Seems like buying games to remove them from your competitor is a scummier thing to do.
because of the anti-competitive price restrictions that Valve often imposes on game developers and producers (the Price Parity Obligations). This means a publisher or developer would not be able to list a game on another platform as well as Steam, unless the prices offered on Steam is the same or lower. This applies to games on all other distribution stores (including online and physical stores) not just those distributed by Steam Keys
Textbook anti-trust lawsuit. Different from what Epic does, I doubt they impose such rules on developers.
Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million
“The legal action, originally filed in 2024 by digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt”
Vicki is a leading campaigner for children’s digital rights, with over 20 years of senior leadership experience in national charities. She is the founder and CEO of Parent Zone, an organisation that works with families and global brands to improve the lives of children in today’s digital world.
(Source: https://steamyouoweus.co.uk/about-us/)
That is why Valve is being sued for 900 million. Because Vicki Shotbolt wanted to. Why did she want to? Here is her claim (in her own words, not mine):
But Steam’s prices appear to be the lowest?
Steam can offer the lowest prices because of the anti-competitive price restrictions that Valve often imposes on game developers and producers (the Price Parity Obligations). This means a publisher or developer would not be able to list a game on another platform as well as Steam, unless the prices offered on Steam is the same or lower. This applies to games on all other distribution stores (including online and physical stores) not just those distributed by Steam Keys. This allows Valve to maintain the monopoly position it has for PC Games as there is not real incentive for gamers to go elsewhere where a game may be cheaper (which would then in turn enable those other platforms to improve).
It is also not possible to offer add-on content on other distribution platforms for cheaper or at an earlier time: this limits the ability of rivals to compete on price and enables Valve to charge the consumer higher prices in the absence of competition. The claim argues that the add-on content is a separate product, and that through the price restrictions and inability to purchase add-on content from another distribution platform or the developer itself Valve has illegally tied these products and limited consumer choice. Consumers must then purchase via Steam and pay its commission charge.
In the UK, dominant companies are not allowed to charge excessive prices. The claim argues that Valve’s commission rate of up to 30% is excessive given: competitors lower commission rates; the way the platform operates for the consumer; and the high level of profit that Valve is making absent a viable competitor (which its behaviour directly restricts as developers are not permitted to list games at lower prices on competing platforms). This unfair commission charge is paid for by the consumer.
"[…] but Epic Games wasn’t sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?
Steam has a much easier claim to be considered a monopoly. It’s a little like (note: I never said it’s exactly like or it is very much like—I only said it’s a little like) Chrome being a monopoly for web browsers—everyone chooses to install chrome on their computers when they install a PC and prefer not to use the pre-installed Edge or Safari. Very few people install Epic games, much like very few people install Firefox. If you want to game on PC, you pretty much have to install Steam to play with your friends you know? Otherwise you’re kinda lame and don’t have friends.
I am still playing Fall Guys via Steam
Im just a caveman, but wouldnt keeping the same price as steam mean the developers get more money from Epic Games Store at the same price point because of the lower fees?
Because Epic and Tencent should have first pick from the IP farm.
Same reason nobody, not even Sony, sued M$ for buying Activision-King and Bethesda.
Actually sony tried to fight it because of the COD franchise mainly but didn’t get into suing them, but they were a big part of the opposition when it came to governments giving approval of such a huge merger
Because sweeney is greedy lying piece of shit, who’s using “think of poor developers being robbed by app stores” to cut himself bigger market share by suing fuck out of competitors
Like they won over google and guess what? He fucked over “all the poor developers” and cut himself a juicy deal to settle antitrust case
Fuck him, fuck Epic
Epic customer support is also garbage. I’ve sworn off the company.
I haven’t really looked deeply into this issue but what caught my eye was the claim that a 30% fee was excessive. I’m no insider into video game publishing but 30% is the standard retail markup for many things. If you bought a candy bar today, it probably cost the mini mart you bought it from 70% of what they’re charging.
30% is the standard retail markup for many things
It most certainly is not standard in retail. Most retail stores have a margin of a couple percentage points. Walmart, for example, is ~3% net margin most years
Unless you’re trying to compare wholesale price to final consumer price. In which case I would say that’s a silly and pointless thing to compare, but even then it’s far smaller than 30% across retail and varies wildly based on the individual item being sold
A 30% cut is only really common in the tech sector where the underlying economics make it feasible
I haven’t really looked deeply into this issue but what caught my eye was the claim that a 30% fee was excessive. I’m no insider into video game publishing but 30% is the standard retail markup for many things. If you bought a candy bar today, it probably cost the mini mart you bought it from 70% of what they’re charging.
Retail needs a location to store and sell their product. They need employees as well. One small Walmart has as many employees as steam does. Retails also buys the product in bulk, there is a bigger risk involved if it doesn’t sell or even sells slowly.
Huge difference imo.
and steam needs data centers and servers and power and all the stuff to keep those running. ultimately though it didn’t matter. if steam thinks that their ecosystem is worth charging that much, then it’s up to the dev to decide if what steam provides is worth it to them
We don’t know how much it costs for their servers but I doubt it’s anywhere near what they charge devs. Gaben having an 11bn dollar net worth kind of points to that.
The biggest problem is that it isn’t up to devs since steam has market dominance. Not putting your game on steam is basically suicide, they have close to 90% of the PC market…
market dominance is not a monopoly. market dominance is a label given to the most successful product. and the product is successful because they offer a service that none else seems to be able to or wish to fulfill.
devs can choose to sell their game on steam, or windows live, or gog, epic game store, playstation, nintendo online, android app store, ios app store, on their own site, eb games, or the back of their car, what ever.
are all of these equally effective? nope. when you put your game on steam you get, the vast user base cultivated by valve, server space to host your game, massive server upload speeds, a built in store front, the discussion boards, steam game cloud, the stream overlays and stream input, steam workshop, community hubs, steam achievements, global money processing, themed sales, two special discovery windows. blah blah blah.
again, it’s up to the dev to decide if they want to pay 30% for these things.
to put it in perspective, when epic game store has a sale, steam makes a profit.
That’s what Apple charges devs in their “ecosystem” correct?
Depends if you’re a big developer or some indie one. Big developers commonly don’t pay fees or have special deals (Uber, etc.). Smaller ones pay 15% up to 1 million downloads, then it’s 30%. So if you want to pay less, get really rich first.
That being said, this is on top of the VAT, not part of it. Still charging 30% in 2026 feels criminal and greedy. This applies to nearly all big corporations, including Valve Corporation with Gabe’s fleet of yachts and company making more money per employee than any other company. It made more sense to take 30% cut when 100Gb of HDD costed thousand dollars, internet was metered in megabytes and the whole infrastructure was just not there yet, but this “industry standart” tax never changed even tho for them distributing apps has become far, far cheaper than it used to.
thats what apple forces and imposes on any developer that uses the app store, which is most of them since on ios alt stores are only a thing on eu and japan afaik
Just letting you know that you commented the same thing twice.
they probably have a legal team protecting thats why, or they are paying of some judges/politicans.
I’m still bitter at Steam for taking a bunch of my single-player games off me that I’d already paid for when I moved to another country, and refusing to refund me because I’d already played 10 hours. Also the support guy treated me like I was a criminal for even trying.
deleted by creator
Did they explain why moving to another country ment anything?
Some countries have huge taxes on entertainment while others have nearly none. I’d guess he moved to a county with a higher tax rate and Valve can’t just have people using a VPN to circumvent their local taxes. Valve is left without a way to determine where you were when you’d purchased the game so they geo lock the titles to where you purchased them.
There was a time when the swastika was not allowed to be shown in games because of a law in Germany, causing Wolfenstein (the uncencored version) to be banned. Maybe the country in question has similar laws?
I suspect Germany was the reason Kane and Lynch 1/2 was so heavily censored. They even got a bright orange bulletin on the Steam store page claiming that German citizens were unable to purchase or play the game.
I didn’t know Fall Guys got bought out. But then again, that was a flavor-of-the-week kind of game where streamers tried to care, then moved on and Fall Guys became irrelevant.
Who sued who in the what now?
Rocket League had a native Linux version, but they also pulled that.
And a Mac client.
I dunno, killing the idea of ownership of games was pretty bad.
I don’t think any amount of Proton patches submitted is going to bring that back.
Steam didn’t do that. Even Super Nintendo cartridges tried to claim in the Terms and Conditions that you legally didn’t own the copy you paid for. It was never contested, and thus we have the current software ownership debacle.
Steam didn’t do that. Even when you bought a physical disk you didn’t own the game. Microsoft is the one you should be blaming for how software is licensed over actually being sold to you. It was them who really pushed for that shit in the fucking 80s.
But Steam didn’t kill the idea of ownership of games? It never existed for digital distribution (or even physical with DRM), which existed before Steam.
Apparently a lot of games don’t have DRMs on Steam. The only thing missing is a badge indicating this.
So at least you own these…
Yes, some of them can be launched directly from the exe without the steam client, or with some modifications to the game files.
Here’s a list of DRM free games: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam
Also it’s kind of silly how people automatically blame Steam for this, even though Valve does not force you to use DRM to publish to Steam. It is the developers themselves that chose to add DRM or tie themselves to the Steam API so that the game can’t run without it.
So for example getting Dorfromantik or Citizen Sleeper from Steam or GOG is virtually equivalent in terms of ownership.
