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Tim Sweeney: "Besides taking 30%, they’re [Valve] also taking a potentially even larger fraction of developers’ revenue and livelihood by undermining their business with these AI hate campaigns." (archive.ph)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 13 points 1 week ago* (6 children)

The real crime is that Valve requires price parity when you independently (no Steam keys) sell your game on a different store, as well as the Steam store.

They don't. Only if you are selling steam keys do they require price parity and only for steam key sales. You cannot sell a Steam key for less than you sell your game on Steam for. You can sell a non-Steam game key on other store fronts for any price you want.

This is what is being alleged in court by only a handful of developers but there are countless examples of the exact opposite thing being true.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    They must've changed their tone recently, because I've read an actual leaked court document, and the Valve representative / employee states (very defensively) that this is what they did. There's accounts of developers confirming this as well, including apparently in the (secret?) contract you sign when you sign up as a developer with Steam.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Link the leaked court document.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago* (2 children)

    Here. And the reddit thread where I found it.

    edit: Wait, lemme go ahead and quote the quotes from a previous post of mine:

    If we get to a situation -- again, this is rare. If we get to a situation where a partner is telling us that the price needs to be lower on other platforms than it is on Steam, then we will typically choose not to run curated marketing during times where that game is being discounted, if that is where the price is lower, or around a launch if it's a around -- if it's a price at launch time.

    and

    Q. Okay. And part of these conversations is saying, hey, we're not going to offer you curated promotions if you keep doing that, right?

    A. Part of our approach, if we get to a situation where we can't have pricing that is fair for Steam customers is not to amplify marketing with curated markets.

    Q. But these conversations, as you know, also involve the threat not to keep the game on the Steam store at all; is that right?

    A. That is not our typical process.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Curated marketing refers to the front page ads and popup steam runs, not the algorithmic suggestions you refer to in your original comment.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    But those can still make or break a game's commercial success, especially during release. It comes down to the same thing: Discouraging developers from making their game available for cheaper on other stores. I'm also not entirely sure that they would stop here, considering they said they do this, they did not say "no" to threatening the removal of a game from the store, and there are accounts of developers saying concerning things.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago*

    So, I take issue with the bit where you said "requires" because it implies that they will refuse to sell your game if you don't list it for the same price on other store fronts. I have seen it phrased this way before, mostly in complaints from the dev Wolfire who made it sound like Valve threatened to completely kick the game off the Steam platform for selling digital copies of the game un-related to Steam at a cheaper price.

    What you're alleging is different but you were unclear about that because you used the phrasing "price parity" and "most favored nation".

    From Wolfire's own mouth:

    But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.

    What this leak shows is not the same thing and even then the alleged Valve employee's statement is that this is not their normal process. That's not the same as them claiming definitively that this is a standard practice, or part of any agreement but I haven't had a chance to read the full document you provided so I'll have the read that before I make any other statements.

    https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action/

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