Steam Is Under Fire In ANOTHER Country 

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Valve doesn't need to be anti-competitive, the so called "competitors" aren't even trying to compete; the only thing competitors are competing at is who can shoot their own feet more.

The problem isn't that Steam is a monopoly, the problem is that the competition loves to shoot itself in the foot before it can compete with Valve.

Companies are so upset that Steams "Consumer First" model is working. Game companies wont be happy until everything falls under the EA model.

ya steam will win this. steam only sets prices for steam codes sold outside of their software lol. edit: before saying “Wrong”. read the steamworks key page and partner/pricing pages.

Digital ownership is more of a pressing issue overall. This is one of the reasons why I have bought my most recent games on GOG. Also, this won't go anywhere.

Steam wins by doing absolutely nothing (compilation)

This lawsuit is a joke from someone that sees this as an opportunity to make money from a lawsuit. They don't actually care it's steam or someone else. It's your usual ambulance chaser but at a corporate level

Out of everything that is happening in the games industry, rampant micro/macrotransactions, unregulated gambling targeted at minors, tons of scam games with false advertising, especially in the mobile game market, STEAM is what they’re going after?

I'm confused -- I thought that the price matching only applied to the steam key -- using steam's infastructure to distribute your game and not anly listing of the game

Steam? In hot water? You're pulling my leg.

If the competition isn't as good as the headliner that doesn't mean the headliner is a problem. I wonder how many small restaurants sue 5 star Michelin restaurants for "unfair competition" in the UK?

Valve getting sued because they dared provide customers with good deals and a convenient buying experience, the nerve of Gabe Newel.... the nerve. (Shakes fist at Gabe)

It is only powerful because it is good. The moment they are not longer good they are done.

How are they even in hot water? Steam has the best experience and community than any other platform on PC. Maybe if these companies got off their butt and did something with all their money, maybe they could get close.

About Steam preventing developers from selling their games at a lower price on other stores, I remember reading in a few different places that this was limited to Steam Keys for the developers games, and not a "ban" on them selling their games on different stores like the Epic Store at a lower price? Was that wrong? For context, Steam Keys can be generated by developers for free, so Steam doesn't make any money on those, hence why they would ban developers from selling those keys at a cheaper price than what they sell the game for on Steam.

So it's steams fualt the others suck so bad?

the idea that they want to sue steam for monopoly is just dumb, they have plenty of competition, wtf are they talking about? just because competition utterly fails to get customer or shoot themselves in the foot, that not steam problems, they literally did nothing.

Nothing is on the line.... "the UK hurt itself in confusion."

And then some customers have the other problem of steams geo-blocking while the indie developer isn't offering alternatives to the steam downloads.

So why'd you get sued? Steam: I made good choices and organically got people to like what I do. Backwards world, can't win for losing.

Sooo...happy summer sale...?

They have no actual merit to sue Steam. It'll just get dismissed. Their point of contention is that Steam doesn't allow people to sell games on other platforms at a lower price, which is wrong. They don't allow you to sell steam keys on other platforms for a lower price.

They want 8 billion pounds?... That's like 2 tons

@19:45 "... you just won't be able to sell it on Steam." I'm sorry, but this is a blatantly false statement based on the Steam terms. You absolutely can sell your games on Steam, and any or all other platforms, including your own if you have one. You can also sell the game at whatever prices you want per platform. The exception to that is when that platform is providing Steam keys. And frankly, since Humble Bundle gets away with selling Steam keys at a significant discount (or free in some ways), I have strong doubts Valve will care if the developer is selling keys for even 30% off. Steam's rule regarding prices applies exclusively to the keys compared to the Steam store price. If the developer wants to host the game themselves off the Steam platform and sell for 10% the price they do on Steam; they can. They just can't sell keys for the Steam version of their game for 10% the store price unless they intend to cut their store price to that same value rather promptly.

I'm sorry but steam is the biggest market share because it has the best functionality that devs and players alike want their games to be on the platform. As soon as Epic, GoG or whoever add all the features steam provides and (most importantly) don't charge players to use it. Maybe people will use it. Steam is currently the only ones keeping the likes of EA and Ubisoft in check. If we didn't have steam, do you really think EA would make a platform that benefits players? We would have ad spam, no friends lists features, or workshop and no sales. Steam just wants steam to remain competitive. Users and devs use steam because its the best service, not because its cheaper service. People waited a year for Metro ang borderlands 3 because EGS sucks ass.

I haven't seen anywhere in the lawsuit site or any of the links shared that this is about steam keys or being able to sell games that will use steam services at a lower price Where did you find the information that this is about key sellers? The lawsuit talks about rival storefronts not being able to sell for less, which to me sounds like "steam is strongarming (some) publishers into price parity with other storefronts" and not "key sellers can't skip the 30% and use valve's services for free"

If people don't have standing when it comes to speech on the internet, then why could they be harmed by a business on the internet?

Love that BBC used a picture of Baezel😂

from a user, dev and publisher perspectiv the reason why competion had failed is in all that data missing. meaning reason they failed. main cause is check what is included in steam platform and what services did the competition offer, in many cases the competition just offer bare minimum that lack what steam users, dev and publisher are used too. this in it self is a reason why majority of users, dev and publishers will keep useing steam.

Leads in like an Austin Powers threat...😂

Victoria Shockbolt - why we can't have nice things... Some people really lack common sense, if a thing is good, don't ruin it, even if you legally can.

we paying more?what are we paying more?BG3 on PC was 60$ on consoles was 70$ and same with 95% of the games that are comming out on top of that Valve is giving us so many Sales Events and y they are getting 30% of the totall sells ravenue of X game but so does EGS/Sony/MS and every other publisher tho the big diference is that Valve ain't locking games for other to enjoy like EGS does

Monopoly laws were brought in to protect the consumer from being screwed, the idea being competition is good for prices, But what if a monopoly is benefitable to the consumer? surely this is against the justification for the law? Case of law being more important than justice.

Steam take 0% cut from Steam keys sold from other stores. Only thing they ask in return is that you do not give a better deal outside steam since steam will have to handle all the bandwidth from downloading game etc.

Damn, the brits are angry Damn bri'ish

But loot crates are A OK!

The Steam clause in question locks Epic out of the biggest lever they can pull which is pricing competition. As for “Epic failed”, we’ll see how long they keep pushing. If the UK thing goes through, we might see the clause dropped and other, lower overhead, platforms can suddenly compete on price. Steam adds a 43% tax, so there’s plenty of wiggle room in the market.

Imagine getting sued because your competition sucks so hard.

From my perspective it doesn't seem like steam is too big to be beaten by competitors it's just the fact that the competitors don't even try

Epic Games had a decent shot. Too bad they gave up on making an actual good launcher and store front and just focused on the games and developer benefits. Which is good, but not everything

You can’t convince me that this isn’t all about money in the primary county

wouldn't it be nice if we could move our game licence to another platform? being locked to a single platform is problematic if you lose access to Steam.

Pirate software's Thor has a take on this and I'm gonna go ahead and think this gets dropped cause steam isn't doing anything wrong other platforms refuse to do it better.

in simple words steam platform is a packaged bundle of multiple services, where as the competion in majority mostly is 1 service a store front. its then understand able why it is hard to compet with since they would need add multiple services to be even a competition in the first place.

Isnt the lawsuit for £646m and not 1 billion dollars? The conversion still comes out to less than $700k

Mind you, this lawsuit was not and will never not be in the benifit of those gamers. Its "in the name of..." for merely the cause, and the cause only. Steam is an amazing platform that is consumer first. This lawsuit, imo, has to be funded by big game companies, theres no way about it.

still always better to have a hard copy over the digital files someone else can remove access to...

just goes to show that monopolies aren't always bad. more commonly monopolies will fuck consumers over because of their position but so far steam has been a great service to use. i think this also comes from not being a publicly traded company and having to constantly pump numbers for quaterlies

Main takeaway from this - those suing do not deserve your business.

In Poland its a little different, here somone prove that Steam did not update currency exchange calculator which srewed deveopers and gamers.

There's a simple solution to all of this. Steam can just stop handing out keys. There! Everything's fair! This is like a busker complaining that you didn't shine the coin before you gave it to them.

Its a dumb lawsuit that doesnt even understand what its suing over.

I doubt that out of nowhere someone would try and sue steam for this. i rkn, an aspiring competitor is paying someone to make a big fuss of this to try and cripple steam, so that they themselves can become the big dog (instead of just providing good service and products and earning good reputation)

After watching Pirate Softwares video on this revently, I see another apology video coming soon. The whole "you cant have different prices on other stores" bit is apparently an absolute LIE. its about selling STEAM KEYS on other sites, not about selling your game on other platforms.

Steam is maybe the only platform where enshitification didn't happen, we're lucky for that, all competitors (Epic especially) are not able to compete because they approach Valve like every other tech giants would introduce themselves on the market: ton of cash & gatekeeping while ignoring customers experience. Small correction: Steam introduction backlash was with Half-Life 1 as an official update/launcher platform and not 2, by the time 2 came out it was already gaining "steam".

Developers love Steam as well, this is a total money grab by the legal firm. Pirate Software did a video on this explaining what Steam does that helps developers and how this lawsuit is complete crap. The game is hosted on Steam servers, downloads from Steam servers and these lawyers want developers to be able to sell the game elsewhere and NOT be removed from Steam, GTFO.

I hope they are sued for everything they are worth. They are largely why PC lost physical game sales. Then they banned my account for “cheating” because I installed a mod allowing a game to connect to my implant hearing aid and I lost over 1k games. They always replied to emails for troubleshooting until they ban you then it’s like they put your email in a different list and never reply again. I don’t think people realize how close they are at any time to losing all their games

Used to be websites trying to replicate the bargain bin of stores. I expect Valve eventually to be bought and some executive to demand subscriptions to access the games you've bought. US courts are as anti-consumer as anyone most of the time.

I think part of the problem is lets say steam is ruled to have to allow prices to be done lower on other sites like epic and gog or a dev own site then whats to stop steam from going okay no more developer generated keys and basically destroying an entire part of the online gaming infrastructure. They wont be saying a dev can't sell a version of there game on another site or on there own for lower but that it just wont be a steam supported one but it will have the same basic effect. I say this as someone that prefers to buy games on gog whenever i can very few people that buy steamkey on places like greenman game are going to stick around on those sites if they are no longer buying keys for steam and they are only instead buy selling keys for gog and epic instead. I get the point of wanting to be able to sell our thing at a lower price on other stores that take a lower cut or on your own site for a lower amount but im sorry you can't simply expect steam to foot the bill of supporting your game with those being steam keys and getting nothing in return and if someone did sue steam for doing what i have said above in response to a ruling about price parity stuff i can't it winning because for the simple reason you dont have a right to steam keys as a dev.

This issue self regulates. If steam sucked or started bad consumer practices people would leave.

*This just makes me respect Steam more. Any pc games i get from Steam, and will continue to.*

The real question here is "darta" or "dayta"

No. Its not more powerful. Its just accessible for people, compared to everyone else having stores that don't work

I would like to buy my games somewhere else than steam but their shop features is light years ahead from other shops. The fact that u can't sell ur steam key for a lower price on other website is the same as amazon, teemu, and most commercial centers. They all have some rules on pricing when u sell ur product on their store. I've sold products on web shops and regular shop and they all have some rules about pricing of ur product. This story is just a lawyer firm trying to get more money for them and their clients.

Steam loses money on every key sold outside their store. Developers can generate and sell Steam Keys for free, while Steam takes 0% of the sales and provides the infrastructure to distribute and maintain the game for free. They won't allow the keys to be sold for more or less because then they'll be at risk of losing customers to a competitor while being on the hook for the games distribution. Essentially, losing money on every step. If the pricing matches across the board, customers are far more likely to stay on Steam and buy from them instead of another site abusing Steams infrastructure. They also require the developers to treat Steam users similarly to how they would treat users on other storefonts. This includes having similar pricing and sales as seen on other stores, which I assume is what a lot of these lawsuits are about. If you're game is $10 on Epic, It has to be $10 on Steam. If it's $50 on PlayStaion, it has to be $50 on Steam. $100 on Xbox, same for Steam. This is to stop people from adding a "Steam Tax" onto a game sold on Steam. Which could be abused to make up for the 30% cut and maliciously push Steam users to sites, like Epic, that would have then been selling the game for cheaper or at the games original price.

i wonder why they dont sue valve for gambling. Counter Strike and a whole market for gambling addiction is totally forgotten.why is that?

Its funny hearing that so many companies are complaining about Steam making sure the customer is the focus first. Its the only reason why they're in this lawsuit now. And when it comes to the many PC storefronts failing you have to really look at how they even have their storefronts and/or launchers were made, I still remember the worst one being EA with ubisoft taking that spot now. Why? because of the many problems with it, connecting to friends or even trying to buy games. People go to steam to actually have a good time connecting to people and playing games, Not getting a service error because EA play somehow shat the bed. And that also goes for Epic's launcher because it was bare bones, sure steam was but it still got fixed and updated over time to make sure everything was working, they heard their users' complaints and adapted to what the users wanted, not their shareholders. Epic in this case can only answer with piles of money because they can while asking for a small percentage while steam can go with a 30% because they know their consumers will buy and if its on discount, will cover the cost somehow.

You can make a game and sell it by your own! Maybe sell 1000 copies... or go with steam and sell 100.000 or a million, 100% of 1000 copies sold? or 70% of 100.000 copies sold? You can do whatever you want as developer.

This isn't the first time Valve has been pulled in line by western governments. The ACCC, an Australian consumer protection agency, took Valve to court and won due to their breach of Australian consumer laws in regards to refunds. As a result to that the easy refund policy was setup worldwide.

They're not too "powerful" to compete with Just their competitors don't bother to really compete I mean their competition are the largest companies on the planet like Apple, Google, and Microsoft; with Microsoft in particular being heavily invested in the market.

Even if steam were to end up losing, which is something that most likely won't happen.. 840 million dollars is still pocket change for steam..

Steam is a distributer, the weakness of the lawsuit would come from if steam allows a developer to price thier game differently on other stores so long as its not using any part of the steam distribution network. I've heard conflicting things on this, but I do believe that particular policy is steam keys can't be sold consistantly foe less than the steam store version, but if you have a different distributor, e.g. Epic, you could price it how you please. If that isnt the case then that is the most likely outcome of the lawsuite.

Steam all nice right now, but as with any beloved company, Valve is one CEO away from disaster. When that happens, you'll wish there was competition.

no Steam is above fire, thats how steam works! The fire goes below... ☁

I don't recall anyone trying to beat steam at their own game. Their game being a customer forward service first platform that offers an incredible amount of value to developers for limited cost and hassle. All of the other attempts to enter the market have come along side some shifty scheme for dominance that forgot the customer along the way. Epic for example. I hope they manage to humiliate Shotbolt and I would almost bet she's got a pocket full of someone else's money right now.

I don't really have a problem with steam here, because instead of forcing the steam price to be higher they force it to be comparable/equal. Thus shifting from competing on price to competing on service. Yes, they turn the fight into one where they have the advantage. But not one where artificially give their opponents a monetary disadvantage. All their competition has to do is take a similar 30% cut and use that to provide an equal or better service, sounds easy doesn't it? XD Literally Valve is not the one stopping the competition here....

"changing things to allow for new opportunities" is such a nauseatingly innocent way to look at it. If it wasn't about "hitting the only nail daring to stand out by being good" it wouldn't be looking to fleece Valve, it would be about helping competition. I tire of listing my experiences, but I have done business DIRECTLY with every other "major" launcher/distributor service(-gog, I'll get there eventually), most of them fatigued me with problems, the others simply failed to provide games of interest. It's so twisted that of all the fields that could get their balls in a vice to be more "consumer oriented" people are acting against the one guy who's been "doing nothing" and winning for decades. For "some reason" these people think that a wrecking ball will help build good business, honey you need to actually BUILD something worth a damn to offer competition, not wreck the only success story.

I am going to try to stay unbiased in this, I do see both sides, and I feel like there is one issue I've always had with Steam, though it's not even the thing they're going for. They're not seeing the full picture, and I do think Steam is on solid footing for winning this. My own two bits are, the very nature of Steam incentivizes continuing to make purchases from the same platform, so that all your owned games are in the same place; however, my fear was always that if something happened to Steam, suddenly I no longer have access to those purchases. But... Of late, there has been a growing trend in another area that has changed my outlook on this: the growing number of streaming services. These days, if you want to watch three different shows, chances are you will need three different streaming services to do so. 'Competition' is impossible in this market, as almost every show is in a proprietary service, and cannot be accessed with any other. This has created a very anti-consumer landscape where you either have to choose only one product or pay for multiples, and they know you're going to pay, because they're the only ones with it. What Steam is doing is the complete opposite. By creating a free marketplace that allows consolidation of every product in one place, without restricting those products from being sold elsewhere--which Steam does not restrict or challenge the price of in general, the only price limiting is towards their own keys that use their resources to host and distribute the game-- Steam has effectively kept the PC gaming market from becoming a proprietary mess of requiring dozens of different services, some perhaps even payed just for access to their products. It doesn't discourage competition; there simply hasn't been any proper attempt made by potential competitors to offer the same end product of this free market structure with built in advertising, often attempting to go the proprietary route with their games. However, I also understand that having a monopoly in any market is bad for its health. In this case, however, the specifics of the product itself needs to be taken into consideration. If Steam were distributing a perishible or consumable product, then everyone coming to one place for repeated purchases could be extremely bad for competition; but these mediums are in most cases, neither. They are a singular purchase, and most of the time that is that, you then own the game and can access it at any time. No matter how many hours you then put into the game, Steam does not earn any more revenue, as it is not a medium that can be consumed to the point you need to purchase more. Some might play one game, and decide to never get one again, or if they do want a different game, they might decide to get it from the developers directly, which is far more common then one might think. There are games I have purchased that way, some of which I've probably forgotten about and don't even remember I own, simply because they were un-installed. Which brings me to my final point. Competition in the gaming market would probably be for the better, but it comes at a higher risk of loss for consumers, whether through forgetfulness, said competition driving others out of business--causing for the consumer a loss of a product through no fault or want of their own--or competitors allowing for more proprietary content with a premium payed just for access, which as I previously stated is perhaps the most daunting difficulty yet in long term economic impact. Tl;dr while there is some merit to looking into Steam for having such a large share of the market, in this case it is not so simple as forcing competition, as due to the nature of digital media, forcing any downsizing of the current market to allow competition would do more harm to consumers then good, due to the potential loss of data involved.

It's very easy to compete with steam, add achievements for all games, add public customizable profiles, add a player based marketplace OR a mod workshop and don't be a cock sucker when it comes to refunds. It's really that easy but they would rather hire idiots that want to put stupid shit and gimmicks on their launcher instead of just listening to people. Hell I have an idea that might bring people in, let us gift our already bought games to a friend thus transferring the key to them and off our account. It really is that simple to come up with competitive ideas.

So when a business is bad for the customer they get chased after by the law and when they're good they get chased after by the law. they just want it both ways don't they.

One way to talk about this is digital feudalism. Consumers and developers can do what they like as long as Steam the landlord gets paid. In a market economy, essential services like the PC marketplace cannot be allowed to interfere with commerce. Because of the value of Steam, regulator cannot wait until management decides to be overtly manipulative and greedy.

Bellular, i think you made a mistake by saying that steam set minimum prices for games and therefore control their pricing at the start of the video, which van be misleading. If im not miataken, the only control of pricing steam has is when a game will have a steam key. Obviously, this means someone else cant just start buying steam and then reselling for less on another platform. But if a platform completely different to them wants to sell a game for less in that platform they can do it. Or did i understand your allegation incorrectly?

People have known steam does that and they still support them.

I'll be quite surprised if Steam loses.

So the primary defense from the bootlicker a is that because steam has a nice looking Jpg pretending to be a store that means……. Something? I don’t know why the primary defense is about the jpg they like then the lawsuits is about the pricing of the product, you know the games. That is unless the boots kickers are making the argument that the wall paper of their favorite grocery store is the real product and not the stuff on the self.

The facts are that game devs, studios and game buyers have the option to sell or buy games on other platforms but they choose not to. Let's talk about Nintendo on the other hand. Where else can you buy and sell Nintendo games...

If they sell the keys off steam, steam still have to pay the bandwidth etc. They can sell whatever other versions on other stores, but if they sell the game with a steam key, then they have to offer steam users the discount.. Steam is not just a game store, its also a service, a forum, a news outlet, a hardware manufacturer etc., its not perfect but it is way better than pretty much every other store out there.

I dont have to worry about my ganes dissappearing with steam. The app is very easy to use. 10/10

This lawsuit must be sponsored by sweeney boi.

This is going to fall through. The reason for the lawsuit is ludicrous. People who don't understand how Steam works are trying to ''fix'' it. There should be a law against stupid people being allowed to pretend they are high-functioning members of society.

Valve's strategy of just sitting around and doing nothing while all their competition just constantly makes terrible choices is too strong.

I'm daily Linux user (unless I really need something windows only, then dualbooting). I'm buying most of my games on Steam to benefit off all the Proton compatibility provided out of the box - if other stores provided the same level of Linux compatibility, I would maybe consider them. Sure, you have non-Steam solution to run other launchers like Lutris or Heroic, but they are not so reliable as just running the game directly from Steam, even GoG (which I think is very nice alternative) can have some problems on the Penguin. Kinda funny that I ditched an OS monopoly, but to play games properly I need to use platform monopoly.

so steam why are your servers dead

Is competition ALWAYS a good thing? Like i could argue that Netflix was a much better product as a monopoly

Years ago...The discs for Civ4 I bought Forced Steam install to use the product. A single player offline game with Other 3rd party software to allow for online multi-player forcing a sales storefront software platform onto your PC. I feel like That was monopolistic and strong-arm tactics personally.

I add new games to my Epic account every week. I mean, sure, it's the free titles for the week -- but I go there at least once a week to add those two free titles... that I will likely never play... :P

Why do people complain about the DLC thing Does Epic let you buy the game there and then the DLC on Steam???? Or GOG??

Why would anyone sue gaming jesus unless for greed?

i hope to god valve don't make a uk version of steam, else it's back to piracy because no way am I using ID to buy games or have accounts