Gabe Newell says Steam doesn't pressure developers on pricing, emails suggest otherwise

[Axeia]

Except this is not what happens with Steam. Steam does not determine game prices, devs do. The situation this article describes is exactly what I'm talking about, devs want the ability to set the Steam price at $60 and the non-Steam price at $40 (for example), exactly the same as my Cadbury/Tesco example. It is entirely within Steam's/Tesco's rights to simply refuse to carry that product under those conditions.

Why do you want to pay more?

If Valve charges 30% and Epic charges 12%.
According to this post if you say made your game and and want to make $10 per sale, you'd want to sell it for $14.29 on Steam and $11.36% on the Epic games store no?

Now Steam swoops in and removes your game from the store or just prevents you from listing in the first place because they don't want you selling it for less elsewhere. You think that's a good/fair system?

If the dev is unsatisfied with the 30% fee Steam charges, they are free to simply not use Steam. They can sell on any of the myriad of other stores, or even to sell the game themselves, like Factorio/Tarkov/Minecraft successfully did.

Let's see, Factorio, Tarkov, Minecraft. I can find the first two on Steam - so bad examples?
Minecraft, the most sold game in the world. So old that its initial success is from a completely different era when Steam wasn't as dominant - another bad example imo.

The article lists a better example in Genshin Impact (came out of nowhere in more recent times) but because there's some rare exceptions to the rule does not mean it's not a bad take imo.

What you're describing is devs wanting to benefit from the infrastructure and marketing/discovery that Steam provides, without having to pay Steam for it. It's a ridiculous expectation. There is nothing wrong with Valve charging the price it wants for the services it provides. If they want the benefits of the Steam platform, 30% is what it costs. If they do not want to pay 30%

When listing on steam and using their infrastructure you pay the steam fee, fine. A-okay, no one expects Steam to run a charity?

, they can simply not use Steam.

Steam controls about 75% of digital games sales, that effectively makes it a monopoly according to the relevant laws in most countries. That means subjecting them to greater scrutiny is a perfectly valid/normal thing to do, they're in a position where they can abuse that power and if steam does what I stated in my first bit of this reply / as this article claims then they are abusing that power.

Making the government force Steam (a private company in a non-essential entertainment market) to lower their fees or force them to carry games they do not want to carry is an absurd overreach. And this is coming from a left-wing person who is very much not a "small government" supporter.

In this/Steams case I agree with you.
After all on a PC it's trivial to install another launcher or the game itself directly.
They can have their 30%, heck I'd even be fine with them setting a minimal price that people are allowed to list a game for. However, forbidding developers from listing their game elsewhere for less - that's an overreach on Steams part. If the developer actually has lower costs elsewhere (like on the Epic games store) then it's really none of Steams business to have anything to say about that. It doesn't come at costs to them (other than missing out on sales because they don't charge a competitive rate).

 

[Ferkv]

Ubisoft games on Steam are using Ubisoft launcher and make use of an Ubisoft account.. so by selling a DLC pack cheaper on the Ubisoft store they effectively are allowing steam users to get the DLC they purchased on the Ubisoft store when they run the game on Steam.. thats the reason why Valve does not want to allow it