680

Steam :: Introducing Steam Families (steamcommunity.com)

submitted 3 months ago by Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

178 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Valve announced a replacement feature for both Family Sharing and Family View. Currently in beta.

Features:

up to 5 members
game sharing
parental controls
- allow access to appropriate games
- restrict access to the Steam Store, Community or Friends Chat
- set playtime limits (hourly/daily)
- view playtime reports
- approve or deny requests from child accounts for additional playtime or feature access (temporary or permanent)
- recover a child's account if they lost their password
child purchase requests

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Spedwell@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

This is demonstrably wrong. The 30% cut is standard because Steam has used the same strategy as Amazon to fix prices across the market (a "Platform Most Favored Nation" clause—see the Wolfire Games v. Valve class action, specifically items 204 and 205 on pg 55). Competing storefronts cannot undercut Steam, so why would they take less than a 30% cut?

Epic Games Store—which is trying to undercut steam at a 12% fee—still list games at the same price as on Steam because of Valve has strongarmed publishers into fixing the prices. If Epic is charging 18% less but Valve is stopping publishers from reducing the game cost by that much, how is that not blatantly anti-competitive and anti-consumer?