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That lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit
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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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it's only applicable if you sell steam keys.
They say that for legal reasons, but their actions are different. If you look at the actual Wolfire complaint, they say they were pressured regardless of steam keys.
I would absolutely agree if it were limited to steam keys, but it's not. Steam can deprioritize your game in more ways than one. Even just not putting your AAA quality $60 game in the featured games list is a big deal.
If you all just give them a pass, they'll keep doing this. If they get criticism for it, they'll likely sweep it under the rug and pretend it was just the Steam key thing the whole time. In the second case, you should expect to see games beginning to sell on Epic (or on their own site) at a lower price than on Steam. There's a reason you don't see this now, and it's not because of steam keys.
I haven't seen anybody else except the litigants included in the class action make these claims. Nobody seems to be able to substantiate them. I'm actively following this because I want to know if it's true. I'd welcome any proof someone can provide that these claims have been elsewhere substantiated.
yeah it's because the publishers have higher margins on epic sales that way.
like, yeah, we want this market to be fair, and if what the wolfire guys say is true then it's a problem. but remember, they started this suit when they ran a competing store! wolfire started humble bundle! and humble's main thing is keys! and i don't know how many other devs are affected by this, but wolfire is driving it and nobody else seems to talk about it.
We should be seeing lower All-Time-Lows off of Steam than on Steam then, right?
Do we regularly see that?
It's no surprise that big-name publishers suck. Though over time, it does seem like digital prices fall lower than physical prices. Especially if we look at those who can't mass produce physical copies. Look at indie devs, for example.
There are lots of indie devs and games released on multiple e-stores. But at least in NA currencies, I don't think we see lower prices on Epic.
i mean, i guess? i know gog regularly host sales when steam doesn't, but i'm not actively price matching. hell, gog even used to give away games for free if you already had them on steam.
Just because they're not on sale at the same time doesn't mean Steam doesn't get the same sale price.
And if GOGs sales aren't going lower than Steam's sale prices, then that'd be evidence in favour of what I'm saying.
...but that's what the clause is about? if you sell steam keys, you can't have a sale if the game is not also cheaper than normal on steam at that time.
gog doesn't sell keys, so it doesn't affect them.
Then let's look at Epic, who also doesn't sell Steam keys, but takes a much lower cut.
Does Epic regularly have lower All-Time-Lows than Steam?
Do you actually know the answer yourself? Just say what you want to say, back it up with data, and PROVE YOUR FUCKING POINT ALREADY. Or keep playing smug coy games and pretend like the downvotes mean you won or something.
well, do they?
if they did, that would be weird, right? lower cut plus lower price equals no benefit for the dev. lower cut plus same price would mean more money.
Edit:
i can't help but notice that you stop responding every time you get asked to back up your claims. i'm assuming this is because you've gone to find hard numbers?
They actually do in some regions! But I couldn't see anyone talking about it about any North American currency.
Nah, it was because I stopped using Lemmy for the day...lol
I track prices with isthereanydeal.com and yeah pretty often a new historical low is set by a Steam key reseller like Fanatical. It's usually only by a few bucks (like maybe $5 max, though still not a bad discount if the previous price was like $25).
Of course if I buy the game, I stop caring about its price so maybe the same sale happens directly on Steam sometime after. I'm not sure on that so ymmv.
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
I'm curious if the same thing happens on the Epic store. I'd seen some people discussing Epic being a lot cheaper in certain currencies, but not in North America anywhere.