This is an older article. Ubisoft was (and is?) pulling some shady shit here though. What they’re doing:
Selling the base game via Steam for free (limited features, but most important stuff is there) or a frequently discounted amount for full access (think less than 10 bucks).
Selling a bonus starter pack that can be used for the Steam game for a larger amount (used to be 20? Looks like 15 now) exclusively via Ubisoft’s own platform.
So for a new player to get started, they’d get the base game for free, with Valve paying for all the costs related to the download infrastructure, etc…, and then pay Ubisoft directly for their ingame starter gear, bypassing Valve entirely. This was just an attempt by Ubisoft to skirt by Valve’s rules.
Valve is extremely lenient when it comes to this sort of stuff. But they’re not going to allow a publisher to abuse the system to essentially get free game distribution via Steam while still making a profit via this side channel. It’s basically a way to bypass the Steam key resell rule, where Steam keys may not be resold for lower prices on other platforms (but you don’t have to pay the 30% fee when you do).
To put Ubisoft’s case to the extreme, imagine a game comes out for free on Steam, but opening it opens up another storefront where you first need to pay 60 bucks to actually play the game. Does it make sense for Valve to continue offering their services here if they are blocked from making any money off of it?
What you’re describing sounds a lot like iOS’s/Google’s IAP fee cut and the controversy around it.
…And I’d still side against Valve in that case, like I did against Apple and Google.
The issue is Valve shouldn’t be in that anticompetitive position in the first place.
Ubisoft isn’t “leeching” off Steam because they want to, they have their own download and game networking infrastructure already. In that scenario, Ubisoft is only listing on Steam and trying to skirt the 30% cut because they effectively have to be on Steam.
And the only response I’ve seen to this is “well, Ubisoft just shouldn’t be on Steam if they don’t like it.”
But that’s commercial suicide now. It’s list, or die, basically.
Not contesting that the Ubisoft launcher is a gigantic pile of trash.
But that doesn’t make a pseudo monopoly okay.
It does not mean Valve should get to dictate what happens in other stores with threats of their own. A policy like that is anti consumer and should be illegal.
What? So in your head Valve has to be okay with companies using their infrastructure for everything while selling the main access elsewhere just because it’s a bad idea not to have your game in Steam?
Look, if this had been a “you can’t sell the same thing cheaper elsewhere or we delist you” kind of deal I would agree it’s using their power to dictate price. But from what that other commenter said this was the other company selling a cheap launcher on Steam and then selling in-game content for everything inside it. So try were making Valve pay the price to host the full game but only selling some content of it on their store. It’s like saying Epic launcher were to be sold on Steam (except even worse, because it’s a launcher that contains the full game thus forcing Valve to foot the bill for hosting/downloads while the other company takes the profit for the game sale).
What you’re describing sounds a lot like iOS’s/Google’s IAP fee cut and the controversy around it.
It doesn’t. Those platforms demanded that apps use their infrastructure to do any and all IAP. iOS and Google use their position to lock down the storefront on user devices, being the de facto only option to use. Valve makes no such efforts, they even deliberately opened up their devices to other stores as well as integrated the launching of those storefronts for the games that “require” them. The only thing Valve demands is that you don’t abuse their infrastructure to get free game distribution while cashing in somewhere else.
You can still do IAP ingame btw (without going through Valve), you should just offer the same on Steam directly (see shark cards in GTA for example). There’s a difference between preventing the abuse of your resources and anti-competitive behaviour.
But that’s commercial suicide now. It’s list, or die, basically.
It’s not. Sales will be lower if you ignore the largest platform, obviously, but that would be true even if Steam had a lower market share (eg 40% or whatever). But it’s not true that it becomes entirely unprofitable to publish games outside of Steam. Which btw, you are allowed to do for a lower price, provided you don’t provide a Steam key upon purchase.
I feel the need to point out, a lawsuit claim isn’t proof. I can sue you for being a goblin, for example.
They are suing, making a claim, and presenting their side of the situation as their proof. You need to keep in mind there’s a non zero chance they have omitted inconvenient facts (to an extent) and misinterpreted information to their benefit.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen many, many, many games on storefronts other than steam that have a sale price lower than steam.
Just one note - Valve don’t care whether or not Steam keys are provided - if you sell on Steam then you can’t sell anywhere else cheaper.
That’s the claim made, but Valve has stressed this isn’t the case and the policy text doesn’t support that claim either. It very explicitly mentions Steam keys.
EA often does this actually for the games they offer through the EA app. EA has their own infra so you don’t get a Steam key if you purchase it from there. As a result EA games are occasionally slightly cheaper there or go on sale a bit more often than they do on Steam, so they can lure customers to their own storefront.
Letting companies sell DLC outside of the Steam Store sounds like a bad deal for Valve but they look like a good company for publicly following through with it. If too many companies are abusing that policy, Valve is well within their rights to revise the policy and ban the behavior, taking the resulting PR hit. What they are not allowed to do is act like the good guy publicly while secretly and selectively enforcing a ban for companies that they are mad at
P.S. If Valve does ban selling DLC outside of the Steam Store, it would make Steam an unusually restrictive store. I can open up Steam and buy DLC for any game by Wise Wizard Games, associate that DLC with my online multiplayer account, then download the same game (for free) on iOS and Android, open up the new copies, log into my online play account, sync purchases, and play my newly purchased DLC from another app store. I have never heard of an App store not allowing it but most game developers do not implement it because it costs them money to code it up and they make money from people who buy the same contents multiple times.
Thats unusual for iOS/Android, as they are pretty strict about the 30% cut for in-app purchases, and the “no external stores” thing.
I can think of other cases where some external purchases (like, say, a streaming subscription) apply to the app. But if you buy that DLC in-app, Apple/Google get the cut, no question. If you buy a subscription in the app, AFAIK they get a cut too.
In my experience, Android and Apple’s enforcement is quite spotty. I wouldn’t be surprised if WWG arbitrarily got a hammer dropped on them at some point.
Valve did not have to revise their policy as it already violated their existing policy. They also don’t ban DLC sales on other stores, but just require that it is sold on Steam as well. They’re fairly lenient on it, but Ubisoft specifically was targeted because they offered the base game for free but sold a pretty substantial “starter pack” only through uPlay.
Rockstar also has in game purchases that Valve doesn’t see a dime from, but that’s allowed because those purchases can also be made through Steam. And as far as I know Rockstar is likely allowed to not even offer it there, because the base game itself is still a normal-priced game.
This is an older article. Ubisoft was (and is?) pulling some shady shit here though. What they’re doing:
So for a new player to get started, they’d get the base game for free, with Valve paying for all the costs related to the download infrastructure, etc…, and then pay Ubisoft directly for their ingame starter gear, bypassing Valve entirely. This was just an attempt by Ubisoft to skirt by Valve’s rules.
Valve is extremely lenient when it comes to this sort of stuff. But they’re not going to allow a publisher to abuse the system to essentially get free game distribution via Steam while still making a profit via this side channel. It’s basically a way to bypass the Steam key resell rule, where Steam keys may not be resold for lower prices on other platforms (but you don’t have to pay the 30% fee when you do).
To put Ubisoft’s case to the extreme, imagine a game comes out for free on Steam, but opening it opens up another storefront where you first need to pay 60 bucks to actually play the game. Does it make sense for Valve to continue offering their services here if they are blocked from making any money off of it?
What you’re describing sounds a lot like iOS’s/Google’s IAP fee cut and the controversy around it.
…And I’d still side against Valve in that case, like I did against Apple and Google.
The issue is Valve shouldn’t be in that anticompetitive position in the first place.
Ubisoft isn’t “leeching” off Steam because they want to, they have their own download and game networking infrastructure already. In that scenario, Ubisoft is only listing on Steam and trying to skirt the 30% cut because they effectively have to be on Steam.
And the only response I’ve seen to this is “well, Ubisoft just shouldn’t be on Steam if they don’t like it.”
But that’s commercial suicide now. It’s list, or die, basically.
They didn’t have to be on Steam. They could have put in the effort to make their storefront worth going to instead of being an awful pile of trash.
Not contesting that the Ubisoft launcher is a gigantic pile of trash.
But that doesn’t make a pseudo monopoly okay.
It does not mean Valve should get to dictate what happens in other stores with threats of their own. A policy like that is anti consumer and should be illegal.
What? So in your head Valve has to be okay with companies using their infrastructure for everything while selling the main access elsewhere just because it’s a bad idea not to have your game in Steam?
Look, if this had been a “you can’t sell the same thing cheaper elsewhere or we delist you” kind of deal I would agree it’s using their power to dictate price. But from what that other commenter said this was the other company selling a cheap launcher on Steam and then selling in-game content for everything inside it. So try were making Valve pay the price to host the full game but only selling some content of it on their store. It’s like saying Epic launcher were to be sold on Steam (except even worse, because it’s a launcher that contains the full game thus forcing Valve to foot the bill for hosting/downloads while the other company takes the profit for the game sale).
It doesn’t. Those platforms demanded that apps use their infrastructure to do any and all IAP. iOS and Google use their position to lock down the storefront on user devices, being the de facto only option to use. Valve makes no such efforts, they even deliberately opened up their devices to other stores as well as integrated the launching of those storefronts for the games that “require” them. The only thing Valve demands is that you don’t abuse their infrastructure to get free game distribution while cashing in somewhere else.
You can still do IAP ingame btw (without going through Valve), you should just offer the same on Steam directly (see shark cards in GTA for example). There’s a difference between preventing the abuse of your resources and anti-competitive behaviour.
It’s not. Sales will be lower if you ignore the largest platform, obviously, but that would be true even if Steam had a lower market share (eg 40% or whatever). But it’s not true that it becomes entirely unprofitable to publish games outside of Steam. Which btw, you are allowed to do for a lower price, provided you don’t provide a Steam key upon purchase.
Just one note - Valve don’t care whether or not Steam keys are provided - if you sell on Steam then you can’t sell anywhere else cheaper.
That’s the whole basis of the lawsuit Wolfire Games brought against them.
Valve are just saying that you can’t treat their customers as second class citizens when it comes to pricing.
I feel the need to point out, a lawsuit claim isn’t proof. I can sue you for being a goblin, for example.
They are suing, making a claim, and presenting their side of the situation as their proof. You need to keep in mind there’s a non zero chance they have omitted inconvenient facts (to an extent) and misinterpreted information to their benefit.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen many, many, many games on storefronts other than steam that have a sale price lower than steam.
That’s the claim made, but Valve has stressed this isn’t the case and the policy text doesn’t support that claim either. It very explicitly mentions Steam keys.
EA often does this actually for the games they offer through the EA app. EA has their own infra so you don’t get a Steam key if you purchase it from there. As a result EA games are occasionally slightly cheaper there or go on sale a bit more often than they do on Steam, so they can lure customers to their own storefront.
Letting companies sell DLC outside of the Steam Store sounds like a bad deal for Valve but they look like a good company for publicly following through with it. If too many companies are abusing that policy, Valve is well within their rights to revise the policy and ban the behavior, taking the resulting PR hit. What they are not allowed to do is act like the good guy publicly while secretly and selectively enforcing a ban for companies that they are mad at
P.S. If Valve does ban selling DLC outside of the Steam Store, it would make Steam an unusually restrictive store. I can open up Steam and buy DLC for any game by Wise Wizard Games, associate that DLC with my online multiplayer account, then download the same game (for free) on iOS and Android, open up the new copies, log into my online play account, sync purchases, and play my newly purchased DLC from another app store. I have never heard of an App store not allowing it but most game developers do not implement it because it costs them money to code it up and they make money from people who buy the same contents multiple times.
Thats unusual for iOS/Android, as they are pretty strict about the 30% cut for in-app purchases, and the “no external stores” thing.
I can think of other cases where some external purchases (like, say, a streaming subscription) apply to the app. But if you buy that DLC in-app, Apple/Google get the cut, no question. If you buy a subscription in the app, AFAIK they get a cut too.
In my experience, Android and Apple’s enforcement is quite spotty. I wouldn’t be surprised if WWG arbitrarily got a hammer dropped on them at some point.
Valve did not have to revise their policy as it already violated their existing policy. They also don’t ban DLC sales on other stores, but just require that it is sold on Steam as well. They’re fairly lenient on it, but Ubisoft specifically was targeted because they offered the base game for free but sold a pretty substantial “starter pack” only through uPlay.
Rockstar also has in game purchases that Valve doesn’t see a dime from, but that’s allowed because those purchases can also be made through Steam. And as far as I know Rockstar is likely allowed to not even offer it there, because the base game itself is still a normal-priced game.