That's not correct from what I've read. You are more than welcome to ask for a source instead of accusing me of falsehoods.

"To help maintain its monopoly power, Valve uses what is known as a Platform Most Favored Nations (“PMFN”) clause in its agreements with game publishers which prevents game publishers from selling their games on other on-line gaming sites with lower costs, fees, and/or sales commissions for less than the game publishers sell their games on the Steam platform"

https://www.masonllp.com/case/valve-mass-arbitration/#:~:tex...

Nothing about that refers to Steam Keys. I did do some cursory searching to find sources which disagreed with this interpretation but was unable to find any. There's always the possibility that the class action lawsuit was misguided or incorrect- so if you have any sources that say otherwise, please provide!

..Or I suppose, some examples of games that sell for less (excluding temporary sales) on other stores than they do within Steam.

EDIT: Elsewhere someone provided this Ars Technica article where an unidentified source at Valve said this does only apply to Steam keys, which is likely what you are referring to: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fe...

So it's definitely a contested fact.

Yet. Imagine how PC gaming would look if tomorrow you woke up and Valve said, hey, our cut is 50% now. The problem with monopoly capture is once a company has it, it can choose to abuse it at any time in the future. And even if you have complete faith in Valve's current leadership, those people get old and die or retire, and the next guys may not run things the same way.

> But it's also fairly standard within gaming.

One of the things uncovered by these lawsuits is largely than everyone settled on the 30% cut because Steam picked it and got away with it. We should definitely blame Steam for this abusive tax on the game industry, even if many others have now copied it.

I would expect a bunch of bright, freshly-laid-off engineers would get together and try to seriously compete either through a single platform offering, or a system of integrated services. I'd love to see Valve's platform advantages a little more democratized; but you can't deny the level of engineering that goes into their products. SteamVR, Steam Play, streaming, Steam Deck, Proton, it goes on and on.

> We should definitely blame Steam for this abusive tax on the game industry, even if many others have now copied it.

No more than we blame anyone else who followed suit, as a gain, Valve chose a number that was already massively standardized in many industries. If the 30% cut is too much, someone should seek to disrupt them at a 5-20% margin.

And we have come full circle: Epic's cut is 12%.

If Steam was just a store frontend, I wouldn't use it. I just established their competitive offering above.

In fact, EGS's primary way of competing, exclusives, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's anti-consumer, and a poor substitute for engineering a competitive feature offering.

I actively avoid their store for this reason, and have passed up on their exclusives in the past, despite being interested in the IP.

You're only noticing because of the competition. Without it games would be exclusive to Steam and you would never notice. Anything from The Finals to Lethal Company, PUBG to Destiny 2. Are these any less anti-consumer because they're only on Steam? I don't think so.

You're blaming Steam for not having worthy competitors, but that isn't their job. Valve/Steam doesn't engage in exclusivity deals, EGS does. And Valve-published games obviously don't count, there's no deal, they just decide not to publish elsewhere.

And remember: the closest competition is literal piracy. I'm not only noticing that Steam provides a quality service worth paying for because of EGS. I don't think you understand how many would-be pirates instead have gigantic Steam libraries.

So why does a deal between a publisher and Valve or EGS make a difference to me, the consumer? Why aren't all exclusives anti-consumer regardless of a deal that might or might not exist?

> I don't think you understand how many would-be pirates instead have gigantic Steam libraries.

I don't understand your point though. Are you saying no one should compete with Steam because users will pirate the games? I don't think that's a good reason to give Steam a monopoly.

The former are in Valve's control, the latter are not. Valve can't help it if they're the best in town and no one else is able to compete at their level.

> I don't understand your point though. Are you saying no one should compete with Steam because users will pirate the games?

My point is that Steam offers a better service than piracy, which is very hard for a digital storefront to compete with. They achieve this by being more than a storefront. The way they conduct business is reasonably open and any funded competitor could emulate their success over time with careful design and engineering. Part of that is being consumer-friendly and having an open culture.

> I don't think that's a good reason to give Steam a monopoly.

No one gives them a monopoly. I don't follow your argument here, because you seem to be suggesting that we should handicap Steam in some kind of Harrison Bergeron scenario.

>The former are in Valve's control, the latter are not.

Why does this distinction make a difference in how anti-consumer it is? The store owner or Valve's (lack of) control doesn't make it any better for me as a consumer.

To summarize my position here to avoid more confusion: Exclusives deals don't make exclusive games any more anti-consumer. Because the deal or lack thereof doesn't effect me as a consumer.

So my original reply is that all of these exclusive games are the same level of anti-consumer. But you only notice when it's not Steam exclusives, because that's your platform of choice. I'm not blaming Valve for anything, I'm just using games on their store as an example of games you don't think of as exclusives or anti-consumer.

I'm just using games on their store as an example of games you don't think of as exclusives or anti-consumer.

Deal or no deal is not relevant to the consumer.

>Exclusive deals are extremely different from a game simply releasing on one store out of convenience.

I know they're not the same. But a game released on one store out of convenience is just as anti-consumer as an exclusive deal.

Epic's cut is 12% because they can afford to lose money on it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/11/07/tim-sweene...

They spend a ton of money on exclusives, enticing offers and other substitutes for attractive features.

Years before Half Life: Alyx, Valve said they would never make single player games again. It made sense - TF2 was making silly money selling silly cosmetics. Presumably, the economics have now changed to make single-player viable again: any further player-base goodwill means a few more years of getting away with predatory BS.

This is a strange allegation; While I have little personal experience with Steam's consumer service, the typical report I hear is that it is excellent and very helpful, while Google more or less doesn't have it at all. I've even successfully refunded some games that were a bit over the 2 hour window.

Twice I have renewed the ticket with staff deeply apologizing and asking for them to print a new RMA, offering to pay this time, and they just send me a new RMA free of charge, which I have twice disregarded. I can't think of another digital business off the top of my hand which would put up with my shit.

I think alyx/deskjob primarily exist to sell hardware rather than make silly money on their own. You even get a free copy of the former with any index hardware.