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Valve faces a £656 million lawsuit in the UK for 'overcharging 14 million PC gamers'
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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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What the hell are these points?
Steam forces developers to ask for higher prices? Ah, yes, because Activision is so eager to sell Call of Duty for just $20 but big bad Steam is just forcing their hand and they have to sell it for $70. See if you look at their own store where they can set their own prices its… also $70… hmm, that’s weird. Maybe others… nope same prices across all platforms. Almost like publishers can actually freely decide on their prices.
Steam also forces customers to buy DLCs for games on their platform. Well, how else is this going to work? I buy a game on Steam and then call up the devs to venmo them $2 and they send me a DVD in the mail? Or should I make a new account on some other website and get my DLCs seperatly from there? Most games don’t even sell you DLCs, they sell you credits so you can unlock content that’s already in the game. Often times you have to buy those credits trough the devs website and link your account to Steam. That’s already a pain it the ass.
Steam takes 30% of the cut. True, that sound like a lot. Imagine you’re a solo Dev and you’ve been working 9 years on a game. 3 of those years you’ve essentially been working just to pay off Steam. But look at what you get for those 3 years. You get a seperate store page for your product that you can essentially design however you want. You get access to high speed distribution servers all over the world, that also allow you to effortlessly push updates out, the option for regional pricing, the industries most reliable user review system, an integrated discussion and fan art forum, third party controller support (important for people with disabilities), and a refund system. Sure 30% still sounds like a lot, but would you be able to provide all this if you would’ve self publish the game, probably not.
Steam is consistently the cheapest option to buy games on sale. And even if it isn’t the cheapest, at no point in time have I thought, man Steam has this game for $7.49 but EGS has it for $6.99, I better get it on EGS. Maybe on GoG but no where else.
It’s mind boggling to think that through inflation and some shortages almost all groceries have nearly doubled in price over the last 20 years, but a AAA game is still $60, even though the cost of making a game has skyrocketed. Imagine gas prices would’ve stayed the same over the last 20 years and people would complian that gas station sandwiches would tast like shit.
I copied my own comment from a cross post on another instance, so don't @ me.
I thought maybe they were saying regional differences in prices were the cause of concern, but again that's not really a basis for a lawsuit, is it?
As far as I know, regional pricing through Steam is completely controlled by the publisher/dev. It's literally a checkbox for each region and a text field to enter an adjusted price. And Steam has made great efforts to stop regional key trading to prevent people from just buying cheaper keys from 3rd world countries and reselling them.
Literally all pricing is set by the devs and publishers. The guy you're responding to has no idea what he's talking about. The Steam store terms of service are public and easily available to read through. I know, I've done it. The only pricing requirement they have is keys sold off store can't be significantly discounted under the store price. That's it.
WDYM I don't know what I was talking about? I never claimed anything about whether steam or the publishers control prices, I was just making a statement about how no matter who controls the prices it's not in violation of any current UK laws or rights.
I think I just have responded to the wrong comment. My bad.
Well yeah but even if it were hypothetically something steam could control, would that really be grounds for a lawsuit?
No, but anything can be grounds for a lawsuit as long as you have enough money to throw out. And given that they are being sued by the government, all bets are off.
That's my whole point, none of the provided arguments are a good reason for a lawsuit. This has early 2000s "It's those darn videogames" vibes, except this time instead of saying that their doing it to protect our children, they are openly doing it to get the money.