• it_depends_man@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Imagine there’s a huge fuel station that’s so big they essentially set rules towards suppliers that they can’t offer their gas to other stations at a cheaper price otherwise they can’t sell it in their station with 95% market share.

    That is specifically not what is happening.

    https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

    “Steam Key Rules and Guidelines”

    “You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”

    Valve does not “dictate” prices in any way.

    Ubi and WB are free to sell their games for as cheap as they want. But if and ONLY IF they offer a steam key with the purchase, they can’t undercut steam.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      This isn’t about steam keys, it’s about a most favored nation clause. It’s a fairly common clause when selling across multiple platforms. It can be considered anticompetitive in some cases. It’s also pretty standard in retail agreements. It’s why name brand products are generally the same price everywhere.

      The same thing would happen if Walmart found Sony was selling PlayStations cheaper on their website than in store.

      • SparroHawc@lemmy.zip
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        4 months ago

        It’s not even that. It’s about Steam apparently trying to enforce a clause that doesn’t exist. The most-favored nation clause applies to Steam keys only, but Steam allegedly sent Ubisoft a nastygram about them selling a non-Steam version for less.

      • Bratosch@lemmy.worlddeleted by creator
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        4 months ago

        “give us your money or let us install cookies” yeah no I’d rather not read the article then.

              • Bratosch@lemmy.worlddeleted by creator
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                4 months ago

                Just for you, I gave Eurogamer my information to farm and sell of to the highest bidder. And I learned nothing new. Ubisoft want to have their game on Steams store, Steam says “alright sure, these are the requirements”. Ubisoft breaks that agreement, Steam says “then we won’t sell your game”. Okay? So? No one is forcing them to sell on Steam if they don’t like it.

                  • Bratosch@lemmy.worlddeleted by creator
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                    4 months ago

                    Speaking of God Given Rights, “we want to sell our games on Steam but not on their terms”. Don’t like it? Don’t do it. “but they have the largest market share 😢” , because you keep selling on their platform. I don’t understand how this shit is so hard to grasp.

                  • Bratosch@lemmy.worlddeleted by creator
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                    4 months ago

                    Steam only takes a share on sold copies. Having YOUR game on THEIR site while selling it cheaper on your OWN site would effectively be leeching free exposure off of Steams front page. How is it not reasonable for Steam to not want that?

    • ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip
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      4 months ago

      Uplay doesn’t offer steam keys. The game version they were selling wasn’t even available on steam.

      Steam keys have fuck all to do with the monopolistic shakedown that valve is enacting to fix PC game prices.

      Stop blindly supporting this bullshit behavior. It’s right there in the article you didn’t read.