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Valve's being SUED? [ THOUGHTS? ]
🕑 Added 2021-05-02 20:40:20 +0000 UTC> GUYS. I've got my lineup for the next week, but I just wrote this and now I'm wondering where I should actually place it in the lineup? Maybe Wednesday and push the FCC video to Saturday?
Before ANYONE seriously accuses me of being a "Valve fanboy." No. I'm not. I've been both highly critical and quite complementary of Valve since the beginning of this channel. I didn't get in on the Steam game until Steam came to Linux. I'm not wistful for the days when Steam would have massive sales around the holidays or blah blah blah.
Valve are a sometimes cool, often perplexing, usually frustrating, and on rare occasion terrifying company. But one thing they're not is anti-competitive.
So that's why I find it strange that Wolfire games--one of the founders of the Humble Bundle, are suing Valve in a class action lawsuit over exactly that allegation. At the heart of the issue is Valve's 30% cut of all sales on the Steam platform. They're claiming that that cut is too high.
I'm forced to ask: is that too high, though? I mean... as a business owner, I know that I wouldn't want to give up 30% of revenue on every product sold.... but up until recently, 30% was considered the standard split. It's what Apple, Google, Microsoft and many, many others have charged for sales on their digital storefronts... and hell, YouTube takes 40% of the revenue on their platform.
And yes, Apple's being sued about a 30% revenue cut... and Google just announced a few weeks ago that they're reducing their cut to 15% for the first million dollars of revenue on the Play store.
Epic has a 12% cut from the Epic Store, and Microsoft just announced they're reducing their cut from the Windows App store... that's a thing? [Shrugs] I guess that's a thing.
So I really think it's only a matter of time before Valve follows suit. Lower revenue splits are the way the industry is going. But does that make Valve anti-competitive? No.
But that's not the only gripe that Wolfire has with Steam. There's the Steam Key Price Parity Provision, which the lawsuit describes as a "scheme." See, 75% of PC games sales are through Steam. And Wolfire claims that the Price Parity Provision basically forced developers and publishers to forego selling their games at competitive prices on other storefronts if they want to be able to also offer Steam Keys.
"Moreover, Valve explicitly instructs publishers that Valve enforces this provision to 'avoid a situation where customers get a worse offer on the Steam store.' Put another way, Valve uses this restriction to prevent customers from getting a better deal anywhere other than on the Steam Store. Thus, rival distributors have no meaningful way to attract publisher customers and take away share from Valve, because their efforts to compete on price (e.g., by charging lower commissions) are blocked by Valve's price parity requirements."
And sure, I can see how that would seem anti-competitive. But again, this is kinda standard. Does that make it right, though? Mehh... probably not.
And look, I get that they aren't selling their own in-house games on other PC storefronts... but they have put many of their games on consoles in the past.
And, the amount of collaboration between Steam and other storefronts like GOG has been pretty cool.
But Valve is a frustratingly obtuse company. Lord knows they've been resting far too heavily on the Steam cash cow and we need more Valve GAMES. Valve has made like... five of my favorite games of all time... and Half-Life: Alyx was absolutely a renaissance for the company... but only if they have real competition in the PC gaming storefront market...
Will this lawsuit have a positive impact on their business practices? I really hope so. We need more AAA VR games.
Comments
Just became a subscriber after seeing your Ubuntu 21.04 video. And then I watched everything. Thank you. Do you also have a discord I can join too please. Thank you.
Mitchel Valentino
Agreed. Publish it!
