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.
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.