Every time I see a post with this specific claim, targeted at Valve, i just can't help but laugh.

Yes. They take a cut.

Yes. Everyone else takes the same cut, so you're biased, if you don't understand this.

Yes. They are an undisputed leader in the market, but no, that's not called a monopoly.

The difference is that Valve, while taking this cut, and being as big as they are, are consistently investing that money into improvement of the platform, AND also paying people to directly contribute to OSS, that affects everyone else in the market too.

Not to even mention the regular, very considerable discounts, practically platform-wide. Show me a time when Nintendo have done the same. A 10 year old copy of MK8 is still 50$

This isn't even a bogus claim, but just a waste of everyone's time

I see what Vicky is attempting to do. But there's nothing stopping publishers from going over to the Epic Games Store for example and selling their content there. Valve does nothing to suppress competition (it can't really either), the competition is just bad.

This is a bogus claim. Steam is by far the most compettitive of the bunch

There's a thread somewhere else on lemmy about this from a couple of days ago, I think the conclusion was that this was a law firm going for a cash grab and the claims were pretty flimsy, they're going after Sony too.

I am not a fan of the title the article uses. It seems more about Steam abusing their near monopoly in a way that hurts publishers. The overcharging aspect seems more like a byproduct

I bought Skyrim for $9.

I would much rather see this level of dedication aimed at an evil corporation. Save pestering the good guys for WAAAAAY later - like, after we've fixed everything else.

I don't feel overcharged. I've got hundreds of games!

What's their claim? With the ridiculous number of sales I've always found steam to be cheap.

I really wanted to see the effect of valve lowering their cut. It would be pretty funny IMHO since currently people are always talking about valve competition, especially Epic taking lower cuts. If valve started taking lower cut and developers flocked from Epic to valve, wouldn't it be epic? (Pun fully intentional)

What a pointless claim. Developers get charged, not the end user. You pay the same price as elsewhere, in fact Steam requires developers to price the same if am not mistaken. Besides what's the charge? People are willing to pay more for product they enjoy? If that's the precedent then Apple will go bankrupt day after this lawsuit is won.

https://lemmy.world/comment/10610894

The issues at hand:

1. Price parity obligation clauses: We say that Valve Corporation imposes price parity clauses that restrict and prevent game developers from offering better prices on PC-games on rival platforms, limiting consumer choice and harming competition.

This seems to be common practice, but is anti competitive. If another platform would charge 20 instead of 30 pct and the publisher would give half this discount to the customers this would be against these clauses. Good that these are looked at.

2. Tying: We say that the restrictions Valve Corporation imposes, that mean the add-on content for games must also be purchased from Steam, restricts competition in the market.

And vice versa, steam dlc does not work with games on epic. Interesting case here too.

3. Excessive pricing: We argue that Valve Corporation has imposed an excessive commission, of up to 30%, charged to publishers, that resulted in inflated prices on its Steam platform.

The 30% market standard seems to be under fire across the board, so if there is a solid case to be made that this is excessive, I'm glad the watchdog is trying to make it.

In all good that this is investigated, cause just paying for another yaght or house for Gabe is not nessecary.