A UK tribunal has given the go-ahead to a £656 million ($901 million) collective action lawsuit targeting Valve over alleged anti-competitive practices on PC storefront Steam.
I don’t mind someone going after Valve but I think the arguments presented are bullshit.
The price parity argument is an argument on paper but in reality we’re not going to see different pricing, except maybe on the super rare occasion a company has their own storefront they want to build up with their first party games while also keeping the game on Steam for extra sales. Realistically that first party game is going to be exclusive to the store (see Alan Wake 2). And 3rd party publishers have no incentive to sell for cheaper on a different storefront because a lower cut by the platform holder would just mean they get to make more money per unit sold. I guess maybe if the storefront pays the 3rd party publisher extra so the storefront itself could set a lower price on the games, but I fear that might end up having the opposite effect where money-rich competitors (like Epic) can end up taking away market from smaller storefronts like GOG or Itch because despite selling games for less it’s still not competing with Steam in terms of features so the market has to grow from somewhere. But I’ll happily be wrong here.
The same way the 30% cut being too much is an argument on paper, but in reality if the cut does go lower the customer, the people actually buying the game, won’t see it. One could argue that it has already gone down for AAA because Steam brings it’s down to 25% after certain threshold and I think once more to 20% after the next threshold. Meanwhile AAA pricing has only gone up in the form heavier focus on MTX alongside an actual price increase from $60 to $70. The cut going down is just going to put that money in the publishers pocket. It would be a win for the publisher but not really a win for the customer.
The only argument that actually could be beneficial to the customer is the add-on argument. I’m not entirely sure what they mean by add-ons. If they mean Steams own made up marketplace of trading cards and stickers and all that shit what is the solution here? Have Steam close it down because there’s no way in world other storefronts would ever make something like that and if they did it would never be made in a way where it could be interchangeable with Steams implementation. I hope by add-ons they mean DLC-s and I would 100% love it if I could buy a game on one platform and DLC-s from a different platform and just have them work together. That would actually be beneficial to the customer. But I don’t see anyone codifying that as a regulation and if it were to happen it would be pretty big strain either on the storefronts or the publishers, because it would be a huge mess to track purchase across platforms to make sure what combination of games + DLCs any particular account has. I would love to see it happen, I just don’t see it actually happening.
The arguments are there on paper but even if Steam did anything about them it probably would have little to no effect on the customers so the lawsuit doesn’t really feel like someone is fighting for the consumer, it just feel like someone trying to take Steam down a peg. It’s fine but it’s unlikely to have an impact on the market, Steam will still stay the biggest seller because Steam offers features to the consumer that no other storefront offers.
This is a great write up to which I can only add that I know that in the ongoing US case, Valve has been arguing that not only is the 30% cut not particularly onerous, and is actually pretty close to the industry norm…
… they also make the argument that Steam provides much, much more to both the consumer and the prospective game seller that…well they just do actually offer many more features and services than existing comparable platforms.
The DLC thing is an interesting idea, but… oh god, basically, is my database manager brain’s response to that.
You’d have to construct like a shared standard of game key liscenses across all digital platforms, you know, the not unlike the kind of thing every single idiot a few years back claimed would be possible with their NFT games.
This is… an interesting idea, but I don’t see how you could actually implement this in practice without basically creating a government agency to manage it.
… Which would then also probably mean that said government would now directly know every game you own.
And then you’d have to think about how that would play with things like game key selling sites…
Yeah. This would be a nightmare to try to actually implement.
Now the government would be directly involved in DRM. Like uh, potentially, verify your actual identity with face scan to log in to your game library of any kinds of games… that kind of involved.
There are many other complexities and problems than that.
There’s nothing that says game developers can’t allow add-ons to be installed from third party stores. Already works that way with games like Gratuitous Space Battles. I’ve bought the expansions on third party stores and simply put the zips or whatever in the relevant game folder.
I don’t know if something has changed since that game, but I don’t see addons sold by 3rd parties as a popular avenue for consumers simply because you have to then manually manage it.
Will say it would be nice to own games on one platform and be able to buy and manage the game via steam. Select the platform you bought it from / the install folder and let steam automagically update the DLCs in there for you.
We don’t really know what the add-on argument is because the article doesn’t really say much about it. I didn’t mean Steam prohibits modifying game files, which is pretty much what you did to add the expansions. I meant it more like you describe in the last paragraph where your purchases are platform agnostic, you buy where you want to and you play where you want to.
I’m pretty sure the dlc thing is already possible. Guild wars 2 at least works this way, you can buy the game/dlcs either via steam or via their own store and then you can install and run the game either via steam or via their own launcher (although IIRC the steam way still has the launcher).
It’s probably more of a case of steam providing a convenient way for developers to not need their own account system, so rather than them creating their own solution that integrates with steam and other sources, they just straight up use Steam’s way.
To be honest I’d love it if they forced a way for steam and other shops to allow migrating your games between them, so I could take all the free games from epic but never use it. Currently my compromise is to just never use it and skip the free games.
I don’t mind someone going after Valve but I think the arguments presented are bullshit.
The price parity argument is an argument on paper but in reality we’re not going to see different pricing, except maybe on the super rare occasion a company has their own storefront they want to build up with their first party games while also keeping the game on Steam for extra sales. Realistically that first party game is going to be exclusive to the store (see Alan Wake 2). And 3rd party publishers have no incentive to sell for cheaper on a different storefront because a lower cut by the platform holder would just mean they get to make more money per unit sold. I guess maybe if the storefront pays the 3rd party publisher extra so the storefront itself could set a lower price on the games, but I fear that might end up having the opposite effect where money-rich competitors (like Epic) can end up taking away market from smaller storefronts like GOG or Itch because despite selling games for less it’s still not competing with Steam in terms of features so the market has to grow from somewhere. But I’ll happily be wrong here.
The same way the 30% cut being too much is an argument on paper, but in reality if the cut does go lower the customer, the people actually buying the game, won’t see it. One could argue that it has already gone down for AAA because Steam brings it’s down to 25% after certain threshold and I think once more to 20% after the next threshold. Meanwhile AAA pricing has only gone up in the form heavier focus on MTX alongside an actual price increase from $60 to $70. The cut going down is just going to put that money in the publishers pocket. It would be a win for the publisher but not really a win for the customer.
The only argument that actually could be beneficial to the customer is the add-on argument. I’m not entirely sure what they mean by add-ons. If they mean Steams own made up marketplace of trading cards and stickers and all that shit what is the solution here? Have Steam close it down because there’s no way in world other storefronts would ever make something like that and if they did it would never be made in a way where it could be interchangeable with Steams implementation. I hope by add-ons they mean DLC-s and I would 100% love it if I could buy a game on one platform and DLC-s from a different platform and just have them work together. That would actually be beneficial to the customer. But I don’t see anyone codifying that as a regulation and if it were to happen it would be pretty big strain either on the storefronts or the publishers, because it would be a huge mess to track purchase across platforms to make sure what combination of games + DLCs any particular account has. I would love to see it happen, I just don’t see it actually happening.
The arguments are there on paper but even if Steam did anything about them it probably would have little to no effect on the customers so the lawsuit doesn’t really feel like someone is fighting for the consumer, it just feel like someone trying to take Steam down a peg. It’s fine but it’s unlikely to have an impact on the market, Steam will still stay the biggest seller because Steam offers features to the consumer that no other storefront offers.
This is a great write up to which I can only add that I know that in the ongoing US case, Valve has been arguing that not only is the 30% cut not particularly onerous, and is actually pretty close to the industry norm…
… they also make the argument that Steam provides much, much more to both the consumer and the prospective game seller that…well they just do actually offer many more features and services than existing comparable platforms.
The DLC thing is an interesting idea, but… oh god, basically, is my database manager brain’s response to that.
You’d have to construct like a shared standard of game key liscenses across all digital platforms, you know, the not unlike the kind of thing every single idiot a few years back claimed would be possible with their NFT games.
This is… an interesting idea, but I don’t see how you could actually implement this in practice without basically creating a government agency to manage it.
… Which would then also probably mean that said government would now directly know every game you own.
And then you’d have to think about how that would play with things like game key selling sites…
Yeah. This would be a nightmare to try to actually implement.
Now the government would be directly involved in DRM. Like uh, potentially, verify your actual identity with face scan to log in to your game library of any kinds of games… that kind of involved.
There are many other complexities and problems than that.
There’s nothing that says game developers can’t allow add-ons to be installed from third party stores. Already works that way with games like Gratuitous Space Battles. I’ve bought the expansions on third party stores and simply put the zips or whatever in the relevant game folder.
I don’t know if something has changed since that game, but I don’t see addons sold by 3rd parties as a popular avenue for consumers simply because you have to then manually manage it.
Will say it would be nice to own games on one platform and be able to buy and manage the game via steam. Select the platform you bought it from / the install folder and let steam automagically update the DLCs in there for you.
We don’t really know what the add-on argument is because the article doesn’t really say much about it. I didn’t mean Steam prohibits modifying game files, which is pretty much what you did to add the expansions. I meant it more like you describe in the last paragraph where your purchases are platform agnostic, you buy where you want to and you play where you want to.
I’m pretty sure the dlc thing is already possible. Guild wars 2 at least works this way, you can buy the game/dlcs either via steam or via their own store and then you can install and run the game either via steam or via their own launcher (although IIRC the steam way still has the launcher).
It’s probably more of a case of steam providing a convenient way for developers to not need their own account system, so rather than them creating their own solution that integrates with steam and other sources, they just straight up use Steam’s way.
To be honest I’d love it if they forced a way for steam and other shops to allow migrating your games between them, so I could take all the free games from epic but never use it. Currently my compromise is to just never use it and skip the free games.