U.S. District Judge rules Valve must face antitrust litigation

HarveyHouston · May 12, 2022

TBH, I wasn't paying attention to whether Steam was anti-competitive or not. Now that I think about it, there's not a lot of other places for PC games, so... should I add Valve to GAMMANT?

VartioArtel · May 12, 2022

ut2k4master said:
steam offers a lot more for that 30% than "just" publishing

It perpetually bugs me how many people fail to realize how much Steam offers.

-Advertising Space
-Publishing
-Servers to let players download/play the files which lightens load on the company's end. (I THINK)
-Mod Storage for games that support
-Community forums for their game
-News Feed/News Feed Compatability (Makes a consolidated locale, meaning players need to check less programs/websites)
-Indirect advertising through friends lists ("My friend's playing this, wonder if it's cool?")
-2nd party means of purchasing that company's games through steam cards (which allows accessfor people who don't use/want to use debit/credit)

I'm sure there's more, but in general anyone who thinks it's 'just' publishing is crazy.

NeroAngelo · May 12, 2022

64bitmodels said:
to be fair, IDK how you'd sell a no DRM copy to begin with
people can just duplicate the files

and yet GoG store is thriving and many games are being sold quite fine on it.

NeroAngelo · May 12, 2022

the one thing that irks me about digital store fronts is how the games are treated as "different", if I buy a game from Steam it should be no different than the same one on Epic, why pay for it again?
GoG used to do this amazing thing where it synced with your Steam account and gave you some games you already purchased.

Purple_Shyguy · May 12, 2022

This company took a 50% cut on PAID USER MODS.

I don't know how anyone can defend Valve these days. They spent over a decade fighting against refunds and it took about a dozen EU lawsuits to finally get them to commit to that. As well as pioneering the loot crate/key and cosmetic microtansactions plague.

Valve have been on the cusp of every greedy cancerous thing that's been eating away at the medium for a while now.

Taleweaver · May 12, 2022

I'm not sure if I've got to laugh of cry at this.

When steam was first released 15 years ago, 30% was a cut that was incredibly low. Now it's "they haven't earned it"?

It's more fun with epic store's involvement. What was their cut again? 12%? I know some steam users get butthurt when another platform gets an exclusive, but you can't really blame valve for the competition not being up to snuff.

relauby said:
Wolfire has claimed that they were told by a Steam account manager that Valve would delist any games from Steam that were being sold for a lower price elsewhere, whether or not it was a Steam key. Noting that Valve's policies affect the way even “non-Steam-enabled games are sold and priced,” Judge Coughenour concluded "these allegations are sufficient to plausibly allege unlawful conduct."

Humble bundle and fanatical are hardly new, and sell steam keys below steam's price all the time, and none of these hundreds if not thousands of games have been delisted.

relauby said:
Wolfire pointed out that Valve acquired the World Opponents Network in 2001 and shut it down in 2004 as Steam gained popularity, forcing users to migrate to Steam, making it "a must-have platform."

...which predates the first release of overgrowth by 13 years. How the fuck is this even relevant? :wacko:

Ugh...I know I'm sounding like a valve fanboy here (which, admittedly: I am). But this isn't serious criticism but just being dumb. There's epic store, gog and itch.io to just name a few. Unless I'm mistaken, the last one takes barely any cut (but you'll feel it in the service you'll get in return). Yes, valve is the largest. Yes, 30% isn't a small thing. But if the judge already pointed out that they knew what they were getting into, why isn't this whole deal still on? Because of this "look, ma...I can stall my case for the heck of it!" spiel?

Marc_LFD · May 12, 2022

Xzi said:
Just because he owns them, that doesn't make them valuable. Anybody else can still download them for free, and that's why ownership over any sort of digital content is a nebulous concept. Outside of owning a trademark/copyright, anyway.

Yes, doesn't mean it's valuable, but has access to the files.

64bitmodels · May 12, 2022

ChibiMofo said:
So you own your FLACs and M4a's? Go ahead and try to sell them and see if it's really true.

you literally fucking do. Your FLACs will never be taken away from you, they're not hosted on someone else's server, and while you can't sell them, you CAN give them out to other people for free, assuming they have a player to play those exact flacs. dude, did you even think before saying this shit? this is exactly why i use bandcamp to begin with- you own your music

diggeloid · May 12, 2022

relauby said:
Judge Coughenour was initially dismissive of the criticism towards the 30% fee as that has always been Valve's policy, even when they were not a dominant force in the market.

This kind of stuff annoys me. Why is it excusable to do this today just because they were doing it in the past before they were the dominant store? It's like saying laws shouldn't evolve to deal with changing markets!

Good on Wolfire games for not giving up. I'm generally a fan of Valve, but they've been long overdue for antitrust scrutiny. Hopefully whatever comes of this will spill over to the other monopolists, especially in broader tech (not just gaming).

diggeloid · May 12, 2022

64bitmodels said:
while you can't sell them, you CAN give them out to other people for free,

That is...not true. Make sure you actually read the licenses of what you're buying. I haven't bought anything on bandcamp before, but I doubt they'd give you permission to redistribute those files. Distributing copies without a license that explicitly gives you that right is called copyright infringement.

Here's a snippet I found on Bandcamp's TOS:

Company grants each user of the Site and/or Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable and non-transferable license to use, modify and reproduce the Content, solely for personal, non-commercial use. Use, reproduction, modification, distribution or storage of any Content for other than personal, non-commercial use is expressly prohibited without prior written permission from Company, or from the copyright holder identified in such Content's copyright notice. You shall not sell, license, rent, or otherwise use or exploit any Content for commercial use or in any way that violates any third party right.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure "personal" use means that you can't lend/share it with other people. When you buy a song on their website, you don't own the song, you own a license to use the song's files in a limited way.

64bitmodels · May 12, 2022

diggeloid said:
That is...not true. Make sure you actually read the licenses of what you're buying. I haven't bought anything on bandcamp before, but I doubt they'd give you permission to redistribute those files. Distributing copies without a license that explicitly gives you that right is called copyright infringement.

you could say the exact thing for physical copies and how companies would like for you not to rip and burn them, yet here we are....
how the fuck is bandcamp gonna know if you distribute the files or not? unless you publicly host them on a massive site for everyone to see, you can do fuck all with them. give them to everybody in your discord/steam friend group. there's no DRM attached to the files preventing you from doing that shit like there is for steam and other PC game storefronts.
Hell, there's nothing stopping you from putting the files on an HDD and just selling said HDD out to other people. Bam, you just "commercially" distributed the files. and Bandcamp ain't gonna do shit about it. just like how selling physical copies is something companies don't want you to do, yet you're able to anyways.

diggeloid · May 12, 2022

64bitmodels said:
you could say the exact thing for physical copies and how companies would like for you not to rip and burn them, yet here we are....
how the fuck is bandcamp gonna know if you distribute the files or not? unless you publicly host them on a massive site for everyone to see, you can do fuck all with them. give them to everybody in your discord/steam friend group. there's no DRM attached to the files preventing you from doing that shit like there is for steam and other PC game storefronts.
Hell, there's nothing stopping you from putting the files on an HDD and just selling said HDD out to other people. Bam, you just "commercially" distributed the files. and Bandcamp ain't gonna do shit about it. just like how selling physical copies is something companies don't want you to do, yet you're able to anyways.

Not sure what you're trying to argue here. Is it physically possible to commit copyright infringement? Yes it is. Is it legal just because you got away with it? No, it isn't.

KennyAtom · May 12, 2022

Honestly is the banning devs from selling cheaper off steam thing actually real?

I've seen many games on Steam sold cheaper in other places, and the devs aren't deleted off of steam.

ChiefReginod · May 12, 2022

I hope the courts throw the book at Valve, but I doubt it. They have too much money. They can do whatever they want and it's as simple as that.

Xzi · May 12, 2022

diggeloid said:
This kind of stuff annoys me. Why is it excusable to do this today just because they were doing it in the past before they were the dominant store? It's like saying laws shouldn't evolve to deal with changing markets!

Good on Wolfire games for not giving up. I'm generally a fan of Valve, but they've been long overdue for antitrust scrutiny. Hopefully whatever comes of this will spill over to the other monopolists, especially in broader tech (not just gaming).

Valve's fee isn't even a flat 30% anymore, it scales down with more sales, all the way to 15% IIRC. Meanwhile, Sony/Ninty/MS do still have a flat 30% fee, and I seriously doubt that's going to change any time soon, if ever.

ChiefReginod said:
I hope the courts throw the book at Valve, but I doubt it. They have too much money. They can do whatever they want and it's as simple as that.

"They have too much money" is not sufficient grounds for a lawsuit. And yes, they can do whatever they want at this point, so it's telling that they choose to sell the "Switch Pro" everybody's been wanting at a loss, rather than just trying to create the next FIFA/Fortnite.

ChiefReginod · May 12, 2022

Xzi said:
"They have too much money" is not sufficient grounds for a lawsuit. And yes, they can do whatever they want at this point, so it's telling that they choose to sell the "Switch Pro" everybody's been wanting at a loss, rather than just trying to create the next FIFA/Fortnite.

I think you might have misread. I just meant that they have enough money that, as you said, they can do whatever they want.

Digitalcat · May 12, 2022

Noctosphere said:
Yea well... I think 30% is quite high for only publishing the game compared to all the work behind the game developped

True, however, Steam has many other avenues of revenue that studio's can collect on, so while their main sales might be 30% cut to valve, there is a lot more parts to earn from, Profile Banners/Backgrounds/Frames, Steam Trading Cards, etc, as well with free use of the workshop that has no cost involved for the studio as far as I am aware.

It's safe to assume vale's cuts are higher because there is a lot more to maintain on the platform than there is for example on Epic Games which is just a store and that's about it, it's often hard for us to remember that steam is a lot more than just a store and whether not you as an individual can personally justify that 30% is based off of whether not you use all of those functions.

I tend to use them a lot so I personally can see where the 30% is going, though it's hard for an outside party such as someone from the U.S Disctrict to judge what it is worth since they will compare it to normal ran stores, or competing online stores with less features and maintenance, personally I don't think valve will lose this case, especially if they can prove why their policy is high and where those extra percentages are going.

The whole Steam Key Price Parity Provision is kinda shit tho ngl.

bonkmaykr · May 12, 2022

relauby said:
Valve filed for the suit to be dismissed in July, claiming that the policy is only in place to protect Steam users and that "seeking the best price for your customers is not harm to competition; it is competition."

I don't agree with this take, but I do understand it. By this logic, they think that by making Steam always have the lowest prices, they're preventing developers from punishing Steam users for using the platform they don't have a bias towards. That, or Valve is lying and is intentionally being anticompetitive by creating these policies, which wouldn't surprise me that much even if Valve is one of the nicer corporations out there. I don't like this policy, and think it's restrictive and easily abused, but it may have a positive effect on the majority of consumers since most of us are Steam users anyway and having to pay higher prices for a game on Steam just because we don't want to install a bunch of other inferior launchers by vendors we don't like is stupid. You could say this is exactly what Valve is getting at and is trying to lock us into Steam, and you may be right, but it's just as important to look at this from all angles.

With their latest appeal, however, Wolfire pointed out that Valve acquired the World Opponents Network in 2001 and shut it down in 2004 as Steam gained popularity, forcing users to migrate to Steam, making it "a must-have platform."

This is part of the case where I'm 100% in Valve's defense. WON was only an online gaming service, it was integrated into games sold outside of WON and offered as a matchmaking or master server network in a similar fashion to Gamespy (which was also known as Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection for those of you console players). It's not a software distribution platform like Steam is. Steam has multiple purposes, and replacing WON and having built in multiplayer connectivity including it's own GoldSrc master servers was one of them, but it's primarily a game store. Steam Community (Steam's built-in social media platform, like Xbox Live 2.0) didn't even come until later down the line. Managing two online gaming services isn't very efficient on company resources, especially when Valve wasn't nearly as big in 2004 as they are now, and since Steam was their own platform with their own vision it would make sense for them to work on Steam and keep that as their main focus. This would put WON in the dust unless they started porting over their improvements to WON which would be a waste of time, when they could just instead migrate everybody to Steam which is a superior platform and move on from there. The accusation comes off as an attempt to acquire and extinguish competition in a similar vein to Microsoft, but Valve does not have a history of doing this and it's entirely possible they took WON and shut it down after a couple of years because they changed direction and wanted WON to become or be replaced by Steam at some point after purchase, or wanted to own WON so they could use it as a basis for what would eventually become Steam.

Valve's controversial 30% fee on all game sales

A 30% cut is practically nothing. It does accumulate overtime with each sale, but you're more than capable of succeeding with a 30% cut. A lower one would be nice now especially with how big Steam is, they could certainly get away with less. And yes, publishers take their own cut of revenue before paying the developers. But Steam allows indie developers to self-publish, and taking a revenue cut is industry standard. Other companies have done far worse. I wouldn't even really consider this that controversial, it's not something I ever see a whole lot of fuss over.

Kubas_inko · May 13, 2022

lokomelo said:
You can't sell what you don't own

Then Steam can't sell anything except Valve games, as they don't own them.
What you can sell, however, is the licence. But this sellability depends on the EULA or ToS, which has to abide by laws in your country. So you can allow people to resell licences for their digital games.

eyeliner · May 13, 2022

KennyAtom said:
Honestly is the banning devs from selling cheaper off steam thing actually real?

I've seen many games on Steam sold cheaper in other places, and the devs aren't deleted off of steam.

A developer has a limited amount of keys they can distribute as they see fit.
Not sure if they can ask for more when they run out. It might be possible, as other stores sell Steam keys.

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