Comment by tomnipotent
4 days ago
Valve used its influence over game publishers to stifle their competition in the digital distribution market.
I'm a happy Valve customer, and I'd still likely buy with them even if other platform's offered lower prices, but that doesn't change that they've leveraged their market domination to force concessions from publishers that benefit their business at the cost of competitors and customers.
I'm game developer, co-founder of my own company and I hate Valve 30% cut.
Yet Valve did nothing to stiffle competition. Their only major requirement for games published on Steam was that games suppose to get same efficient discounts as they get on other storefronts. E.g you cannot constantly sell your game on Epic Games store for $10 while Steam version cost never drops below $12.
Also game developers are allowed to request sane amount of Steam keys for free and sell them elsewhere while pocketing all the profit while Valve covers all the distribution costs.
Epic Games stiffled itself. Their store is shitty and dont even have player reviews. No surprise they have no customers except those who come to play Fortnite or get free games.
Publisher's should be allowed to price their product differently based on the distribution fee of the platform. Steam does not allow you to do this.
For example a publisher could price a new title at $69.99 on Steam or $59.99 on Epic and make the same gross margin, given the platform fees.
That Epic is a sub-par distribution platform does not change this, and Steam's agreement precludes the possibility that competitors can compete on price. Amazon was forced to remove price parity after regulatory pressure.
So like Microsoft of the 90's, Valve is using their market dominance to force publishers into agreements that limit competition. It's only different because we generally like Valve. Epic and GOG cannot compete on price and use that as a mechanism to grow their business because Steam could threaten to remove your product. It just so happens that Steam is so good that even with price discounts it's unlikely that competitors could use that as a major advantage.