this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

They give you free keys to sell elsewhere if you choose

To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.

That’s very far from monopolistic behavior.

I mean, imagine if, say, Walmart or Amazon did this (assuming they don’t already). Every price is every other store has to be at or above theirs, or their product gets delisted, which is apocalypse for a supplier.

How does that not sound monopolistic to you?

Imagine if Amazon took 20% more cut that Newegg and passed that to hardware prices for literally everyone.

EGS literally can’t be monopolistic because they have like no market share, but yes, they’re being anticompetitive and bribing in an unsustainable way. It’s not good either. And their store is barebones, no question.

But the double standard of bothers me. Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform and they’ve been fine in other areas so far.

To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.

That depends. For GOG and EGS, yeah, those stores don't want to sell Steam keys, they want to sell keys for their own platform. But other stores like Fanatical sell Steam keys, and I'm not exactly sure how those work.

My point is that devs can sell keys on their own and take 100% profit if they want, they just can't undercut Steam. And that's pretty common in retail, if you see a product in store, it'll be a very similar price to buy direct. It turns out, retail stores don't like providing marketing just to get undercut on your website or a competitor store.

Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform

Neither does EGS just because they take a lower cut and give away free games.

AFAIK, Steam isn't doing anything differently than other retail stores. If EGS were in Valve's position, you can bet they'd be way worse.