Amazon got slapped with a substantial fine (in the EU) for having basically the same “rule” in their contracts, that forbid cheaper listings elsewhere. So yes, in the EU hanging that rule is illegal. But if it applies to digital licensing is another matter.
You do know you’re only renting access to the game with a one-time fee, not buying it, right?
Edit: the original comment left it unclear if the price rule only applies to copies sold that include a steam key, or if copies that work completely without steam can be arbitrarily priced. If the latter is the case, it’s obviously fine. If it includes any game version, it isn’t OK.
amazon’s case is different. if you’re selling the steam version of your game it needs to match the price on steam. if you have a separate non-steam version you can charge whatever you want.
the reason places like gog follow steam pricing is, why wouldn’t they? makes them more money.
There have been several lawsuits about this policy, and the more recent class action one is about whether steam is actually enforcing this policy for steam keys only or also for games sold on other platforms without relying on steam keys. I don’t think there is any actual written rule about this because it’s probably illegal in several jurisdictions but there have been rumors about this since basically the beginning of third party games on steam.
if you have a separate non-steam version you can charge whatever you want.
This is the part that was unclear from the original comment. If that’s in fact the case, that’s obviously fine (and different from the Amazon case).
why wouldn’t they?
it’s called “competetive pricing”. If I’m a customer and have a steam account holding most of my games (like most PC gamers), why would I even consider buying it anywhere else if it isn’t even cheaper and now I got games in like 3-5 stores with at least 2-3 launcher/downloaders/apps. No, this most likely won’t make them more money but much much less with fewer people buying it there.
If I’m a customer and have a steam account holding most of my games (like most PC gamers), why would I even consider buying it anywhere else if it isn’t even cheaper
I pay the same or sometimes a bit more for GoG games because they are DRM free. Id like better client support on Linux, but DRM free is a value proposition thats usually worth it.
I do appreciate the ability to download a fully offline installer from gog and the requirement that games be drm free. But people keep making statements similar to yours as if steam games have to include some form of drm. There is no such requirement. Steam can simply act as a downloader and patcher. Integrating stream services and failing to start if there is no steam or the active account doesn’t own the game is completely up to the developer.
So if they have a drm free build on gog, but the steam hype includes drm, that’s cause the developer actively decided it should be like that.
Popular game examples that do not include any drm in the steam version are Factorio and (the original) Kerbal Space Program. Once downloaded, you can freely copy the installation around, and just start the exe. These games start just fine.
I know, i know there are also some utilities to back up steam games. Ive used them years ago. I dont hate Steam by any means, but i really like GOGs philosophy and requirements so I support them where i can, though i will borrow games from the family library if someoen else bought it on steam for the achivements
Uplay featured a $15 USD Rainbow Six Siege Starter Pack, but this version was not available on Steam, making the cheapest option on Valve’s platform much more expensive.
emphasis mine.
a “starter pack” is a collection of dlc for a game. all the dlc is on steam. the starter pack was not, making the dlc cheaper on uplay than on steam. rainbow six siege uses the steam backend for online play, meaning that the dlc in question is connected to steam, but available elsewhere for less money.
Edit: the original comment left it unclear if the price rule only applies to copies sold that include a steam key, or if copies that work completely without steam can be arbitrarily priced. If the latter is the case, it’s obviously fine. If it includes any game version, it isn’t OK.
“You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam.** It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”**
Just read that paragraph. It should be pretty clear what the whole thing is about.
because that’s what the lawsuit is about. valve has no problem with people selling games on their own store fronts, as long as what they’re selling isn’t just a steam key. ubisoft wants to sell games on their own store for online games which use steam as a backend without giving steam a cut. you can buy all the anno games for cheaper on uplay than on steam, and that’s not a problem. but rainbow six siege uses steamplay.
sure, but rainbow six siege uses all of those things because it’s an online game. otherwise there’d be a need to have separated server infra for steam and non-steam users.
The steam version probably just uses steam features through some library/interface/whatever that simply implements calls to the relevant code depending on the game’s build (steamworks for steam, Xbox live or whatever they changed it to again, PSN, epic online services, etc…) for platform-related stuff like rich presence, joining servers etc.
I don’t know the specifics of R6 but I’ve worked on multiplayer, multiplatform games, and I really doubt they have a specific network stack for Uplay, another one for PC, and then another one for each console. Especially if it has crossplay.
More likely it’s all going to ubi’s servers (through their own crossplay solutions and servers, or through a third party like EOS) and just implementing the aforementioned platform specific stuff to make the experience smooth for the end user.
I’m not a law guy but I don’t think the other platforms pricing thing was ever about a “steam version” of the game, as that rule would be easily circumvented by releasing another “version” where the black background on the title screen is a slightly different shade of black than the steam version or whatever.
I’m saying that the non Steam version, which is the one the article mentions, has no Steam features, and proof of it is that anyone with Uplay can play online.
“It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”
That’s a very fair way of phrasing it and should make sense to anyone saying “but what if they want to sell it cheaper elsewhere?” Seems most people don’t even understand the actual issue, they just are butthurt over headlines
Yep. Sell your game for whatever you want wherever you want. If you want to distribute your game via Steam (Steam keys), you can’t sell them cheaper than they are sold on Steam because you aren’t handling the distribution (which costs money).
Otherwise a competing company (like Ubisoft) could just make a 20TB game, list it on steam for a crazy price, then sell Steam keys for it on another storefront cheap; Steam will have to cover the distribution costs without making anything in return.
Amazon is a seller. Steam is (aside from selling) a service provider with their workshop, forum, etc
While it would be way better if those were all in a different tier for devs, so for example they can select to get less of a share for those features, what they are basically doing is sidestepping a provider
Or in the case of photography:
You go to a Photo shop and lend their camera equipment and services for free, but they take a 20% cut for every copy of that picture sold.
If you buy a picture, you can download it indefinitely and get some services like changing the color grading on the website. The photo shop hosts the picture for free and only makes a profit through selling licenses. The owner also has an option to get infinite licenses for these services for free.
What youre allowed to do is host the picture on your own, pay your own cloud provider, and sell the picture that way.
What youre not allowed to do is generate infinite licenses for free and sell them without ever paying the photo shop for their services, while still using them.
Calling Amazon just a “seller” is an understatement. It’s like saying that the Google Play store is just an hosting platform. Amazon provides ad and marketing services, hosting, support, and more importantly, logistics.
Games sold outside of Steam have no access to Steam features, in the same sense that products sold outside of Amazon aren’t promoted and delivered by Amazon.
Have you ever bought a game via a Steam key? Those use Steam’s infrastructure for distribution while not providing them (Steam) any income.
As someone that has entered so many Steam keys over the years (over 1,000) yet only bought maybe 20 games from Steam I almost feel bad, but the dev was following the rules and Steam is okay with it (as long as they aren’t selling those keys for less than they can be purchased on Steam for).
OK, I know English is hard, but you should at least know what alleged means.
This article describes allegedly that that is happening. The same way I can say that alledegly my guinea pig has just started to talk to me in perfect English. It means literally nothing until either lawsuit no. 4 suddenly finds this to be true (yes, there have been at least 2 before, all of them dismissed afaik) or out of nothing you find some clause saying this is true
Either that or Mii Mii lends you their hard drive.
Their only problem is with distributing the steam keys yourself for less.
Which is not true.
From the Bloomberg article:
Emails indicate Valve employees once threatened to delist all editions of Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege “by end of day tomorrow” after they learned the publisher was marketing a separate $15 “starter pack” exclusively on its in-house Uplay store. 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.”
From the lawsuit itself, point 16:
Valve also requires game publishers to agree to give Valve veto power over their pricing in the Steam Store and across the market generally (the “Price Veto Provision”). Valve selectively enforces this provision to review pricing by game publishers on PC Desktop Games that have nothing to do with the Steam Gaming Platform at all. Through this conduct, prices set in the Steam Store serve as a benchmark that leads to inflated prices for virtually all PC Desktop Games.
English is hard, amirite?
This article describes allegedly that that is happening.
Of course these are “claims”. That point is made in the Eurogamer article, and the Bloomberg one, and the lawsuit. If your point is that whatever journalists write should be summarily dismissed unless there’s a final and binding judgement from a court of law, I don’t know what to tell you other than that is not how journalism works.
The service part only applies to copies sold that include steam keys and therefore use the steam-API related things (workshop, cloud saves). I haven’t read about this specific case in detail, but as long as that use of steam for copies sold is part of what they wanted to leverage but essentially not pay for, that’s obviously bull.
This honestly is somewhat unexpected and I had to re-read the comment I replied to to understand it correctly, hence my misunderstanding of that aspect. It’s unexpected cause ubisoft in particular for the longest time had their own “store” and games required at least their own launcher. I haven’t played Ubisoft games in at least a decade, so I don’t know/remember if the games reuired your own ubi-account, or if the games relied on Steams systems (workshop/cloud saves/…). I would’ve assumed no, and that they only use it as a downloader cause players essentially wouldn’t buy it outside of steam (or at least not enough).
Top be clear: if steam allows copies of a game listed on steam to be sold at an arbitrary price as long as that doesn’t include a steam key, this is perfectly fine. Actively thinking about it now I would assume it does, as I’m pretty sure I bought games without steam keys for less than the listing on steam was.
Amazon got slapped with a substantial fine (in the EU) for having basically the same “rule” in their contracts, that forbid cheaper listings elsewhere. So yes, in the EU hanging that rule is illegal. But if it applies to digital licensing is another matter.
You do know you’re only renting access to the game with a one-time fee, not buying it, right?
Edit: the original comment left it unclear if the price rule only applies to copies sold that include a steam key, or if copies that work completely without steam can be arbitrarily priced. If the latter is the case, it’s obviously fine. If it includes any game version, it isn’t OK.
amazon’s case is different. if you’re selling the steam version of your game it needs to match the price on steam. if you have a separate non-steam version you can charge whatever you want.
the reason places like gog follow steam pricing is, why wouldn’t they? makes them more money.
There have been several lawsuits about this policy, and the more recent class action one is about whether steam is actually enforcing this policy for steam keys only or also for games sold on other platforms without relying on steam keys. I don’t think there is any actual written rule about this because it’s probably illegal in several jurisdictions but there have been rumors about this since basically the beginning of third party games on steam.
This is the part that was unclear from the original comment. If that’s in fact the case, that’s obviously fine (and different from the Amazon case).
it’s called “competetive pricing”. If I’m a customer and have a steam account holding most of my games (like most PC gamers), why would I even consider buying it anywhere else if it isn’t even cheaper and now I got games in like 3-5 stores with at least 2-3 launcher/downloaders/apps. No, this most likely won’t make them more money but much much less with fewer people buying it there.
I pay the same or sometimes a bit more for GoG games because they are DRM free. Id like better client support on Linux, but DRM free is a value proposition thats usually worth it.
I do appreciate the ability to download a fully offline installer from gog and the requirement that games be drm free. But people keep making statements similar to yours as if steam games have to include some form of drm. There is no such requirement. Steam can simply act as a downloader and patcher. Integrating stream services and failing to start if there is no steam or the active account doesn’t own the game is completely up to the developer.
So if they have a drm free build on gog, but the steam hype includes drm, that’s cause the developer actively decided it should be like that.
Popular game examples that do not include any drm in the steam version are Factorio and (the original) Kerbal Space Program. Once downloaded, you can freely copy the installation around, and just start the exe. These games start just fine.
I know, i know there are also some utilities to back up steam games. Ive used them years ago. I dont hate Steam by any means, but i really like GOGs philosophy and requirements so I support them where i can, though i will borrow games from the family library if someoen else bought it on steam for the achivements
gog is running mostly on rep, to be fair. don’t know about many other stores that don’t just sell steam keys.
Did you read the article? This is about a completely different version of the game that was not even sold on steam.
i did. here’s what it says:
emphasis mine.
a “starter pack” is a collection of dlc for a game. all the dlc is on steam. the starter pack was not, making the dlc cheaper on uplay than on steam. rainbow six siege uses the steam backend for online play, meaning that the dlc in question is connected to steam, but available elsewhere for less money.
Ok. The rule is, actually let me link it…
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
“Steam Key Rules and Guidelines”
“You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam.** It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”**
Just read that paragraph. It should be pretty clear what the whole thing is about.
But it says nothing in your link about selling games that work without steam key on another platform?
I do not see where steam keys are mentioned in the article? Why do you care so much about steam keys if that’s completely irrelevant in this case?
because that’s what the lawsuit is about. valve has no problem with people selling games on their own store fronts, as long as what they’re selling isn’t just a steam key. ubisoft wants to sell games on their own store for online games which use steam as a backend without giving steam a cut. you can buy all the anno games for cheaper on uplay than on steam, and that’s not a problem. but rainbow six siege uses steamplay.
Not true. Games bought outside of Steam have no access to most Steam features outside of local based ones, e.g. Steam Input, Remote Play.
sure, but rainbow six siege uses all of those things because it’s an online game. otherwise there’d be a need to have separated server infra for steam and non-steam users.
That’s exactly how it works. There are companies whose focus is precisely that, e.g. EdgeGap, but UbiSoft have their own infrastructure.
Why did you think you need an Uplay account to play UbiSoft titles?
so you’re saying that the steam version is not using sheam features?
The steam version probably just uses steam features through some library/interface/whatever that simply implements calls to the relevant code depending on the game’s build (steamworks for steam, Xbox live or whatever they changed it to again, PSN, epic online services, etc…) for platform-related stuff like rich presence, joining servers etc. I don’t know the specifics of R6 but I’ve worked on multiplayer, multiplatform games, and I really doubt they have a specific network stack for Uplay, another one for PC, and then another one for each console. Especially if it has crossplay.
More likely it’s all going to ubi’s servers (through their own crossplay solutions and servers, or through a third party like EOS) and just implementing the aforementioned platform specific stuff to make the experience smooth for the end user.
I’m not a law guy but I don’t think the other platforms pricing thing was ever about a “steam version” of the game, as that rule would be easily circumvented by releasing another “version” where the black background on the title screen is a slightly different shade of black than the steam version or whatever.
I’m saying that the non Steam version, which is the one the article mentions, has no Steam features, and proof of it is that anyone with Uplay can play online.
“It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”
That’s a very fair way of phrasing it and should make sense to anyone saying “but what if they want to sell it cheaper elsewhere?” Seems most people don’t even understand the actual issue, they just are butthurt over headlines
Yep. Sell your game for whatever you want wherever you want. If you want to distribute your game via Steam (Steam keys), you can’t sell them cheaper than they are sold on Steam because you aren’t handling the distribution (which costs money).
Otherwise a competing company (like Ubisoft) could just make a 20TB game, list it on steam for a crazy price, then sell Steam keys for it on another storefront cheap; Steam will have to cover the distribution costs without making anything in return.
That is another situation
Amazon is a seller. Steam is (aside from selling) a service provider with their workshop, forum, etc
While it would be way better if those were all in a different tier for devs, so for example they can select to get less of a share for those features, what they are basically doing is sidestepping a provider
Or in the case of photography:
You go to a Photo shop and lend their camera equipment and services for free, but they take a 20% cut for every copy of that picture sold.
If you buy a picture, you can download it indefinitely and get some services like changing the color grading on the website. The photo shop hosts the picture for free and only makes a profit through selling licenses. The owner also has an option to get infinite licenses for these services for free.
What youre allowed to do is host the picture on your own, pay your own cloud provider, and sell the picture that way.
What youre not allowed to do is generate infinite licenses for free and sell them without ever paying the photo shop for their services, while still using them.
Calling Amazon just a “seller” is an understatement. It’s like saying that the Google Play store is just an hosting platform. Amazon provides ad and marketing services, hosting, support, and more importantly, logistics.
Games sold outside of Steam have no access to Steam features, in the same sense that products sold outside of Amazon aren’t promoted and delivered by Amazon.
Have you ever bought a game via a Steam key? Those use Steam’s infrastructure for distribution while not providing them (Steam) any income.
As someone that has entered so many Steam keys over the years (over 1,000) yet only bought maybe 20 games from Steam I almost feel bad, but the dev was following the rules and Steam is okay with it (as long as they aren’t selling those keys for less than they can be purchased on Steam for).
Steam keys are a drop in the bucket.
Regardless, this case isn’t about keys either, but Valve pressuring publishers to set prices of games sold outside of the Steam ecosystem entirely.
Yes, but if its not sold on Amazon, they don’t do these logistics.
And steam allows that too. Their only problem is with distributing the steam keys yourself for less.
The act of reading is something only the fewest people can do, apparently
Right, exactly like Steam.
Perhaps you should read the Bloomberg article first: https://archive.ph/YvHxF
OK, I know English is hard, but you should at least know what alleged means.
This article describes allegedly that that is happening. The same way I can say that alledegly my guinea pig has just started to talk to me in perfect English. It means literally nothing until either lawsuit no. 4 suddenly finds this to be true (yes, there have been at least 2 before, all of them dismissed afaik) or out of nothing you find some clause saying this is true
Either that or Mii Mii lends you their hard drive.
Your asserted that
Which is not true.
From the Bloomberg article:
From the lawsuit itself, point 16:
English is hard, amirite?
Of course these are “claims”. That point is made in the Eurogamer article, and the Bloomberg one, and the lawsuit. If your point is that whatever journalists write should be summarily dismissed unless there’s a final and binding judgement from a court of law, I don’t know what to tell you other than that is not how journalism works.
The service part only applies to copies sold that include steam keys and therefore use the steam-API related things (workshop, cloud saves). I haven’t read about this specific case in detail, but as long as that use of steam for copies sold is part of what they wanted to leverage but essentially not pay for, that’s obviously bull.
This honestly is somewhat unexpected and I had to re-read the comment I replied to to understand it correctly, hence my misunderstanding of that aspect. It’s unexpected cause ubisoft in particular for the longest time had their own “store” and games required at least their own launcher. I haven’t played Ubisoft games in at least a decade, so I don’t know/remember if the games reuired your own ubi-account, or if the games relied on Steams systems (workshop/cloud saves/…). I would’ve assumed no, and that they only use it as a downloader cause players essentially wouldn’t buy it outside of steam (or at least not enough).
Top be clear: if steam allows copies of a game listed on steam to be sold at an arbitrary price as long as that doesn’t include a steam key, this is perfectly fine. Actively thinking about it now I would assume it does, as I’m pretty sure I bought games without steam keys for less than the listing on steam was.