The amount of people in this thread that are arguing that steam is fully within the right here due to the fact that they have a restriction on steam key pricing blows my mind.
for example with the UbiSoft case, It’s clear they have never actually opened or used Uplay because if they had they would realize that Uplay does not use Steam keys period at all. They are their own distribution platform that distributes off of uplay servers.
The entire point of the lawsuits is going one step further, which is that despite steam having a policy that says it’s for keys only, they unilaterally enforce it on all platforms regardless of the usage of the keys.
Now whether that’s actually true or not is what the lawsuits have to determine. But that is what the claim is. Personally I’m leaning towards it’s true because I’ve seen some screenshots posted about customer service saying that’s how it worked and threatening to delist steam games for cheaper first party distribution pricing elsewhere.
The issue with the Ubisoft case was that Ubisoft offered R6S in a free, restricted mode and a full mode. However, Ubisoft allowed you to obtain the free version from Steam (distributed by Steam servers) but offered a cheaper way to access the full game on Uplay only.
So you could get the full game, distributed by Steam without spending a penny on Steam, as long as you purchase it on Uplay. That’s just Ubisoft trying to dodge Steam’s policy prohibiting cheaper access to Steam distributed games on other storefronts.
It’s kinda like you providing a free game on Steam, but upon opening it you have to enter your credit card details first in order to access the rest of the game. You’re just using Steam’s services for free at that point, and that is obviously dodging the policy.
It’s interesting though because if I have my game listed on Steam and then have my game listed on GOG for the same price technically the version on GOG is more expensive because they don’t take a 30% cut. So developers could still list their games on both platforms and not get in trouble with valve and still make a profit from listing it on other platforms. I know uplay does take a cut but presumably they don’t care to cut off their own profits.
The amount of people in this thread that are arguing that steam is fully within the right here due to the fact that they have a restriction on steam key pricing blows my mind.
for example with the UbiSoft case, It’s clear they have never actually opened or used Uplay because if they had they would realize that Uplay does not use Steam keys period at all. They are their own distribution platform that distributes off of uplay servers.
The entire point of the lawsuits is going one step further, which is that despite steam having a policy that says it’s for keys only, they unilaterally enforce it on all platforms regardless of the usage of the keys.
Now whether that’s actually true or not is what the lawsuits have to determine. But that is what the claim is. Personally I’m leaning towards it’s true because I’ve seen some screenshots posted about customer service saying that’s how it worked and threatening to delist steam games for cheaper first party distribution pricing elsewhere.
I’ll be curious where these cases go.
The issue with the Ubisoft case was that Ubisoft offered R6S in a free, restricted mode and a full mode. However, Ubisoft allowed you to obtain the free version from Steam (distributed by Steam servers) but offered a cheaper way to access the full game on Uplay only.
So you could get the full game, distributed by Steam without spending a penny on Steam, as long as you purchase it on Uplay. That’s just Ubisoft trying to dodge Steam’s policy prohibiting cheaper access to Steam distributed games on other storefronts.
It’s kinda like you providing a free game on Steam, but upon opening it you have to enter your credit card details first in order to access the rest of the game. You’re just using Steam’s services for free at that point, and that is obviously dodging the policy.
It’s interesting though because if I have my game listed on Steam and then have my game listed on GOG for the same price technically the version on GOG is more expensive because they don’t take a 30% cut. So developers could still list their games on both platforms and not get in trouble with valve and still make a profit from listing it on other platforms. I know uplay does take a cut but presumably they don’t care to cut off their own profits.
Spot on, this is literally the whole lawsuit. Quite boring and a very easy fix when decided.