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I looked at the lawsuit details. Steam basically did what everyone else does. Apple, google, EA, everyone.
They charge 30% of the sale. They require that the steam price be the same as an external price.
It’s the most nothing of nothings.
To compare, what MS did when they got smacked with their monopoly lawsuit is bundle IE with the OS and they both made it hard to switch the default and they’d constantly try to switch you back to IE.
*steam price the same as external price only if the external sale is for steam keys. And you have some time to offer an equivalent sale on steam.
This is the point everyone tends to gloss over, especially with the case brought against Valve from the Overgrowth dev where it’s pretty relevant to their case. Glad to see someone has actually read the friggin’ Steam TOS.
The problem is that, allegedly, there are threatening emails from Valve to developers who tried to sell for lower prices on other platforms (NOT Steam keys). If this is true, then there is actual ammunition against Valve.
I’ll point out, when I went to sell my book on Apple Books, they had this in their TOS as well - I wasn’t allowed to sell the same digital book for less somewhere else. It is not a new or unique agreement.
The entirety of third party selling on Amazon is under this agreement. This is why i don’t think Steam will lose. Not because they shouldn’t, but because the money and power behind this are not valve at all.
These comments…
Some day, Steam is going to enshittify, eat game devs for breakfast, and all these Steam fans will wonder how anyone could have possibly seen this coming.
Kind of like a certain online bookstore named after a river.
Not that I don’t enjoy Steam. But I trust them as much as any corporation: not at all.
Hearing those arguments for how many years now? Right …
The day Gabe is bo longer there things may get ugly, may.
But, Valve is not publicly traded, or has to cater to shareholders in any way. That is the reason they are still who they are.
They run a good service platform and aren’t as greedy as they could be, but they’re still not safe.
Use them, but no fangirling. They’re a business.
I’d be completely in agreement of what you are saying if it wasn’t for the fact that there are so many people acting like Steam is the worst platform in existence every time they get brought up. People are awfully quick to suck Tim Sweeney off for only charging 12% and fill up the comments with whatever the opposite of “fangirling” is.
Yeah, that’s going too far, but I understand the reaction to fanning over Valve.
There are a bazillion historical examples of why one should use, not trust, big businesses. They are entities to make transaction with, not people, and they will tighten the screws even if it takes decades.
This is doubly true in the software business.
And if the Valve superfans look at the world in 2026 and somehow don’t see that, I honestly don’t know what to tell them. They’re in such a completely different world than me I don’t know where to start.
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One of the most accurate descriptions of this entire beef.
Steam does nothing and just keeps winning.
it doesn’t just do nothing, it sticks to its core idea : we can’t do as much as the community can when it comes to making games, how do we maximise the community’s possible output?
People love to shit on valve working on lootboxes, but I was there to see how it developed. It was there as part of a way of getting money back to the people making stuff, which is why a shitload of the TF2 hats came from the community and steam workshop. The system came from a left wing greek economist, before , you know, he BECAME Minister of Finance for greece (for half a year)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanis_Varoufakis
This is why they have steam OS, steam greenlight, SFM, etc etc.
Valve doesn’t make games anymore, because they know hobbyists can make shitloads of more games than them, they need a platform to shove them into.
Also, the other goal is to improve and extend the PC gaming space, which is why they are working on SteamOS, the deck, and all the other shit they are working on. Because of the work they put into making steam work to make game distrobution better than piracy (LITERALLY said by Gabe), PC releases became synonymous with “Steam”, which is why whenever you have a game announcement, you get “New game : Available on (XboxLogo : PS5Logo : SteamLogo)”
Valve is doing stuff. Just not, you know, making HL3 or nothing.
In a service business, if you do things right, people think you’re doing nothing.
God?
glad i’m not the only one who caught that
It’s probably my favorite depiction of god in any media. Obviously if you think about it the whole premise falls apart and he’s a huge dick but in the context of the episode it’s pretty cool beans
haha yeah, he/it was kind of a dick
Bender: You know, I was God once.
God: Yes, I saw. You were doing well until everyone died.
it doesn’t just do nothing,
Valve is a for profit company, one of their main goals is to make money and they work daily to do that. There are people at Valve who work 8h a day on how to boost profits.
People love to shit on valve working on lootboxes, but I was there to see how it developed. It was there as part of a way of getting money back to the people making stuff, which is why a shitload of the TF2 hats came from the community and steam workshop. The system came from a left wing greek economist, before , you know, he BECAME Minister of Finance for greece (for half a year)
I think you are confusing lootboxes with the items market which was there mainly to compensate the free to play model. If you were there i hope you remember too no DRMs and no third party software launchers to run games.
This is why they have steam OS
They have steam OS because microsoft become one of their competitors
“They have steam OS because microsoft become one of their competitors” Lmfao riiigght like Microsoft just got into the video game selling business, jfc.
Valve makes steamOS because windows fucking sucks and there needs to be an alternative OS for running game without a bunch of garbage like Windows or a completely locked down OS like Macs that they could use on their hardware.
Even if Valve’s offering sucked, I still have not seen anyone point out a business practice I would call anticompetitive. They are not buying up studios or publishers, or even paying for timed exclusivity. I have not seen any hint that they are colluding with competitors on prices or fees. I haven’t seen then accused of stealing IP or poaching personnel. They readily welcome Microsoft and Sony to release games on Steam, and they have released their own games on consoles including the Switch. They let you install Windows or whatever else on the Deck, if you want to for some reason.
Billionaires should not exist, and Gabe Newell is no exception. He should be taxed more. I don’t love one company having so much control of this space. But I also don’t want to have a dozen different crappy launchers from different companies to deal with. There are a lot of benefits to the user to having everything centralized in one place.
How do we tax Gabe that much without necessarily watering down his share in the company and ensuring that outside investors enshittify it in the process?
- Taxing those outside investors too
- Taxing Valve as a corporation more, making them less profitable and less attractive to said investors.
- I’m not even convinced this would be an issue at all really. Remember Valve is not publicly traded. I suspect Gabe would hold on to controlling ownership as long as it was profitable, and remember that taxes are usually on profits.
- Even if outside investors move in and enshittify, the moment they start doing anticompetitive you hit them with antitrust suits. Not to mention the industry can also be regulated even before all this: a lot of governments are cracking down on lootboxes already.
I don’t want to fucking tax them! Fuck that! Do you see who runs this government?!?! Fuck that shit!
Redistribute that fucking wealth right back to us immediately! Don’t let those greedy government pigs take it! I’d rather valve have it!
I see 2 main points against steam in this comment section.
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Steam is doing price fixing for games: False, this accusation came from Epic Games CEO, but the actual steam policy only blocks the selling of steam keys for a lower price, not the game itself.
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Steam is a monopoly and monopolies are bad: I agree that monopolies are bad, but in my opinion only if they take action to harm the user and the market. From my knowledge steam is pretty known as being pro customer and haven’t taken any monopolistic actions to block other stores from growing.
The reason why the games are not usually cheaper on other platforms is because publishers practice standard prices, so the game publishers take the extra profits from a lower store cut.
I am not trying to be a fanboy, I am just trying to look objectively at the facts, if someone can prove me wrong, I am willing to change my mind.
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