If tomorrow someone made a better Steam, how many years would you have to wait to be reasonably secure that it's not fueled by venture capital and serving as a loss leader foot-in-the-door scheme? It's not impossible that Steam itself would enshittify and open an IPO, but the fact that the option's been on the table for decades and Valve hasn't taken it is better evidence than *any* other platform could muster. Valve has proven that it's profitable and that it doesn't need to care about YoY growth. Let's overestimate their operations costs (CDN, R&D, employee salaries) at 5 billion a year. If they made ten billion in revenue last year and only make seven billion this year, *Valve is fine*. Think about that. Think about what a *sixty percent drop* in profits would do to literally any shareholder-backed company. It'd be apocalyptic. That's the main reason I'll use Steam happily but never install another storefront on my PC. I'll buy games on GOG or Itch as DRM-free installers, and store the installers locally, and I'll buy and play games that distribute without a storefront launcher, but the only "storefront platform" anyone's gonna get me to install in the next decade is Steam. If "better Steam" happens, it needs to demonstrate immunity to being bought out by Microsoft/Elon Musk for eighty morbillion dollars. And that can't be demonstrated in a day. That's without any mention of actual "features" like reviews or remote play or proton or steam input or anything that actually makes Steam as a program good/bad. It's all about the company's refusal to go shareholder-driven. If Gabe sells Valve or his successors do, I'm off the ship and scraping the DRM off of my library. What I won't do if that happens is go to someone else's shareholder-value-generating storefront.

The PC is an open platform. Even more so with Linux. Steam doesn't force exclusivity, you're free to host your game on Steam for discoverability while also self-distributing or using other storefronts. Valve's 30% is a price that a studio *chooses* to pay, because they know that a ton of PC gamers *like buying games on Steam*. If all you want out of a storefront is a payment processor, CDN, and possibly DRM, you can release on Steam, Epic, Itch, GOG, or all at once. You pick Steam (or Steam+others) instead of others because you know that enough PC gamers are *willing to pay for your game* on Steam, because *they like Steam*. Epic can tout its small cuts or exclusivity bonuses or "zero percent cuts on the first $x" deals, but game devs know that 100% of revenue on an Epic launch week is going to be a lower absolute number than 70% of revenue on a Steam one.

The allegations of the plaintiff are not the written or enforced policies of the defendant. Please consider linking something of substance when accusing others of being un-serious/insincere. You made a claim without linking to it in the first place. Its not my job to substantiate your claims.

[It was proposed](https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/oof-years-before-steam-a-blizzard-engineer-wanted-to-turn-battle-net-into-a-third-party-game-store-but-was-reportedly-turned-down/), but Blizzard rejected it: > Schreier reports in the book that a few years before Steam launched, a group of employees pitched the company on a plan "to turn Battle.net into a digital store for a variety of PC games." Battle.net basically approached the same problem as Steam but from the multiplayer side, whereas Steam approached from the distribution side. > Valve supports Linux just to safeguard their monopoly. I wouldn't put it like that. They support Linux to safeguard against Microsoft pushing _their_ monopoly, and they _did_ seem to be gearing up to do just that. Epic had similar concerns, hence the lawsuits against Google and Apple. > All of this is pointless for most of the How is Linux support pointless? Having _more_ options to play your games is a good thing! I don't think Heroic would've had as much of an impact w/o Valve's investment into Proton/WINE, and that gives customers a choice on which platform to buy and play their games on. It also allowed for the Steam OS market, and competitors are absolutely welcome to create their own spin with their own store, they just don't for whatever reason. Downloading and updating games, for me, is actually the least important part of what Steam offers. I care _far_ more about Linux support (I was a Linux user before I was a Steam user), Steam Input (Steam Deck, and I prefer controller on PC), and consolidating sales to one store. Whether I need to launch it separately or whatever isn't a big deal.

Again, this is not about Steam Keys, it's about Steam using shady contracts to bully developers into price parity on completely unrelated stores. Yes, runescape is cheaper on Epic, the incredibly broad nature of these rules that allows for selective wishy-washy enforcing is also part of the lawsuit. > If you see something I am missing from the lawsuit please let me know, preferably without the hostility if you can manage. The whole thing because you didn't read it and, given that you keep bringing up Steam Keys, which is not what we're talking about, I'm skeptical that you can read at all.

Ah, the classic spoon-feed me the answer or it doesn't count as a source. Learn to use the internet, you're not a child.

So because Battle.net failed to predict market correctly 100% of PC gamers are stuck with Steam until the end of the world. That doesn’t change the fact that Valve lucked into the position they are in.

PC gamers aren't "stuck with Steam," they very much have options. And Steam is likely _way_ better than whatever Battle.net would've become, so I'm quite happy with how things turned out. And yeah, Valve was quite lucky in nailing the timing, however, that was also a very conscious choice since they filled a need they saw. Valve is perhaps the best company you could ask for to have such a dominant position, pretty much any other company would've resulted in a _way_ worse situation for gamers.

Yes, Valve enforcing price parity only when it's convenient for them is also addressed in the lawsuit. The rest of your comment refers to Steam Keys. That's literally not what we're talking about.

So, you think a good way to correct someone is to directly insult them because you find their points unrelated but yours perfect? Rude. And the only thing steam controls via contract is the ability to sell your games via steam keys for price parity. And you misunderstood my point. RuneScape isn't even on the epic game store so you aren't reading my words carefully. You are projecting your own hypocrisy.

> Valve's 30% is a price that a studio *chooses* to pay No its not. Its a fee they **have to pay** because they have no other option, because Steam is a monopoly. Even CDPR, who literally _owns their own game store_, lists their games on Steam, because there's no way they could ever be successful without it.

CDPR judges that selling on Steam is enough of a boost that it's worth the cost. Riot (for example) doesn't. If you think every game company or indie studio feels *mandated* to use Steam, that's a hugely consolebrained take. Nintendo has a monopoly. Want your game on Switch? Follow Nintendo's terms and list on Nintendo's store. Apple has a monopoly, challenged recently. Want your app on iPhone? Follow Apple's terms and list on Apple's store. Want your game on Windows PC? Upload an EXE somewhere. Sell a disc. Run your own launcher. Or license out to Steam/Epic/whoever. The only reason you get more sales on Steam is because the PC gaming userbase overwhelmingly prefers Steam. Hell, I play Guild Wars 2, a 12 year old MMO that "launched" on Steam a couple years ago. You can still buy and play that game without any third parties getting involved at all, and always could. It doesn't have any Steam achievements, doesn't benefit from any Steam features, and has a decade old community in spaces other than Steam ones. ArenaNet decided that exposure via Steam recommendations was worth losing $x/player to list on Steam.

You honestly think I didn't do a google search before reading the two relavent articles reachable from the OP? Nothing I found, nor the fact that I regularly buy games/steam!keys cheaper than via steam, meshes with the plaintiff's claims. Calling someone a child while accepting un-founded claims that happen to reflect your argument at face-value. Very Mature.

But that is what the *policy* is about. Steam doesn't have a price parity policy regarding general game sales.

No, I think you deserve to be insulted because you are talking out of your ass about something you didn't read. Again, *this is about the price veto policy. This is not about Steam Keys* (here's me hoping italics help with your dyslexia). And yeah, I thought you meant runescape on the EGS not on their site. It doesn't matter because it has zero bearing on the discussion, I only addressed it because *you didn't read the thing you're talking about.*

I know you didn't google anything or you would have said "nothing I found substantiates your point" instead of "these specific two articles don't say what you said". But let's assume you're not lying and you did look up the situation. What's your claim then? That Steam has no price veto policy or that they don't abuse it? Because one is wrong and the other is *incredibly* naive. Talk about taking unfounded claims at face value. Also, what do you keep bringing up Steam Keys? That has nothing to do with anything. Focus.

> If I don’t like what Comcast charges I don’t do a class action lawsuit. That's a poor example, because in many markets, Comcast (or another cable provider) is the only option, or there's only one other option with much lower top-end speeds (e.g. DSL). So a class-action against Comcast _may_ be a reasonable idea, since they're an actual monopoly in many markets. The games industry is different. Steam _does_ have a commanding share of the market, but there's no real lock-in there, a developer can choose to not publish there and succeed. Minecraft, famously, never released on Steam, and it has been wildly successful. Likewise for Blizzard games, like Starcraft and World of Warcraft. Maybe a better comparison is grocery store chains? [Walmart has something like 60% market share in the US](https://www.foodindustry.com/articles/top-10-grocers-in-the-united-states-2019/), yet I have successfully been able to completely avoid shopping there.

Valve will never IPO, why would they? They own a money printing machine that doesn’t need any more capital. They will print money until the heat death of the universe if we let it. I’ve never seen a conceivable scenario where anything else can happen unless Valve does something mental on purpose. Some people here raised they concern that they don’t value Valve input to merit 30% cut and would take lower price if it meant it didn’t have features they don’t use. What’s happening now means there’s no real free market or competition.

You don't know shit. My search turned up nothing more concrete than your own apeing of the plaintiff's claims as though those were evidence, so I didn't bother. Meanwhile, the subject at hand quite literally revolves around Steam and Steam-Keys. We don't even have to get into third-party distribution *without* Steam-Keys to disprove your argument, although that market also remains alive and well as ever. The rest was just me matching your energy, but I'm not exaggerating when I say I should have just blocked your belligerent ass a while ago. You can't be bothered to prove your own points, yet keep pretending to be the most "mature" and "focused" person here. It's painful to watch the trolling this far off the rails.

Your search turned up nothing because you searched for nothing. Steam Keys are irrelevant here, you only keep bringing them up to derail the discussion to a greyer area where you can better defend your beloved corporate overlord. This was always about the price veto policy. Very telling how you flat out refuse to even address anything regarding that topic. Grow up.