It will end up, with customers (us), getting to pay for a STEAM account service...more games, more money. 😢
I am all up for anti-trust law suit...but in the end, smaller customers always get to pay the bill.
Someone needs to pay for streaming service of all those games. 😎
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I didn't read everything in the complaint, but there is one point that surprised me : the price veto clause. If I understand well, by selling a game on Steam, a company can not sell it for a lower price on another platform (GOG, epic, whatever, not talking about stores selling steam keys) if Valve says no.
As a customer I'm not comfortable with this. Valve is rich enough and don't need to lock the market in this way, I guess.
Am I understanding well this clause ?
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Because other platform may take less than 30% cut, and selling at the same price on Steam and other platform would mean dev is getting less money from purchase on Steam.
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People buy from Steam bc game is on Steam. Just like people keep buying overpriced products when cheaper alternatives are available - they are conditioned to like / use one product.
We can't underestimate people laziness and / or habits. And that's what Steam uses to keep their position.
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No argue about people habits, but when you say cheaper alternatives ... I am not sure, but I think (believe) that products in the shops from the same seller cost the same way in every shop that sells it, the price differs only during sales. But the main price is still the same, no? If you want a cheaper, let's say, yogurt, you need to choose different producer. Why should it be different with games?
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I am not sure, but I think (believe) that products in the shops from the same seller cost the same way in every shop that sells it, the price differs only during sales.
Producer can give MSRP but shops can still decide to sell it cheaper / more expensive. Even when MSRP is printed by the company on the box. Look on the price of stupid water bottle in UK. ASDA and Tesco are low-price shops and sell it with base price of £0,85. While Waitrose or Sainsbury's sell the same bottle for £1,1, making whopping £0,25 (nearly 33% of cheaper shop base price!!) more profit. Why is that? Because over the years Waitrose and Sainsbury marketing created image that those shops are "better", more "posh". Some of their products may have better quality than in Tesco or LIDL, not denying that. But it allows them to sell the same stupid bottle of water with so much higher profit margin.
https://www.trolley.co.uk/product/volvic-touch-of-fruit-sugar-free-lemon-lime-flavoured-water/GAX627
Again - if you will get used to make shopping in Waitrose you will not go to do shopping in Tesco, even when it saves you tangible amount of money. And shops know that, that's why they keep price that can be so wildly different. I had times when I was going from one market to another (that is literally 100m further) to save 1 pounds on one pack of biscuits. No promotion, just different base price.
If people would look on and chose only shopping where price is lowest - Sainsbury or Waitrose would go out of the business long time ago. They may sell more expensive (and better quality) veggies or meat, but everything else in their stock is delivered by the same distribution centers from the same production lines of Nestle, Mars, Catbury, Unilever etc.
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Interesting, I thought they can't go under it. Thanks for the example. :)
If you went 100m more just for biscuit pack, that's alright, worse would be going for it 5-10km. ;)
And you are of course right, I am also an example of the habits / laziness as I buy mostly from the Steam. >_>
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:D
I'm lucky because I have LIDL, Tesco, ASDA and Sainsbury around me. So I can pick where I want to buy what. I would not walk 1h one way to grab pack of biscuits 1 pounds cheaper though.
I've read about people that travel dozens of km to buy in bulk something cheap in another city. And I'm like:
Or people who drive across continent to not rent car on place of destination. I did check it, and if I'd want to drive for 16h from UK to Poland - it would cost me 200 pounds one way (fuel for 1600 km...). When plane tickets are starting at 20 pounds. Car rental for 7 days like 100. So I'd save 80 pounds one way (and 2 days worth of travel) by going by plane.
"But I can take a lot of stuff in a car back!". So could I by grabbing registered luggage on the plane for 40 or 50 pounds extra.
(Although I know that in some cases going far by car may be cheaper than plane if plane tickets are expensive).
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I think current pricing is proportional, both for Publishers and Gamers, also indie should be thankful, they will not survive under Xbox/Playstation closed ecosystem.
PC enjoy golden age thanks to Valve. I don't think it will happened under Microsoft, Epic, EA, or other pretentious Companies.
We certainly should look back at the past. Remember 15 years ago? when Microsoft and Epic mocking PC market is dead.
And leave the market entirely for Xbox 360. Many Big Companies and multi-platform titles leaving PC at those times.
Only few that stay loyal to PC ecosystem, and make it better, that's Valve and CDProject.
Those are the dark times for being PC gamers.
Now all of sudden, many people that enjoyed established PC market, want their authority to be heard.
Epic is hypocrite and opportunist, only old enough PC Gamer know their true face. On the other hand Valve loved by PC gaming community for many things they have done in the past.
Valve fully deserve fruit of their success.
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(As a reminder, creators no longer own Humble Bundle, as it was sold to IGN in 2017)
Yup, he sells his independent baby to a bigger company for shitloads of money, and now he cries about big companies being too big...
Big companies get so big because people like him keep selling their small companies to big companies. Period.
Also I love how people complain about "Valve's tax" (30%), but not so much about State taxes (in my communist country, over 50%) or Google's or Apple's tax, which are about the same as Valve's, except while not being on Steam doesn't actually lock you out of PCs, not being on Apple's store does lock you out of iOS, and not being on Google's store creates lots of friction and scary warning so most consumers won't ever bother installing anything on Android that doesn't come from Big Brother Google's store.
I'm not saying that Valve isn't a problem though. But it's far from being the biggest one as far as software shops go.
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Well Epic file a lawsuit against Apple with "down with the monopoly!". But they also tried to recruit average joe to be their soldier in this "war".
People also complain about Google and their "you need to install tons of bloatware if you want to use our shop".
So there are voices where people complain, but they come and go in waves.
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Indeed, they come and go because they are from people who just care about their personal interest and their little comfort. Ignoring the long-standing issues with those companies/services.
To continue with your examples, as far as I remember, for Epic the "fight" against Apple was about the sale commissions on Fortnite on iOS (TL;DR: Epic wants more money, again no matter if actual taxes cost more than "Apple's tax"). They don't give a damn about iOS being a freaking lockware - even though that's exactly what bit them in the ass, fundamentally.
As for people complaining about Google's bloatware, I'm not sure what that was about, but seems that they want to use the shop and just would like fewer side apps with it?
I say Google should just let us download the bloody APKs as we want (e.g., from a desktop browser if we feel like it). Well, the ones that are free, at least: for the paid ones, I understand that's a bit more complex. And they should also allow third-party shops to have as much ease as their official monopoly shop in installing APKs: those installation confirmation popups are a UX hell. And they know it, and they leave it on purpose to make all alternative shops much less competitive.
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Epic rolled out update that allowed people to buy V-bucks directly from epic, without apple as middle man. So Epic didn't want to give apple cut on the V-bucks sale. They well knew it's direct breach of store Terms and Condition. Apple removed Fortnite from the shop entirely. And then Epic immediately started "we fight with monopoly for players!" bullshit.
Bit about Google is that when you want to have phone with app Store google is "forcing" phone manufacturers to install a lot of unnecessary bloatware - chrome, google maps, youtube, picassa etc. They can't just opt in to use pure android plus preinstall google shop. And Google knows that their store is biggest, most reputable and something people are just used to. If manufacturers would stop to have google shop on their phone - they would feel product is "bad".
So Google is using this consumer habit of using google shop to "blackmail" manufacturers into installing this crap on phones. And if you already have web browser - chrome, maps - google, image viewer - picassa, video platform - yourube etc. you will be too lazy to look for other solutions.
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At first, I thought this lawsuit was a waste of time. But actually it makes a really good point about Steam Key sales versus Steam store sales. What difference does it really make? Like even on the Steam store pages review section they have to have a little icon that shows whether a reviewer purchased a Key directly from the Steam store or Activated a product with a Steam key. Why do THEY care so much how and where the game was obtained. So this lawsuit makes a lot of sense and yes I would say Steam is very successful in having gamers buy directly from their store. The stickers and Steam points and what not all keep the customers in the Steam store instead of other Steam key sellers.
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What I like the most about Steam is the no-hassle return policy - if I buy a game directly through Steam, play for 100 minutes and find out it's just not as interesting as I thought, I can be certain they will return my money. I'm not sure this is obtainable through any other store front that just sells Steam keys (or is it?)
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Well they didn't care at first, then some lowlifes pretending to be developers abused the system by farming key reviews to boost their visibility and trick players like you and me into thinking their games are far better and more popular than they could realistically ever be, so Steam stepped in and said "key reviews don't count into total numbers anymore" and behold, those amazing games went from overwhelmingly positive to negative or mixed when counting only the real people who actually paid for the game on Steam.
That's how difference between the steam/key reviews came to be.
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It shows as a review marked with a key (gifts used to have a gift box, but they show a key nowadays too), but not in the default final score that shows in the top of the page under mini/capsule picture.
You can use filters above review box to display all reviews, just key reviews and stuff... and it will change the score above the box accordingly... but never in the top of the page.
tl,dr, Steam is trying to protect the customers, even if it can upset a single or a few customers. Their goal is that no one gets scammed to buy a fake game by looking at fake positive score.
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Also, there are people that leave key reviews that aren't fake, but they're more generous toward the game because the dev gave them a free key in exchange for a review. If I see too many key reviews I tend to avoid them and I try to make sure I read reviews where the game was bought on Steam before deciding if I want the game or not. At least half of the time people that got the game for "free" will give a more generous review than someone that paid for it. If the game is good, you'll see a decent amount of people that bought it directly from steam in the reviews
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Exactly. Though, bias will always be present in some way. I could in theory follow a dev, like his work, buy a game on Steam and leave a positive review partially because I like the dev. Is that biased or is it OK because they inspired me to like their work previously? Am I as a reviewer biased toward a game if it's in a genre that I really like compared to some game I bought randomly and disliked even if everyone else seems to like it? It's complicated. But yes, getting stuff for free = almost certain bias, at least in regular well meaning people.
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People like to complain about Steam's 30% cut but it would be interesting to see where all that money goes. Is it just for the Steam owners to buy big mansions or is it mostly to keep Steam operating smoothly, R&D, server maintenance upgrades etc.
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Considering how all servers go down every time there's a sale, I think we can rule out "appropriately scaled server upgrades" as a place into which the money goes 👀👀
But yeah, the tricky thing with Steam is that games generate regular costs (for hosting, downloading, handling achievements and such), but mostly just generate a single income (when they're bought), so I can understand it's a tricky thing to balance. Pretty sure some of the money does go into big cars and mansions, though
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I'll give you one example besides what you've already listed. 15 years ago, as an indie, you had to have your own website, accumulate customers, then make a deal with some payment processor to enable people to buy a copy of your game through them. Back in those days those processors took around 50% of your earnings on payment fees.
Then comes Steam and even my little game that most people never heard of can be easily purchased by anyone in France, Peru, Gabon, Pakistan, wherever... They support several dozens payment processors around the world, from pre-paid cards and credit cards to systems you almost never see in the west like some wire payments in street kiosks in Russia and such. And they host the game, achievements, leaderboards, cloud saves and so on on top of that, create technology for you to add those to your game very easily, have gamepad abstraction layers, now recently local multiplayer over internet thingy... and all of that for a small 30% the same as retail stores took back in a day.
Would I like if it was less? Sure. But am I gonna protest their fair share after all they do, not even going into free keys (and only thing they ask of you is not to scam Steam customers by selling those keys for a few cents while the game is $$$ on Steam)? No. I support Gaben buying a huge mansion in New Zealand.
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My problem with Steam is precisely that they participate in killing the decentralized web. Each indie game dev having its own website is how the Internet is supposed to work: many decentralized, independent, interconnected services. Hence Internet.
In my country, before Internet we did have such a centralized system, where any company could rent a space and be hosted by that central system, and be accessible kind of like on the Internet now. In a way, the Internet is going back to that, hence the term "Minitel 2.0" that we sometimes use to point out the regression (Minitel was the name of that archaic system).
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I hate that too but it's happening everywhere. Back in early 2000s I ran a literature website+forum in my native language, 300 novice or established authors published their works there, 3000+ forum members... It was about literature. There were other forums about video games, socializing, fishing...
... then the trend came for let's say a big gaming forum to include other categories, because users felt lazy to register to other forums for different stuff, and money from ads was nice if you had a lot of visitors, so gaming forums got "film", "literature", "anime" and similar sections, automotive forums started covering discussions about fishing, camping, books, movies... and smaller communities disappeared.
The same happened to "news portals", web indexes (remember those before google? you had to register your website so they'd index it in a proper category so people would know it exists) and all of that got overrun once facebook allowed everyone to register and post news and...
Most people are inherently lazy and tend to limit their experience. You're on facebook? Why go to some website if it's not linked from facebook? This game is not on steam? Well get it to steam and we'll consider buying it. This movie is not on Netflix? Well I'm not registering for another account...
We used to have several email addresses back in the day, nowadays when I tell kids my professional email (I'm a teacher during day) they ask me what strange gmail that is? I'm like, that's not gmail, that's email.... and they are like, but it ends with @gmail.com? What do you mean no?
Internet used to be indie, it's not corporate world where big fish eats small and people's behavior supports that race. Steam didn't invent the wheel.
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I like games, but I wouldn't say games are vital. I haven't looked at the whole suit, but wonder if the law firm can honestly claim this is not a frivolous claim. The plaintiff seems mad they can't just get a ton of keys to sell on their own so Valve would make no money. Hosting downloads costs money.
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That lawsuit is a troll, right?
There's no way someone would even attempt to claim such garbage.
"Hey, what are our chances of winning this case?"
"Ehh.. about 0%"
"Let's do it"
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Simple fact is, if a developer or publisher does not like Steam's rules, they have all the freedom in the world to release the game on other platforms, or even from their own websites/platforms. Steam offers tons of free systems that benefit developers/publishers, so for them to get anal about not being able to cut valve out of profits more, whilst getting free hosting, DRM, forums, additional methods of revenue, and more... It's just ridiculous imo. Pay the cost to have the services, or don't use the platform.
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not to mention a lot of games actually getting played to collect trading cards and do the achievements - i bet a lot of games that haven't got either would never be touched or even bought
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So I was reading the PDF, and I came across this:
A Steam Key simply consists of a string of 15 letters and numbers, such as “P77LR-8VFW0-MZ5G3,” which when entered into the Steam Gaming Platform, grants the user access to the corresponding product.
I was curious so I tried to activate that key... Sadly it's already taken ;)
(the game is this one)
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Now I'm wondering why they would include a valid and unused game key in a lawsuit filing to begin with...
Maybe this whole thing is an elaborate puzzle/event by that publisher to hide the giveaway in an 80 pages document ;) Congrats on solving it!
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I have no problems with EPIC like others and welcome the competition.
But at the same time I have respect for Valve/Steam for allowing the masses of external keys,
where Valve doesn't seem to earn any share but still has the costs for the download infrastructure.
I hope they will never disallow keys from key sellers or sites like this here.
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In my opinion Steam and other stores are like Netflix vs other streaming companies: They were here first/had the largest catalog, so the user base don't want the inconveignance of buying games elsewhere/starting a new subscription again.
As someone that pay their games, I just hate having multiple launchers for games (and epic launcher is so heavy it's outreageous).
The only other service I like besides Steam is GOG because it's DRM-free games, but I barely use it x)
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I think madjoki being able to snatch an unused key out of the document to have been the icing on the cake, "thanks for skyrim" elaborate puzzle GA sort of thread, something you would have seen on Steamgifts, nothing here sounds like a real professional complaint.
think they might be aiming towards meme status
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Small update> https://news.bloomberglaw.com/class-action/valve-loses-bid-to-end-antitrust-case-over-steam-gaming-platform
tl,dr; judge let the most-favored-nation claims move forward
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https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754.1.0_1.pdf
(As a reminder, creators no longer own Humble Bundle, as it was sold to IGN in 2017)
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