A new lawsuit was filed earlier this month in the UK that alleges Valve, owner of Steam, has been overcharging 14 million PC gamers and abusing its dominant position in the UK.
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.
I’m open to the idea steam puts restrictions on publishers. But the obvious answer would be that the publisher is taking the extra profit for themselves instead
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).
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.
I’m open to the idea steam puts restrictions on publishers. But the obvious answer would be that the publisher is taking the extra profit for themselves instead
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).