating. And soon enough, the community grew to love it. It just worked. If something broke in your game, it was probably fixed in a week if it was a Valve game. It gave so much to PC players.
Adults like gambling. It’s not Valve’s fault that children are using it cause their parents are ignorant of their own child.
If adults want to gamble, fine. Let’s enforce gambling laws and get this over with. It would also solve the children gambling problem because that would be illegal. But this is why Valve’s gambling service is indefensible. Valve is actively trying to prevent the gambling classification because if it gets treated like actual gambling it most likely stops being profitable. I don’t necessarily have an issue with gambling, I have an issue with it not being treated as gambling. And all the other things Valve has done that have been positive for gaming do not justify giving Valve a free pass on gambling.
To bring it back to Gaben, he isn’t avoiding taxes but he is avoiding the (gambling) law because it makes him more money, so is it that different from avoiding taxes?
That is a fair point. However, I must ask, what is the different between what Valve is doing with loot boxes v. every single trading card game out there. MTG, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Disney’s Lorcana? You are purchasing an item that has items in it that are random. The only reason they have value is because people have the option to just buy skin they want on Valve’s marketplace. Just like people have the option to buy a specific Pokémon card from a third party.
The other thing that Valve has done is, there’s no inherent value to the item. You can sell items for Steam Wallet funds, to then use in the marketplace. So, to me it seems, it’s really easy to set up a Steam account to not be allowed to purchase items. Which would include adding money to a Steam wallet for the marketplace. So, no this is not a “think of the children” issue. It’s yet again, another people are bad parents and can’t be bothered to use parental controls on their children’s electronics. Or take steps to prevent them from spending real money. Or take steps to prevent them from playing too much.
That is a fair point. However, I must ask, what is the different between what Valve is doing with loot boxes v. every single trading card game out there. MTG, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Disney’s Lorcana? You are purchasing an item that has items in it that are random. The only reason they have value is because people have the option to just buy skin they want on Valve’s marketplace. Just like people have the option to buy a specific Pokémon card from a third party.
I don’t see how that matters at this point, you’ve already called it gambling. Are you going to walk that back to defend Valve? After all the only reason to bring up this point is to claim it’s not actually gambling. And to address your point, yes I also consider MTG, Pokemon and most trading card games the physical equivalent of a lootbox and a form of gambling. I also know they’re not gambling in a legal sense but we’ll get to where Valve differs in the next part.
The other thing that Valve has done is, there’s no inherent value to the item. You can sell items for Steam Wallet funds, to then use in the marketplace. So, to me it seems, it’s really easy to set up a Steam account to not be allowed to purchase items. Which would include adding money to a Steam wallet for the marketplace. So, no this is not a “think of the children” issue. It’s yet again, another people are bad parents and can’t be bothered to use parental controls on their children’s electronics. Or take steps to prevent them from spending real money. Or take steps to prevent them from playing too much.
Actually that’s no longer true and that’s why there was a lawsuit filed against Valve at the start of this year. The items now have a value because you sell the things to get Steam credit and then use Steam credit to buy a Steam Deck and then sell the Deck for real money. It’s no longer a closed system, you can get the money out. And once again, this wouldn’t be an issue if Valve either a) stopped their gambling or b) adhere to gambling laws.
That’s a whole lot of distraction from the point, mate. If you found out that a casino was allowing children to gamble on their property, would you not want to shut down that casino?
Yes, the parents shouldn’t be allowing the kids to gamble. But parents don’t always “allow” their kids to do the things they do in the first place. You know damn well you did things as a child that you weren’t “allowed” to do, things that you were told specifically not to do. You know that you successfully hid things from your parents, but expect other parents to find everything? Most of this happens completely under the parents’ radar.
Addicts steal, and that’s no different for children, either. Often they’ll take their parent’s credit card in hopes that the charge goes unnoticed, or they’ll obfuscate the charge by spending money on another currency that gets converted after the fact to one used for lootboxes.
There are even worse things that an addict will do for money. Some may resort to scams; sometimes they’ll set up catfish social media profiles to bait gooners into paying them gobs of money for fake pictures. Some may resort to worse behavior; I’ve seen instructional TikTok videos for children to lure adults onto Roblox for sexual acts, to be paid in Robux, which can then easily be converted into just about any other game’s currency. Literal child prostitution.
But sure. Let’s blame the parents, instead of the billionaire’s child casino.
I could not give a shit. I am a parent of two and no, you cannot watch them every second. But you can watch your bank accounts. You can watch your child play. You can watch your child’s behavior change if they start getting really into gambling.
I had an older child I kinda took care of, who thinks of me as a father figure; he has none. He called me one night cause he was 16 and drunk and high and didn’t want to drive home. He said, "I called you, because you always said to call you if this happened. I’m so sorry“. I picked him up and helped his hangover the next morning and we had a long talk. That kid is on the ocean sending underwater robots to explore as an electrical engineer. Cause he liked that I did that. EE, not the water stuff lol.
Parents are responsible for their children and children have to learn responsibility for their actions. And that is a lesson that you have to teach your children. The best way is through learning. I’ve watched my mom raise an addict, so don’t you fucking dare try to appeal to me. She was the perfect mom. He just got in with the wrong crowd and went downhill. He’s sober now, but it was rough growing up. But she put in a hell of a lot of work into him.
I tell you that, because I’m not here to say we should ban public schools, because that’s where my brother tried heroin. I’m not here to say we should fund private schools with taxpayer money, because there are drugs in our schools. It’s a fucking bad stroke of luck. Fire and damnnation, this got me hot. Don’t fall off your pedestal as you get on your high horse.
You’re right, I just gave you my personal experiences about parenting children. I even brought up my brother in recovery, distinctly because you brought up addicts. I still stand by it being a parental issue. Don’t have kids if you don’t want that responsibility. This kind of argument has the same vibes as, “we need age verification on websites”. No, we don’t. Parents need to be better. I’m a millennial parent and I know how the internet works. I also know that every app nowadays has parental controls built in. Moreso, I can specifically block things on the router. The tools are there. Just be a parent. How many children do you have?
Fucking Nintendo and that piece of shit Pokémon company! Fuck Magic the gathering, a bunch of groomers in the 90s trying to get kids addicted to gambling!
All of those things were specificially degined to encourage addiction to buying the product, like yeah we should do something about those practices when they cross a line. Idk why you think it should all be fair game just because a less problematic version of the issue exists.
What if governments just banned any form of real financial gambling in video games? Valve is still a business, they are going to try and make money, even if it’s shitty. Also a parental problem if you are loading your childs Steam account with money 24/7 so they can gamble.
But were they selling Steam Keys? Sounds to me like Ubisoft was selling a UPlay version of the game for cheaper than the Steam version, which probably didn’t include a Steam Key.
If the UPlay version also included a Steam Key, then yes, Ubisoft would have broken the terms of contract, but that seems unlikely to me.
I think its fair enough for Valve to require that Steam Keys, which use Steam infrastucture, are not sold for less than Steam sells them for, since Valve wouldn’t be making any money on them, but would still have some of the costs associated with delivering the product (and depending on how much Steam infrastructure they use, matchmaking, anti-cheat and other things).
But requiring that keys for other Stores, with their own infrastructure, are never cheaper that Steam is definitely monopolistic, shitty and probably illegal.
Its weird to me that all articles I have found about this issue don’t actually mention this crucial detail.
That clause isn’t even relevant to the situation valve is being sued over.
No steam keys or steam infrastructure was being used by selling their own game on their own storefront…a version that wasn’t even available on steam. Valve threatened them anyway over the price
Amazon got slapped with a substantial fine (in the EU) for having basically the same “rule” in their contracts, that forbid cheaper listings elsewhere. So yes, in the EU hanging that rule is illegal. But if it applies to digital licensing is another matter.
You do know you’re only renting access to the game with a one-time fee, not buying it, right?
Edit: the original comment left it unclear if the price rule only applies to copies sold that include a steam key, or if copies that work completely without steam can be arbitrarily priced. If the latter is the case, it’s obviously fine. If it includes any game version, it isn’t OK.
amazon’s case is different. if you’re selling the steam version of your game it needs to match the price on steam. if you have a separate non-steam version you can charge whatever you want.
the reason places like gog follow steam pricing is, why wouldn’t they? makes them more money.
if you have a separate non-steam version you can charge whatever you want.
This is the part that was unclear from the original comment. If that’s in fact the case, that’s obviously fine (and different from the Amazon case).
why wouldn’t they?
it’s called “competetive pricing”. If I’m a customer and have a steam account holding most of my games (like most PC gamers), why would I even consider buying it anywhere else if it isn’t even cheaper and now I got games in like 3-5 stores with at least 2-3 launcher/downloaders/apps. No, this most likely won’t make them more money but much much less with fewer people buying it there.
If I’m a customer and have a steam account holding most of my games (like most PC gamers), why would I even consider buying it anywhere else if it isn’t even cheaper
I pay the same or sometimes a bit more for GoG games because they are DRM free. Id like better client support on Linux, but DRM free is a value proposition thats usually worth it.
Edit: the original comment left it unclear if the price rule only applies to copies sold that include a steam key, or if copies that work completely without steam can be arbitrarily priced. If the latter is the case, it’s obviously fine. If it includes any game version, it isn’t OK.
“You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam.** It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”**
Just read that paragraph. It should be pretty clear what the whole thing is about.
Amazon is a seller. Steam is (aside from selling) a service provider with their workshop, forum, etc
While it would be way better if those were all in a different tier for devs, so for example they can select to get less of a share for those features, what they are basically doing is sidestepping a provider
Or in the case of photography:
You go to a Photo shop and lend their camera equipment and services for free, but they take a 20% cut for every copy of that picture sold.
If you buy a picture, you can download it indefinitely and get some services like changing the color grading on the website. The photo shop hosts the picture for free and only makes a profit through selling licenses. The owner also has an option to get infinite licenses for these services for free.
What youre allowed to do is host the picture on your own, pay your own cloud provider, and sell the picture that way.
What youre not allowed to do is generate infinite licenses for free and sell them without ever paying the photo shop for their services, while still using them.
The service part only applies to copies sold that include steam keys and therefore use the steam-API related things (workshop, cloud saves). I haven’t read about this specific case in detail, but as long as that use of steam for copies sold is part of what they wanted to leverage but essentially not pay for, that’s obviously bull.
This honestly is somewhat unexpected and I had to re-read the comment I replied to to understand it correctly, hence my misunderstanding of that aspect. It’s unexpected cause ubisoft in particular for the longest time had their own “store” and games required at least their own launcher. I haven’t played Ubisoft games in at least a decade, so I don’t know/remember if the games reuired your own ubi-account, or if the games relied on Steams systems (workshop/cloud saves/…). I would’ve assumed no, and that they only use it as a downloader cause players essentially wouldn’t buy it outside of steam (or at least not enough).
Top be clear: if steam allows copies of a game listed on steam to be sold at an arbitrary price as long as that doesn’t include a steam key, this is perfectly fine. Actively thinking about it now I would assume it does, as I’m pretty sure I bought games without steam keys for less than the listing on steam was.
but when they sell somewhere else, that includes the steam key and access to steam and steam’s distribution at no cost.
Ubisoft selling the game on Uplay, their own storefront, does not include a steam key with the purchase. The clause you just listed IS NOT RELEVANT to the situation. Which is why valve is being sued.
They’re offering a version of the game that isn’t even available on steam (so doubly no steam key), and were told that doing so at a lower price would have valve removing all versions of the game for sale. This is blatant market position abuse to fix pricing.
Who the fuck is upvoting your blatant misinformation?
Hence, the antitrust. If you have the qualities of a monopoly you don’t get to partake in certain business practices. Like the language in contacts limiting competition.
Valve allegedly threatened to delist all editions of Rainbow Six Siege after Ubisoft offered a cheaper option on its Uplay store.
Yeah.
Because it violates their policy.
And that policy only exists because monopoly enables them to set anti-trust/anti-competitive practices and further cement their position by ruining competition’s chances.
Imagine there’s a huge fuel station that’s so big they essentially set rules towards suppliers that they can’t offer their gas to other stations at a cheaper price otherwise they can’t sell it in their station with 95% market share.
If you don’t see a problem with this as a customer, then don’t forget to support your local billionaire by paying a 30% fee for each game purchase (and that 30% cut also exists due to no one being able to take on steam, ridiculous amount of money).
I’m slowly getting tired of gamers defending Gabe like he’s Jesus when in reality valve is a corporation doing corporation things.
EDIT: Billionaires have became rich in 100% ethical ways, they do not overcharge, they do not abuse their market position, they most definitely don’t bribe Microsoft and other entities, etc. Now give upvotes, redditors
Imagine there’s a huge fuel station that’s so big they essentially set rules towards suppliers that they can’t offer their gas to other stations at a cheaper price otherwise they can’t sell it in their station with 95% market share.
“You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”
Valve does not “dictate” prices in any way.
Ubi and WB are free to sell their games for as cheap as they want. But if and ONLY IF they offer a steam key with the purchase, they can’t undercut steam.
This isn’t about steam keys, it’s about a most favored nation clause. It’s a fairly common clause when selling across multiple platforms. It can be considered anticompetitive in some cases. It’s also pretty standard in retail agreements. It’s why name brand products are generally the same price everywhere.
The same thing would happen if Walmart found Sony was selling PlayStations cheaper on their website than in store.
If i give you free advertising, a solid store page, and the damn server to host your games with free steam keys for the dev (Amazon doesn’t even fucking do this. Authors need to pay for their damn ebooks at full price for instance) and you go out and sell those fucking keys cheaper and spend my money doing it so i make nothing, what the fuck do you expect to happen?
Uplay featured a $15 USD Rainbow Six Siege Starter Pack, but this version was not available on Steam, making the cheapest option on Valve’s platform much more expensive. It’s claimed Valve insisted Ubisoft swiftly remedy the discrepancy, giving the publisher “until the end of day tomorrow” to change that.
This isn’t about keys and devs abusing the system, but competition and monopoly.
Yes because the other platforms are worse in every single fucking way. You can’t say oh it’s this huge awful monopoly when it’s only that because the rest purposely fucking suck to make as much money as possible (gog is fine).
we’re talking gaming, of which pc is a niche. a shrinking one at that. nobody is claiming sony has a monopoly on the ps5, ubisoft and wb are seemingry happy to pay them.
but valve created steam, which the publishers willingly signed up for even though both ubisoft and wb games have been on pc for longer than valve has.
i think that graph also needs mobile to get the full picture, but i’ll concede that i based my statement on old numbers. the market share seems to be holding steady. still, 40% seems about right.
by the way, i’m using “niche” to mean “smaller part of”, maybe that’s not the correct usage. blame esl.
Yeah but why do they have that market share? It’s not forcefully. They aren’t buying up competitors. They don’t own all the publishers and can dictate who sells their games.
People choose Steam. Why? Because Ubisoft Connect it horrendous to navigate. Because EA App is slow and, when it launched (as Origin), left a bad taste in people’s mouths because it bordered on spyware. Epic Launcher is kinda getting better but when it launched it was extremely bare bones, it didn’t even have a cart to buy multiple products at once, you had to buy things individually, which is absolutely ridiculous for an ONLINE STORE .
This so-called monopoly is not a product of predatory methods, quite the opposite. Valve may be a corporation but they constantly set standards in favor of the consumer:
Generous refund policy
Unparalleled customer support, as opposed to their competitors basically giving the finger to users asking for help.
Actively working towards wider support and accessibility, i.e. SteamOS, Steam Deck, and their runnable-verification markings.
Just recently announced the “real requirements” stats from players sharing a games’ performance on their actual hardware rather than the developers Recommended Requirements which we all know are complete bullshit. They are literally forcing developers to stop cranking out half-assed games with non-existant optimization for $70.
Definition of Monopoly according to Merriam-Webster:
exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action.
specifically : exclusive control of a particular market that is marked by the power to control prices and exclude competition
None of this applies to Valve/Steam, all they’re guilty of is setting policies in favor of the consumer. People tend to choose the consumer-friendly seller.
Added it after a lawsuit regarding steam not wanting to properly process refunds. Epic has it better automated and GOG processes refunds regardless of your hours if you have technical difficulties, so in my eyes Steam is in the last place.
Unparalleled customer support
Steam support is commonly regarded as non-existing. The only times I needed it, I got automated replies and my issue was not solved.
Actively working towards wider support and accessibility, i.e. SteamOS, Steam Deck, and their runnable-verification markings.
Making your product accessible is just business. I don’t really use any of that stuff since I’m only on PC.
Definition of Monopoly according to Merriam-Webster:
This is one of those words where definitions vary, but generally if a company has such a large market share/power that they can dictate prices and set rules that affect other platforms/competition, then that’s monopoly/near monopolies. Valve Corporation does this.
all they’re guilty of is setting policies in favor of the consumer.
Riiight, because ripping off gamers and devs with 30% cut (a cut that stayed from physical discs and times when 100gb HDD costed 5000eur) is so in favor of the users. The whole gambling thing and mystery boxes was also done to promote ethics to children, right?
My guy.
I deliberately left out GOG in my comment because they fill a different niche in the market, DRM-free and generally older games. The bureaucracy of refunds is probably alot less complicated.
You’re probably the first person I’ve heard say Steam has bad customer support.
They are not making “their product accessible”, they are making other people’s games accessible by providing an open OS for gaming outside of the Microsoft Windows system.
Again, having a large market share because you simply provide the best service is -not a Monopoly-. How do they in any way dictate prices? Ubisoft are free to sell their game for half the price on their store front if they want to.
I’d happily pay 30% to Steam for all the service they provide over 100% to Ubisoft’s reskinned, buggy, unoptimized quarterly “games” or EAs microtransaction simulators any day.
You’re probably the first person I’ve heard say Steam has bad customer support.
Steam customer support was a fucking meme back in my day. You also got oceans of videos like these: https://youtu.be/kE0QtkTNUqk
How do they in any way dictate prices? Ubisoft are free to sell their game for half the price on their store front if they want to.
I… are we speaking English? Do you simply refuse to read and get new information? I mean, sure, they can, but they will get angry emails from Valve Corporation and threats of suspended sales, no pre-orders, etc., because that’s what a near monopoly does to further cement their position on the market, and I don’t even want to think about the future with different CEO and valve having basically grown into the next google or microsoft with Gabe long gone
i mean, sure, they can, but they will get angry emails from Valve
So? Maybe they should put more focus on improving their own platforms instead of whining about Steam, then they could sell their game exclusively there without issue.
I don’t know I can make it any clearer; Steam has a big market share because people choose them, not because they use any hostile tactics to push out the others. Ubisoft and EA, among others, have for years done everything in their power to lose any good will from the player base in favor of their shareholders.
First of all, I trust Ubi and WB way less than valve.
Yeah.
Because it violates their policy. That’s not a “threat”, those are the terms of the contract Ubi and WB agreed to. Terms that everyone has to follow.
Heck, Ubi and WB should be hit with a counter suit for trying to leverage their market position to exert control over valve and getting unusually favorable terms.
Clown suit. Ubi and WB are mad they can’t break their contract with valve in a one sided way.
edit: I forgot some context:
The deal between valve and a publisher or dev is: they can sell on steam and elsewhere if steam is at least tied in price, or cheaper, but when they sell somewhere else, that includes the steam key and access to steam and steam’s distribution at no cost.
What the devs and publishers wanted to do was leverage other features of steam and the steam ecosystem, while undercutting steam’s price.
They are always free to just not sell on steam for a cheaper price. That’s not what this is about.
edit2:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
“Steam Key Rules and Guidelines”
Definitely not a forgotten detail. There is clearly a campaign against valve brewing for reasons that are less clear.
You shouldn’t trust any of them. No billionaire has your best interests at heart. Even Gabe.
I’m inclined a little to agree with you, but it’s not like he made his money because Gabe refused to be run by anyone. He pays his employees really well. My dad’s friend still is working at Valve after going there 20 some odd years ago. He rakes in money like no ones business. But they are all benefitting from the work they have done.
Secondly, nobody knows how charitable he is in his private life. The fact that he’s so private about it, inclines me to believe he’s probably a decent guy, who just doesn’t like the spotlight. He may be a billionaire, but how many billionaires have their employees love them like at Valve?
Lastly, most of his money is tied up in shares of the company, as he is 50%+ owner. He may use that to leverage cash loans, but he’s also just smart. He doesn’t really do that all that much, except when he’s buying his research yachts. And those shares are only accessible by the workers, as it’s a private company. Why? Because the money belongs to the laborers who produce the goods.
Now, I’m willing to change my view if there’s ever a situation in which Gabe Newall is intentionally trying to avoid paying taxes, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Bezos, Musk, Gates, Trump, Zuckerburg, Page, Brin, Ellison, Dell, Huang, the Waltons, Blomberg, Thiel. There’s so many worse people out there. I do agree wealth is bad, but what the aforementioned are doing is significantly worse.
So much wrong with this. Gabe pays his extremely small workforce very well while keeping the lions share for himself. At 300-400 employees getting paid 300k on average, that is only around one hundred million in total payroll compared to 17 billion in revenue.
Gabe is in no way a good guy here. He could afford to pay his workers a cool million a piece and his payroll would still be a fraction of revenue.
Wild conjecture about how much Gabe is trickling down his wealth has got to be one of the lamest excuses I have ever seen. There is no such thing a good billionaire despite your wish Gabe is.
We already determined Gabe is not giving the money to the people who do the work, he is giving them a small fraction, less than 1%.
If you think for a second Gabe is not taking advantage of every tax loop hole his high paid accountants can find you are fucking crazy. He is definitely doing everything he can to avoid paying taxes.
Gabe has a monopoly. He has not used this to increasingly provide cheaper services like a corporation in competition would. Steam’s cut should have went down over time if there was good competition. I personally think anything above 10% for a digital platform is crazy.
Yes, salaries whatever. Who gives a shit about salaries when there are stocks available for employees. Employees get dividends from those stocks.
If there was $17B in revenue, and just $1B of that went through dividends, that means $500M is going to the employees. Because Gabe owns half, because he founded the company. Depending on how many shares someone has, which is most likely tied to how long you’ve been at the company, you rake in money. I know, cause I worked for a large corporation that did that same thing. My buddy who’s still there is pulling $30k/year alone on that. Granted, that company has a much lower revenue:employee ratio. Valve is at the top of this category. So yeah, people who invest time and work into Valve make bank. As they should.
Hold up, they are not the ones making the content. While a digital distribution network deserves a cut they certainly do not deserve 30%. This is just a form of monopoly rent at this point extracting far more than they are worth taking advantage of developers.
Not sure why you want to defend a monopoly, but it is your perogative I guess. Cheers!
Damn, got me. I didn’t realize Steam was the only place to buy games and they’re using their market share to inflate prices and gouge customers. You’re so right. That’s what monopolies do. Specifically, it’s when one business owns the sole source of a good. PC gaming is an oligopoly and the other businesses in the oligopoly are mad Valve is doing it better. There is nothing stopping anybody else offering a better deal with the features customers want from Steam.
You didn’t realize they had a 75% market share? Please save the bootlicking for someone who cares.
Market Share =/= monopoly. Answer this, what prevents a person, such as yourself, designing and coding a marketplace that meets the feature request of current Steam users?
What about exploiting child gambling? Valve’s value, and thusly Gabe’s value, skyrocketed after introducing lootboxes to TF2, CSGO, DOTA2, etc. He can be as charitable as he fucking wants, but he still defends lootboxes while taking little to no efforts to ensure that children aren’t gambling on his platform. He’s had… how many years to fix this problem now? Too many. He’s not fixed the problem, and continues to reap the rewards in the meantime.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s just as much of a piece of shit as any other billionaire. The only difference is that he makes toys that a lot of us really, really like; toys that we apparently like so much so that we’re willing to handwave child gambling as long as it doesn’t get in the way of making it moderately convenient to download DRM-infested games.
Mate, I did not know parents were not responsible for their own children. That is on me. I’m glad to hear all the work I’ve done on my network and computers to make them safe for my children was a moot point.
Adults like gambling. It’s not Valve’s fault that children are using it cause their parents are ignorant of their own child.
As far as the DRM stuff goes, that’s all based on the publisher. And it’s not that difficult to bypass. Valve has shown time and time again, that they are a business for their customers. Their customers like a solid platform that works and is easy to use and has a community.
Let’s take a look a Linux real quick. If it wasn’t for Valve, Linux gaming wouldn’t be what it is today. They did that and gave it to the community. I’m sorry other platforms can’t be bothered to put in that kind of effort. If you wanna play with the big dogs, you gotta get off the porch. And Ubisoft wants to take the easy way out through a lawsuit. They need to do better with their storefront. Offer good exclusives. Try to actually appeal to your customers.
I still remember when everybody bitched about Steam when half-life 2 came out. It was kinda bad, and people were mad about it. But Valve was just ahead of the curve. It allowed them to publish updates, patches, anti-cheating. And soon enough, the community grew to love it. It just worked. If something broke in your game, it was probably fixed in a week if it was a Valve game. It gave so much to PC players.
If adults want to gamble, fine. Let’s enforce gambling laws and get this over with. It would also solve the children gambling problem because that would be illegal. But this is why Valve’s gambling service is indefensible. Valve is actively trying to prevent the gambling classification because if it gets treated like actual gambling it most likely stops being profitable. I don’t necessarily have an issue with gambling, I have an issue with it not being treated as gambling. And all the other things Valve has done that have been positive for gaming do not justify giving Valve a free pass on gambling.
To bring it back to Gaben, he isn’t avoiding taxes but he is avoiding the (gambling) law because it makes him more money, so is it that different from avoiding taxes?
That is a fair point. However, I must ask, what is the different between what Valve is doing with loot boxes v. every single trading card game out there. MTG, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Disney’s Lorcana? You are purchasing an item that has items in it that are random. The only reason they have value is because people have the option to just buy skin they want on Valve’s marketplace. Just like people have the option to buy a specific Pokémon card from a third party.
The other thing that Valve has done is, there’s no inherent value to the item. You can sell items for Steam Wallet funds, to then use in the marketplace. So, to me it seems, it’s really easy to set up a Steam account to not be allowed to purchase items. Which would include adding money to a Steam wallet for the marketplace. So, no this is not a “think of the children” issue. It’s yet again, another people are bad parents and can’t be bothered to use parental controls on their children’s electronics. Or take steps to prevent them from spending real money. Or take steps to prevent them from playing too much.
I don’t see how that matters at this point, you’ve already called it gambling. Are you going to walk that back to defend Valve? After all the only reason to bring up this point is to claim it’s not actually gambling. And to address your point, yes I also consider MTG, Pokemon and most trading card games the physical equivalent of a lootbox and a form of gambling. I also know they’re not gambling in a legal sense but we’ll get to where Valve differs in the next part.
Actually that’s no longer true and that’s why there was a lawsuit filed against Valve at the start of this year. The items now have a value because you sell the things to get Steam credit and then use Steam credit to buy a Steam Deck and then sell the Deck for real money. It’s no longer a closed system, you can get the money out. And once again, this wouldn’t be an issue if Valve either a) stopped their gambling or b) adhere to gambling laws.
Holy fuck, didn’t realize so many kids were buying and selling steam decks. Damn, got me. I admit defeat. Later, friend.
That’s a whole lot of distraction from the point, mate. If you found out that a casino was allowing children to gamble on their property, would you not want to shut down that casino?
Yes, the parents shouldn’t be allowing the kids to gamble. But parents don’t always “allow” their kids to do the things they do in the first place. You know damn well you did things as a child that you weren’t “allowed” to do, things that you were told specifically not to do. You know that you successfully hid things from your parents, but expect other parents to find everything? Most of this happens completely under the parents’ radar.
Addicts steal, and that’s no different for children, either. Often they’ll take their parent’s credit card in hopes that the charge goes unnoticed, or they’ll obfuscate the charge by spending money on another currency that gets converted after the fact to one used for lootboxes.
There are even worse things that an addict will do for money. Some may resort to scams; sometimes they’ll set up catfish social media profiles to bait gooners into paying them gobs of money for fake pictures. Some may resort to worse behavior; I’ve seen instructional TikTok videos for children to lure adults onto Roblox for sexual acts, to be paid in Robux, which can then easily be converted into just about any other game’s currency. Literal child prostitution.
But sure. Let’s blame the parents, instead of the billionaire’s child casino.
I could not give a shit. I am a parent of two and no, you cannot watch them every second. But you can watch your bank accounts. You can watch your child play. You can watch your child’s behavior change if they start getting really into gambling.
I had an older child I kinda took care of, who thinks of me as a father figure; he has none. He called me one night cause he was 16 and drunk and high and didn’t want to drive home. He said, "I called you, because you always said to call you if this happened. I’m so sorry“. I picked him up and helped his hangover the next morning and we had a long talk. That kid is on the ocean sending underwater robots to explore as an electrical engineer. Cause he liked that I did that. EE, not the water stuff lol.
Parents are responsible for their children and children have to learn responsibility for their actions. And that is a lesson that you have to teach your children. The best way is through learning. I’ve watched my mom raise an addict, so don’t you fucking dare try to appeal to me. She was the perfect mom. He just got in with the wrong crowd and went downhill. He’s sober now, but it was rough growing up. But she put in a hell of a lot of work into him.
I tell you that, because I’m not here to say we should ban public schools, because that’s where my brother tried heroin. I’m not here to say we should fund private schools with taxpayer money, because there are drugs in our schools. It’s a fucking bad stroke of luck. Fire and damnnation, this got me hot. Don’t fall off your pedestal as you get on your high horse.
I can tell, since nothing else about your comment was at all related to what I was saying.
You’re right, I just gave you my personal experiences about parenting children. I even brought up my brother in recovery, distinctly because you brought up addicts. I still stand by it being a parental issue. Don’t have kids if you don’t want that responsibility. This kind of argument has the same vibes as, “we need age verification on websites”. No, we don’t. Parents need to be better. I’m a millennial parent and I know how the internet works. I also know that every app nowadays has parental controls built in. Moreso, I can specifically block things on the router. The tools are there. Just be a parent. How many children do you have?
Fucking Nintendo and that piece of shit Pokémon company! Fuck Magic the gathering, a bunch of groomers in the 90s trying to get kids addicted to gambling!
GUMBALL MACHINES AND THE GAMBLING OF FLAVOR!
All of those things were specificially degined to encourage addiction to buying the product, like yeah we should do something about those practices when they cross a line. Idk why you think it should all be fair game just because a less problematic version of the issue exists.
What if governments just banned any form of real financial gambling in video games? Valve is still a business, they are going to try and make money, even if it’s shitty. Also a parental problem if you are loading your childs Steam account with money 24/7 so they can gamble.
That is true, definitely a “lesser evil” situation.
Username checks out
Go to sleep
And in this specific situation, it’s valve doing the evil.
How?
I do like Valve more than most companies, but this is absolutely monopolistic behavior.
They’re also being sued because this situation is completely different from the clause mentioned in the policy.
But were they selling Steam Keys? Sounds to me like Ubisoft was selling a UPlay version of the game for cheaper than the Steam version, which probably didn’t include a Steam Key.
If the UPlay version also included a Steam Key, then yes, Ubisoft would have broken the terms of contract, but that seems unlikely to me.
I think its fair enough for Valve to require that Steam Keys, which use Steam infrastucture, are not sold for less than Steam sells them for, since Valve wouldn’t be making any money on them, but would still have some of the costs associated with delivering the product (and depending on how much Steam infrastructure they use, matchmaking, anti-cheat and other things).
But requiring that keys for other Stores, with their own infrastructure, are never cheaper that Steam is definitely monopolistic, shitty and probably illegal.
Its weird to me that all articles I have found about this issue don’t actually mention this crucial detail.
No love for those companies but just because you agreed to a contract doesn’t mean the clauses of the contract are legal or enforceable.
True, but this deal is that companies stick to the terms and in turn they get access to steams shop, implicitly the community.
They don’t have some unalienable right to access another company’s customers.
You don’t have a “right” to go into a BurgerKing and advertise and sell your burgers there.
… and in a country with rule of law whether a contractual clause is legal would be decided by a court, no?
Yeah, isn’t that the point of the lawsuit? That this exact clause is challenged in court?
That clause isn’t even relevant to the situation valve is being sued over.
No steam keys or steam infrastructure was being used by selling their own game on their own storefront…a version that wasn’t even available on steam. Valve threatened them anyway over the price
Amazon got slapped with a substantial fine (in the EU) for having basically the same “rule” in their contracts, that forbid cheaper listings elsewhere. So yes, in the EU hanging that rule is illegal. But if it applies to digital licensing is another matter.
You do know you’re only renting access to the game with a one-time fee, not buying it, right?
Edit: the original comment left it unclear if the price rule only applies to copies sold that include a steam key, or if copies that work completely without steam can be arbitrarily priced. If the latter is the case, it’s obviously fine. If it includes any game version, it isn’t OK.
amazon’s case is different. if you’re selling the steam version of your game it needs to match the price on steam. if you have a separate non-steam version you can charge whatever you want.
the reason places like gog follow steam pricing is, why wouldn’t they? makes them more money.
This is the part that was unclear from the original comment. If that’s in fact the case, that’s obviously fine (and different from the Amazon case).
it’s called “competetive pricing”. If I’m a customer and have a steam account holding most of my games (like most PC gamers), why would I even consider buying it anywhere else if it isn’t even cheaper and now I got games in like 3-5 stores with at least 2-3 launcher/downloaders/apps. No, this most likely won’t make them more money but much much less with fewer people buying it there.
I pay the same or sometimes a bit more for GoG games because they are DRM free. Id like better client support on Linux, but DRM free is a value proposition thats usually worth it.
gog is running mostly on rep, to be fair. don’t know about many other stores that don’t just sell steam keys.
Ok. The rule is, actually let me link it…
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
“Steam Key Rules and Guidelines”
“You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam.** It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”**
Just read that paragraph. It should be pretty clear what the whole thing is about.
That is another situation
Amazon is a seller. Steam is (aside from selling) a service provider with their workshop, forum, etc
While it would be way better if those were all in a different tier for devs, so for example they can select to get less of a share for those features, what they are basically doing is sidestepping a provider
Or in the case of photography:
You go to a Photo shop and lend their camera equipment and services for free, but they take a 20% cut for every copy of that picture sold.
If you buy a picture, you can download it indefinitely and get some services like changing the color grading on the website. The photo shop hosts the picture for free and only makes a profit through selling licenses. The owner also has an option to get infinite licenses for these services for free.
What youre allowed to do is host the picture on your own, pay your own cloud provider, and sell the picture that way.
What youre not allowed to do is generate infinite licenses for free and sell them without ever paying the photo shop for their services, while still using them.
The service part only applies to copies sold that include steam keys and therefore use the steam-API related things (workshop, cloud saves). I haven’t read about this specific case in detail, but as long as that use of steam for copies sold is part of what they wanted to leverage but essentially not pay for, that’s obviously bull.
This honestly is somewhat unexpected and I had to re-read the comment I replied to to understand it correctly, hence my misunderstanding of that aspect. It’s unexpected cause ubisoft in particular for the longest time had their own “store” and games required at least their own launcher. I haven’t played Ubisoft games in at least a decade, so I don’t know/remember if the games reuired your own ubi-account, or if the games relied on Steams systems (workshop/cloud saves/…). I would’ve assumed no, and that they only use it as a downloader cause players essentially wouldn’t buy it outside of steam (or at least not enough).
Top be clear: if steam allows copies of a game listed on steam to be sold at an arbitrary price as long as that doesn’t include a steam key, this is perfectly fine. Actively thinking about it now I would assume it does, as I’m pretty sure I bought games without steam keys for less than the listing on steam was.
Ubisoft selling the game on Uplay, their own storefront, does not include a steam key with the purchase. The clause you just listed IS NOT RELEVANT to the situation. Which is why valve is being sued.
They’re offering a version of the game that isn’t even available on steam (so doubly no steam key), and were told that doing so at a lower price would have valve removing all versions of the game for sale. This is blatant market position abuse to fix pricing.
Who the fuck is upvoting your blatant misinformation?
lol ur the guy who thinks that making sounds with haptics in a controller will make it smoke somehow
nobody should listen to you
Hence, the antitrust. If you have the qualities of a monopoly you don’t get to partake in certain business practices. Like the language in contacts limiting competition.
And that policy only exists because monopoly enables them to set anti-trust/anti-competitive practices and further cement their position by ruining competition’s chances.
Imagine there’s a huge fuel station that’s so big they essentially set rules towards suppliers that they can’t offer their gas to other stations at a cheaper price otherwise they can’t sell it in their station with 95% market share.
If you don’t see a problem with this as a customer, then don’t forget to support your local billionaire by paying a 30% fee for each game purchase (and that 30% cut also exists due to no one being able to take on steam, ridiculous amount of money).
I’m slowly getting tired of gamers defending Gabe like he’s Jesus when in reality valve is a corporation doing corporation things.
EDIT: Billionaires have became rich in 100% ethical ways, they do not overcharge, they do not abuse their market position, they most definitely don’t bribe Microsoft and other entities, etc. Now give upvotes, redditors
That is specifically not what is happening.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
“Steam Key Rules and Guidelines”
“You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”
Valve does not “dictate” prices in any way.
Ubi and WB are free to sell their games for as cheap as they want. But if and ONLY IF they offer a steam key with the purchase, they can’t undercut steam.
This isn’t about steam keys, it’s about a most favored nation clause. It’s a fairly common clause when selling across multiple platforms. It can be considered anticompetitive in some cases. It’s also pretty standard in retail agreements. It’s why name brand products are generally the same price everywhere.
The same thing would happen if Walmart found Sony was selling PlayStations cheaper on their website than in store.
Uplay doesn’t offer steam keys. The game version they were selling wasn’t even available on steam.
Steam keys have fuck all to do with the monopolistic shakedown that valve is enacting to fix PC game prices.
Stop blindly supporting this bullshit behavior. It’s right there in the article you didn’t read.
Please read the article.
“give us your money or let us install cookies” yeah no I’d rather not read the article then.
If i give you free advertising, a solid store page, and the damn server to host your games with free steam keys for the dev (Amazon doesn’t even fucking do this. Authors need to pay for their damn ebooks at full price for instance) and you go out and sell those fucking keys cheaper and spend my money doing it so i make nothing, what the fuck do you expect to happen?
I don’t think you understand what this is about.
EDIT:
This isn’t about keys and devs abusing the system, but competition and monopoly.
40% of the market is not a monopoly.
It’s 75-79.5% depending on what data you use. Quite a big mistake on your part.
of the pc market, yes. that’s like calling tesla a monopoly when they sold 75% of electric cars.
Are we not talking about PC market? Steam is a PC platform. What are you even talking about then? Steam market share on PS5?
Yes because the other platforms are worse in every single fucking way. You can’t say oh it’s this huge awful monopoly when it’s only that because the rest purposely fucking suck to make as much money as possible (gog is fine).
we’re talking gaming, of which pc is a niche. a shrinking one at that. nobody is claiming sony has a monopoly on the ps5, ubisoft and wb are seemingry happy to pay them.
Absolutely not. PC is growing, and continues to grow year after year. Consoles are on a slight decline, but PC has never really stopped growing.
You’re really gonna need to start citing some sources at this point.
yeah i backed down from that in my other reply.
And Valve didn’t create PC. What a bizzare argument.
What a bizzare argument. Nearly half is “niche”? Shrinking?
You people become weird when defending corporations.
but valve created steam, which the publishers willingly signed up for even though both ubisoft and wb games have been on pc for longer than valve has.
i think that graph also needs mobile to get the full picture, but i’ll concede that i based my statement on old numbers. the market share seems to be holding steady. still, 40% seems about right.
by the way, i’m using “niche” to mean “smaller part of”, maybe that’s not the correct usage. blame esl.
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Monopoly implies there are no alternatives. There are plenty of alternatives. People just choose Steam because the other ones are (mostly) crap.
That’s not the legal definition of a monopoly.
Is not Google a monopoly in search and online advertising, then?
Yes, it is.
For most people, google is the only search they use.
Are you saying Yes, it is the legal definition; or Yes, Google is a Monopoly?
Yeah but why do they have that market share? It’s not forcefully. They aren’t buying up competitors. They don’t own all the publishers and can dictate who sells their games.
People choose Steam. Why? Because Ubisoft Connect it horrendous to navigate. Because EA App is slow and, when it launched (as Origin), left a bad taste in people’s mouths because it bordered on spyware. Epic Launcher is kinda getting better but when it launched it was extremely bare bones, it didn’t even have a cart to buy multiple products at once, you had to buy things individually, which is absolutely ridiculous for an ONLINE STORE .
This so-called monopoly is not a product of predatory methods, quite the opposite. Valve may be a corporation but they constantly set standards in favor of the consumer:
Definition of Monopoly according to Merriam-Webster:
None of this applies to Valve/Steam, all they’re guilty of is setting policies in favor of the consumer. People tend to choose the consumer-friendly seller.
Who’d’ve thunk?
Added it after a lawsuit regarding steam not wanting to properly process refunds. Epic has it better automated and GOG processes refunds regardless of your hours if you have technical difficulties, so in my eyes Steam is in the last place.
Steam support is commonly regarded as non-existing. The only times I needed it, I got automated replies and my issue was not solved.
Making your product accessible is just business. I don’t really use any of that stuff since I’m only on PC.
This is one of those words where definitions vary, but generally if a company has such a large market share/power that they can dictate prices and set rules that affect other platforms/competition, then that’s monopoly/near monopolies. Valve Corporation does this.
Riiight, because ripping off gamers and devs with 30% cut (a cut that stayed from physical discs and times when 100gb HDD costed 5000eur) is so in favor of the users. The whole gambling thing and mystery boxes was also done to promote ethics to children, right?
My guy. I deliberately left out GOG in my comment because they fill a different niche in the market, DRM-free and generally older games. The bureaucracy of refunds is probably alot less complicated.
You’re probably the first person I’ve heard say Steam has bad customer support.
They are not making “their product accessible”, they are making other people’s games accessible by providing an open OS for gaming outside of the Microsoft Windows system.
Again, having a large market share because you simply provide the best service is -not a Monopoly-. How do they in any way dictate prices? Ubisoft are free to sell their game for half the price on their store front if they want to.
I’d happily pay 30% to Steam for all the service they provide over 100% to Ubisoft’s reskinned, buggy, unoptimized quarterly “games” or EAs microtransaction simulators any day.
Steam customer support was a fucking meme back in my day. You also got oceans of videos like these: https://youtu.be/kE0QtkTNUqk
I… are we speaking English? Do you simply refuse to read and get new information? I mean, sure, they can, but they will get angry emails from Valve Corporation and threats of suspended sales, no pre-orders, etc., because that’s what a near monopoly does to further cement their position on the market, and I don’t even want to think about the future with different CEO and valve having basically grown into the next google or microsoft with Gabe long gone
So? Maybe they should put more focus on improving their own platforms instead of whining about Steam, then they could sell their game exclusively there without issue.
I don’t know I can make it any clearer; Steam has a big market share because people choose them, not because they use any hostile tactics to push out the others. Ubisoft and EA, among others, have for years done everything in their power to lose any good will from the player base in favor of their shareholders.