It’s important to differentiate between being a monopoly, and engaging in monopolistic behavior.
Valve, to the best of my knowledge, isn’t doing anything that prevents or stifles competition. As a monopoly it’s important to investigate them from time to time to ensure this remains true. But if they’re just putting out the best product and everyone is choosing to use them, then it’s not really a problem.
Forced price matching could be considered a abuse of their position. If a dev cannot sell on another store for less (even if that platform takes a smaller cut) then that makes reduces the need for others to use a different platform to get a cheaper deal. Devs cannot use pricing to save you some money while drawing you to a platform that gives them a larger margin. All of which means that there is less incentive for valve to reduce their cut of the sale to be more competitive. This is what some lawsuits against valve are arguing ATM I believe.
I’ve seen this being said mostly on reddit but haven’t seen any source/reference to this claim. Is this like an NDA that devs sign ? Has anyone reported on this/archived it ?
Yes (or at least it was how it used to be, don’t know if it has changed) if you were selling steam keys outside of steam you should price match the steam price. If you are distributing the game some other way you can set any price you want.
There are some games tbat are sold on both steam and other platforms. Many of these games have external modding communities. Steam provides slick integration for “workshop” mods, which helps drive sales.
A few years back steam used to allow fairly open API access if you acquired the game elsewhere and just wanted the mods. And then they turned it off, but still allow direct anonymous downloads. A decision that only makes sense if they wanted to lock in any steam-adopted community to make going elsewhere difficult.
Turning off something people were using to avoid potential competitors is kinda exactly what would count as “monopolistic behavior” if Steam were to be ruled a monopoly by a court
It’s important to differentiate between being a monopoly, and engaging in monopolistic behavior.
Valve, to the best of my knowledge, isn’t doing anything that prevents or stifles competition. As a monopoly it’s important to investigate them from time to time to ensure this remains true. But if they’re just putting out the best product and everyone is choosing to use them, then it’s not really a problem.
Forced price matching could be considered a abuse of their position. If a dev cannot sell on another store for less (even if that platform takes a smaller cut) then that makes reduces the need for others to use a different platform to get a cheaper deal. Devs cannot use pricing to save you some money while drawing you to a platform that gives them a larger margin. All of which means that there is less incentive for valve to reduce their cut of the sale to be more competitive. This is what some lawsuits against valve are arguing ATM I believe.
EDIT : Found it.
I’ve seen this being said mostly on reddit but haven’t seen any source/reference to this claim. Is this like an NDA that devs sign ? Has anyone reported on this/archived it ?
OK, where?
But that rule is only when using steam keys for distribution on other platforms no?
Yes (or at least it was how it used to be, don’t know if it has changed) if you were selling steam keys outside of steam you should price match the steam price. If you are distributing the game some other way you can set any price you want.
I think this is true, because I’ve definitely seen games on sale at Epic that have lower price than their Steam version.
But then I get into the quandry if I want to “own” it on Epic’s platform over Steam, and I usually don’t 🫤
There are some games tbat are sold on both steam and other platforms. Many of these games have external modding communities. Steam provides slick integration for “workshop” mods, which helps drive sales.
A few years back steam used to allow fairly open API access if you acquired the game elsewhere and just wanted the mods. And then they turned it off, but still allow direct anonymous downloads. A decision that only makes sense if they wanted to lock in any steam-adopted community to make going elsewhere difficult.
Turning off something people were using to avoid potential competitors is kinda exactly what would count as “monopolistic behavior” if Steam were to be ruled a monopoly by a court