this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 2 years ago by Goronmon@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] sirdorius@programming.dev 28 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I'm also curious what the allegations are. The only ones I ever heard were from Epic, which was basically making a big fuss to promote their own competitive platform (which was so shit it didn't gain any traction apart from the free games).

I've tried all the online stores ever since the cloudification (remember Impulse?) but none have ever been able to compete with Steam in terms of features and value to the customer. Steam didn't get to the top by being anti competitive, it got there by being competitive and offering a better product to all stakeholders, not just to shareholders.

And as you mentioned, there is plenty of competition for Steam. Don't like the monoply? Get it on GOG or Itch instead.

[–] Rose@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

You can read the complaint in full here.

Edit: Updated with a more recent version.

[–] sirdorius@programming.dev 14 points 2 years ago

Thanks. So TLDR:

  1. PMFN (Platform Most-Favored-Nations clause): Valve forces publishers to price games on other platforms at the same price or higher than Steam. This is an anticompetitive monopoly because publishers can't sell the game at lower prices on platforms with a lower cut than 30%, which would improve competitiveness. Very valid point
  2. Keys that publishers can sell on other storefronts are limited. This point is moot. The fact that Steam allows you to activate a product that was purchased elsewhere and then use their infrastructure to download the game is way more than they have to do. They can completely make the rules here as this is basically a free service that you get from Valve.
  3. Some murky points about Valve policing review bombing that isn't explained properly.
[–] Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago

Valve devotes only a small percentage of its revenue to maintaining and improving the Steam Store, and dedicates very few employees to that effort.

Okay yeah I was annoyed that it took Epic's store to make Valve update their ancient UI, but Proton has gone a long way to improving my opinion of them (and it's open source to boot).

Also is a shame that the court won't have the background to know that invoking EA's complaints about anti-competitiveness and price gouging is so completely laughable.