Valve encourages Microsoft to bring Game Pass to Steam

[Sausagemeat]

This is on the publishers, not Steam, unless you're in one of the unlucky places that have no regional pricing and just uses Euro or US dollar, in this case it's Steam job to add those regions. The Publisher have full control of the pricing they set for each region, and while steam have recommended regional prices, most Publishers ignore the recommended prices and increase them significantly. You can often see on SteamDB that regions that are supposed to have cheaper prices, like Brazil, Argentina, Russia and others, will have US/EU level pricing, which is often anywhere between 2x to 4x the Valve's recommended price. Some publishers follow the recommended prices better than others, and sometimes the same publisher will wildly change pricing from one title to the next in some regions, like for example Koei Tecmo's Atelier Ryza 2(26 January 2021) was released for ARS$ 2499,00(USD 23.25)(Argentina), R$ 299,90(USD 58.07)(Brazil), $59.99(US), while Atelier Sophie 2(25 February 2022) was released for ARS$ 2499,00(USD 23.25)(Argentina), R$ 109,99(USD 21.29)(Brazil), $59.99(US).

Yes it’s on the publishers to set the prices. But because steam take a bigger cut than epic publishers often set lower prices on epic with the goal of making the same money.

At the end of the day consumers don’t care who is setting the prices, they will tend to go for a cheaper price regardless. I certainly don’t spend more on a game on steam if it’s available for less on epic.

 

[MaitieS]

Yes it’s on the publishers to set the prices. But because steam take a bigger cut than epic publishers often set lower prices on epic with the goal of making the same money.

At the end of the day consumers don’t care who is setting the prices, they will tend to go for a cheaper price regardless. I certainly don’t spend more on a game on steam if it’s available for less on epic.

Yeah I agree just as you said people are going for lower prices possible they don't care about using only Steam and with more games on Epic people will have bigger trust and will be more willing to buy stuff there

 

[KaitouX]

Yes it’s on the publishers to set the prices. But because steam take a bigger cut than epic publishers often set lower prices on epic with the goal of making the same money.

At the end of the day consumers don’t care who is setting the prices, they will tend to go for a cheaper price regardless. I certainly don’t spend more on a game on steam if it’s available for less on epic.

They don't often set lower prices on Epic. With the exception of a few titles that Epic paid exclusivity, all titles had the same base price in both Steam and Epic, and they have to do so if they want to publish on Steam, as Steam have a rule that games there can't have their base price higher than on other shops. At least this is for the US Dollar, Euro, and some other currencies.

Now regional prices are another thing, I did a quick check, and in the games I looked Swiss/Israeli prices were often higher on Steam while regions like Uruguay/Kazakhstan and others are cheaper, mostly because there's no regional prices for those in the EGS, so countries that the regional pricing is higher than the US price are cheaper on Epic, while countries that regional prices are usually lower than the US are more expensive on Epic, Argentina was cheaper on Steam in some older games, mostly due to Epic seemingly charging reduced prices in US dollars in Argentina, and not in Pesos like Steam, so likely the price was the same when released, but due to the drop in value of the Argentinian currency compared to US$, the game now is cheaper on Steam.

 

[Sausagemeat]

They don't often set lower prices on Epic. With the exception of a few titles that Epic paid exclusivity, all titles had the same base price in both Steam and Epic, and they have to do so if they want to publish on Steam, as Steam have a rule that games there can't have their base price higher than on other shops. At least this is for the US Dollar, Euro, and some other currencies.

Now regional prices are another thing, I did a quick check, and in the games I looked Swiss/Israeli prices were often higher on Steam while regions like Uruguay/Kazakhstan and others are cheaper, mostly because there's no regional prices for those in the EGS, so countries that the regional pricing is higher than the US price are cheaper on Epic, while countries that regional prices are usually lower than the US are more expensive on Epic, Argentina was cheaper on Steam in some older games, mostly due to Epic seemingly charging reduced prices in US dollars in Argentina, and not in Pesos like Steam, so likely the price was the same when released, but due to the drop in value of the Argentinian currency compared to US$, the game now is cheaper on Steam.

A big way Epic get round Valves really quite disgusting and extremely anti-competitive policy of forcing publishers to agree not to sell cheaper elsewhere is by giving vouchers to customers. I just added a game to my cart on Epic and at the checkout I had an £8 voucher applied for some reason. I’ve seen this loads of times, all games above a certain price qualify for a voucher.