A new lawsuit was filed earlier this month in the UK that alleges Valve, owner of Steam, has been overcharging 14 million PC gamers and abusing its dominant position in the UK.
Vicki accuses Valve Corporation of shutting out competition in the PC gaming market by forcing game publishers to sign up to pricing restrictions that dictate the lowest price games can be sold for on rival platforms.
I had heard about it in the past and if true, I feel that is quite an uncompetitive practice, probably made possible by the dominant position Valve has.
The claim is not true. The official rules are not forcing price parity.
You can sell on steam for 40$ and on gog or itch for 20$.
The only rule is that you want to sell a steamkey, making the game available through the service, to people buying from a different platform, you can’t give out the steam key for cheaper on that different platform than steam customers can buy it on steam. You don’t even have to pay steam the 30% cut if you’re selling somewhere else.
You can even do temporary deal on a different platform, if you’re doing a similar deal on steam “within a reasonable time”.
Given that steam let’s you sell keys on other platforms (like gog, gmg, etc) and activate them on steam, and have steam handle all the heavy work of file distribution and stuff, it makes sense that steam wouldn’t want you to sell steam keys cheaper on other platforms and make them wear all the cost of distribution… Otherwise they’d get no sales and end up with all the expense
The only other choice would be to no longer allow you to get steam keys to sell on other platforms or even to give away for review purposes or things like that.
I’ve read about this one. I don’t know if it applies to games totally managed by other stores, but I know it originated with key distribution. The gist is, they distribute keys to the publisher free of charge, so this was so they can’t undermine their pricing while still utilizing their content distribution systems.
IIRC, it basically just says that base prices have to be the same.
Yeah. If this restriction exists it’s pretty clear it only applies to selling steam keys on another platform, not for selling generally. Pretty often games are cheaper on Epic or GOG and don’t use steam for delivery.
It’s misleading, at best. They don’t actually restrict sales on other platforms at all. You’re free to sell your game at whatever price you want. The only restrictions they place are on Steam keys which unlock the game for a Steam account. They restrict the price of Steam keys, because they want price parity for Steam keys. But you’re still welcome to sell non-Steam versions of your game at whatever price you want. Hell, you can give it away for free if you want, as long as it’s not giving away steam keys.
For instance, GoG doesn’t distribute games via Steam keys, so you can sell your game on GoG for cheaper.
I think this is the key claim:
I had heard about it in the past and if true, I feel that is quite an uncompetitive practice, probably made possible by the dominant position Valve has.
The claim is not true. The official rules are not forcing price parity.
You can sell on steam for 40$ and on gog or itch for 20$.
The only rule is that you want to sell a steamkey, making the game available through the service, to people buying from a different platform, you can’t give out the steam key for cheaper on that different platform than steam customers can buy it on steam. You don’t even have to pay steam the 30% cut if you’re selling somewhere else.
You can even do temporary deal on a different platform, if you’re doing a similar deal on steam “within a reasonable time”.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#2
And also, you are not FORCED to sell on steam. You can just not use the platform.
Given that steam let’s you sell keys on other platforms (like gog, gmg, etc) and activate them on steam, and have steam handle all the heavy work of file distribution and stuff, it makes sense that steam wouldn’t want you to sell steam keys cheaper on other platforms and make them wear all the cost of distribution… Otherwise they’d get no sales and end up with all the expense
The only other choice would be to no longer allow you to get steam keys to sell on other platforms or even to give away for review purposes or things like that.
I’ve read about this one. I don’t know if it applies to games totally managed by other stores, but I know it originated with key distribution. The gist is, they distribute keys to the publisher free of charge, so this was so they can’t undermine their pricing while still utilizing their content distribution systems.
IIRC, it basically just says that base prices have to be the same.
Yeah. If this restriction exists it’s pretty clear it only applies to selling steam keys on another platform, not for selling generally. Pretty often games are cheaper on Epic or GOG and don’t use steam for delivery.
It’s misleading, at best. They don’t actually restrict sales on other platforms at all. You’re free to sell your game at whatever price you want. The only restrictions they place are on Steam keys which unlock the game for a Steam account. They restrict the price of Steam keys, because they want price parity for Steam keys. But you’re still welcome to sell non-Steam versions of your game at whatever price you want. Hell, you can give it away for free if you want, as long as it’s not giving away steam keys.
For instance, GoG doesn’t distribute games via Steam keys, so you can sell your game on GoG for cheaper.