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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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 53 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Aren't these rules specifically for Steam keys?

Like it's fine if they sell their game on Steam for $40 and another store for $60 as long as the thing on the other store is for that platform and not a key to activate it on Steam.

They just want the price of a game that's on your Steam library no matter the source to be the same no matter where you purchase it.

[-] RedWeasel@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago

That is my understanding. Additionally I have seen no evidence that it is actually enforced either. You could get Ghost of Tsushima for $59.99 on steam and for like $51.xx on another site using keys. Same happened with forbidden west.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The agreement is only between the dev and Valve; 3rd party key sellers like G2A or Eneba usually obtain their keys through trades, buying them from the original seller, or by stealing them (which is an entirely different can of worms). They're entitely user-driven marketplaces selling second-hand merch.

[-] stardust@lemmy.ca 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Doesn't even have to be sketchy resellers like ones mentioned like g2a. Normal ones like fanatical and humble bundle sell cheaper. Those aren't user driven market places.

Just have to take a look at isthereanydeals which anyone should do before buying a game.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago

Enforced or not, the fact that it's part of the contract is the issue as there's always the chance that they'll enforce it.

[-] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 32 points 5 months ago

It says Valve "forces" game publishers to sign up to so-called price parity obligations, preventing titles being sold at cheaper prices on rival platforms.

Ms Shotbolt says this has enabled Steam to charge an "excessive commission of up to 30%", making UK consumers pay too much for purchasing PC games and add-on content.

This is actually the norm on a lot of platforms unfortunately. Apple. Google Play. Not at all unique to Valve.

[-] CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world 26 points 5 months ago

That 30% cut is also done on the Xbox and Playstation stores. I would assume Nintendo does the same thing.

It also sounds like Valve's price parity agreement only applies to Steam keys. So, if a developer or publisher wanted to provide the game through their own storefront or on another third-party platform then they could charge whatever they wanted.

As for the 30% cut being excessive, I don't know if it is or not, but storing data at the scale that Valve does costs a lot of money, not to mention the costs associated with ensuring the data's integrity and distributing the data to their users all over the world at reasonable speeds. In all likelihood they are running multiple data centers on multiple continents with 100s of petabytes of storage each with some extremely high speed networking within the individual data centers, between the data centers, and out to the wider internet. Data hosting, especially for global availability, is damn expensive.

[-] lorty@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 months ago

Still shitty. No need to defend it just because it's valve.

[-] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Just because it's the norm doesn't mean it's not excessive. In contrast, Apple's implementation of a 30% cut is even worse, since with an iPhone you can't just install an app from another source (and even when you can in the case of the EU, there are recurring costs for doing so). Since Steam accounts for the majority of PC video game sales, with AAA titles only not releasing on it when they have a clear financial motive not to, Valve's use of a price parity clause effectively makes it the arbiter of what the industry standard markup on PC should be.

[-] 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.

[-] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 3 points 5 months ago

The issue is much bigger than this and much bigger than valve.

The underlying problem are nation state sized companies that are so vertically integrated that they profit from every step of the process they are involved in.

Through their huge size they have the power to profit on procurement, labor, production, sales, etc. compared to smaller companies. The concept of billion dollar companies (and individuals) is perverse.

The capitalist system was not designed to harbour companies that never make a loss and are sold or broken up just because they dont satisfy last quarter‘s predictions.

Everywhere where joe or jane average cant start a competing business (either through overzealous regulations like tiny banks or through monopoly inducing IP laws like the one allowing valve to infinitely hold games hostage) you will have overcharging, barely any progress in development and small numbers of people ridicolously raking in profits.

We need to get rid of the right to „sell“ limited licenses, billion dollar companies and shareholder primacy.