Steam owner Valve accused of ripping off 14m UK gamers (www.bbc.com)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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Valve Corporation is being accused of using its market dominance to overcharge 14 million people in the UK.

"Valve is rigging the market and taking advantage of UK gamers," said digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt, who is bringing the case.

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[-] otp@sh.itjust.works -1 points 5 months ago

Taking a cut isn't a big deal, but effectively forcing price fixing seems much more sketchy to me

[-] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Forcing you to sell at the same price as on steam when customers will be downloading from steam servers anyway is not sketchy but very fair.

As a developer you could set the game price on steam to a high number and sell keys on your own site for cheaper. Anyone who buys a key then used steam resources to download it. The dev keeps the 30% since its not a sale through steam. Yeah id like free file hosting with terabytes of bandwidth too please.

If you sell the game yourself and provide the files, you can set lower prices. This is fair and valve doesn't restrict that.

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago

If you sell the game yourself and provide the files, you can set lower prices. This is fair and valve doesn't restrict that.

What about setting lower prices on other stores like GOG or Epic Games?

[-] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

There was a indie dev, the Spiderweb games guy, who refused to use Steam for years and he sold his games on his website. I think it was from like 2008 all the way to 2022. Refused to give Valve a cut.

Then he finally released it on Steam and he wrote a blog post how his niche games sold extremely well and regrets leaving so much money on the table for years.

I tried to find the blog post but no luck.