this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
245 points (86.1% liked)

Games

30470 readers
480 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
quinten
TheSpookiestUser
shitpostpolice
Dremor
245
$843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Dadifer to c/games
234 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As far as I know, this only applies to Steam keys: developers are allowed to generate Steam keys for free to sell on their website (Valve does not get 30% of these sales either) with the restriction being they cannot be cheaper than the price on Steam

I don't think there's ever actually been any proof that Valve disallows selling games for cheaper elsewhere as long as you're not selling those freely generated Steam keys

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Proof? What would proof look like?

Do you expect companies to just leak contracts they signed while under NDA?

[–] ByteJunk 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not the companies. But some anonymous whistleblower? Sure

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Like the anonymous whistleblower who went to a lawyer and triggered this lawsuit?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This suit seems to just be vaguely, "30% is too high", along with requiring that DLC for a game bought on Steam also be bought on Steam, it was the Wolfire case back in 2021 that alleged they're not allowed to sell their game for cheaper on other platforms

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

According to Shotbolt, the developer and digital distribution company is "shutting out" all competition in the PC gaming market as it "forces" game publishers to sign off on price parity obligations - supposedly preventing them from going on to offer lower prices on other platforms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is true and public knowledge though as I said (details seen here in the "Steam Key Rules and Guidelines" section), if anything Valve is giving devs a lot of leeway by allowing them to do that at all, not only are they giving up their 30% cut but are also then distributing and committing to updating those copies of the game for free

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The allegation says nothing about steam keys. The lawsuit is alleging that they are contractually prevented from selling the game cheaper elsewhere.