Technology

can’t be doing that steam.

stopping people from undercutting you by selling steam key cheaper elsewhere and avoiding steams cut, sure.

mandating price parity in other situations, no bueno. gonna lose this one probably

What if we turn it on it's other side and say: In the interest of its customers, Valve prohibits publishers from selling for a higher price on Steam than somewhere else.

I want to make something clear about the Valve Anti-trust lawsuit currently making its way through the court system.

This case is predicted on the idea that Valve's "Price Parity Clause" in its contracts with Game Devs is anti-consumer and anti-competitive.

The original lawsuit filed by Wolfire before this became a class action Anti-trust lawsuit is available online and it alleges a couple of things.

1. Steam is two separate services that are lumped together in an effort to maintain its market share.

2. It uses this market share to enforce a Most Favored Nation Clause.

3. The Price Parity Clause does not only apply to Steam Keys but to all e-shop sales outside the Steam store.

4. The Price Parity Clause is actually a Most Favored Nation Clause, aka a Price Veto Provision.

The reason that people are claiming this is about Steam Keys is because the original lawsuit filed by Wolfire says that it is. This is what most of the articles that are actually written about this exempt from their writeup and since they don't provide source documentation (from the filing), they lack this context.

The lawsuit is literally about whether or not Valve applies and enforces their Price Parity Clause to not just Steam Keys but also to non-steam storefronts that do not at all use Steam Keys.

If you are arguing that this isn't about Steam Keys, your information is inaccurate and based not on the court filing but on articles that exclude information from the court filing.

If you're saying it's solely about Steam Keys your information is contextually right to some small degree but just as incomplete and therefore just as incorrect.

Because of the nature of the claims in the Wolfire lawsuit (some of which are actually demonstrably false), it does not lend creedence to the other claims being made by Wolfire (on which the class action is relying).

One of the most notable discrepancies between what Wolfie claim and what is legally proven to be true thus far is that Steam does not make a 30% commission on Steam Keys. In point of fact, Valve do not claim any percentage of sales figures from Steam Keys at all. Only sales made directly on the steam e-shop are charged the 30% fee.

The second major one is that the clause in their contract with Steam on which this is predicated is specifically about Steam Key availability and use.

So far as I can tell, there is not a difference in these particular parts of the lawsuit between the class action and the original lawsuit that was dismissed in 2021. So Wolfire's original lawsuit and the Class Action still state that Valve does these things and this lawsuit is as much about Steam Keys as it is about Price Parity/Most Favored Nation type market tactics and clauses.

I believe they have not changed this wording because they cannot remove their Steam Key argument from the lawsuit because without it they do not have a written Steam Policy on which to rely.

So far as I can tell Wolfire and the Class Action claim that the Most Favored Nation Clause is only spoken of in person and is not part of the official contract they signed or any such contract that Valve offers for Steam services. It is unclear if this is their own claim or something they point to as being true based on alleged Microsoft Employee statement.

If I come across more information on this I will try to post it, but I might not remember.

I do wish we could stop posting articles with sensationalized claims and horribly clickbait titles that don't actually providing even a link back to the sources of their information and claims.

I believe there is a separate lawsuit happening in Europe and I haven't delved into that one to this degree.

There's also a separate lawsuit alleging price fixing between Microsoft and Valve. I have not looked into that one at all though I did come across it in my rabbit hole dive.

If anyone can direct me to a non-account required court filing for the two video game developers that sued Valve I would like to see them. So far it looks like the court filings were originally separate but have been combined into a single court filing and that court filing doesn't use the same language as Dark Catt's singular filing did.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754.1.0_1.pdf

https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/why-valve-actually-gets-less-than-30-percent-of-steam-game-sales.1450097/

https://lawfold.com/valve-lawsuit/

https://www.classaction.org/media/wolfire-games-llc-et-al-v-valve-corporation.pdf

https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/14/sweeney-vs-steam-cut-epic-tirade-gaben-emails-revealed

https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/revealed-tim-sweeneys-epic-rant-to

https://aftermath.site/gamers-sue-microsoft-valve-steam-antitrust-lawsuit/

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.300801/gov.uscourts.wawd.300801.1.0.pdf

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/it/ip_21_170

I like Valve as a company, but this is exactly what antitrust laws are for. I hope the due course of justice is followed and the appropriate consequences result if any impropriety is found.

The suit, which is ongoing, centers on what the developers alleged was a tacit company policy designed to punish them for offering discounts at competing online stores. But instead of defending the purported rule, Newell just denied it existed. “Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms,” he said, according to a previously unreported transcript of his deposition. Presented with internal communications in which Valve employees appeared to be enforcing the rule, Newell repeated his denial, at times verbatim, again and again. When an attorney pressed him on how Valve would react if a developer did charge less money for a game on a competing store, Newell demurred. “I’m confused by your question,” he said, before later adding, “Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we’re providing.”

from the bloomberg article.

Valve allegedly threatened to delist all editions of Rainbow Six Siege after Ubisoft offered a cheaper option on its Uplay store.

Similar tactics to Amazon