$843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players

Are you joking? I’ve saved thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, by waiting for Steam Sales and buying games at a reasonable price for me(I’m poor) rather than paying $60 a game. Nobody else does this(When was the last time Nintendo put Mario Kart on sale?)

The statement “Steam overcharges gamers” is self-defeating and hilarious.

Can we not go after one of the few good guys in gaming? Please? If you want to hound someone Nintendo is right over there.

"Charges 30% fee" "That's too high! You're ripping us off"

"Charges 10% fee" "That's too low! No other platforms could hope to compete against you with that!"

This is nothing but people bitching about nothing for the price gouging. I will give merit to the anti competitive nature if game makers aren't allowed to have their games listed for less at other stores. As far as add on game packages locking you in goes....that might be a technical minefield to ensure compatibility.

This lawsuit build on a false premise. Steam doesnt have a price parity clause for other stores. What this lawsuit alleges applies to Steam keys that the developer generates through Steam. If the developer lists those keys for sale at a price lower than what the game is listed for on Steam, then the price of the Steam Store purchase price must match it, so that people visiting the store page on Steam get the same discount. It doesn't matter if you list your game on GOG and discount it there.

Its literally helping players.

How can this be? All the games I buy on Steam are cheaper than on other platforms. Where are these cheaper games?

Smells like a smear campaign. Some idiots try to get some fake-ass grass roots movement going.

Bold move, let‘s see how it plays out for them.

Sue Meta or Google instead geez

I'll reiterate here that I think it would be funny to see steam actually lowering their cut to 20-10% or something and the mass migrations of developers from other competing stores to steam, and finally making the other store even more insignificant. That's what they want isn't it? And even more funny when after the changes are applied there is no difference in price because after all, publishers get more money for free, why should they lower their profit? If anything, when the policy is reversed/back to when it was, we will only see an increase in game price lol.

Tim Sweeney, is this you?

Why is the 30% publishing cut of dev sales thing even part of a CLA of players? It literally doesn't affect them.

My favorite recent example:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1493640/Banishers_Ghosts_of_New_Eden/ (50 EUR)

https://www.playstation.com/de-de/games/banishers-ghosts-of-new-eden/ (60 EUR)

PS5 game on sale did cost 2 EUR less than the regular price on Steam. I don't think Steam overcharges me. It's not like the game is cheaper somewhere else on PC either: https://store.epicgames.com/de/p/banishers-ghosts-of-new-eden-f9e3f2?lang=de (50 EUR)

What a load of rubbish.

This is stupid, Valve provides a free social platform, charges developers to list on their shop, and profits. That's the business model. Have they have broken some contract? Or done anything malicious?

In 2022 the median household income in the USA was $74 580, that means 50% of households had less than $74 580 in income.

A person that has at least a billion in wealth (like Gabe Newell) owns at least the equivalent of 13 409 times the median income.

I would love to illustrate it by copy pasting $74580 13409 times, but it creates a comment too long Lemmy.

If we go by net worth instead?

https://www.fool.com/research/average-net-worth-americans/

5190 US medians, 25 615 US medians for people under 35 (the crowd on this platform).

No one deserves that kind of wealth and anything that's done to prevent it is a good thing.

yay billion dollar lawyer paycheck

How is Lemmy so anti corporate, but bends over backwards to defend steam as an immaculate corporation. I love steam, and 90% of my game purchases or from their store. 5% are from stores that let me redeem steam keys.

I think their market position should have some scrutiny.

I won't say no to cheaper games. The 30% cut was settled upon in the days where physical copies were the norm and Steam was still under heavy development. Given how established Steam and digital distribution in general is, it's not really fair to developers to dedicate almost a third of the price of the game to a hosting platform. Yes, exposure is important, but that's a service provided passively due to the fact of being the largest platform. Reducing Steam's cut hurts no one except maybe Gabe's ability to buy another yacht (and even then, not likely). Even if customers don't see lower prices if Steam were to reduce their cut, it'd be great to see the actual developers getting more money from the games they put all the effort into making.