2mo ago

That lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit

www.rockpapershotgun.com That lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit

A game developer's gruelling legal case against Valve's allegedly anti-competitive practices has reached an important milestone.

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2mo ago

That lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit

www.rockpapershotgun.com /that-lawsuit-against-steams-30-cut-of-game-sales-is-now-a-class-action-meaning-many-other-developers-could-benefit

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It's kinda funny to read through this thread ngl.
Everyone claiming: "OH WOW PRICES WILL BE LOWER" or "OH MAN DEVS WILL PROFIT SO MUCH MORE!!!!!"
You know who profits? Publishers. The ones already taking 80 - 90% of a games revenue. Devs don't see shit of that. And for indie devs that don't have a publisher, the 30% cut is a godsend considering that steam is handling everything in the distribution chain.
You guys are fighting for corpos that want to buy their 5th luxury yacht.
- People who genuinely believe game prices will get lowered if stores take a cut are delusional. You can literally look at the Epic Game Store and see that it isn't even remotely true. The only games on there that are cheaper than on Steam are the ones Epic invested in specifically to entice developers/gamers to use their services. The ones that don't have exclusivity deals are the same as on Steam.
  
  IMO the only way game prices will get lower is if people just stop buying them at the higher prices. If the price of a game goes from $60 to $100 and people complain but still buy the game, then the next one's going to be $100 too (or more.)
  
  The wonderful side effect of buying cheaper games is you never have to worry about buying a game that is the result of a megacorp dropping $400 million into a metastasized web of sweatshop developers that comes with a "micro"transaction store where you can spend $240 on a new pair of shiny shoes for your avatar.
  
  Bingo. We even saw price increases on the EGS instead of reductions lmao.
  People are coping so badly because they want to hate valve or something, idk. It's cringe beyond believe. Of all the shitty semi-monopolistic companies you could hate, valve is at the bottom of the list.
  
  Tbf, any game that's on both steam and Epic Game Store will be priced the same, because anything other than steam having the lowest available price is against Steam's terms of service. You cannot be priced lower on another platform. GOG and a few others like it get around this by selling steam keys.
  While that's in place, you definitely can not see prices go lower.
  
  Nope, that's a misconception/misinformation. That's just for Steam Keys (i.e. you can't sell Steam Keys cheaper than on Steam). Everything else is fair game.
  
  You are in the wrong here, Steam have a term where you can't mark the sale cheaper on any other place, including your own website as you can generate your product keys.
  
  I constantly see people saying this.
  Explain the pricing on virtually every non-Valve-published game on IsThereAnyDeal at any given time. Steam is almost always being undercut by another legit store selling legit Steam keys.
  
  Except those are grey market keys and Valve can just take the game away from you once they detect it.
  
  ITAD only lists retailers that are fully legit. No grey market.
  
  Unless you can point us to that term, is it worth considering that you may be in the wrong here?
  I've been searching for someone who can give me more than "yeah, but I saw someone say it online" for a while now... I've read the public facing docs and have found nothing that says you can't sell your game cheaper - though there is something that says you can't sell your free generated Steam keys cheaper without an equivalent deal on Steam ([here] (https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3)).
  It is important that you don't give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam key purchasers.
  It's not even that strongly worded.
  Even if there was a super secret policy, how do you think it is communicated to developers so they know not to do it?
  
  Nope. This is, at best, a misconception. At worst, it’s an intentional misinterpretation. They have a term that prohibits the sale of Steam keys cheaper elsewhere. Game publishers are welcome to put their game up for sale on other sites for cheaper; They just can’t sell Steam keys cheaper. Basically, Steam wants to protect their own product keys from being undercut.
  Ubisoft has their own storefront, and their own launcher. If you buy games on the Ubisoft Store, you get access to them via Ubisoft’s launcher, called Ubisoft Connect. Ubisoft is free to sell their games at whatever price they want on the Ubisoft Store, as long as they’re not granting access to the game as a Steam key. If you buy it on the Ubi Store and get access via Ubi Connect, then everything is fine. The only way it would be a breach of contract is if Ubi ran a sale on the Ubi Store, then gave players access via Steam. If you buy it cheaper than Steam on the Ubi Store, you won’t get a Steam key.
  You can even sell DRM-free versions of your game for cheaper. As long as you’re not selling Steam keys, you’re fine.
  
  It's a major part of the lawsuit itself.
  I did not set out with the goal of suing Valve, but I have personally experienced the conduct described in the complaint. When new video game stores were opening that charged much lower commissions than Valve, I decided that I would provide my game "Overgrowth" at a lower price to take advantage of the lower commission rates. I intended to write a blog post about the results.
  But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM. This would make it impossible for me, or any game developer, to determine whether or not Steam is earning their commission. I believe that other developers who charged lower prices on other stores have been contacted by Valve, telling them that **their games will be removed from Steam if they did not raise their prices on competing stores. **
  http://blog.wolfire.com/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action
  
  I've joined one of the Steam Dev Days conference in Seattle. It's around time where people was still doing things like cross buy etc. (so buying the game on website unlocks both steam, dev's own drm free version, maybe even console version.) I do not know if any of the actual developer term is updated after that time, but during the conference, one dev asked question exactly like this, can he sell his version without the 30% cut from valve if it does not going through Steam while giving away the steam key for free. The answer is no.
  During the time it was explained that if you sell on different platform, that gives better sale %, steam can also impost that sale % on it's platform. At the time EGS was still not a thing but people asked about can they have different price on different platform, I think the answer is also no or not recommended, as they can request you to match say the base price of itch.io but they don't mind if that sale and software never use anything from steam. They specifically mention if any steam feature, like invite steam friend is used, then no, even if your game are not downloaded or use any steam distribution feature.
  
  Incorrect, steam allows for lower prices and give aways if steam keys you request... As long as it's not the base price. That's how humble bundle works. That's how every dev give away works.
  The "devs" in this case want to sell access to the steam version of their game for lower than the steam price, on a permanent basis. Which is against steams rules, because steam provides a service that needs to be paid for, one that is worth far more than the 30% cut.
  
  I find your 30% cut being less than adequate a very opinionated response. Steam gets to double dip repeatedly with anything that gets sold on their platform. Got a steam key? Now be prepared to always open their app which is defaulted to land on the store page and give you multiple pop ups when logging in. We also harvest your data for "advertising purposes" and you will need to constantly keep our client running if you wish to enjoy your game.
  Imagine you had to go into the IOS or google play store every time you wanted to open an app and it started with suggestions for other apps you could use instead. If you wanted to use your app account on another device, even a pc, you need to download the playstore and link your mobile account to it just to then login to the app. Everyone would be shitting bricks.
  
  A) they don't double dip on the marketplace, developers (or publishers) get the steam tax on all items sold there.
  B) maybe, but they provide unlimited nonrate capped downloads for eternity for your game, including free unlimited downloads and uploads of workshop items. Bandwidth isn't cheap at scale, you could spend >50% of your income as a small dev on distribution, or for 30% you get everything steam provides for eternity for all your players.
  
  I meant double dip as in they get to advertise and force you into perpetually using their software on any device you own that you wish to play your "subscription based" games on (you don't own the games through steam).
  Are we really celebrating Steam taking away distribution? That was a whole industry that's been completely destroyed by companies like Amazon and now Steam.
  So imagine you sold in-game currency for 100 EUR. The distribution costs consist of Value Added Tax, which stands at about 20% in Europe and payment processing fee, which could be around 2-4% depending on the payment method. After all the deductions, the developer keeps about 76-78 EUR.However, if the game is sold on Steam or the likes of Google Play, the developer must pay the store a 15-30% commission in addition to the Value Added Tax.
  Yes, marketplaces do calculate and pay VAT for the game developers/publishers. They also add their own commission of 15-30% on top, which leaves the developer with about 50% of the revenue generated on the platform.
  (link)
  If you just want all of your stuff under one umbrella, well that's your prerogative but you've been misinformed on what steam does or how horrible it is for a company to become a monopoly in a sector of the economy.
  you get everything steam provides for eternity for all your players.
  statements like these are just scary. It's like everyone has just completely forgotten how companies run in the modern age. Thinking any company has an "eternal" footprint and will always uphold their highest standards just aren't paying attention to anything.
- To be fair, Gaben himself already has a ton of luxury yachts.
  
  Taking money away from one billionaire and giving it to another billionaire is completely irrelevant.
  Also, of all the billionaires we have, gaben is one of the few I like. Steam has brought linux gaming ahead like nobody else ever did before, and there was no profit incentive until the steam deck which was like 5 years after the first release of proton, and that's something I'm genuinely thankful for.
  
  Valve had a Steam Machine before the Steam Deck which went down like a lead balloon but did get enough indie interest to continue to support a Linux version of the client. The Steam Deck is basically a continuation of that in a small form factor. I wouldn't be surprised if Valve ever decide to offer cloud gaming that it is also derives from some of these efforts, if for no other reason than to avoid a Windows license fee on the server.
  
  The steam machine was good in concept, the problem was that the software was not ready at ALL and the market was too niche. Most people alrady had a PlayStation or XBox for couch gaming and most games back then that were available on steam were not that well optimized for controllers.
  They basically built the foundation over the past few years with steam input and proton so they could bring it all together to make an amazing handheld device.
  You gotta fail somewhere to be succesful, and valve did just that.
  
  I think another problem with the Steam Machine was that it was still trying to be like a PC ecosystem, so there wasn't a universal Steam Machine. It was just a PC running a specific OS, and everyone who was making Steam Machines had wildly different builds. It didn't make it any easier for a non-tech consumer to get, and there was nothing to get excited about as a tech-minded person other than the software.
  The Deck is a perfect entry level PC, and, aside from the added bonus of portability, should have been what a Steam Machine actually was.
  
  You gotta fail somewhere to be succesful, and valve did just that.
  you aren't wrong, but I don't even view them as failures so much as future investments.
  
  Valve already does cloud gaming. It's called Steam Cloud Play (not to be confused with cloud saves) and they currently work exclusively with GeForce Now.
  https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming
  
  Agreed on Gaben. So what if he hasn't given us the third [pick game]. At least he hasn't gone out of his way to fuck over society for another penny.
- The solution is the same as every other industry IMO.
  Worker owned and operated cooperatives that are integrated throughout their respective industries by a organization such as Mondragon.
  
  Worker-owned businesses do not work on a large scale. If it would, more people would do it.
  Please go back to lemmy.ml
  
  Did you look at the linked Wikipedia page? Mondragon is big, it has 70000 workers. Wikipedia says it is one of the biggest companies in Spain.
  
  I'm well aware that mondragon is big, it's the prime example that's always brought up when "MUUUH WORKER SHOULD OWN THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION!!!!!"
  Doesn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of businesses are not ran by the workers themselves.
  
  the overwhelming majority of businesses are not ran by the workers themselves.
  And do you have any sources to back up your assertion that that's because they "don't work"? Because the way I see it it could just as well be our current legal systems and societal incentive structures that prevent them from being more of a thing.
  
  Amongst the top 100 most valuable companies, not a single one is ran as a worker collective. If we extend it to the top 1000 most valuable companies, we have mondragon, the IFFCO and CHS. Which is still only 3 of 1000. I don't know how much more of a source you need.
  current legal systems
  The current legal system doesn't do anything to prevent worker-ran companies.
  societal incentive structures
  Dunno what you mean by that tbh.
  In the end, too many cooks spoil the broth. Worker collectives suffer exactly from that problem. On top of that, many people don't WANT to be a part of their company. They want to work 4 - 8 hours, get their safe salary and move on. If the company goes bankrupt, they move on and don't want to be personally liable. On top of that, having a company with a lot of employees that all have an equal say in matters makes such companies extremely inflexible.
  I legit never met anyone IRL with a job that was claiming that worker collectives are the greatest thing ever, it's only on lemmy or other lefty online communities where this statement is spread.
  
  Amongst the top 100 most valuable companies, not a single one is ran as a worker collective. [...] I don't know how much more of a source you need.
  I didn't ask for sources that they're not a thing, I asked for sources on the reasons for that.
  The current legal system doesn't do anything to prevent worker-ran companies.
  I'm a startup owner (in Germany) who has looked at the possibility of making my company worker-owned. It is serious effort and comes with a lot of hurdles, tax headaches, etc., because the legal system is not generally made with that kind of company structure in mind, much less the transition into it. It is very easy to start a company with the default capitalist structure of one or a few owners/investors, it requires magnitudes more to do it the worker-owned way (and do it right). But sure tell me again how the legal system is impartial in that matter.
  In the end, too many cooks spoil the broth.
  That's assuming that everyone wants to have a say in everything, and that there are no good internal structures for dividing and assigning responsibility. You can still have individual people who steer the ship, who make autonomous decisions in certain areas, etc. The difference being that they're selected by their peers, rather than through a management hierarchy, and they answer to their peers, rather than their managers and/or investors.

301 comments