404media is doing excellent work on tracking the non-consentual porn market and technology. Unfortunately, you don’t really see the larger, more mainstream outlets giving it the same attention beyond its effect on Taylor Swift.

Okay, fair enough.

Basically valve do not stop other companies from competing

So is there something you didn’t understand that I can clarify, or are we in agreement that Valve needs to discard the PMFN policy?

… but I want to acknowledge that at least for now there’s no actual evidence of it.

I wouldn’t call a multi-year class action asserting that a clause exists “no evidence”.

(I mostly continue on this point because I will continue to go around saying Valve uses a PMFN clause, and it’s not unfounded for me to do so)

What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

For games being the same price on different store fronts? Whatever the justification for selling digital games at the same price as physical games was back when digital purchases were becoming mainstream, or for the same reason that Nintendo games will rarely go on sale: because there are still people willing to pay.

Alright, if you’re not convinced that there ought to naturally be differentiated pricing, and that the uniform pricing we see is artificial, I don’t know where else to go.

Is it? Because I pulled the term from the complaint filed Apr 27, 2021 under the Price Veto Provision section. Where did you see a valve employee saying it?

Ah, I was thinking of the “TomG” quotes here. I see what you’re referencing now, though that doesn’t really make the language as less ambiguous.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion but I’m going to call it here. Cheers.

Valve also doesn’t use shopping platform monopoly methods such as artificially making process low by selling at a loss, which is the main problem with other monopolies like Amazon.

That isn’t the only method. There is also the “[Platform] Most Favored Nation” clause, which eliminates the ability to undercut the platform elsewhere. This allows the platform to leverage it’s market share and benefits to maintain dominance, raising the price floor of the market so nobody can compete on cost. Being the dominant platform, with better economies of scale and consumer intertia, this gives them an advantage in that competing platforms have a difficult time being the better choice.

Valve uses a PMFN clause. See my other comments for links to relevant court cases.

The moment steam starts enshittifing, it will be very easy to switch to another platform. Compared with other platforms, like any social media or YouTube.

Being familiar with “enshitify”, you should go read more of Cory Doctorow’s (who coined the term) writing over on pluralistic.net. He writes frequently about monopolies (his writing on Amazon’s monopolistic practices (skip to the part about high fees and raising prices) are applicable to Valve’s PMFN clause). He also has explicitly given social media platforms as examples of platforms prone to enshitification because of the high network effects.

We can go back and look at the historical prices for The Division 2 and see that Ubisoft didn’t have a lower baseline price on their own store compared to the epic store. So either Epic has an MFN policy as well, or Ubisoft would most likely want to keep their prices consistent across platforms and stores.

Thanks for digging that up, interesting to note. Epic might have an MFN, or maybe Ubisoft’s internal publishing overhead is roughly 12%.

That’s the thing: you’re being given a random game every week and that’s still not enough to get people to stick around

I don’t know what you envision when you say “stick around”. Do people uninstall Steam when they install Epic? No, they don’t. You just have both installed. The free game gimmic is for you to download the platform; that’s the first hurdle, but it does little to change your preference between platforms when it comes time to make a purchase.

And looking at the store now, it seems they’re just giving back 5% of the money you spend, meaning if you opt into their ecosystem, all their games actually are cheaper.

Interesting point on the 5%, I was unaware of that.

We also don’t really know that they do. The source saying that the MFN policy exists at all is the CEO of Epic Games saying so on twitter. And I’m pretty sure the lawsuit says that it’s “selectively enforced”, so there aren’t any actual examples of Valve vetoing a game’s price based on the price in another store.

What evidence would be needed to convince you?

Clearly, there is a business case for listing a game for less on Epic (or a publisher’s own site!). We can trust the MFN policy most likely exists. What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

“Selectively enforced” is the wording used by Valve’s own employee. That could mean anything from “only big, noteable games” to “only enforced when we noticed it” to “actually enforced consistently”. Regardless, it can have a chilling effect that causes everyone to step in line.

It’s also not about whether 30% is the right number or not. It’s about how Valve has made it impossible to choose a different number at all.

The argument has little to nothing to do with Epic’s business strategy—it’s 12%, along with the 30% of Steam, is merely a feature of the landscape in which publishers operate. Whether 12% is sustainable for the platform long-term or not, Valve is coercing the market so that publishers cannot take advantage of it.

I’m confused what you mean.

So if you want to sell steam keys…

Yeah, to be honest that portion of the Wolfire case is pretty weak in my opinion. The Wolfire case isn’t only about steam keys, though, it also alleges that the PMFN clause applies to all game listings outside of Steam.

I’m not even close to being a lawyer so I don’t know why exactly, but this video seems to make a pretty good argument for why this isn’t a good legal argument.

I watch the timestamp provided. The video appears to me to suggest that it is a well-founded legal complaint given you can establish the MFN is the cause of the lack of differentiated pricing. The commentator seems to dismiss the idea that such an effect is evident in the information provided, and seems wishy-washy on a lot of his claims about economic principles. I’ll take his word on the legal front, but for the economic side I will turn to the plethora of academic and legal publications on the effects of MFN clauses (which support the anti-competitive effects alleged by the filing).

Also it looks like the Colvin wasn’t dismissed, it was consolidated into the Wolfire class-action.

There’s also no telling whether or not other storefronts have similar conditions in place, because apparently these kind of Most Favored Nation clauses are fairly standard in some industries.

Yep, and the MFN is also a point in the monopoly proceedings against Amazon.

Looking at your other comment, I can say that Ubisoft tried ditching steam, but their prices didn’t really change even though they were paying a lower commission to epic than they would have to valve. So they would have had the ability change their prices to whatever they wanted on the epic store without fear of valve vetoing the price, because those games weren’t being sold on steam.

This is interesting, I was unaware. I’ll have to look into it.

Not to be nitpicky (because this might be solid counter-evidence), but do we know that in a universe without the Steam MFN policy Ubisoft wouldn’t have listed the games concurrently on Steam for 18% higher?

Is there any actual proof of this? Epic is well known for giving games away for free, the best price customers can hope for. Yet they still can’t seem to retain a loyal customer base. Maybe the price isn’t the most important factor for a digital distribution platform.

Strikes me as a little beside the point. A randomly rolled free game once a week is almost nothing compared to the sea of purchases in the game industry. If I want to buy game XYZ, the free weekly does me no good—at most, it gets me to install Epic (which is what they want). But it isn’t going to change the fact that Steam gives more bang for the buck, all else equal.

The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic. So if price isn’t the most important factor, why does Steam feel the need to impose such a policy?

I will continue dunking on Valve as long as they remain the reason good, healthy alternatives can’t exist. I will not re-hash the whole arguments here, please see my other replies in this thread.

Oh wow, lots to unpack here. Bear with me.

Wolfire v valve was thrown out right? So they didn’t successfully prove valve were doing anything anti competition.

AFAIK still ongoing, looks like most recent filings were on 06/12.

To my knowledge the price parity is only on steam keys sold elsewhere not for you selling a game on another storefront, happy to be shown evidence that isn’t the case.

The actual terms of the Steam Distribution Agreement are behind an NDA so we can’t publicly know for sure, but Wolfire alleges that it applies to non-key sales (see points 204, 205, 207 of the Wolfire v. Valve filing)

In terms of what is a “fair deal” we could quibble about the 30% but that’s literally the only thing up for discussion right? And at the moment that’s an “industry standard” …

Bit of a chicken and egg situation. Is Steam charging 30% because that’s standard, or is the 30% standard because Steam charges it? Epic’s attempt at 12% at the very least indicates the “industry standard” is much higher than it has to be, which is a good indicator of non-competitive behavior.

There is some slop in this argument because obviously the quality of platforms could influence this; but that is a bit moot due to the price policy preventing competitive pricing (see below).

… so by all means lower it if they can, I’m all for savings as a consumer, but not at the expense of the service they provide.

For example if Valve personally came to me and said “you can either have games 10% cheaper but we would have to retire X features” I would happily keep the features and forgo the discount.

That’s great for you, but I’m sure we could find plenty of consumers who would make that trade. The choice should be available to them.

Also being realistic if Valve were to drop their cut to 20% game prices wouldn’t change, the publishers would just pocket the difference, as we have seen with Epic.

You can’t point to current publisher behavior on EGS, because their behavior at present is influenced by Valve’s price policy (called the “Platform Most Favored Nation” or “PMFN” clause in the court filing) which is the foundation of the anti-competitive case against Valve.

Re: concerns about publishers eating the difference. An ideal greedy publisher would drop the price on Epic by some amount in the middle—cheap enough to convince consumers to buy on Epic instead of Steam (since it yields more revenue to them) without making it too cheap that the difference in profit between a sale on Epic and a sale on Steam goes to 0.

This is how competition between platforms should work. It drives down the cost by some amount, but the publisher isn’t going to pass up the chance to profit where they can.

Again most other mainstream platforms take 30% and while I do think they could ALL trim that down a bit, I don’t see why Valve should be the first one to cut back when they offer the most bang for buck, get Sony and MS to reduce their cut and start offering more basic features, then once the competition is ACTUALLY competing we can turn our eyes to Valve.

I think that sums up my perspective here, most storefronts are not trying to compete, they are just offering the bare minimum for same cut and then wondering why everyone wants to use the more feature rich store front… Why wouldnt you?

I’m confused by your response here since this is addressed in my prior comment. Is there something not quite clear enough?

Steam clearly wins on features, the only metric to beat them on is price. Epic is trying to do so, but publishers are not actually lowering the cost on their platform because of Valve’s policies—policies which are only effective because a publisher cannot afford to be delisted from Steam due its large market share.

See my other comment in this thread. Steam does exhibit what you call “cartellic behavior”.

See my other comment

They do little to no anti competitive behaviour, clutching at straws would be that they require you to keep price parity on steam keys (except on sales).

It is very much not clutching at straws to claim that. That policy is a major element of the Wolfire v. Valve case. You can also look at how despite charging a 12% platform fee, Epic Games Store does not sell games 18% cheaper.

It’s an abuse of Steam’s established market share and consumer habits to coerce publishers into not offering consumers a fair price on other platforms. It very literally stops EGS from competing on price, which is pretty much the only area where Epic can beat out Steam, since Steam otherwise is much more convenient, provides more functionality, and has more community-generated content (i.e. workshop material).

It’s hard to say that isn’t anti-competitive, especially because such a policy is only effective due to Steam’s existing market share.

Epic literally does anti competitive things like exclusivity and taking games they have some stake in off other store fronts or crippling their functionality.

This is a fair complaint against Epic, I agree.

EGS can’t compete on features for sure (it really is quite a shit platform), but they would be very competitive if their 12% fee (vs. Steams 30% fee) could be passed to buyers as lower prices. As it stands, Valve’s policies essentially strongarms the market to prohibit this (publishers selling on Steam may not have a lower price on a different platform, or the game can be de-listed from Steam). The Wolfire v. Valve case is highly relevent here.

My plea is for you not to get mad at Epic for being shit. We should be accepting of crappy platforms if their fees reflect that (Epic charges 40% what Steam does). Focus your frustration at Valve for preventing the market from fairly allowing you select the quality of the platform you’d like to pay for.

I don’t understand this mentality. If we oppose monopolistic sales platforms when it’s Amazon, Google Play, or the Apple store why should we turn a blind eye when suddenly we like a particular company.

I’m not contesting that Steam offers the best user experience by a mile (it truly beats Epic and Gog by miles), but that doesn’t erase the downsides of having a single entity with a grip on the entire market.

Empty threats is an interesting concept, but ultimately the market is behaving as if the threats are sincere so whether or not Valve would follow through is irrelevent to whether the presence of a policy is an exhibition of monopolistic power. The need to see an actual example of a game being delisted for violation of the policy is a weirdly high standard of evidence, when the downstream effects of the policy are otherwise so apparent.

I guess we’ll have to hope the courts are reasonable on this (if it ever gets out of legal limbo lol).

They certainly do pocket the difference. But the point is the behavior we see is that what we would see if Steam wasn’t enforcing uniform pricing. Publishers would pick some list price on other platforms / their own sites that undercuts Steam and also gives higher margin for themselves.

E.g. a $60 game on Steam with a 30% cut nets you ~$42. If you list the game on for $50 on Epic with a 12% cut, you net $44. The price differential works in favor of the consumer and publisher, and would convince more people to buy on the high-margin platform. A greedy publisher isn’t going to keep the $60 price tag, because that just pushes consumers to buy on Steam (which has the most features).

Adding a link to my other comment: see points 204 and 205 in the filing for where it alleges Steam enforces pricing for non-key sales.

The latter point is a claim in the Wolfire case, and is supposedly a term in the Steam Distribution Agreement which all publishers sign. It’s behind an NDA, though.

There is indirect evidence of this in the following: if Steam’s cut is 30%, and Epic’s is 12%, and a publisher’s own site has no platform fee… Why don’t we see gradiated pricing across these different services?

It seems like there must be some policy or threat of consequences that keeps a game’s price consistent.