Stop acting like Valve isn’t the best we could ask for out of all the alternatives.
I’m going to stop right here, because this is absolute nonsense.
There are plenty of big tech companies out there that are the “best” at what they do, and still shouldn’t be allowed to do shady and illegal stuff. Simple as that.
If we are going to forgive this behaviour just because “people want games”, then I’m sorry to say, but this society might be more fucked up than I thought. Probably beyond salvation.
Panen et circenses with a side of billionaire cock.
I couldn’t care less about Ubisoft or their shareholders. But just so you know, Valve is roughly ten times bigger than Ubisoft, and this suit was filed by the founder of Humble Bundle. So go ahead and wipe your chin now.
Humble Bundle isn’t even mentioned in the article shared my guy.
A few years later, Rosen started his own game distribution program, allowing customers to pay whatever they wanted for a collection of indie games called Humble Bundle. The program, which Rosen ran with his brother, took only a 5% cut but, he says, was still turning a profit. Rosen started looking more closely at Valve in 2018, when it implemented a tiered system that gave rate reductions to large game makers, angering indie developers who were stuck paying the higher rates. Rosen reached out to the company again, this time to see how it would react to him selling Overgrowth, another Wolfire game, at a discount on Humble Bundle’s store. “They replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere,” Rosen wrote in a May 2021 blog post explaining why Wolfire decided to sue Valve. (In its response to Wolfire’s suit, Valve disputed Rosen’s description of what occurred on the call.)
and other online stores have rarely offered features compelling enough to lure people away.
The fear among some developers is that doing so can lead to penalties or even expulsion from Steam — a potentially devastating outcome for their game sales.
The US lawsuit Newell was deposed in, which has been certified as a class action, alleges that it “is not economically feasible” for game makers to leave Steam in favor of a rival store and that they are effectively “forced to comply” with Valve’s rules and high fees.
The above quotes all point to exactly what I’ve been saying: Other stores/platforms simply don’t appeal to users.
“Customers have enormous choice,” Newell has testified. They can decide “where they purchase their products, whether they buy the game on an Xbox, whether they buy it on Steam, whether they buy it on Epic Games Store or whether they buy it directly from software developers.”
No one is forcing anyone to use Steam.
EA experimented with everything including opening its own PC store and stopping major releases on Valve’s marketplace, only to reverse course and eventually bring big-name titles such as The Sims 4 and Battlefield V back to Steam.
Competing marketplaces, meanwhile, have failed to match even Steam’s basic capabilities, never mind its emotional resonance with users. EA’s original store was filled with glitches and had nowhere near the number of third-party titles as Steam, while Epic’s rival launched without such standard features as user reviews and a shopping cart for purchasing multiple games in a single transaction.
They tried, and failed, to launch BFV and Sims on just their own platform because IT WAS A BUGGY MESS. Not because StEaM hAs A BiG MaRkEt ShArE.
Not even having a Cart in your online store is mind boggling. Also, if I have to go to Steam to see reviews I might as well buy it there.
In 2017, Kassidy Gerber, who works in business development at Valve, wrote to Warner Bros. executives that preorders for its new Middle-earth: Shadow of War game had been deleted from Steam because the price was “significantly higher than what was available at other retailers for the same version of the game.”
So Valve protected their own brand by not wanting to be associated with “significantly higher prices”. Sounds like a sound business decision to me.
Now, from what I understand, Rosen had his game in early access on Steam for like 5 years. And the game was hosted solely on Steam. Things that cost Rosen nothing. Then, Rosen wants to sell keys directly to the costumers rather than through the very service used to distribute the game, effectively bypassing paying Valve anything. Valve says that’s not ok, Rosen sues them, and somehow Valve is the bad guy?
I’m going to stop right here, because this is absolute nonsense.
There are plenty of big tech companies out there that are the “best” at what they do, and still shouldn’t be allowed to do shady and illegal stuff. Simple as that.
If we are going to forgive this behaviour just because “people want games”, then I’m sorry to say, but this society might be more fucked up than I thought. Probably beyond salvation.
Panen et circenses with a side of billionaire cock.
You want to punish Steam in favor of the shareholders of the likes of Ubisoft, who is really gagging on billionaire cock here?
I couldn’t care less about Ubisoft or their shareholders. But just so you know, Valve is roughly ten times bigger than Ubisoft, and this suit was filed by the founder of Humble Bundle. So go ahead and wipe your chin now.
Humble Bundle isn’t even mentioned in the article shared my guy.
https://archive.ph/YvHxF#selection-1867.0-1879.103
Just… Read it. I pasted this link three times already. It makes no sense for me to keep posting if you willingly ignore every single fact.
The above quotes all point to exactly what I’ve been saying: Other stores/platforms simply don’t appeal to users.
No one is forcing anyone to use Steam.
They tried, and failed, to launch BFV and Sims on just their own platform because IT WAS A BUGGY MESS. Not because StEaM hAs A BiG MaRkEt ShArE.
Not even having a Cart in your online store is mind boggling. Also, if I have to go to Steam to see reviews I might as well buy it there.
So Valve protected their own brand by not wanting to be associated with “significantly higher prices”. Sounds like a sound business decision to me.
My apologies! Genuinely.
Now, from what I understand, Rosen had his game in early access on Steam for like 5 years. And the game was hosted solely on Steam. Things that cost Rosen nothing. Then, Rosen wants to sell keys directly to the costumers rather than through the very service used to distribute the game, effectively bypassing paying Valve anything. Valve says that’s not ok, Rosen sues them, and somehow Valve is the bad guy?