company: “I want what steam is making and more” shareholders: “brilliant”
Comment on Valve Announces New Steam Machine, Steam Controller & Steam Frame
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day agoIt’s fucking wild. Like, I love Steam, don’t get me wrong, but holy shit just suck less and charge less and you could gobble up a lot of that market share. But none of them do.
underscores@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day ago
“I want what steam is making but I’m not willing to improve service OR charge less!”
BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Most other competitors charge less than steam, but steam has a clause which prevents devs from putting their games cheaper elsewhere. This is the real big shitty move made by valve, otherwise they do mostly everything right. I hope someone challenges this clause in a court of law someday, it looks very monopolistic to me
LupertEverett@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Except that is a thing only for selling steam keys outside steam. There are no price parity clauses.
partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Also here is a gamedev saying that they’ll sell their game for a cheaper price on EGS: twitter.com/…/1700066610302603405
store.epicgames.com/…/heard-of-the-story-ff3758
store.steampowered.com/app/…/Heard_of_the_Story/
If what you saying was actually the case I am 120% sure Tim Sweeney would be all over it lol.
Lastly, there was ALREADY a case like that (Valve vs. Wolfire). The courts couldn’t find anything regarding Wolfire’s claims and then dismissed the case.
BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Ho ok, my bad, I completely misunderstood the issue then. It seems reasonable to impose a price equivalence on steam key
LupertEverett@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No worries! And indeed!
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Word that stands out is comparable. Which provides a lot of flexibility on discounts outside the steam store. And isthereanydeals data that tracks all the prices over the years shows that in steam keys do go on sale for cheaper than the steam store. Steam also takes 0% of Steam keys.
Recent example is ARC Raiders. isthereanydeal.com/game/arc-raiders/info/
Current best price is 15% off for $34.16 versus $39.99 on Steam. And all time low was $31.92.
I do wonder how many people assume Steam store price is the best price, and end up paying more than they’d have to if theh check isthereanydeals. Since I’ve come across some comments that believed Steam did not allow cheaper prices as though it were fact despite reality not being the case.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Notably Epic charges less than 30% to try to get more of that market. They even give away games. But their app is still inferior so it gets less use.
Vespair@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Because Epic doesn’t care about end users and won’t add necessary end user features like reviews.
It’s cool that Epic wants to pay developers more, but the way they disregard the consumer makes the platform non-viable