> Alan Wake 2 wasn’t profitable until EGS exclusivity expired Well yeah, because EGS sucks. If you look at Steam's competitors, none of them are really developing their feature set. So even if customers were dissatisfied w/ Steam, who is actively trying to earn their business? > aren’t you worried that having one good option is being one good option away from having no good options? Sure, I'd _love_ it if another platform stepped up to actually compete w/ Steam. My expectations are fairly low: it needs to work well on Linux. Heroic largely resolves that for EGS and GOG, but I'm not particularly interested in supporting a platform that only works because some community project has done the work for them. So if GOG supported Galaxy on Linux as a first class citizen, I'd probably still use Heroic, but I'd buy a _lot_ more games from them. But as it stands, GOG is one update away from blocking access to my games through a launcher, and dealing w/ WINE/Proton directly is a pain. EGS is so far away from what I care about that I don't think they could ever earn my business, but who knows, maybe they'll surprise me. But the fact that we're even _having_ this discussion is a testament to Steam's success. Heroic probably wouldn't be a thing w/o Valve's investment into Proton/WINE, so GOG/EGS wouldn't even be a consideration for me at all. But since that work _was_ done, I now have more options. I've played some GOG and EGS games through Heroic, so it's not even theoretical, they are realistic alternatives. It's important to note that at every turn, Valve has earned my trust. When games are pulled from their store, owners of those games still have access (e.g. I bought Rocket League on Steam, and when they went EGS exclusive, I _still_ had the old version of the game). They have a solid refund policy, and they have gone out of their way to make things more pleasant for their customers. Even if they didn't have a dominant market position, I'd probably _still_ choose them just based on the user experience. So yeah, not having a realistic alternative isn't great, but I don't think it's because of anything nefarious Valve has done, but instead lack of interest by their competitors.

Ah yes. Massively unsuccessful games like... *checks notes* League of Legends. World of Warcraft. Fortnite: Battle Royale. The magic part of the PC is that if your independently distributed game *does* fail, you can still, after the fact, decide to slap it on someone's storefront in a desperate attempt for eyeballs - see Overwatch 2. Why *not* double dip? It only costs you hypothetical money you haven't made yet. Am I supposed to be *sad* that E fucking A failed to install their shareholder value store on my computer?

What? That wording isn't even relevant to the case. That's just Valve saying they will do a review of the price changes *on Steam*. They set out no specific requirements (other than a minimum price of $0.99, but will try to catch errors based on their pricing recommendations. It's similar to how Valve reviews new store pages and provides recommendations to devs on how to improve them. They do have rules against games set up for card farming scams, but that makes sense. Wolfire's case is about how Valve as an extremely large player is impossible to go around, so game devs have no choice but to accept their 30% fee if they want to reach most of the market out there. Valve then uses these fees to entrench this supposed monopoly position (Wolfire specifically cites the acquisition of WON back in the day, which Valve eventually shut down and merged with Steam). Wolfire argues that a fair price is much lower than 30%, and that Valve should lower the fee and therefore have less funds to fight their competitors, creating a more competitive environment.

As far as I can tell, the lawsuit alleges that steam threatened pulling their (wolfire games) steam sales if they sold elsewhere for cheaper. Which would be bad if true. However, this does not appear to be anywhere in steam's actual seller agreement. The only clause in that agreement is about steam keys being sold for cheaper, which is why the other poster was focusing on that. That allegation seems to be that steam in practice is threatening things that are outside of the contract itself.

Until the case is concluded, all we have to go on is what Wolfire says. And considering who the head of that developer is, I would not take their word for anything.

> Am I supposed to be *sad* that E fucking A failed to install their shareholder value store on my computer? No, you're just supposed to recognize _why_ it failed.

>there's a reason Steam is number 1 Monopoly, and Stockholmed G*mers

For me, it failed because I wasn't willing to install some shareholder-driven company's storefront app on my computer just to play Mass Effect 3, so I pirated Mass Effect 3. Then I got to watch it fail because it turns out I wasn't the only one willing to skip/pirate games because they came with Origin attached to them. Epic's exclusives are the exact same. I get my PC games from four sources. Steam, GOG's *website*, Itch's website, standalone launchers (I'd probably be okay with a "store" of games as small as the Riot launcher, but I don't use that because I don't install rootkit anticheat), and piracy. Launcherless Itch and GOG have convenience parity with piracy with the added benefit of the devs getting paid (and the ease of acquiring updates), and I'll usually use them over Steam if available. Itch could easily get bought by a corp like Humble did and CDPR is already a shareholder value company, but they sell DRM-free products that I can use even after the stores die / sell out. A recent launch I paid for and didn't use Steam for is "The Bazaar" - it has a standalone launcher. The game went pay to win so I uninstalled it, but its lack of presence on Steam didn't keep me from playing it. I'll use stuff other than Steam no problem. But I'll always cheer when a platform owned and operated by a shareholder backed company dies in favor of one that isn't. My experience in the hobby space of PC gaming is better when there aren't exclusives locked on EA Origin or UPlay or Microsoft UWP store or Epic, because I might want to play those games without installing a stock-ticker company's adware on my computer. Having the space "capitalism free" is unrealistic, unless we're talking "pirate everything". I'll settle for "profit driven" over "YOY growth driven" leaders in the space any day of the week. Now, if Steam's position as the best distributor/launcher platform is a de facto "monopoly", what's the solution to that? Anecdotally I know plenty of people that play non-Steam games while not playing any Epic games. Epic tries to fight Steam by directly paying developers to *not* publish on Steam, and also effectively guaranteeing studios a financial success by cutting a deal to put their game up for "free" on the Epic storefront. Plenty of games have been "Free" on Epic while full price on Steam. Valve tries to fight Epic by... Acting like Epic doesn't exist. They don't chase exclusives or get into a price war with Epic. Steam is the most popular platform for PC game releases. A subset of users will not consider ever using other platforms. If we accept this as the definition of "monopoly" the way we'd say Windows has a monopoly on x64 PCs, how would changing the revenue split for devs (which appears to be the issue this company's suing Valve over) alleviate this "monopoly"? Sounds to me like forcing Steam to explicitly allow "the game is more expensive on Steam" tactics would just make Steam *even more* of a no-brainer for devs over stuff like Epic or their own platform. You could say that paying the devs/studios a better cut is the point, and I'd see the validity in the argument. But it's completely unrelated to whether or not Valve operates as a monopoly.

So can developers just 'create' steam keys out of thin air that can be used to activate their game on steam? Does Valve get paid when the keys are created or activated? Or not at all? Seems fair maybe if it's using all of Steams infrastructure, considering developers can distribute the game themselves without steam keys.

Glad to see lawsuits against Valve. I love them as a company and I buy my games on Steam first, (GOG is my second choice)... but we need their monopoly reigned in. If not by a viable competitor than by making Valve beholden to their clients and not vice versa.

The other competitors are kinda shit. GoG is dope for giving install files and being DRM free. But acting like steam isn't legitimately the best platform by a country mile is crazy.

Everyone is not you

If there weren't enough people put off by Origin and uPlay to not install them or use them to buy games, Origin and uPlay would still exist. Steam didn't kill them, all it did was exist and be a better platform that people actually wanted to use. If there weren't enough people put off by the Epic Games Store, the EGS wouldn't still be paying developers to put their shit on the store. Steam hasn't killed it, and isn't even *attempting* to kill it. It's just existing and being a better platform that people actually want to use. If EGS can't compete with Steam while *giving shit away for free*, that's not a "Steam monopoly" it's an indicator of how dogshit the opinion of Epic as a corporation and storefront is. Origin failed because nobody wanted it. uPlay failed because nobody wanted it. The perks (being able to buy exclusives) weren't worth the downsides (literally just making another account and installing another program on your computer). I think that's beautiful. I hope it happens to Epic next. Steam's existence as an IPO/enshittification-proof platform has prevented the PC gaming storefront market from going the way of Netflix. Remember that? We had cable channels, pay-per-views, piracy, and DVDs/blu-rays as the only way to watch movies. Then a Blockbuster-over-mail company started getting licenses to let you pay to watch movies at home with one subscription, which was a massive success. Then every other IP holder went "hey wait, why are we paying Netflix when we could just eat the whole pie ourselves" and now we have Netflix Disney+ Max Peacock AppleTV+ Amazon Prime Video Fandango Paramount+ AMC+ Philo Hulu Tubi Fubo Dippy Weeno Poob all trying to be the new Netflix. And because Netflix itself is a shareholder-value-driven company, it's putting ads in its paid product and jacking up prices and paying for exclusivity.

What the fuck are you talking about? It's well known history that the right wing in the United States saw how successful the word was in leftist movements and aped it as their own word. If that's the kind of research you do you make people dumber. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism Libertarianism in the United States (1943 - 1980s) H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock were the first prominent figures in the United States to describe themselves as libertarian as synonym for liberal. They believed that Franklin D. Roosevelt had co-opted the word liberal for his New Deal policies which they opposed and used libertarian to signify their allegiance to classical liberalism, individualism and limited government.[166] LITERALLY YOU WERE INSULTING PEOPLE FOR NOT READING WIKIPEDIA

ITT: People saying Steam is bad and a monopoly, no I won't name reasons why. Do your research.

In what way are they not, or what actions should be taken?

Ok be honest you're trolling right?

Wait, not trying to be a "cultist" here, but if Valve requires devs/publishers to "offer Steam Keys on other stores at the same price that you offer the game on Steam", then why do I keep finding Steam Keys much much cheaper elsewhere? Like, all the time...

Storefront 101 supposedly yet it took steam almost a decade to implement and is largely useless due to being filled with jokes and sourced from people who don't actually understand how to review something.

Yes, that is the big thing many people are missing. Valve takes a 0% cut from Steam keys sold outside of their platform. The 30% does not apply. The only rule Valve sets out here is that you don't sell those Steam keys for less on other storefronts. Which imo seems fair enough if Valve is doing the distribution and asking for nothing in return. The big sticking point is whether the 30% cut isn't too high in the first place.