@Gardiner Bryant not one word about Xbox Play Anywhere ??? 🤔 just google Xbox Play Anywhere Buy once, play anywhere Purchase an Xbox Play Anywhere digital game, play it on Xbox and Windows 10/11 PC at no additional cost. Now when you own an Xbox Play Anywhere digital title, it’s yours to play both on Xbox and Windows 10/11 PC Progress goes with you Pick up where you left off on another Xbox or Windows 10/11 PC, bringing all your saves, game add-ons, and achievements with you. make you look like a bit of a joke
@Gardiner_Bryant not one word about Xbox Play Anywhere ??? 🤔 Purchase an Xbox Play Anywhere digital game, play it on Xbox and Windows 10/11 PC at no additional cost. Progress goes with you Pick up where you left off on another Xbox or Windows 10/11 PC, bringing all your saves, game add-ons, and achievements with you make you look like a bit of misinformation guy 🤔
OH NO I am a UK Victim of Steam, it would surely be a shambles if I was to sink a few quid into games on sale during summer sales, I guess I should stop that practice of saving money and FIGHT with them against Steam. ...... Yeah right like that is going to happen, FU uwu site I will continue to purchase from Steam! The only winners here will be the Lawyers because the refund to the rest of us will be negligible at best and Impact us more in the future.
A hundred choices in launchers would be great if they weren't bundled with their exclusive storefronts and exclusive social media platforms. Sorta like how you can change your email client from Outlook to Thunderbird without having to make a new email account for each client and then having to keep track of which contacts are only on Thunderbird, which are only on Outlook, which are only on Apple Mail etc. Because if game companies invented email, that's exactly how it would work.
@@oftensalty that is true, its a form of them getting more money. If you buy an EA game on steam they take a cut of like 30% but if you buy an EA game from EA its 100% profit. It stems from greed.
Same. I would purchase all my games from steam if I could. I do purchase some from the EA app simply because even if I buy them through steam, I still need the EA app which is stupid.
As for the tying... What about the sims? As far as I know the DLCs owned trough EA app will work with Steam copy, as long as you have accounts linked properly. So game developers are allowed to do it, they just don't (thankfully, we don't need more launchers).
Indeed! That's one game I had in mind myself. Just shows there's no limitation imposed by Valve to prevent DLC from other stores. It's up to the games themselves to support it.
@@GeekIWGthis works the other way too, my wife and daughter have most of the sims4 library, and I can attest that packs from both the Steam and Epic store load just fine on Origins launcher. And that doesn't lock my steam account when they play. Edited: added the "too".
That's one that does works like that. Expect the problem is that you still have to have LINKED account to steam. So, If I have G.O.G bought one I can't use it unless I linked my G.O.G galaxy/account to steam account. Which most people who use the offline installers would be denied access too even though they still legitimately bought the game.
The whole lawsuit sounds very much like an AstroTurf movement. It meant to make you think its by a civilian community, though likely backed up by a company.
Did someone already check out the originators of that site? I remember when we were battling software patents in the EU some of the big money companies created a fake movement to act as if real software developers were behind it. But they were called out, and that called for a major lobbying transparency law overhaul in the EU. Since the UK isn't part of the EU anymore, I bet this again is some big company lobbying.
If that law came into effect before the UK left the EU then it is likely that the law has not been rescinded yet any way so it will still stand. I did a whois on the site and both the Steam and Playstation sites are served by the same server so it is likely they are the same people based on this alone as the whois for some reason does not reveal the company that owns either domains which is odd as I was under the impression that only individuals could hide domain ownership details and companies could not but it seems I was wrong. More intrestingly is that xboxyouoweus, nintendoyouoweus and microsoftyouoweus does not exits but sonyyouoweus has existed since 2022 and steamyouoweus has existed since 2023 (I left of the co uk on these sites in this comment as to not trigger some moderation thing from UA-cam as it is likely to convert it to url's)
Case in point: I currently own *2104* games on Steam: - *257* of those I got for free (either F2P or promotional sales at -100%) - *1277* I got as Steam Keys from other stores (mainly bundles) - Another *500+* (probably even more than 1000) Steam Keys I have already purchased and are currently awaiting activation - *570* only of more than *2000* where bought on the Steam Store! That's only about 1/4 of my (activated) games that were bought on Steam, with Valve getting their 30% cut. And it's not even 1/5 if I count my idle keys. For the other 2000+ games I hold, they got and will get nothing at all, only bandwidth costs from me downloading them. _I'M HELD VICTIM IN VALVE'S CHAINS, SEND HELP /s_
Onthe dlc thing: i bought dragon age origins on steam and the dlc on a drifrent store (cant remember what one it was) after linking my accounts and the dlc worked fine, so yes this is 100% posible.
The fact they single out Valve is really funny to me and it has to be some weird Epic backed thing imo, sounds like Tim Sweeney is saying "Steam, you owe us... Your market share!"
I said the same when this came about a couple of weeks ago as my initial response was "yeah and I bet in the law suit we will see Tim fighting alongside them" But now I am wondering if he would actually be that stupid because if they are going after Steam and Sony then they are likely to go after Epic too.
I've always thought the price parity thing was totally unfair and Valve should not be restricting the price of non-Steam versions of the game so the Steam version cannot be undercut because whenever I saw the clause it was presented obscuring that it only applied to Steam keys. It did stand out to me as strange because normally I find Valve's policies very reasonable if not favourable to customers, but I figured they probably just weren't as "good guy Valve" as they seemed. When I saw in this video that it was only for Steam keys I went looking for the clause to correct you but turns out I was the one that was wrong, now that I see it is only applicable to the sale of Steam keys I'm 100% on Valve's side for this. Thanks for specifically calling out that it was only for Steam keys and showing the whole thing in context.
One important thing to note is that the wording of that clause has changed over the years. Check out that page on the web archive. There was a time where the clause itself didn't specify "Steam keys." HOWEVER, it was always on that same page with the headline titled "Steam keys" which means it always only applied to Steam keys.
@@AusSkiller I can confirm that Steam was not going to allow my game on their store with a lower price elsewhere. Even if it does not use Steam, parity is strictly enforced. If I run a 50% off sale somewhere else, I am required to run an equivalent promotion on Steam. Humble bundle has been able to get by this rule because the price of the bundle is still greater than the promotional prices of the individual games in the bundle, and Steam chose to not fight it. This is also a primary reason that the humble bundles have pricing tiers, so that the more expensive games can still comply with price parity. Steam is capable of destroying most developers on their platform if they so choose, which is why I hide my identity when talking about this issue.
Valve has done good and bad. Like the Steam Deck is amazing since it is a console-first, desktop second platform while devices like the ROG Ally and Legion GO run Windows that isn't even stripped down. It's running a desktop in the background and Windows wasn't designed for handhelds. However, they need to move on their promise of releasing the ISO for SteamOS. I trust Valve more than I do Epic, EA, Ubisoft, and even Microsoft.
I buy from Steam because I trust Gabe not to screw us. He understands the gravy train will keep rolling as long as Valve doesn't act like a standard corporation trying to nickle and dime its customers. I dread the day he retires.
If you know anything about the UK ( and the EU ) I would say this is more a political decision against the use of open source software rather than to do with a "monopoly" or protecting consumers. Not enough people read between the lines.
exactly this. This is not a consumer rights organization. It is a lobbying organisition probably meant for a future legislation that either helps EA or nintendo against consumer rights. I notice that wikipedia has been largely rewritten by pro software PR organizations. Really, every time I look at wikipedia, more of the whole demonstration against software patents has largely been edited out...
I think you are missing an important piece, when it comes to the price fixing allegations - and that's the e-mail exchange between Epic and Valve that mentioned Steam actively restricting lower prices on other digital store fronts (the infamous "U MAD BRO" e-mail from one of the Epic vs Everyone lawsuits). That e-mail suggests that Valve has been trying to keep the prices on digital games that are not handled by Steam as Steam keys fixed to the Steam price - and that thread went nowehere further, until now. With both Polish and UK anti-monopoly and consumer protection authorities going after Valve lately for price fixing - there must be something more to the story - maybe that policy is only limited to big publishers only, or something, only time will tell, as more info about the proceedings is released. Also, Polish UOKiK went after Sony and Xiaomi in the same manner (even going as far as to order Police raids on Sony and Xiaomi distributors' office) so there are probably way more price parity clauses hidden in the Tech/digital media market that will come to light in the future.
Smut on Steam being bad is entirely subjective. But I do think they should have a separate store front for it, but then they'd still be criticized for having that store front at all.
@@bradweir3085 Steam sells fast food? 😱 That you can download without friction with a couple clicks? While still being young and careless to the issues it might carry with it? This comment was completely irrelevant whataboutism mate.
@@IrisNebula7023 the negative effects of media on children is the responsibility of parents, but I already conceded it shouldn't share a store front with Steam. What's wrong with having a separate Store front for smut?
@@bradweir3085 The responsibility of parents is very theoretical with the rate technology advanced recently, we both know children are fantastically skilled at fooling them because they are understanding it way better, but I digress. I also said "young people" and that includes young adults as well, being 18 or 19 or however doesn't make you instantly immune. My comment was about your fast food mention which was totally irrelevant and something parents can control a lot more effectively, anyway. Not about the separate storefront, which I would be completely ok with if Valve wants to make one. It's a different thing having to actively visit Phub, than just a juicy recommendation popping up on UA-cam while you're watching a video about dog biology or whatever.
There may come a day when I stop giving money to Valve because of abusive practices but so far I haven't really observed any *truly* abusive practices perpetuated by them. If anything, they have been pushing the industry away from those practices. For the time being, Gaben is my shield.
unfortunately, once he dies, the market share still exists, and our libraries are still entirely under their walled garden. and then the investment board takes over. and they want a profit. anticompetitive behavior sucks, cause there's no forcing function that promises that the benevolence lasts forever. and there are big incentives for it not to. enshittification comes for us all :(
Thank you for the video Gardner. I watched a video by Jason Thor Hall of Pirate Software (an indy dev) just a couple a days ago about this topic. He and you appear in complete agreement. As indy devs I value YOUR opinion much more than some KAREN who wants to grift on Valve from her hive in the UK. Full disclosure: I am addicted to Steam games... Humble has made my Steam Library a ***vast*** warehouse of unplayed games I may never ever get around to. So sue me. I want to add that I ***often*** purchase games on GOG that I already have in my Steam Library if I LOVE the game and want to be absolutely certain I will retain access to said games I buy on GOG then download the Installer complete and ARCHIVE the games. I keep an OFFLINE copy in a DIFFERENT location so I OWN those games and no "online" entity can steal them. I believe "Trust But Verify" is the order of the day with Valve and I loathe the day that GabeN passes and what ***could*** happen if a corpo zombie gets its fangs or hooks into Steam. Peaceful Skies.
I hear that! Looks like the Steam Tax is now a thing :D Generally I just wait for the games to come to Steam but timed exclusives are just ridiculous on PC at this point.
3:58 I mean that's just naive and ignores basic market principles. Steam *does* have an effect on pricing on other platforms. If steam all of a sudden says "Hey, we're going to see all of these games at half price forever and pay the publisher the other 50% out of our pocket" in an effort to get more users, you better bet the other platforms are going to manipulate their pricing to compete. Obviously that's an exaggeration, but saying the largest corporation in a sector has *no* influence on its competitors pricing is beyond ludicrous.
Let's be real. In that hypothetical scenario, game publishers would all immediately double their prices on Steam so the consumers keep paying the same 🤣 Games aren't priced $X because they *need* to, but because they believe that $X is the price that will maximize profits. X has remained pretty stable throughout the years due to consumers being sensitive to prices that deviate from the established norm. If 90% of your potential buyers will avoid your game out of spite if you dare go a dime above $60, you're kinda forced to stay at $60.
You can dislike smut stuff (and where do you draw the line - for instance Baldurs Gate 3 has some pretty strong adult elements) but you have no right to impose your specific moral standards on others, as long as the content is legal in your jurisdiction for those that actually want it Steam absolutely should allow it to be sold. And far as I can tell the defaults to on adult filter works pretty darn well. So that complaint really doesn't fly to me, its like complaining the entire web from server to browser is terrible because Porn websites exist. Also have to say that Valve isn't exactly a huge company in staff count so the amount of things they do manage to do that are good for us all with Proton, making the handheld PC form factor affordable, functional and putting in so much work to tell the customers how well a game will/won't work, same with in home streaming, being a leader in VR gaming - expecting them to put out Portal, L4D or Halflife quality stand out well beyond just their era games frequently on top of all that is a bit steep. Though it would be nice.
I really dislike "competition" authorities and "competition" arguments for the following reason. As you point out, the whole dynamic is, in fact, very competitive. In fact, most situations are in business, even when they don't seem to be. Usually, if you could just fast-forward 10 yrs, the thing the bureaucrats are worried about today will no longer be relevant. In the meantime, Valve/Steam is providing a very valuable piece of software, platform, and service that people mostly happily choose to use, and if that means Valve earning 10-20 yrs of big profits before technological change, mkt disruptions, and competition catch up with them, that's precisely what incentivizes people to work together to build these things for consumers, users, gamers, etc., in the first place. Good video.
9:00 your point here is wrong. Steam does have a price parity rule that applies to games released for sale on Steam, when they are available for sale anywhere else; and no we're not talking about the steam keys rules, this is a different rule . Let's start off first with the fact that there is a standard retail price established by publishers in the game industry to standardize competition. AAA titles are 60 (now 70) dollars. Now let's compare Epic to Steam, the 12% cut compared to the 30%. The reality is that a game could go on sale for the same price discount on both epic and Steam, and the dev and publisher would make more share of the profit on Epic. So why ever put the game on sale on Steam when you could generate more money by putting the game at an attractive price only on one store where you'd make more money--Epic? Because THEY have to. I many scenarios, if a publisher wants their game to be available on Steam, AT ALL, said publisher has to agree to a price parity rule demanding THAT if they put that game on discount on a competing store, that game's price on Steam MUST match that exact same price within a reasonable time frame (once again we're not talking about Steam keys). This means, at some point or other, the game must be available for that same discounted price on Steam; and even though the game is just as attractive for the consumer on both store fronts because it's literally the same price, it ultimately hurts the dev and publisher to buy from Steam. If one wants to publish their game on Steam, they either have to play by Steam's rules OR not show up on Steam at all. And the reality is Steam is so powerful, and so many people ignore competing storefronts, that ignoring Steam can essentially mean the death of your game unless it's available on console. What this means is that a game can't go on sale at an even larger discount on other store fronts than on Steam (say a mathematical scenario where the dev/publisher would make the same amount of money on each storefront--so on Epic's store the game would logically be cheaper for the dev to achieve the same numerical percentage of money from game sales than on Steam because Epic takes a smaller cut of sales). The competition that Epic COULD/SHOULD/DOES enable, is negated by Steam's rules. Epic should have cheaper prices for common games shared between both store fronts, but they only DO on special occasions because Steam is pushing their weight around. Steam is being anti-competitive, or rather pro-survival. They don't want their prices to look shabby. This results in homogenous looking discount sales (even though at different times) when comparing store front mass discounts. Games that COULD be cheaper on Epic tend to not be.
Cite your sources, my guy. I have published a game on Steam. I did not sign a Price Parity Agreement. Epic's 12% cut is 1) the outlier, and 2) completely unsustainable for any PC storefront that wants to take themselves seriously as a platform. When I said 30% is the industry standard, I misspoke. It's not the *industry* standard. It's **the standard**. From brick and mortar retail to every other digital storefront (less MS PC games and Epic), 30% is the norm. Epic and MS's PC storefronts are the only ones offering less right now and it's no surprise they're publicly traded companies looking to sabotage the market to satisfy their growth targets for the quarter.
I think all the stores shouldn't take more than 15% anyway, it just seems absurd to me that they've had the infrastructure paid for millions of times over and they still expect to take a 30% cut for doing essentially nothing.
I didn't realize that funding the development of viral free and open source software or fighting against Microsoft's stranglehold on desktop PCs was "essentially nothing."
@@gardiner_bryant I'm just saying that from a purely monetary standpoint. I know they've done lots of cool stuff. I also understand that the Publishers are the biggest problem. I just figure all of them make ungodly amounts of $$$ it would be nicer for devs of smaller companies.
if you take in to account steam allow them to use there servers plus fetures gamers like from steam only downside nowdays is that you cant get a copy of your cd keys thanks to a twat on utube showing how you can use refunded keys to download games or use them on stores outside of steam even when a games delisted you can still download it. the only issue i take is i HATE DENOVO!!!! and how it fks single player games offline use, also we dont pay the 30% the publishers do!!!!!!!
@@christopherheathcote7039 And adding on to what Chris said above, Valve are hosting all our screenshots we want saved to our profiles, all the forums, all our saves, multiplayer game servers etc etc and servers are not cheap to run these days. Also 100% with you on Denuvo FK them.
@@gardiner_bryant your argument here is akin to "but exxon fund green energy initiatives!". what's up with that man? yeah, I LOVE that they are supporting linux, and I LOVE that someone can (seemingly) strong arm nvidia into FINALLY playing ball on open source. but that doesn't mean they're suddenly mechajesus.
id rather have 1 large monster to deal with that we can all target when we have problems, than dozens, or hundreds of smaller monsters that we couldnt possibly handle when a problem arises.
Concentrated market structures (a.k.a. monopolies) are just vilified, it's not valve's fault that competitors sucks so bad. They've created their own market and they deliver consistent quality.
Steam became dominant by good old-fashioned competition. They offer a better product, and the market favored said better product. If the other stores want to compete, then they need to make a better product. That being said, first-party stores should just stop. EA and Ubisoft actively make it hard to consume their products. It's insane to me.
Steam is technically a monopoly, sure, but is the exception to the rule of monopolies fucking everything up given that they're not enforcing their monopoly, and they're very consumer friendly. Rather Steam is a monopoly by simply continually providing the best service available to both customers and developers, Epic Games could have actually tried, but, they really didn't.
Do people in UK/EU not get free security and software updates?! Who the hell do you think pays for the engineers that produce said updates? That right, part of the 30% fee pays for maintaining and improving the Steam Platform - not just credit card fees!!!
Probably best not to tar us all with the same brush as you will discover that a not insignificant number of us also disagree with this lawsuit. So while you are actually trying to vilify the "people" maybe take a step back an actually ask yourself is it the "people" or is it just a few jumped up lawyers who have clearly conjured up some plan to have a big pay day for themselves. Of course people are going to sign up to be a part of the lawsuit because at the end of the day those people have just been given a free entry into a raffle that will net them a few $$ without doing anything and I do not doubt those same people will go spend it on Steam any way. America has show this to be entirely plausible time and time again with all the class action law suits that we all get to hear about and without a doubt people will join those even if they are satisfied with the product in that lawsuit. We can all throw shade at each others countries in the way you have done but at the end of the day if it happens in one country you can bet your bottom dollar that it will spread like wildfire globally. Besides at the end of the day are any of the people winners in these lawsuits with the few $$ they gain? probably not as the real winners are the lawyers as they are the only ones that stand to gain huge pay days.
Why the fuck doesn't anyone on sell their game on EGS for 10-20% less than the Steam version? It seems like that'd be a no brainier. It would drive people to EGS. And developers would make MORE money.
To _sell_ a game on EGS, there has to be willing _buyers_ on EGS (which there aren't). For every 1 sale on EGS, you'll get 30+ on Steam. More sales = more money. EGS is a terrible platform run by corpocratic villains.
@@markdebruyn1212 It's not that people won't care it's that developers don't because Steam has larger audience. Why see a game for $2 less & only get 1,000 people to buy when you can sell it on Steam Get 100,000 people to buy for $2 more. People always talk about how they want competition, yet the refuse even bother to keep using competition or ever try it, because it's too small or it's not good enough, (or it's not exactly like Steam or better than Steam) It's like what Gordon said about Nvidia on that gamers Nexus video "the internet will complain, whine about it, & go on keep on doing the exact of opposite of what they say. Just plain being hypocrites.
Alright I get it, but just by giving us the opportunity to have a device like the Steam Deck, for such an awesome price, I'll give them a pass this time...But only this time lol
British consumer law is some of the most robust in the world but this just doesn't make any sense. 1. makes sense to me based on valve having to pay for distribution of all steam games regardless of where the key comes from. 2. I imagine this is entirely on the developers themselves. 3. Publishers and devs are free to sell their game only on epic with it's 12% cut but I imagine since Tim needs to throw giant bags of money at publishers to do this it's not a popular option. I think because of all the support and features steam offers like GBs of space for saves, community pages etc it's probably worth it. This is a nothing burger as you yanks say and I'd find it more appealing if this law firm spent their time going after actual monopolies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. They are already going against Sony and I think they should focus on that. PC is literally the last open platform it's perfectly possible to make and release a game and never touch steam, though while possible I imagine it's not particularly profitable.
Maybe you're a valve fanboy, but maybe that's not a bad thing. Steam is what killed game piracy. Game vendor balkanization may as well bring back piracy just like it happened with movies after the 100ths of competitors of Netflix.
I am a victim of Steam as well. 😔 I am a victim of being able to escape a Microsoft monopoly thanks to Valve giving me freedom with Proton. I also have Stockholm syndrome and I'm happy this way.
It's actually in part because of Valve I switched to Linux on my PC as I was using my Steam Deck docked to monitor and keyboard/mouse to play games from it over my PC. I was even using the Desktop mode on it more for UA-cam, email etc because honestly I purchased Teh Deck I sure as hell am going to use it for various things just to see if it was possible! The Deck made it easy to adapt to Linux and then Microsoft started pushing all the AI garbage and that was the nail in the coffin for me for Windows. Now I run the grandparents friendly OS that is Linux Mint on the PC with windows on an external SSD just for the two games I play that have the BS windows only anti-cheat and only ever gets used for those games. The Steam Deck is not getting shelved either as it is now practically summer here that will be out in the garden with me in the evening :D
0:35 this must be a prank, made bay an weabo... i mean i'm a weaboo, and that is definitely one name i would use to make sure people know its a joke...
Pretty sure you are missing the point of this lawsuit. The price parity clause this lawsuit targets is not for selling Steam keys. it is about publishing a game on other stores - i.e. Epic or GOG - Steam requires price parity in such situation, even though you could offer the same game cheaper on Epic because they have lower fees.
They don't tho, they only require price parity on other stores selling _Steam keys_ . I've literally purchased games cheaper at retail price/not on sale from publisher websites before because they don't need to add the 30% cut on top. That is an alternate store. It wouldn't happen if it was against the ToS of selling on Steam.
Except they don't. Price parity is SPECIFICALLY for Steam keys, and nothing documented says otherwise. Even then, it's not enforced much. Otherwise, how could Steam games get sold for cheaper on Humble Bundle and Green Man Gaming? Lawsuit is ambulance chasers hoping Valve will just settle.
In my country, most games on GOG are way cheaper than on Steam due to regional pricing. Well, both have but GOG is still cheaper. So Steam isn't enforcing price parity, at least not here.
Good debunking, but that was easy 😉 Now i'm really curious of the background and motivations of this awkward political grabbing attempt in UK, i've yet to see a video on this.
Look up the ongoing, once dismissed "Wolfire vs Valve". Same thing. They're hoping Valve is rich enough to just settle so they don't have to deal with it, but not so big that they're likely to fight back and let it actually go to court. It's ambulance chasing.
@@The8bitbeard Yea Wolfire's case was pretty straightforward i think, a small platform trying to cash grab through lawsuit against an industry giant. This one tho has a real political dimmension behind and it'd be interesting to see where the rabbit hole goes (ie. who's pulling strings).
I am opposed to the uk lawsuit claims. 1.) without such a clause, markets go out of control and monopolies win. 2.) not "tying" dlc to the same platform the game came from results in unsafe means of dlc installation. it can allow malware to be bundled by a third party. 3.) there is no evidence of claim.
The emails literally says that Steam threatens consequences if you sell your NON STEAM KEYS on other platforms. And you’re surprised the prices are the same everywhere? This rule gives the customer ZERO reason to look for cheaper prices, and just keeps using Steam. It’s anti-competitive as hell.
Actually the DLC thing is true but that is due to the DRM that valve has. Anyway even if I hate DRM even since I bought steamdeck in all in steam. I bought so many games. It just works great. And you still hating on blockchain 😂😂 Even your president in endorsed bitcoin. You never replied to my latest reply either. Please read about bitcoin for your own sake. Just saying.
Steam ❤ because it's been the go to place for PC gaming. I never had issues. Doesnt feel force like those launchers from other companies. Make something better than steam if those companies want to compete. So far epic with their time exclusive only put a sour taste.
No. I'm not a "victim" of steam. The massive sales every few months, the generous return policy, and all the features make it more than worth it. I'm tired of this new anti-steam\anti-valve attitude going around. Especially when valve is arguably the most pro-gamer company there is.
The thing is that it doesn't really matter. Valve could be actively anti pc gamer and... We would be fine. We have choices. Gog, other key sellers, heck even Epic and EA. We don't have to like them, but we have choices, we have options. When it comes to pricing, I generally get far better ones at GoG due to their regional pricing (I'm not from the US), so I don't mind having my games spread around different platforms.
Valve sucks nowdays, and I hope this puts a mark in their bottom dollar. They’re way too relaxed with Steam printing infinite money, and need to return to their loyal games fans. And NOT by making DOTA an FPS…
so you want Steam to fall? if that’s what you want then pc gaming will be dead so uh yea, I mean they are rich but if they make Valve go bankrupt then it’s game over for pc.
@@rainbowdash3419 Valve isn’t, shouldn’t be, and will never be PC gaming. They may be the corporate face of it, but PC gaming will always be decentralized, and we’re better off for it. Valve can take these Ls
@@rainbowdash3419 the market exists because of the players paying for games, not because of the hosting company you download the games from. if valve got on a rocket ship tomorrow and stopped doing business on earth, the gap would probably be filled by other companies, and by open source infrastructure (because indies would finally have the kick in the pants they needed to push shared hosting infrastructure to be a real thing). big companies with big market share cause apathy in the industry, not growth. that's why REAL competition is GOOD. I want valve to have to keep earning their market share. There should never be a point where they become comfortable and complacent. They should be the premium choice, not the only half-decent choice. In 10 years, we SHOULD be looking back on today's valve and thinking it's absolute trash that we shouldn't have put up with, because they'd been innovating so hard during that 10 years. but if they keep having such dominance and such insanely high revenue, there's not much reason for them to do that innovation.
I have owned my Steam Deck for 2 weeks now and yeah l have bought a couple of games gotta tell you l’m Lovin it Australian girl gamer since1996 psone move up in the world 😅😊
"Valve has nothing to do with setting prices across store fronts, they only manage Steam" Not entirely correct. This may be the case for developers and some store fronts, but when I worked in the publishing space, publishers like EA, Epic, Ubisoft, CD Project, etc, were not allowed to sell games on their own platforms cheaper than what they were selling them on Steam... for fear of having their games delisted on Steam. It had nothing to do with Steam keys. So I somewhat agree with the first point of the lawsuit's claims.
and how is that anti-competitive? if anything thats your publishers being anti-competitive because you're making only your publisher storefronts have the sales, meaning that steam customers and steam itself lose out on the sales. steam on the other hand allows you to have steam keys sold lower prices than on steam itself as long as you have a similar sale on steam in the future. because of that, there are third party steamkey storefronts to buy steamkeys from for lower price than steam, even for publisher games, like for example fanatical.
@@infern24 Being able to sell your product cheaper due to having a lower cost of distribution is not anti-competitive. Using your position of dominance to prevent that is. Of course Steam and Steam customers will lose out (On maybe slightly lower prices). That’s why it’s competitive. Those publishers can pass on their savings to the customer. I imagine you simply refuse to buy a game anywhere other than Steam though (Which is cool) and don’t want people willing to do that to have a better deal (Which is not cool), and you would be part of the problem in that case. Reminder that I am not talking about Steam keys here, those are a different beast. I’m talking about sales on a separate platform that does not lead to an impact on Steam’s infrastructure. I prefer Steam as much as the next person, but I’m not blind to Steam abusing its dominance over the market, and I want there to be more reasons for Steam to do better and to WANT to do better for us. It may also help bring down the cost of games.
Nah man. 30% is way too much. It's "standard" because everyone thinks they can get away with it. You know what else is "standard"? Organic labels on food not having to mean anything. Corporations allowed to buy up housing and land. Corn Syrup & Sugar. $70 for video games. Day 1 Patches. Don't argue standard. Epic would let me sell for 12%. That's fair. And it's only so attractive because everywhere but Itch and Humble are being "standard". None of these storefronts are printing my game on physical discs and distributing them to game stops across the country. They absolutely don't need 30%. Every accusation in this video hasn't been "debunked", just defended right? "Valve DOES take 30% but you can circumvent them by using steam keys!" - "And even if they ARE making you pay 1/3rd of every sale, it's normal! Look Microsoft is doing it!" 30% is a holdover from when Nintendo saved the industry and when gamers used physical means to play their games. We are in a strongly digital age now. There's absolutely a cost in hosting my game, allowing people to download it. Valve gives us a boat load of tooling and metrics to work with. Then there's the fact that the platform eclipses features on every other platform by a mile. Steam isn't just a storefront though. And those added features do not escalate the deserved 12% to 30%. "And games are the same price across platforms!" Yeah, because it's against rules if that's NOT done. An incoming argument against this is "Well we've seen publishers pocket the difference in money instead of passing those savings on to the player in the past." Yeah, and that sucks. But do all of us have to do that? "Someone could come sell a game on steam for 10 bucks then turn around and sell keys for 1 dollar elsewhere." They gray market is doing that as we speak. Kinguin, G2A, etc. Valve isn't stopping this behavior. It's just hurting developers. If they are aiming to take big publishers to task, then aim the verbiage at them. Give them a separate contract & deal. This should not be universal, and the consumer pays in the end. "If developers wanted to check for DLC across platforms, they would, but it's time consuming and you'd lose sales." - "And look, steam workshop is right there. Valve even has the mercy to not blink at you using other mod sites." It would take time as we would need a standardized, cross-platform method/framework, yes this is true. Luckily for us, a solution has popped up recently and I've been made aware of it within the last few months. Baldur's Gate 3 made a blog post about how they are supporting modding with mod.io. I've seen Mod.io going around here and there, but since they don't support Godot yet, I haven't looked too deeply into it's implementation. What I do know is it has gathered a solid track record with Deep Rock, Dying Light 2, House Flipper 2, Space Engineers, Dusk and a lot more. And with Baldur's Gate 3 coming, that's a massive endorsement. Valve needs to be taken to task for this. This isn't in the spirit of an open and free market. Through-out this you weave in steam keys as a type of excuse/out for Valve on points 1 & 3. It's irritating to put it lightly. If I'm reading you right, you're a developer as well. Unless you're being paid to shill for Valve, I cannot imagine how you don't see the harm they are doing and how locked we are if we want to stay on that platform? Don't get blinded by what-about-isms. GOG ain't any better. Sure they are DRM-free and I love that, but their support is trash, and they ALSO require 30%. But you have to aim at this problem's head. And that head is Valve. Just because things are currently like this doesn't mean they HAVE to be like this. You deserve better. All of us do. Steam is great. Valve is great. And while I'd love to see them go the GOG route of allowing DRM-Free Access to our libraries in the future like they hinted, I don't think they should collapse if they don't. But we can't keep hand waving the wrong they are doing. This fight has happened so many times before. The first time I saw this fight was for Overgrowth and it's developer. Valve got away scot-free. And seeing people like you and PirateSoftware using your platforms to downplay this, means that Valve is going to once again, get away scot-free. I'm not happy to see that at all.
And Developers/Publishers(especially publishers) get a free pass because.......? Are you really going to imply that price parity is not caused by Developers/Publishers too? I will assume you are a developer and/or publisher based on how you have worded your response and if not then assume the role of one, as a developer/publisher are you going to have different prices across store fronts depending on what that store front charges to have your game on that store front or are you going to set the same price across all store fronts and cause a price parity yourself regardless of that store fronts charges? I know which I would do and it does not include different prices because of the simplicity of having a parity of price. It's all well and good calling out Valve and GOG for their 30% price gauging but you are eluding to the fact that the big Developers/Publishers also have their own stores and selling those same games at the same price with 100% of the money going to them. Epic offer a 12% charge to developers/publishers great...... but for how long and how long will it be before they ramp that up to that industry standard of 30%? Epic also give away free games every two weeks to everyone and I am far from a mathematician but as a business that surely can not be sustainable indefinitely surely? at what point does this cost get passed on to the end user? the only visible way that I can see this happening is that the cost will be passed on to the developers/publishers in the form of what epic charges them to publish on epic which they will then pass on to the end user because at the end of the day it is always passed on to the end user (you do have to eat as well after all). All the store fronts, Developers/Publishers need to be taken to task over this and not just two (Sony and Steam) because in doing so will change nothing in the grand scheme of things. If Valve lose then all that is going to happen here is that the Developers/Publishers get to pay less but the end user will still be paying the same because there is no chance in hell those Developers/Publishers are going to reduce the price to compensate. You are making the point of view from the Developer/Publisher point of view and yet this lawsuit is about the end user at the end of the day given the distinct lack of mentioning Developers/Publishers. There are only two outcomes here: Lawsuit is won, store fronts loses, Developers/Publishers win, End users lose because prices are not going to change to reflect this win. Lawsuit is lost, store fronts win, Developers/Publishers lose, End users lose. Also lets question why that website has not actually published any of the documentation so far considering that just says coming soon and from what I can tell they submitted at the beginning of the month. All we have from them so far is an FAQ that says Valve is in breach of laws "trust me bro" with no real facts to back that claim up and I have seen some vague information in my time but this takes the cake, Even UA-cams Terms of Service are not that vague and they invented vague documents. As for the Steam Keys thing because I honestly think that is what this lawsuit is actually targeting and not store parity outside of Steam Key Distribution given I actually took the time to go through the Steamworks documentation and failed to actually see anything that could even remotely be considered a parity clause that does not pertain to Steam Keys themselves but I may have missed it so it is possible that does exist. The rules outlined for Steam Keys are seemingly fair for the end user because in short it basically says that the keys generated for other store fronts should not be sold at less than those you sell on Steam and if they are then the same needs to happen through steam in a reasonable time frame so my understanding of this is if you have a sale on your own website for steam keys at 50% off then the same needs to happen for the game sold through Steam in a reasonable time frame (probably a couple of week?) Given we do see this with the other store fronts like Humble Bundle and Fanatical generally the Steam Sale happens then Humble Bundle and Fanatical have theirs after this all seems to be above board in terms of that agreement. Although I do have to say I am not exactly sure how Humble Bundle works this given their bundles seem to fall outside of this fair parity sale clause of keys and given I have never actually kept tabs on if all the contents of those bundles have gone on sale at a later time and equal the same value of those items in the bundle when on sale in steam it's a bit of a mystery unless they have an agreement in place with Valve on this one. It's also worth noting that as a Developer/Publisher you can request keys for external sales on other sites without cost to you which means you do get 100% of those sales up to 5,000 keys with the ability to request more with a few criteria being checked, honestly this is probably going to comparing key sales externally to steam store sales etc. I guess if you sold 5000 keys externally and not one sale has happened via steam then they are going to question it, there is a whole documentation and a video on this though. Grey market keys are whole rabbit hole on their own to be fair and given sites like G2A and Kinguin allow for end users and nefarious users to become sellers it opens the flood gates to all sorts of issues like fraudulent cards being used to obtain cheap steam keys from countries with a lower price and then sold on these sites for a profit to those sellers only with nothing going to the Developer/Publisher outside of the cheap key -30%. This I wholly disagree with using as there is no real way to verify the legitimacy of those keys or the sellers and I also do not believe these sites policy's of "user protected purchases" either (now we wait for the Grey Market key mob to jump in and tell me how wrong I am, good news for all of you about to make those comments, your opinion means nothing to me) I will say though I do think that the 30% is actually a steep price for indie devs and this should be modified for the small studios that do not have a big publisher backing them or are not part of/owned by a corporation like EA as a small studio. A large corporation making hundreds of millions can swallow that cost but a small studio which barely makes a couple of million probably not given that most of that profit is more than likely going to swallowed up by their next game development. Although there is a bit of an obscurity to this in Palworld given that game exploded overnight and it made on obscene amount of money for and indie dev so I am not exactly sure how you would go about handling those exceptions in this instance. Also I win for longest message award :p
@@Nodster When Valve requires them to sell Steam keys for parity, then you can't set a lower price based on lower percentages costing you less money. This means that the users see no benefit to shopping through other storefronts which helps to maintain the monopoly. The fact that so many people are so blind to this obvious economic abuse really sickens me, but it also explains how so many get elected that keep screwing up the economy while those that make it better get slandered.
@@anon_y_mousse my man... Why are you talking about steam keys here? Steam keys means people go to steam to play the game which makes the monopoly stronger. You should check the price of games which do not give steam keys and realize that those are in no way limited to what the game price is on steam. You want to sell games for less outside of steam? don't give a steam key and you are all good.
@@TrixyTrixter Fewer benefits for your end users or play by monopolistic rules. Those are both bad choices, but while one allows you to be profitable it also means you make a direct competitor, or in this case an add-on leech service, richer. If they instead charged a percentage that was reasonable and applied that to offsite key sales too, then they would still make money to support their infrastructure without forcing a monopoly.
I hate to say it but Valve is the only one I'd speak out against any government intervention. Overall fairly consumer friendly, it almost feels like an infinite amount of games in the store with new games, old games, free games, games in big sales that you may have just skipped on. One man band devs getting to have any easy way to publish their game, have workshop support for mods and cloud saves, I mean common. There is a reason nobody cares for any other launchers, plus I fully switched to Linux and the work they did with Proton is incredible. I just was playing a non linux game with Proton maxed out graphics and whatnot and you wouldn't even know its not native. Im also pretty sure you can use Proton to try and play non Steam games on Linux as well. If Valve didn't make it so easy to play games and support Linux like they did I probably couldn't have fully switched. I heard anti cheat causes issues and cant play on Linux but I don't play any that have it so no big deal. Im still pissed about the bots in TF2 though.
I agree with the video but man are there some anti consumer fanboys in the comments. More competition is always better, period. It doesn't matter if other services are worse, you as a consumer having more choices is never a bad thing.
More competition is better if the competition is actually trying to compete. No launcher actually tries to compete with Steam, they toss something out see its not getting all the valve customers and say f it.
@@omgman5745 No, such exclusivity deals actually tend to harm the consumer. I don't know how you read "more options" and understood: "Oh he means arbitrary restrictions that limit consumer options"
@@omgman5745 I want to have more choices. I have some games on epic because they were given away, and some because they were just outright cheaper than on steam. Same with GoG. Ideally you would have similar selections all around so you can pick and choose what's best for you. If you prefer a single platform (which I totally understand, specially now that I have a steam deck), then that's good. That's your choice. The exclusivity example you said is the antithesis of what I said, because that limits your ability to choose. Even then, though, there's the caveat that if you're on pc you can access the store/launcher you want need because you're not completely held hostage like on consoles.
Want to site a legitimate beef then lets talk about the hobgoblins running the support department and moderating the forums. I gets every Hogwarts needs a Slytherin I suppose. But this in itself is nonsense.
The first point you discuss (which is the third on the list, but first on your video) is exactly what I'm telling people years. This platform is more open than any other. You don't need to buy Steam games on Steam in order to get it for Steam. Valve gets 0% money if you buy the game on alternative stores, but yet, you get the key for Steam and can play it on Steam. How is that anti consumer? Which other platform allows this? Furthermore, the 30% cut isn't even set in stone, because it get cheaper the more you sell. But that is the biggest flaw in my opinion, because indie devs don't get this price cut, but they are the one who needs it most The other point that Steam dictates not to sell the game for cheaper on other platforms, well, that's a fair criticism, because Valve should not have a say how other stores are priced. But if that is the case, then how do Humble Bundle sell games for cheaper? Maybe they are partnered with Steam as an official retailer?
The retail price has to be the same, which is fair enough because it's a steam key, and the retail prices _are_ the same on all major key stores. It said in the video that you can do cheaper sales as long as there's a "comparable" sale on Steam relatively soon after.
@@MangoPanic (Edit: Rephrased a statement to be more clear.) Right, but I wasn't talking about the Steam keys (on the point about price parity), I was talking about games published on other platforms, to buy them separately from Steam. That is something Gardiner didn't talk about. I am look at the Pricing in Steamworks page, but cannot find any clause to support this statement. So maybe its a myth? To be fair, I never fact checked this before.
@@MangoPanic I often buy games on other platforms for less than it would be on steam. I use the Augmented Steam extension to check prices and a lot of things are cheaper outside of steam, so even this rule doesn't apply all the time.
Valve has to maintain the servers that house these games and services so 30% is more than fair! lets talk about Xbox Live and PS plus doing damn near the same thing and charging you a access fee monthly to game online!?!?!?!?!?
Oh no, im a victim because i like having all my games available all in one place, oh no im so depressed. Maybe i should make myself feel better by getting some games on sale at the summer game fest. Yeah thats what I'll do
I lean left politically but I have no problem with a business being the most successful through excellence. Nothing is perfect but Steam just works. Want to beat them? Do it better.
Valve does not enforce patents unless you backstab them, and their patents are technical. Amazon has frivolous broad patents on sending someone a gift. They tried to get these patents too in the EU, but they have been rejected thanks to real consumer rights organizations. Amazon was a frivolous software patent proponent (Valve is not), and now they are getting bitten by their own stance on frivolous patents because they have lost several patent lawsuits already. So yes, there is a big difference between Amazon and Valve. Valve doesn't try to hurt R&D.
not sure what your political leaning has to do with this but sure ok. But you are absolutely correct If others want to beat the industry leader then they simply need to do better, add the features people want etc instead of trying to sue the industry leader *cough epic cough* Personally I have found the epic software to be more clunky and prone to locking up on me compared to Steam even though Steam has it's moments at times so I favor Steam because it really does just work although the irony of it is that I found Epic to actually work better on Linux using Wine than on Windows lol
@@NodsterPolitical leanings can often influence or even dictate policy positions. There is a segment on the left that hates and wants to abolish capitalism, it's small. If you listen to media like "Fox news", they'll often say it's the majority of the left. It's not. Capital and corporations should be regulated, this is a case of it going too far.
#1 makes no sense. By their logic then the xbox marketplace, nintendo eshop and PS Store are limiting consumer choice too. You can buy game codes for all of those from third parties to use on those storefronts too. So, if they are going after valve for this then they should go after those console makers too. #3 does not make sense either since the consoles also take a substantial fee around 30% too, so again if they go after valve they should go after consoles too.
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It's a "parents" Activists group!
@Gardiner Bryant not one word about Xbox Play Anywhere ??? 🤔
just google Xbox Play Anywhere
Buy once, play anywhere
Purchase an Xbox Play Anywhere digital game, play it on Xbox and Windows 10/11 PC at no additional cost.
Now when you own an Xbox Play Anywhere digital title, it’s yours to play both on Xbox and Windows 10/11 PC
Progress goes with you
Pick up where you left off on another Xbox or Windows 10/11 PC, bringing all your saves, game add-ons, and achievements with you.
make you look like a bit of a joke
@Gardiner_Bryant
not one word about Xbox Play Anywhere ??? 🤔
Purchase an Xbox Play Anywhere digital game, play it on Xbox and Windows 10/11 PC at no additional cost.
Progress goes with you
Pick up where you left off on another Xbox or Windows 10/11 PC, bringing all your saves, game add-ons, and achievements with you
make you look like a bit of misinformation guy 🤔
Oh no, I'm a victim of Steam! I sure hope the upcoming Steam Summer Fest doesn’t have any game I want on sale or else I might be victimised again!
Oh no l’m a victim too been there done this that😮
OH NO I am a UK Victim of Steam, it would surely be a shambles if I was to sink a few quid into games on sale during summer sales, I guess I should stop that practice of saving money and FIGHT with them against Steam.
...... Yeah right like that is going to happen, FU uwu site I will continue to purchase from Steam!
The only winners here will be the Lawyers because the refund to the rest of us will be negligible at best and Impact us more in the future.
First time?
I feel so victimized that I went to buy a couple of games . . . on Steam
isint it strange that on ubisoft store and ea store the prices are higher than on steam ?
I'd rather Steam be a monopoly than have 200 different launchers for games.
A hundred choices in launchers would be great if they weren't bundled with their exclusive storefronts and exclusive social media platforms.
Sorta like how you can change your email client from Outlook to Thunderbird without having to make a new email account for each client and then having to keep track of which contacts are only on Thunderbird, which are only on Outlook, which are only on Apple Mail etc. Because if game companies invented email, that's exactly how it would work.
@@oftensalty that is true, its a form of them getting more money. If you buy an EA game on steam they take a cut of like 30% but if you buy an EA game from EA its 100% profit. It stems from greed.
Same. I would purchase all my games from steam if I could. I do purchase some from the EA app simply because even if I buy them through steam, I still need the EA app which is stupid.
Just wait until each one costs £20 a month, then £30, then £40.
That address sounds like someone hit their little toe at furniture. Multiple times.
The content reads like they hit their head on furniture multiple times.
It's supposed to be "Steam You Owe Us" lol
As for the tying... What about the sims? As far as I know the DLCs owned trough EA app will work with Steam copy, as long as you have accounts linked properly. So game developers are allowed to do it, they just don't (thankfully, we don't need more launchers).
Indeed! That's one game I had in mind myself. Just shows there's no limitation imposed by Valve to prevent DLC from other stores. It's up to the games themselves to support it.
@@GeekIWGthis works the other way too, my wife and daughter have most of the sims4 library, and I can attest that packs from both the Steam and Epic store load just fine on Origins launcher.
And that doesn't lock my steam account when they play.
Edited: added the "too".
That's one that does works like that. Expect the problem is that you still have to have LINKED account to steam. So, If I have G.O.G bought one I can't use it unless I linked my G.O.G galaxy/account to steam account. Which most people who use the offline installers would be denied access too even though they still legitimately bought the game.
Isn't there an option in the settings you have to click in to see adult games? Unclick if you don't want to see that content.
Probably nintendo secretly trying to cabbage the market for everyone 😅
Valve has a new pricing model that reduces the more you sell. Also they even give back the $100 fee when you sell X amount
Usually this type of lawsuits win, but let's see what the future holds
You mean that $5 AAA game I got was inflated?!
YEP but not by valve but by the Devs ROFL
@@Nodster The devs also decided to inflate Aloy.
The whole lawsuit sounds very much like an AstroTurf movement. It meant to make you think its by a civilian community, though likely backed up by a company.
I suppose the first problem with your video is that you used the US storefronts to discuss UK prices and software availablity.
I wonder how much epic games had to pay to not be named as responsible for this..
My only issue with Steam is the uneven enforcement of what is allowed in adult games. heh. So I usually buy games like that on other platforms.
Did someone already check out the originators of that site?
I remember when we were battling software patents in the EU some of the big money companies created a fake movement to act as if real software developers were behind it. But they were called out, and that called for a major lobbying transparency law overhaul in the EU.
Since the UK isn't part of the EU anymore, I bet this again is some big company lobbying.
If that law came into effect before the UK left the EU then it is likely that the law has not been rescinded yet any way so it will still stand.
I did a whois on the site and both the Steam and Playstation sites are served by the same server so it is likely they are the same people based on this alone as the whois for some reason does not reveal the company that owns either domains which is odd as I was under the impression that only individuals could hide domain ownership details and companies could not but it seems I was wrong.
More intrestingly is that xboxyouoweus, nintendoyouoweus and microsoftyouoweus does not exits but sonyyouoweus has existed since 2022 and steamyouoweus has existed since 2023 (I left of the co uk on these sites in this comment as to not trigger some moderation thing from UA-cam as it is likely to convert it to url's)
The amount of resiliency he has whenever he say "Steamy OuO We Us" is hilarious and impressive
Case in point:
I currently own *2104* games on Steam:
- *257* of those I got for free (either F2P or promotional sales at -100%)
- *1277* I got as Steam Keys from other stores (mainly bundles)
- Another *500+* (probably even more than 1000) Steam Keys I have already purchased and are currently awaiting activation
- *570* only of more than *2000* where bought on the Steam Store!
That's only about 1/4 of my (activated) games that were bought on Steam, with Valve getting their 30% cut. And it's not even 1/5 if I count my idle keys. For the other 2000+ games I hold, they got and will get nothing at all, only bandwidth costs from me downloading them.
_I'M HELD VICTIM IN VALVE'S CHAINS, SEND HELP /s_
Onthe dlc thing: i bought dragon age origins on steam and the dlc on a drifrent store (cant remember what one it was) after linking my accounts and the dlc worked fine, so yes this is 100% posible.
The fact they single out Valve is really funny to me and it has to be some weird Epic backed thing imo, sounds like Tim Sweeney is saying "Steam, you owe us... Your market share!"
I said the same when this came about a couple of weeks ago as my initial response was "yeah and I bet in the law suit we will see Tim fighting alongside them"
But now I am wondering if he would actually be that stupid because if they are going after Steam and Sony then they are likely to go after Epic too.
Ya know, or… Steam is the main target because they’re the biggest target.
I've always thought the price parity thing was totally unfair and Valve should not be restricting the price of non-Steam versions of the game so the Steam version cannot be undercut because whenever I saw the clause it was presented obscuring that it only applied to Steam keys. It did stand out to me as strange because normally I find Valve's policies very reasonable if not favourable to customers, but I figured they probably just weren't as "good guy Valve" as they seemed. When I saw in this video that it was only for Steam keys I went looking for the clause to correct you but turns out I was the one that was wrong, now that I see it is only applicable to the sale of Steam keys I'm 100% on Valve's side for this. Thanks for specifically calling out that it was only for Steam keys and showing the whole thing in context.
One important thing to note is that the wording of that clause has changed over the years. Check out that page on the web archive. There was a time where the clause itself didn't specify "Steam keys." HOWEVER, it was always on that same page with the headline titled "Steam keys" which means it always only applied to Steam keys.
@@Moskeeto Yeah when I had seen it previously that was the version I was shown but with the heading omitted.
They give keys for free when you put your games on steam, it's a catch 22.
@@AusSkiller I can confirm that Steam was not going to allow my game on their store with a lower price elsewhere. Even if it does not use Steam, parity is strictly enforced. If I run a 50% off sale somewhere else, I am required to run an equivalent promotion on Steam. Humble bundle has been able to get by this rule because the price of the bundle is still greater than the promotional prices of the individual games in the bundle, and Steam chose to not fight it. This is also a primary reason that the humble bundles have pricing tiers, so that the more expensive games can still comply with price parity. Steam is capable of destroying most developers on their platform if they so choose, which is why I hide my identity when talking about this issue.
Valve has done good and bad. Like the Steam Deck is amazing since it is a console-first, desktop second platform while devices like the ROG Ally and Legion GO run Windows that isn't even stripped down. It's running a desktop in the background and Windows wasn't designed for handhelds. However, they need to move on their promise of releasing the ISO for SteamOS. I trust Valve more than I do Epic, EA, Ubisoft, and even Microsoft.
I buy from Steam because I trust Gabe not to screw us. He understands the gravy train will keep rolling as long as Valve doesn't act like a standard corporation trying to nickle and dime its customers. I dread the day he retires.
ESO dlc works.. Game bought on steam. Updates on ESO Website.. still works..
If you know anything about the UK ( and the EU ) I would say this is more a political decision against the use of open source software rather than to do with a "monopoly" or protecting consumers. Not enough people read between the lines.
exactly this. This is not a consumer rights organization. It is a lobbying organisition probably meant for a future legislation that either helps EA or nintendo against consumer rights.
I notice that wikipedia has been largely rewritten by pro software PR organizations. Really, every time I look at wikipedia, more of the whole demonstration against software patents has largely been edited out...
@@bloepje you may restore that as a Wikipedia user
I think you are missing an important piece, when it comes to the price fixing allegations - and that's the e-mail exchange between Epic and Valve that mentioned Steam actively restricting lower prices on other digital store fronts (the infamous "U MAD BRO" e-mail from one of the Epic vs Everyone lawsuits). That e-mail suggests that Valve has been trying to keep the prices on digital games that are not handled by Steam as Steam keys fixed to the Steam price - and that thread went nowehere further, until now.
With both Polish and UK anti-monopoly and consumer protection authorities going after Valve lately for price fixing - there must be something more to the story - maybe that policy is only limited to big publishers only, or something, only time will tell, as more info about the proceedings is released.
Also, Polish UOKiK went after Sony and Xiaomi in the same manner (even going as far as to order Police raids on Sony and Xiaomi distributors' office) so there are probably way more price parity clauses hidden in the Tech/digital media market that will come to light in the future.
I think it's more likely that such clauses don't actually exists and I'm giving Valve the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise
Smut on Steam being bad is entirely subjective. But I do think they should have a separate store front for it, but then they'd still be criticized for having that store front at all.
It's not subjective. Pornography is addictive and damaging to its victims.
@@gardiner_bryant so is fast food.
@@bradweir3085 Steam sells fast food? 😱 That you can download without friction with a couple clicks? While still being young and careless to the issues it might carry with it?
This comment was completely irrelevant whataboutism mate.
@@IrisNebula7023 the negative effects of media on children is the responsibility of parents, but I already conceded it shouldn't share a store front with Steam. What's wrong with having a separate Store front for smut?
@@bradweir3085 The responsibility of parents is very theoretical with the rate technology advanced recently, we both know children are fantastically skilled at fooling them because they are understanding it way better, but I digress.
I also said "young people" and that includes young adults as well, being 18 or 19 or however doesn't make you instantly immune.
My comment was about your fast food mention which was totally irrelevant and something parents can control a lot more effectively, anyway. Not about the separate storefront, which I would be completely ok with if Valve wants to make one.
It's a different thing having to actively visit Phub, than just a juicy recommendation popping up on UA-cam while you're watching a video about dog biology or whatever.
There may come a day when I stop giving money to Valve because of abusive practices but so far I haven't really observed any *truly* abusive practices perpetuated by them. If anything, they have been pushing the industry away from those practices. For the time being, Gaben is my shield.
unfortunately, once he dies, the market share still exists, and our libraries are still entirely under their walled garden. and then the investment board takes over. and they want a profit.
anticompetitive behavior sucks, cause there's no forcing function that promises that the benevolence lasts forever. and there are big incentives for it not to.
enshittification comes for us all :(
If Valve was enforcing this policy, Humble Bundle would not be including Steam keys in their bundles.
Keys exist specifically to be sold via stores like Humble.
Thank you for the video Gardner.
I watched a video by Jason Thor Hall of Pirate Software (an indy dev) just a couple a days ago about this topic. He and you appear in complete agreement. As indy devs I value YOUR opinion much more than some KAREN who wants to grift on Valve from her hive in the UK.
Full disclosure: I am addicted to Steam games... Humble has made my Steam Library a ***vast*** warehouse of unplayed games I may never ever get around to. So sue me.
I want to add that I ***often*** purchase games on GOG that I already have in my Steam Library if I LOVE the game and want to be absolutely certain I will retain access to said games I buy on GOG then download the Installer complete and ARCHIVE the games. I keep an OFFLINE copy in a DIFFERENT location so I OWN those games and no "online" entity can steal them.
I believe "Trust But Verify" is the order of the day with Valve and I loathe the day that GabeN passes and what ***could*** happen if a corpo zombie gets its fangs or hooks into Steam.
Peaceful Skies.
it's sad G.O.G is the smallest platform.
The only time I've felt like a victim on steam is when I have to buy a specific game from epic or ubisoft because of a timed/ exclusive release
I hear that!
Looks like the Steam Tax is now a thing :D
Generally I just wait for the games to come to Steam but timed exclusives are just ridiculous on PC at this point.
3:58 I mean that's just naive and ignores basic market principles. Steam *does* have an effect on pricing on other platforms. If steam all of a sudden says "Hey, we're going to see all of these games at half price forever and pay the publisher the other 50% out of our pocket" in an effort to get more users, you better bet the other platforms are going to manipulate their pricing to compete.
Obviously that's an exaggeration, but saying the largest corporation in a sector has *no* influence on its competitors pricing is beyond ludicrous.
Let's be real. In that hypothetical scenario, game publishers would all immediately double their prices on Steam so the consumers keep paying the same 🤣
Games aren't priced $X because they *need* to, but because they believe that $X is the price that will maximize profits. X has remained pretty stable throughout the years due to consumers being sensitive to prices that deviate from the established norm.
If 90% of your potential buyers will avoid your game out of spite if you dare go a dime above $60, you're kinda forced to stay at $60.
You can dislike smut stuff (and where do you draw the line - for instance Baldurs Gate 3 has some pretty strong adult elements) but you have no right to impose your specific moral standards on others, as long as the content is legal in your jurisdiction for those that actually want it Steam absolutely should allow it to be sold. And far as I can tell the defaults to on adult filter works pretty darn well. So that complaint really doesn't fly to me, its like complaining the entire web from server to browser is terrible because Porn websites exist.
Also have to say that Valve isn't exactly a huge company in staff count so the amount of things they do manage to do that are good for us all with Proton, making the handheld PC form factor affordable, functional and putting in so much work to tell the customers how well a game will/won't work, same with in home streaming, being a leader in VR gaming - expecting them to put out Portal, L4D or Halflife quality stand out well beyond just their era games frequently on top of all that is a bit steep. Though it would be nice.
based
We're more likely to become a victim of buying from Ubisoft or Bethesda than buying something through Steam.
We would rather give away the steam keys! Rather have people loving and playing our game than trying to maximise profit!
I really dislike "competition" authorities and "competition" arguments for the following reason. As you point out, the whole dynamic is, in fact, very competitive. In fact, most situations are in business, even when they don't seem to be. Usually, if you could just fast-forward 10 yrs, the thing the bureaucrats are worried about today will no longer be relevant. In the meantime, Valve/Steam is providing a very valuable piece of software, platform, and service that people mostly happily choose to use, and if that means Valve earning 10-20 yrs of big profits before technological change, mkt disruptions, and competition catch up with them, that's precisely what incentivizes people to work together to build these things for consumers, users, gamers, etc., in the first place. Good video.
Steam Sales are phenomenal though. I've gotten soooooo many AAA games for under $20
Don't forget to look up authorized key vendors for developers. Fanatical and Humble often have great deals on games.
My thoughts on Steam/Valve are simple, as long as it’s private and GabeN is alive we’ll get the “best”
i didnt know we can sell steam keys omg praise lord gsben he is generous
This videos thumbnail is hilarious 😂
9:00 your point here is wrong. Steam does have a price parity rule that applies to games released for sale on Steam, when they are available for sale anywhere else; and no we're not talking about the steam keys rules, this is a different rule . Let's start off first with the fact that there is a standard retail price established by publishers in the game industry to standardize competition. AAA titles are 60 (now 70) dollars. Now let's compare Epic to Steam, the 12% cut compared to the 30%. The reality is that a game could go on sale for the same price discount on both epic and Steam, and the dev and publisher would make more share of the profit on Epic. So why ever put the game on sale on Steam when you could generate more money by putting the game at an attractive price only on one store where you'd make more money--Epic? Because THEY have to.
I many scenarios, if a publisher wants their game to be available on Steam, AT ALL, said publisher has to agree to a price parity rule demanding THAT if they put that game on discount on a competing store, that game's price on Steam MUST match that exact same price within a reasonable time frame (once again we're not talking about Steam keys).
This means, at some point or other, the game must be available for that same discounted price on Steam; and even though the game is just as attractive for the consumer on both store fronts because it's literally the same price, it ultimately hurts the dev and publisher to buy from Steam. If one wants to publish their game on Steam, they either have to play by Steam's rules OR not show up on Steam at all. And the reality is Steam is so powerful, and so many people ignore competing storefronts, that ignoring Steam can essentially mean the death of your game unless it's available on console.
What this means is that a game can't go on sale at an even larger discount on other store fronts than on Steam (say a mathematical scenario where the dev/publisher would make the same amount of money on each storefront--so on Epic's store the game would logically be cheaper for the dev to achieve the same numerical percentage of money from game sales than on Steam because Epic takes a smaller cut of sales). The competition that Epic COULD/SHOULD/DOES enable, is negated by Steam's rules. Epic should have cheaper prices for common games shared between both store fronts, but they only DO on special occasions because Steam is pushing their weight around. Steam is being anti-competitive, or rather pro-survival. They don't want their prices to look shabby. This results in homogenous looking discount sales (even though at different times) when comparing store front mass discounts. Games that COULD be cheaper on Epic tend to not be.
Cite your sources, my guy. I have published a game on Steam. I did not sign a Price Parity Agreement.
Epic's 12% cut is 1) the outlier, and 2) completely unsustainable for any PC storefront that wants to take themselves seriously as a platform.
When I said 30% is the industry standard, I misspoke. It's not the *industry* standard. It's **the standard**. From brick and mortar retail to every other digital storefront (less MS PC games and Epic), 30% is the norm. Epic and MS's PC storefronts are the only ones offering less right now and it's no surprise they're publicly traded companies looking to sabotage the market to satisfy their growth targets for the quarter.
*Epic isn't publicly traded, but it is owned by private equity and the PRC... which is arguably worse.
Ha, the one about DLC having to be bought on Steam is for sure BS. Fantasy Grounds allows you to buy direct through them or through Steam.
I think all the stores shouldn't take more than 15% anyway, it just seems absurd to me that they've had the infrastructure paid for millions of times over and they still expect to take a 30% cut for doing essentially nothing.
I didn't realize that funding the development of viral free and open source software or fighting against Microsoft's stranglehold on desktop PCs was "essentially nothing."
@@gardiner_bryant I'm just saying that from a purely monetary standpoint.
I know they've done lots of cool stuff. I also understand that the Publishers are the biggest problem. I just figure all of them make ungodly amounts of $$$ it would be nicer for devs of smaller companies.
if you take in to account steam allow them to use there servers plus fetures gamers like from steam only downside nowdays is that you cant get a copy of your cd keys thanks to a twat on utube showing how you can use refunded keys to download games or use them on stores outside of steam even when a games delisted you can still download it. the only issue i take is i HATE DENOVO!!!! and how it fks single player games offline use, also we dont pay the 30% the publishers do!!!!!!!
@@christopherheathcote7039 And adding on to what Chris said above, Valve are hosting all our screenshots we want saved to our profiles, all the forums, all our saves, multiplayer game servers etc etc and servers are not cheap to run these days.
Also 100% with you on Denuvo FK them.
@@gardiner_bryant your argument here is akin to "but exxon fund green energy initiatives!". what's up with that man? yeah, I LOVE that they are supporting linux, and I LOVE that someone can (seemingly) strong arm nvidia into FINALLY playing ball on open source. but that doesn't mean they're suddenly mechajesus.
id rather have 1 large monster to deal with that we can all target when we have problems, than dozens, or hundreds of smaller monsters that we couldnt possibly handle when a problem arises.
Concentrated market structures (a.k.a. monopolies) are just vilified, it's not valve's fault that competitors sucks so bad. They've created their own market and they deliver consistent quality.
Steam became dominant by good old-fashioned competition. They offer a better product, and the market favored said better product. If the other stores want to compete, then they need to make a better product. That being said, first-party stores should just stop. EA and Ubisoft actively make it hard to consume their products. It's insane to me.
Tying is DLC, I cannot buy DLC from Epic and use it on Steam. what ambulance chaser lawyers being dirty...lol
Steam is technically a monopoly, sure, but is the exception to the rule of monopolies fucking everything up given that they're not enforcing their monopoly, and they're very consumer friendly.
Rather Steam is a monopoly by simply continually providing the best service available to both customers and developers, Epic Games could have actually tried, but, they really didn't.
exactly.
I like this video a lot, I also hate some of the routes the Steam storefront has gone. The Nintendo Eshop is very similar too. Anyways great video.
Do people in UK/EU not get free security and software updates?! Who the hell do you think pays for the engineers that produce said updates? That right, part of the 30% fee pays for maintaining and improving the Steam Platform - not just credit card fees!!!
Probably best not to tar us all with the same brush as you will discover that a not insignificant number of us also disagree with this lawsuit.
So while you are actually trying to vilify the "people" maybe take a step back an actually ask yourself is it the "people" or is it just a few jumped up lawyers who have clearly conjured up some plan to have a big pay day for themselves.
Of course people are going to sign up to be a part of the lawsuit because at the end of the day those people have just been given a free entry into a raffle that will net them a few $$ without doing anything and I do not doubt those same people will go spend it on Steam any way.
America has show this to be entirely plausible time and time again with all the class action law suits that we all get to hear about and without a doubt people will join those even if they are satisfied with the product in that lawsuit.
We can all throw shade at each others countries in the way you have done but at the end of the day if it happens in one country you can bet your bottom dollar that it will spread like wildfire globally.
Besides at the end of the day are any of the people winners in these lawsuits with the few $$ they gain? probably not as the real winners are the lawyers as they are the only ones that stand to gain huge pay days.
Why the fuck doesn't anyone on sell their game on EGS for 10-20% less than the Steam version? It seems like that'd be a no brainier. It would drive people to EGS. And developers would make MORE money.
To _sell_ a game on EGS, there has to be willing _buyers_ on EGS (which there aren't). For every 1 sale on EGS, you'll get 30+ on Steam. More sales = more money.
EGS is a terrible platform run by corpocratic villains.
There is one game that is cheaper on EGS that I know of. It's called "Heard of the Story?" It's 19.99 on Steam and 17.99 on EGS.
I doubt most people would care for a $2 price difference
@@markdebruyn1212 It's not that people won't care it's that developers don't because Steam has larger audience.
Why see a game for $2 less & only get 1,000 people to buy when you can sell it on Steam Get 100,000 people to buy for $2 more.
People always talk about how they want competition, yet the refuse even bother to keep using competition or ever try it, because it's too small or it's not good enough, (or it's not exactly like Steam or better than Steam)
It's like what Gordon said about Nvidia on that gamers Nexus video "the internet will complain, whine about it, & go on keep on doing the exact of opposite of what they say. Just plain being hypocrites.
Alright I get it, but just by giving us the opportunity to have a device like the Steam Deck, for such an awesome price, I'll give them a pass this time...But only this time lol
And the Steam Deck 2 when that becomes a thing? rofl
British consumer law is some of the most robust in the world but this just doesn't make any sense.
1. makes sense to me based on valve having to pay for distribution of all steam games regardless of where the key comes from.
2. I imagine this is entirely on the developers themselves.
3. Publishers and devs are free to sell their game only on epic with it's 12% cut but I imagine since Tim needs to throw giant bags of money at publishers to do this it's not a popular option. I think because of all the support and features steam offers like GBs of space for saves, community pages etc it's probably worth it.
This is a nothing burger as you yanks say and I'd find it more appealing if this law firm spent their time going after actual monopolies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. They are already going against Sony and I think they should focus on that. PC is literally the last open platform it's perfectly possible to make and release a game and never touch steam, though while possible I imagine it's not particularly profitable.
Maybe you're a valve fanboy, but maybe that's not a bad thing.
Steam is what killed game piracy.
Game vendor balkanization may as well bring back piracy just like it happened with movies after the 100ths of competitors of Netflix.
I am a victim of Steam as well. 😔
I am a victim of being able to escape a Microsoft monopoly thanks to Valve giving me freedom with Proton. I also have Stockholm syndrome and I'm happy this way.
It's actually in part because of Valve I switched to Linux on my PC as I was using my Steam Deck docked to monitor and keyboard/mouse to play games from it over my PC.
I was even using the Desktop mode on it more for UA-cam, email etc because honestly I purchased Teh Deck I sure as hell am going to use it for various things just to see if it was possible!
The Deck made it easy to adapt to Linux and then Microsoft started pushing all the AI garbage and that was the nail in the coffin for me for Windows.
Now I run the grandparents friendly OS that is Linux Mint on the PC with windows on an external SSD just for the two games I play that have the BS windows only anti-cheat and only ever gets used for those games.
The Steam Deck is not getting shelved either as it is now practically summer here that will be out in the garden with me in the evening :D
@@Nodster Perfect! Welcome to the Linux community and enjoy playing some games out in the garden!
0:35 this must be a prank, made bay an weabo... i mean i'm a weaboo, and that is definitely one name i would use to make sure people know its a joke...
Pretty sure you are missing the point of this lawsuit. The price parity clause this lawsuit targets is not for selling Steam keys. it is about publishing a game on other stores - i.e. Epic or GOG - Steam requires price parity in such situation, even though you could offer the same game cheaper on Epic because they have lower fees.
They don't tho, they only require price parity on other stores selling _Steam keys_ . I've literally purchased games cheaper at retail price/not on sale from publisher websites before because they don't need to add the 30% cut on top. That is an alternate store. It wouldn't happen if it was against the ToS of selling on Steam.
You're wrong. The only price parity rule is related to Stream Keys.
Except they don't. Price parity is SPECIFICALLY for Steam keys, and nothing documented says otherwise.
Even then, it's not enforced much. Otherwise, how could Steam games get sold for cheaper on Humble Bundle and Green Man Gaming?
Lawsuit is ambulance chasers hoping Valve will just settle.
In my country, most games on GOG are way cheaper than on Steam due to regional pricing. Well, both have but GOG is still cheaper.
So Steam isn't enforcing price parity, at least not here.
Good debunking, but that was easy 😉
Now i'm really curious of the background and motivations of this awkward political grabbing attempt in UK, i've yet to see a video on this.
Look up the ongoing, once dismissed "Wolfire vs Valve". Same thing. They're hoping Valve is rich enough to just settle so they don't have to deal with it, but not so big that they're likely to fight back and let it actually go to court. It's ambulance chasing.
@@The8bitbeard Yea Wolfire's case was pretty straightforward i think, a small platform trying to cash grab through lawsuit against an industry giant.
This one tho has a real political dimmension behind and it'd be interesting to see where the rabbit hole goes (ie. who's pulling strings).
Lol, being a victim is a choice.
This lawsuit is lame
I am opposed to the uk lawsuit claims. 1.) without such a clause, markets go out of control and monopolies win. 2.) not "tying" dlc to the same platform the game came from results in unsafe means of dlc installation. it can allow malware to be bundled by a third party. 3.) there is no evidence of claim.
steamy uwu
VagabeN
The emails literally says that Steam threatens consequences if you sell your NON STEAM KEYS on other platforms. And you’re surprised the prices are the same everywhere? This rule gives the customer ZERO reason to look for cheaper prices, and just keeps using Steam.
It’s anti-competitive as hell.
Well the "must purchase items items on steam claim is complete nonsense." To debunk it I need only play like half the games
Actually the DLC thing is true but that is due to the DRM that valve has. Anyway even if I hate DRM even since I bought steamdeck in all in steam. I bought so many games. It just works great.
And you still hating on blockchain 😂😂
Even your president in endorsed bitcoin. You never replied to my latest reply either. Please read about bitcoin for your own sake. Just saying.
Lol I said *don't* mention block chain. Nobody will take you seriously.
😂You are Wrong Steam is the perfect platform we dont deserve
Blockchain
I'm from the uk, i do not support this law suite
Steam ❤ because it's been the go to place for PC gaming. I never had issues. Doesnt feel force like those launchers from other companies. Make something better than steam if those companies want to compete. So far epic with their time exclusive only put a sour taste.
Steam is doing a wonderful job they hated on steam because they think about the players and not just the dollar smh
Lol i heard players will get between 30 to 40 quid 😂 i made that back in sales lol so stupid
No. I'm not a "victim" of steam. The massive sales every few months, the generous return policy, and all the features make it more than worth it. I'm tired of this new anti-steam\anti-valve attitude going around. Especially when valve is arguably the most pro-gamer company there is.
The thing is that it doesn't really matter. Valve could be actively anti pc gamer and... We would be fine. We have choices.
Gog, other key sellers, heck even Epic and EA. We don't have to like them, but we have choices, we have options.
When it comes to pricing, I generally get far better ones at GoG due to their regional pricing (I'm not from the US), so I don't mind having my games spread around different platforms.
Valve sucks nowdays, and I hope this puts a mark in their bottom dollar. They’re way too relaxed with Steam printing infinite money, and need to return to their loyal games fans. And NOT by making DOTA an FPS…
so you want Steam to fall? if that’s what you want then pc gaming will be dead so uh yea, I mean they are rich but if they make Valve go bankrupt then it’s game over for pc.
@@rainbowdash3419 Valve isn’t, shouldn’t be, and will never be PC gaming. They may be the corporate face of it, but PC gaming will always be decentralized, and we’re better off for it. Valve can take these Ls
@@rainbowdash3419 the market exists because of the players paying for games, not because of the hosting company you download the games from. if valve got on a rocket ship tomorrow and stopped doing business on earth, the gap would probably be filled by other companies, and by open source infrastructure (because indies would finally have the kick in the pants they needed to push shared hosting infrastructure to be a real thing).
big companies with big market share cause apathy in the industry, not growth. that's why REAL competition is GOOD.
I want valve to have to keep earning their market share. There should never be a point where they become comfortable and complacent. They should be the premium choice, not the only half-decent choice. In 10 years, we SHOULD be looking back on today's valve and thinking it's absolute trash that we shouldn't have put up with, because they'd been innovating so hard during that 10 years. but if they keep having such dominance and such insanely high revenue, there's not much reason for them to do that innovation.
I have owned my Steam Deck for 2 weeks now and yeah l have bought a couple of games gotta tell you l’m Lovin it Australian girl gamer since1996 psone move up in the world 😅😊
Fun fact, Amazon also has price parity clauses.
And yet they are not taking on Amazon, wonder why!
I'm ready to get victimized by Valve again.
Valve... Time to lay some pipe
Same and honestly I'm excited.
As a UK user I can confirm games on steam are no cheaper elsewhere
"Valve has nothing to do with setting prices across store fronts, they only manage Steam"
Not entirely correct. This may be the case for developers and some store fronts, but when I worked in the publishing space, publishers like EA, Epic, Ubisoft, CD Project, etc, were not allowed to sell games on their own platforms cheaper than what they were selling them on Steam... for fear of having their games delisted on Steam. It had nothing to do with Steam keys.
So I somewhat agree with the first point of the lawsuit's claims.
You can temporarily offer them cheaper if you plan to offer a similar sale for steam "in the near future". If you're selling steam keys, that is.
and how is that anti-competitive? if anything thats your publishers being anti-competitive because you're making only your publisher storefronts have the sales, meaning that steam customers and steam itself lose out on the sales. steam on the other hand allows you to have steam keys sold lower prices than on steam itself as long as you have a similar sale on steam in the future. because of that, there are third party steamkey storefronts to buy steamkeys from for lower price than steam, even for publisher games, like for example fanatical.
@@infern24 Being able to sell your product cheaper due to having a lower cost of distribution is not anti-competitive. Using your position of dominance to prevent that is.
Of course Steam and Steam customers will lose out (On maybe slightly lower prices). That’s why it’s competitive. Those publishers can pass on their savings to the customer. I imagine you simply refuse to buy a game anywhere other than Steam though (Which is cool) and don’t want people willing to do that to have a better deal (Which is not cool), and you would be part of the problem in that case.
Reminder that I am not talking about Steam keys here, those are a different beast. I’m talking about sales on a separate platform that does not lead to an impact on Steam’s infrastructure.
I prefer Steam as much as the next person, but I’m not blind to Steam abusing its dominance over the market, and I want there to be more reasons for Steam to do better and to WANT to do better for us. It may also help bring down the cost of games.
Nah man. 30% is way too much. It's "standard" because everyone thinks they can get away with it. You know what else is "standard"? Organic labels on food not having to mean anything. Corporations allowed to buy up housing and land. Corn Syrup & Sugar. $70 for video games. Day 1 Patches. Don't argue standard. Epic would let me sell for 12%. That's fair. And it's only so attractive because everywhere but Itch and Humble are being "standard". None of these storefronts are printing my game on physical discs and distributing them to game stops across the country. They absolutely don't need 30%.
Every accusation in this video hasn't been "debunked", just defended right?
"Valve DOES take 30% but you can circumvent them by using steam keys!" - "And even if they ARE making you pay 1/3rd of every sale, it's normal! Look Microsoft is doing it!"
30% is a holdover from when Nintendo saved the industry and when gamers used physical means to play their games. We are in a strongly digital age now. There's absolutely a cost in hosting my game, allowing people to download it. Valve gives us a boat load of tooling and metrics to work with. Then there's the fact that the platform eclipses features on every other platform by a mile. Steam isn't just a storefront though. And those added features do not escalate the deserved 12% to 30%.
"And games are the same price across platforms!"
Yeah, because it's against rules if that's NOT done. An incoming argument against this is "Well we've seen publishers pocket the difference in money instead of passing those savings on to the player in the past." Yeah, and that sucks. But do all of us have to do that? "Someone could come sell a game on steam for 10 bucks then turn around and sell keys for 1 dollar elsewhere." They gray market is doing that as we speak. Kinguin, G2A, etc. Valve isn't stopping this behavior. It's just hurting developers. If they are aiming to take big publishers to task, then aim the verbiage at them. Give them a separate contract & deal. This should not be universal, and the consumer pays in the end.
"If developers wanted to check for DLC across platforms, they would, but it's time consuming and you'd lose sales." - "And look, steam workshop is right there. Valve even has the mercy to not blink at you using other mod sites."
It would take time as we would need a standardized, cross-platform method/framework, yes this is true. Luckily for us, a solution has popped up recently and I've been made aware of it within the last few months. Baldur's Gate 3 made a blog post about how they are supporting modding with mod.io. I've seen Mod.io going around here and there, but since they don't support Godot yet, I haven't looked too deeply into it's implementation. What I do know is it has gathered a solid track record with Deep Rock, Dying Light 2, House Flipper 2, Space Engineers, Dusk and a lot more. And with Baldur's Gate 3 coming, that's a massive endorsement.
Valve needs to be taken to task for this. This isn't in the spirit of an open and free market. Through-out this you weave in steam keys as a type of excuse/out for Valve on points 1 & 3. It's irritating to put it lightly. If I'm reading you right, you're a developer as well. Unless you're being paid to shill for Valve, I cannot imagine how you don't see the harm they are doing and how locked we are if we want to stay on that platform? Don't get blinded by what-about-isms. GOG ain't any better. Sure they are DRM-free and I love that, but their support is trash, and they ALSO require 30%. But you have to aim at this problem's head. And that head is Valve.
Just because things are currently like this doesn't mean they HAVE to be like this. You deserve better. All of us do. Steam is great. Valve is great. And while I'd love to see them go the GOG route of allowing DRM-Free Access to our libraries in the future like they hinted, I don't think they should collapse if they don't. But we can't keep hand waving the wrong they are doing. This fight has happened so many times before. The first time I saw this fight was for Overgrowth and it's developer. Valve got away scot-free. And seeing people like you and PirateSoftware using your platforms to downplay this, means that Valve is going to once again, get away scot-free. I'm not happy to see that at all.
And Developers/Publishers(especially publishers) get a free pass because.......?
Are you really going to imply that price parity is not caused by Developers/Publishers too? I will assume you are a developer and/or publisher based on how you have worded your response and if not then assume the role of one, as a developer/publisher are you going to have different prices across store fronts depending on what that store front charges to have your game on that store front or are you going to set the same price across all store fronts and cause a price parity yourself regardless of that store fronts charges? I know which I would do and it does not include different prices because of the simplicity of having a parity of price.
It's all well and good calling out Valve and GOG for their 30% price gauging but you are eluding to the fact that the big Developers/Publishers also have their own stores and selling those same games at the same price with 100% of the money going to them.
Epic offer a 12% charge to developers/publishers great...... but for how long and how long will it be before they ramp that up to that industry standard of 30%?
Epic also give away free games every two weeks to everyone and I am far from a mathematician but as a business that surely can not be sustainable indefinitely surely? at what point does this cost get passed on to the end user? the only visible way that I can see this happening is that the cost will be passed on to the developers/publishers in the form of what epic charges them to publish on epic which they will then pass on to the end user because at the end of the day it is always passed on to the end user (you do have to eat as well after all).
All the store fronts, Developers/Publishers need to be taken to task over this and not just two (Sony and Steam) because in doing so will change nothing in the grand scheme of things.
If Valve lose then all that is going to happen here is that the Developers/Publishers get to pay less but the end user will still be paying the same because there is no chance in hell those Developers/Publishers are going to reduce the price to compensate.
You are making the point of view from the Developer/Publisher point of view and yet this lawsuit is about the end user at the end of the day given the distinct lack of mentioning Developers/Publishers.
There are only two outcomes here:
Lawsuit is won, store fronts loses, Developers/Publishers win, End users lose because prices are not going to change to reflect this win.
Lawsuit is lost, store fronts win, Developers/Publishers lose, End users lose.
Also lets question why that website has not actually published any of the documentation so far considering that just says coming soon and from what I can tell they submitted at the beginning of the month.
All we have from them so far is an FAQ that says Valve is in breach of laws "trust me bro" with no real facts to back that claim up and I have seen some vague information in my time but this takes the cake, Even UA-cams Terms of Service are not that vague and they invented vague documents.
As for the Steam Keys thing because I honestly think that is what this lawsuit is actually targeting and not store parity outside of Steam Key Distribution given I actually took the time to go through the Steamworks documentation and failed to actually see anything that could even remotely be considered a parity clause that does not pertain to Steam Keys themselves but I may have missed it so it is possible that does exist.
The rules outlined for Steam Keys are seemingly fair for the end user because in short it basically says that the keys generated for other store fronts should not be sold at less than those you sell on Steam and if they are then the same needs to happen through steam in a reasonable time frame so my understanding of this is if you have a sale on your own website for steam keys at 50% off then the same needs to happen for the game sold through Steam in a reasonable time frame (probably a couple of week?)
Given we do see this with the other store fronts like Humble Bundle and Fanatical generally the Steam Sale happens then Humble Bundle and Fanatical have theirs after this all seems to be above board in terms of that agreement.
Although I do have to say I am not exactly sure how Humble Bundle works this given their bundles seem to fall outside of this fair parity sale clause of keys and given I have never actually kept tabs on if all the contents of those bundles have gone on sale at a later time and equal the same value of those items in the bundle when on sale in steam it's a bit of a mystery unless they have an agreement in place with Valve on this one.
It's also worth noting that as a Developer/Publisher you can request keys for external sales on other sites without cost to you which means you do get 100% of those sales up to 5,000 keys with the ability to request more with a few criteria being checked, honestly this is probably going to comparing key sales externally to steam store sales etc.
I guess if you sold 5000 keys externally and not one sale has happened via steam then they are going to question it, there is a whole documentation and a video on this though.
Grey market keys are whole rabbit hole on their own to be fair and given sites like G2A and Kinguin allow for end users and nefarious users to become sellers it opens the flood gates to all sorts of issues like fraudulent cards being used to obtain cheap steam keys from countries with a lower price and then sold on these sites for a profit to those sellers only with nothing going to the Developer/Publisher outside of the cheap key -30%.
This I wholly disagree with using as there is no real way to verify the legitimacy of those keys or the sellers and I also do not believe these sites policy's of "user protected purchases" either (now we wait for the Grey Market key mob to jump in and tell me how wrong I am, good news for all of you about to make those comments, your opinion means nothing to me)
I will say though I do think that the 30% is actually a steep price for indie devs and this should be modified for the small studios that do not have a big publisher backing them or are not part of/owned by a corporation like EA as a small studio.
A large corporation making hundreds of millions can swallow that cost but a small studio which barely makes a couple of million probably not given that most of that profit is more than likely going to swallowed up by their next game development.
Although there is a bit of an obscurity to this in Palworld given that game exploded overnight and it made on obscene amount of money for and indie dev so I am not exactly sure how you would go about handling those exceptions in this instance.
Also I win for longest message award :p
@@Nodster When Valve requires them to sell Steam keys for parity, then you can't set a lower price based on lower percentages costing you less money. This means that the users see no benefit to shopping through other storefronts which helps to maintain the monopoly. The fact that so many people are so blind to this obvious economic abuse really sickens me, but it also explains how so many get elected that keep screwing up the economy while those that make it better get slandered.
@@anon_y_mousse my man... Why are you talking about steam keys here? Steam keys means people go to steam to play the game which makes the monopoly stronger. You should check the price of games which do not give steam keys and realize that those are in no way limited to what the game price is on steam. You want to sell games for less outside of steam? don't give a steam key and you are all good.
@@TrixyTrixter Fewer benefits for your end users or play by monopolistic rules. Those are both bad choices, but while one allows you to be profitable it also means you make a direct competitor, or in this case an add-on leech service, richer. If they instead charged a percentage that was reasonable and applied that to offsite key sales too, then they would still make money to support their infrastructure without forcing a monopoly.
@@anon_y_mousse hey, it's a take of yours I agree with. nice one!
I hate to say it but Valve is the only one I'd speak out against any government intervention. Overall fairly consumer friendly, it almost feels like an infinite amount of games in the store with new games, old games, free games, games in big sales that you may have just skipped on. One man band devs getting to have any easy way to publish their game, have workshop support for mods and cloud saves, I mean common. There is a reason nobody cares for any other launchers, plus I fully switched to Linux and the work they did with Proton is incredible. I just was playing a non linux game with Proton maxed out graphics and whatnot and you wouldn't even know its not native. Im also pretty sure you can use Proton to try and play non Steam games on Linux as well. If Valve didn't make it so easy to play games and support Linux like they did I probably couldn't have fully switched. I heard anti cheat causes issues and cant play on Linux but I don't play any that have it so no big deal. Im still pissed about the bots in TF2 though.
Godot cameo FTW
I agree with the video but man are there some anti consumer fanboys in the comments.
More competition is always better, period. It doesn't matter if other services are worse, you as a consumer having more choices is never a bad thing.
More competition is better if the competition is actually trying to compete. No launcher actually tries to compete with Steam, they toss something out see its not getting all the valve customers and say f it.
So I assume you wanted kingdom hearts to stay on epic games huh?
@@omgman5745 No, such exclusivity deals actually tend to harm the consumer. I don't know how you read "more options" and understood: "Oh he means arbitrary restrictions that limit consumer options"
@@omgman5745 I want to have more choices. I have some games on epic because they were given away, and some because they were just outright cheaper than on steam. Same with GoG.
Ideally you would have similar selections all around so you can pick and choose what's best for you. If you prefer a single platform (which I totally understand, specially now that I have a steam deck), then that's good. That's your choice.
The exclusivity example you said is the antithesis of what I said, because that limits your ability to choose. Even then, though, there's the caveat that if you're on pc you can access the store/launcher you want need because you're not completely held hostage like on consoles.
@@Fernando-ek8jp Yes but that is the cost of competition.
Want to site a legitimate beef then lets talk about the hobgoblins running the support department and moderating the forums.
I gets every Hogwarts needs a Slytherin I suppose.
But this in itself is nonsense.
they should sue Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation for charging such insane prices
The first point you discuss (which is the third on the list, but first on your video) is exactly what I'm telling people years. This platform is more open than any other. You don't need to buy Steam games on Steam in order to get it for Steam. Valve gets 0% money if you buy the game on alternative stores, but yet, you get the key for Steam and can play it on Steam. How is that anti consumer? Which other platform allows this?
Furthermore, the 30% cut isn't even set in stone, because it get cheaper the more you sell. But that is the biggest flaw in my opinion, because indie devs don't get this price cut, but they are the one who needs it most
The other point that Steam dictates not to sell the game for cheaper on other platforms, well, that's a fair criticism, because Valve should not have a say how other stores are priced. But if that is the case, then how do Humble Bundle sell games for cheaper? Maybe they are partnered with Steam as an official retailer?
The retail price has to be the same, which is fair enough because it's a steam key, and the retail prices _are_ the same on all major key stores. It said in the video that you can do cheaper sales as long as there's a "comparable" sale on Steam relatively soon after.
@@MangoPanic (Edit: Rephrased a statement to be more clear.)
Right, but I wasn't talking about the Steam keys (on the point about price parity), I was talking about games published on other platforms, to buy them separately from Steam. That is something Gardiner didn't talk about. I am look at the Pricing in Steamworks page, but cannot find any clause to support this statement. So maybe its a myth? To be fair, I never fact checked this before.
They buy keys in bulk ans get them cheaper (if you calculate it per key)
@@thingsiplay Yeah the price parity only applies to Steam keys, not other platforms
@@MangoPanic I often buy games on other platforms for less than it would be on steam. I use the Augmented Steam extension to check prices and a lot of things are cheaper outside of steam, so even this rule doesn't apply all the time.
Valve has to maintain the servers that house these games and services so 30% is more than fair! lets talk about Xbox Live and PS plus doing damn near the same thing and charging you a access fee monthly to game online!?!?!?!?!?
Pronunciation of the website throughout this video drives me crazy. Steam You Owe Us -- not Steamy OuO We Us.
Did you miss that it was a joke? 0:35
Oh no, im a victim because i like having all my games available all in one place, oh no im so depressed. Maybe i should make myself feel better by getting some games on sale at the summer game fest. Yeah thats what I'll do
to be fair there some small indy dev games I have that I didn't know about it's steams discovery feature that highlighted them
Do you have a video on the Wolffire & Epic v. Valve lawsuit? There seem to be a lot of similarities/overlaps.
I lean left politically but I have no problem with a business being the most successful through excellence. Nothing is perfect but Steam just works.
Want to beat them? Do it better.
Let's go Brandon
Valve does not enforce patents unless you backstab them, and their patents are technical.
Amazon has frivolous broad patents on sending someone a gift.
They tried to get these patents too in the EU, but they have been rejected thanks to real consumer rights organizations. Amazon was a frivolous software patent proponent (Valve is not), and now they are getting bitten by their own stance on frivolous patents because they have lost several patent lawsuits already.
So yes, there is a big difference between Amazon and Valve. Valve doesn't try to hurt R&D.
@@bloepje Fair enough.
not sure what your political leaning has to do with this but sure ok.
But you are absolutely correct If others want to beat the industry leader then they simply need to do better, add the features people want etc instead of trying to sue the industry leader *cough epic cough*
Personally I have found the epic software to be more clunky and prone to locking up on me compared to Steam even though Steam has it's moments at times so I favor Steam because it really does just work although the irony of it is that I found Epic to actually work better on Linux using Wine than on Windows lol
@@NodsterPolitical leanings can often influence or even dictate policy positions. There is a segment on the left that hates and wants to abolish capitalism, it's small. If you listen to media like "Fox news", they'll often say it's the majority of the left. It's not. Capital and corporations should be regulated, this is a case of it going too far.
Besides, Epic offers lower cut share and still prices don't are much or any better.
Steamy oWo
Hope Valve counter-sues just for wasting their time.
Keep away sus engines, great job stay firm
#1 makes no sense. By their logic then the xbox marketplace, nintendo eshop and PS Store are limiting consumer choice too. You can buy game codes for all of those from third parties to use on those storefronts too. So, if they are going after valve for this then they should go after those console makers too.
#3 does not make sense either since the consoles also take a substantial fee around 30% too, so again if they go after valve they should go after consoles too.
3:12 *$24.99 :)