this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
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I don't think steam has any anti-competitive behavior that I'm aware of.
Fortnite has roughly 100 million more monthly active users than steam, to say nothing of every piece of software running Unreal Engine, Epic is huge.
Steam somehow prevents publishers from selling games at a cheaper price in competitors' stores, even if their cut from the store is lower. That is extremely anti-competitive and has to be illegal.
True. I forgot about that in my comment actually. I think they calmed down on that because it was basically illegal in a lot of countries though.
If you sign up to use Steam to distribute your game then one of the things you agree to is to make it available on Steam at the same price you offer anywhere else. This protects Steam's business and ensures that Steam customers aren't disadvantaged.
However, it also applies even if the alternative channels don't make use of Steam directly (e.g selling on Epic). This is where the Wolfire Games lawsuit comes in. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
Steam was fined in Australia for not providing refunds for games
It was a bit more than just an issue of Valve not providing refunds.
Read about it here and here.
Epic doesn't make nearly as much money from Fortnite's players as Steam makes from their users though. Same for UE royalties. I don't think there's a single UE license that has a 30% rev share (which is what you get on steam if you don't have big AAA sales). Hell, I don't even think there's one at 10%.
Steam doesn't have anti competitive behavior yet. Gabe has made some bad decisions in the past (may I remind you that he greenlit Bethesda's paid mods idea ?) but he does seem to generally put the users first. But what happens after him ? Imo the company will go public at some point, and it's pretty much downhill from here
Edit: gotta love getting downvoted into the negatives with nobody pointing out anything wrong with my comment, all because I dared criticizing the sacrosanct Steam. I actually quite like Steam but gamers are downright irrational when it comes to this platform.
Gabe had a say in greenlighting horse armour? What?
Horse armor was a dlc, not a mod (well, there were also joke mods), and it was for Oblivion. They tested the paid mods on Skyrim back in 2015. Officially implemented on the Steam workshop and all, and obviously Valve was supposed to get a cut out of every sale which is probably why they were A-OK with it. (Bethesda is apparently having another try right now, although it looks like Valve is out of the picture this time)