245

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

submitted 6 months ago by Dadifer@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

233 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] stardust@lemmy.ca 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Steam also enforce a strict key price parity.

Do they?

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/helldivers-2/info/

if you think a 30% cut doesn't reflect on the cost a player is paying, you're out of your mind. This is business 101.

Isn't business 101 charging as much as possible and not passing on savings to customers, and trying to capture as much high paying consumers as possible before being forced to start capturing price sensitive consumers with discounts?

Price of games that didn't release on Steam seem to reflect that. Even games released by platform owners like Sony or Nintendo first party exclusives and the beloved Blizzard. Isn't that pricing strategy business 101 as opposed to this belief that savings pass onto consumers? Lowering price right away doesn't seem like good price maximizing strategy when goal would be to increase retail price consumers are willing to pay over time.

[-] Kayana@ttrpg.network 5 points 6 months ago

As far as I know, they do - for Steam keys. If you're selling your game through other stores, not just a Steam key, there aren't any demands placed upon you. The OC might've been talking about that.

[-] stardust@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 months ago

Those are steam keys.

I've bought most of games through other sites because the games would be discounted lower and sooner than Steam. So it's more personal experience than theory in my case.

Humble bundles on the even more extreme end of like 8 games sometimes being cheaper than a single title has ever been discounted.

[-] Kayana@ttrpg.network 2 points 6 months ago

Huh, interesting... You know, I've never really wondered about Humble Bundle specifically, but you're right, they seem to be selling your run-of-the-mill Steam keys, or at least you can activate them effortlessly in Steam. Maybe it's a case of Steam themselves handing out keys (instead of the publishers) to increase user retention? I honestly don't know, this is all just speculation.

I actually didn't click on your link at first, because I assumed it would just show other stores where you could purchase the whole game instead of a key, so I'm sorry that you had to clarify that.

[-] stardust@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Isthereanydeals is a great resource. I always make sure to look up a game there before buying to check what the lowest price it was ever sold was.

That link was for helldivers 2 which is only available on steam on pc. From what I understand the keys are actually provided by the devs/publishers and steam doesn't get a cut of key sales.