Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day agoValve gives you free steam keys for your game on request, which you can sell off steam, without paying Valve a cut. This has a specific rule that disallows selling those keys for a lower price. However, not sure if it’s this case, there was an email submitted as evidence from a Valve employee telling a game developer that selling their game for less in general would be undercutting steam, and something they wouldn’t want. If the email is real and not a misinterpretation, Valve indeed was/is pressuring developers to not sell games cheaper elsewhere.
Also, sales and giveaways are exempt from the steam key price parity rule, which I would assume epic’s free games would fall under, if you applied the rule to that despite not involving steam keys.
Big_Boss_77@lemmynsfw.com 1 day ago
Aren’t those keys for valve hosted games, meaning that they are taking full advantage of valve CDN… and so even though they’re being sold on a different site, they’re still being procured from valve? Way it reads to me, they’re not saying they can’t sell it cheaper on another market place, they’re simply saying if you’re using our infrastructure to distribute the game, don’t undercut what we are selling your game for.
Which doesn’t sound unreasonable to me… but I’m just a dude sitting in his office… so fuck if I know.
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 11 hours ago
That’s just the thing - the publicly visible rules are about the keys, but the email that’s part of evidence isn’t about the keys. (Also, steam isn’t just distributing the game, but providing other services for workshop, cloud saves, multiplayer, forums)