Valve does not decide how much the games cost, its the publisher Microsoft of the games. And why is Microsoft singled out here? This is true for every other publisher as well, including Sony and third parties. There is no evidence for the claim that has been made. You can’t accuse being in a cartel just because you had a bad dream. Sounds like made up arguments.
From what I remember, if you publish on Steam and other platforms, you are not allowed to offer bigger sales on other platforms. If you don’t offer a similar discount/pricing on Steam in the coming weeks/months, Valve warns you about removing it from its storefront. And that’s what’s also written here.
Steam is the best launcher, store and gamertoolkit for consumer, I agree with that and especially since that I’m a GNU/Linux gamer. However that doesn’t mean Valve is clean and has no cartel behavior. They make their money by create incentives for gamers to gamble on lootboxes.
Gabe follower…
Fucking loser alias holy shit.
Why is “Gabe follower” a loser alias?
Why someone becomes a follower of GabeN?
Doesn’t valve itself have a rule that you can’t sell the product for lower in other locations? It has to remain the same? So how was this collusion ? I don’t understand.
No, Valve’s rule is that you can’t sell Steam keys at a lower price in different places. You can sell the game at any other price without the potentially-unlimited Steam keys they provide to devs.
Steam key rules and guidelines in the Steamworks docs: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3
Oh. Okay cool that makes sense
Yes, there is a rule and contract when selling games on Steam. Microsoft knew this day one, as any other publisher (not sure why Microsoft is singled out here). Valve wants to have price parity of games sold on Steam and other stores. But exceptions are made for short term sales.
Yes, that’s the “collusion”. Pretty much every platform has similar rules. I don’t think collusion is the right word, as that implies some sort of agreement between them, when in reality they each just have the same agreement. But I do think it’s a valid complaint and the implications of such a suit are wide-reaching for that reason.
Am I the only one who thinks this is one market that we can’t complain about prices on? In the mid 90s premium games were 60-70 dollars. Like super Mario bros 3 was 70 dollars. Now current premium games are 60-70 base price(not including dlc). Thats not counting the tons of games for less than 20 these days. In 30 years prices have mostly gone done despite inflation. Imagine if that was true for cars, or houses or even dog food …
