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.
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.