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What do you think of this prediction?
(programming.dev)
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I don't understand this mentality. If we oppose monopolistic sales platforms when it's Amazon, Google Play, or the Apple store why should we turn a blind eye when suddenly we like a particular company.
I'm not contesting that Steam offers the best user experience by a mile (it truly beats Epic and Gog by miles), but that doesn't erase the downsides of having a single entity with a grip on the entire market.
I don't think it's quite as simple as "let's crack down on steam like other monopolies" as what do you crack down on?
They do little to no anti competitive behaviour, clutching at straws would be that they require you to keep price parity on steam keys (except on sales).
All these other monopolies do lots of shady stuff to get and maintain their monopoly, so you generally want to stop them doing those things. Steam doesn't do anything shady to maintain it's monopoly it just carries on improving it's platform and ironically improving the users experience and other platforms outside of their own.
Like what do you do to stop steam being so popular outside of just arbitrarily making them shitter to make the other store fronts seem ok by comparison?
The 30% cut is often something cited and maybe that could be dropped slightly, but I'm happy for them to keep taking that cut if they continue to invest some of it back into the eco system.
Look at other platforms like Sony, MS who take 30% to sell on their stores, THEN charge you like £5 a month if you want multiplayer and cloud saves etc. Steam just gives you all this as part of the same 30%.
Epic literally does anti competitive things like exclusivity and taking games they have some stake in off other store fronts or crippling their functionality.
Steam has improved how I play games, it has cloud saves, virtual controllers, streaming, game sharing, remote play together, VR support, Mod support and this is all part of their 30%, the other platforms take same and do less, or take less but barely function as a platform.
Anti monopoly is great when a company is abusing it's position, but I don't feel Valve is, they are just genuinely good for pc gaming and have single handily made PC gaming a mainstream platform.
It is very much not clutching at straws to claim that. That policy is a major element of the Wolfire v. Valve case. You can also look at how despite charging a 12% platform fee, Epic Games Store does not sell games 18% cheaper.
It's an abuse of Steam's established market share and consumer habits to coerce publishers into not offering consumers a fair price on other platforms. It very literally stops EGS from competing on price, which is pretty much the only area where Epic can beat out Steam, since Steam otherwise is much more convenient, provides more functionality, and has more community-generated content (i.e. workshop material).
It's hard to say that isn't anti-competitive, especially because such a policy is only effective due to Steam's existing market share.
This is a fair complaint against Epic, I agree.
Sure, let's look at that lawsuit.
So if you want to sell steam keys, you need to offer a similar deal on steam as you would wherever you're selling those steam keys. This doesn't apply to other storefronts like GOG, Epic, the Ubisoft store, the EA store or the Windows store, this is only about selling steam keys. So if you want to avoid giving Valve a cut of the sale while still using their platform to distribute your game, Valve is going to get upset and take action to prevent you from doing that.
There is also a section about
which I think was the focus of a different lawsuit that mostly talked about a Most Favored Nation clause. This one is a little more complicated, but this lawsuit ended up getting dismissed. I'm not even close to being a lawyer so I don't know why exactly, but this video seems to make a pretty good argument for why this isn't a good legal argument. To summarize: there isn't actually any proof that this kind of clause is actually anti-competitive and violates anti-trust laws. There's also no telling whether or not other storefronts have similar conditions in place, because apparently these kind of Most Favored Nation clauses are fairly standard in some industries.
Looking at your other comment, I can say that Ubisoft tried ditching steam, but their prices didn't really change even though they were paying a lower commission to epic than they would have to valve. So they would have had the ability change their prices to whatever they wanted on the epic store without fear of valve vetoing the price, because those games weren't being sold on steam.
Is there any actual proof of this? Epic is well known for giving games away for free, the best price customers can hope for. Yet they still can't seem to retain a loyal customer base. Maybe the price isn't the most important factor for a digital distribution platform.
Yeah, to be honest that portion of the Wolfire case is pretty weak in my opinion. The Wolfire case isn't only about steam keys, though, it also alleges that the PMFN clause applies to all game listings outside of Steam.
I watch the timestamp provided. The video appears to me to suggest that it is a well-founded legal complaint given you can establish the MFN is the cause of the lack of differentiated pricing. The commentator seems to dismiss the idea that such an effect is evident in the information provided, and seems wishy-washy on a lot of his claims about economic principles. I'll take his word on the legal front, but for the economic side I will turn to the plethora of academic and legal publications on the effects of MFN clauses (which support the anti-competitive effects alleged by the filing).
Also it looks like the Colvin wasn't dismissed, it was consolidated into the Wolfire class-action.
Yep, and the MFN is also a point in the monopoly proceedings against Amazon.
This is interesting, I was unaware. I'll have to look into it.
Not to be nitpicky (because this might be solid counter-evidence), but do we know that in a universe without the Steam MFN policy Ubisoft wouldn't have listed the games concurrently on Steam for 18% higher?
Strikes me as a little beside the point. A randomly rolled free game once a week is almost nothing compared to the sea of purchases in the game industry. If I want to buy game XYZ, the free weekly does me no good—at most, it gets me to install Epic (which is what they want). But it isn't going to change the fact that Steam gives more bang for the buck, all else equal.
The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic. So if price isn't the most important factor, why does Steam feel the need to impose such a policy?
We can go back and look at the historical prices for The Division 2 and see that Ubisoft didn't have a lower baseline price on their own store compared to the epic store. So either Epic has an MFN policy as well, or Ubisoft would most likely want to keep their prices consistent across platforms and stores.
That's the thing: you're being given a random game every week and that's still not enough to get people to stick around. The games they're giving away are often pretty good too, and yet it's not enough to convince people that the Epic Games Store is worth using. And looking at the store now, it seems they're just giving back 5% of the money you spend, meaning if you opt into their ecosystem, all their games actually are cheaper. At some point you need to admit that people won't abandon steam just because prices are lower somewhere else. Because the alternative would mean that piracy would be everyone's preferred method of getting games.
We also don't really know that they do. The source saying that the MFN policy exists at all is the CEO of Epic Games saying so on twitter. And I'm pretty sure the lawsuit says that it's "selectively enforced", so there aren't any actual examples of Valve vetoing a game's price based on the price in another store.
Thanks for digging that up, interesting to note. Epic might have an MFN, or maybe Ubisoft's internal publishing overhead is roughly 12%.
I don't know what you envision when you say "stick around". Do people uninstall Steam when they install Epic? No, they don't. You just have both installed. The free game gimmic is for you to download the platform; that's the first hurdle, but it does little to change your preference between platforms when it comes time to make a purchase.
Interesting point on the 5%, I was unaware of that.
What evidence would be needed to convince you?
Clearly, there is a business case for listing a game for less on Epic (or a publisher's own site!). We can trust the MFN policy most likely exists. What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?
"Selectively enforced" is the wording used by Valve's own employee. That could mean anything from "only big, noteable games" to "only enforced when we noticed it" to "actually enforced consistently". Regardless, it can have a chilling effect that causes everyone to step in line.
I would expect people to start buying games from the epic games store. They'd be using it regularly and have a sense of ownership over the games they have in their libraries.
Honestly, I'm mostly just being pedantic. I'm perfectly willing to believe this kind of clause exists, but I want to acknowledge that at least for now there's no actual evidence of it.
For games being the same price on different store fronts? Whatever the justification for selling digital games at the same price as physical games was back when digital purchases were becoming mainstream, or for the same reason that Nintendo games will rarely go on sale: because there are still people willing to pay.
Is it? Because I pulled the term from the complaint filed Apr 27, 2021 under the Price Veto Provision section. Where did you see a valve employee saying it?
I wouldn't call a multi-year class action asserting that a clause exists "no evidence".
(I mostly continue on this point because I will continue to go around saying Valve uses a PMFN clause, and it's not unfounded for me to do so)
Alright, if you're not convinced that there ought to naturally be differentiated pricing, and that the uniform pricing we see is artificial, I don't know where else to go.
Ah, I was thinking of the "TomG" quotes here. I see what you're referencing now, though that doesn't really make the language as less ambiguous.
Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion but I'm going to call it here. Cheers.
I think my point was more that publishers aren't going to do that. Back when digital wasn't the default, it was acknowledged that selling a download was a fair bit cheaper and easier than manufacturing disks or carts that could easily be resold by the customer after they were done with it, but the pricing didn't change to reflect that. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time, and not just with steam.
Fair enough, good night.
For that fact to “remain,” it would need to have been established in the first place. At best it’s been alleged.