Imagine there’s a huge fuel station that’s so big they essentially set rules towards suppliers that they can’t offer their gas to other stations at a cheaper price otherwise they can’t sell it in their station with 95% market share.
“You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”
Valve does not “dictate” prices in any way.
Ubi and WB are free to sell their games for as cheap as they want. But if and ONLY IF they offer a steam key with the purchase, they can’t undercut steam.
This isn’t about steam keys, it’s about a most favored nation clause. It’s a fairly common clause when selling across multiple platforms. It can be considered anticompetitive in some cases. It’s also pretty standard in retail agreements. It’s why name brand products are generally the same price everywhere.
The same thing would happen if Walmart found Sony was selling PlayStations cheaper on their website than in store.
That is specifically not what is happening.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
“Steam Key Rules and Guidelines”
“You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”
Valve does not “dictate” prices in any way.
Ubi and WB are free to sell their games for as cheap as they want. But if and ONLY IF they offer a steam key with the purchase, they can’t undercut steam.
This isn’t about steam keys, it’s about a most favored nation clause. It’s a fairly common clause when selling across multiple platforms. It can be considered anticompetitive in some cases. It’s also pretty standard in retail agreements. It’s why name brand products are generally the same price everywhere.
The same thing would happen if Walmart found Sony was selling PlayStations cheaper on their website than in store.
Uplay doesn’t offer steam keys. The game version they were selling wasn’t even available on steam.
Steam keys have fuck all to do with the monopolistic shakedown that valve is enacting to fix PC game prices.
Stop blindly supporting this bullshit behavior. It’s right there in the article you didn’t read.
Please read the article.
“give us your money or let us install cookies” yeah no I’d rather not read the article then.