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Valve antitrust lawsuit reportedly reveals lengths Steam owner is willing to go to prevent cheaper prices elsewhere (www.eurogamer.net)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 10 points 5 months ago (19 children)

They aren't. If Ubisoft wants to release a game on their own platform steam can do nothing about it.

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  • [–] 21 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Did you even read the article? That is exactly what the to lawsuit is about?? Do you have any insider knowledge or why are you starting this as fact???

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    No, Ubisoft tried to offer a partial game for free, distributed via Steam, but sold paid full access for cheap on Uplay. Basically, a "purchase full access to this Steam game on our storefront so we don't have to pay the fee we'd normally pay to get Steam to distribute the game for us".

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    It's like if I download an app from Google Play Store, and then go to that apps first party website, and pay for your subscription to the app service there , in order to bypass the Google Play Store transaction and thus the developer fee.

    I'm trying to figure out why I'm okay with circumventing this to amazon, apple, and every other publicly traded company offering a platform or marketplace, but feel that my favorite privately owned and operated platform should get a pass and be able to restrict the off network transactions.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Because steam offers steam keys for free if "given away" Pay me $25 and you get a free steam key to game B but I'm going to explicitly charge $30 if you try and buy it on steam direct. Mean while steam is on the hook for hosting and server costs.

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  • [–] 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Steam can delist all of Ubisoft's games from their storefront in retaliation to what Ubisoft does on their own independent store

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Sure, and ubisoft can decide to not sell their property on steam at all, that mechanic goes both ways.

    I forgot the issue at hand while writing that, oh bother

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  • [–] 29 points 5 months ago (11 children)

    there's more to it than that.

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  • [–] 24 points 5 months ago* (8 children)

    Yeah but it's fairly simple.

    You can generate Steam keys using the Steam developer tools. This allows a game key to be purchased on any storefront that supports selling them, which can then be activated on Steam.

    The main requirement? You can't price those steam keys on a 3rd party store cheaper than on Steam itself.

    For that, it means if the 3rd party store takes a smaller cut than Steam itself would take, the developer makes a bit more profit through almost no additional effort. Steam is the system users use to download and update the game, and cloud save syncing, and community guides, forums, workshop, etc.

    The developer is, afaik, more than welcome to also sell a UPlay key if they partner with Ubisoft at any price point they want (regardless of the Steam price) because Ubisoft is the taking on the burden of distribution, etc.

    The only price requirement Valve imposes is on selling Steam keys on 3rd party storefronts. Not UPlay keys. Not Xbox keys. Not Epic Store keys.

    Edit: and I read the article, while albeit short (can't access the linked Bloomberg article sadly), they claim exactly that, that the version on UPlay was significantly cheaper than the version on Steam for essentially the same game. Valve was arguing that Rainbow Six Siege needs to change their pricing on UPlay or they would be delisted.

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  • [–] 40 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    The crux of the case is whether Valve is applying that rule to non-Steam keys or not. Lawsuit says they are, Valve says they aren't. If Valve is telling the truth, they've done nothing wrong. If Valve is lying however that is an anticompetitive practice that should be punished. We won't really know until the trial concludes though.

    Personally I think the most likely answer is that some junior support people at Valve misunderstood the policy and told some people the wrong thing. There's a decent chance that when those accusations first surfaced a decade or so ago (yes this has been a thing for that long) Valve probably sent some internal memos to clarify what the rule actually covers and what it doesn't and hopefully that was that.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago

    Valve probably sent some internal memos to clarify what the rule actually covers and what it doesn't and hopefully that was that.

    Speaking from my company experiences as an employee:
    If it's not written in a clear language (e.g. ONLY keys generated and distributed by Valve need to follow the same price on other storefronts. We do not care about 3rd Party key generator/distributors like uPlays own infra) and somewhere accessible it will be forgotten or misinterpreted by employees.
    I can't even count the amount of "With this email we inform you of policy X and order Y".
    This email will be lost and new employees will never receive it.
    And employees will repeat the rules in a flawed way.

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  • [–] 16 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    This isn't about steam keys, it's about Valve throwing their weight around.

    Valve was arguing that Rainbow Six Siege needs to change their pricing on UPlay or they would be delisted.

    It's the equivalent of Amazon telling a manufacturer that they can't sell their product at a lower price on their own website if they want to sell it on Amazon.

    None of this should be defended.

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  • [–] -2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    No, it would be like Amazon saying that a manufacturer cannot use Amazon to ship goods sold on their own website if they're going to sell at a lower price. That is reasonable. Steam keys are a means of distribution. If steam is going to provide the file transfer, cloud saves, multiplayer server hosting, community page, and workshop page for your game, then don't sell your steam keys for less than the game on steam.

    If you want to sell a key for epic for less than you list the game on steam, they do not stop you from doing so.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Yes it's a very short article and apparently you completely hallucinated a paragraph where it's about steam keys?

    I do not see any mention of steam keys in the article. They wanted to sell a version that wasn't even on steam. Only on Uplay. This has nothing to do with steam keys. And valve was still complaining.

    So yeah. It's fairly simple and you still got it wrong.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Not really no. Ubisoft agreed to these terms in order to sell their game on steam. If they sold their game on any third party platform, they would agree to the same or even more severe terms. They even made their own storefront specifically so they would have the option to not sell on a third party platform.

    They now cry foul because they got all the benefits from selling on steam, but they don't want to pay for any of those benefits.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    Yeah it's particularly weird in this case because Ubisoft and Valve both have publisher, developer, and distributor departments within each company. So the agreements they signed and put into place are probably somewhat complex.

    Looking at the Steam page though it says

    Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

    Publisher: Ubisoft

    So in this case it's whatever Ubisoft as a publisher signed / agreed to with Valve when they accepted their distribution terms. These are probably not the same boiler plate terms an indie dev would sign if self publishing.

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