Open any gaming PC, and chances are the blue icon of Steam is sitting right there on the desktop. Not hidden, not optional, but almost expected. Over time, Steam has gone from being just another launcher to becoming the default storefront for PC gaming, almost like a built-in part of the experience. The Monopoly Nobody […]
I’m glad we at least have moved on from people outright denying Valve does this to defending Valve doing this.
You’d have to ask the dev, but obviously Valve takes 30%, while the dev would get 100% on its own store. If there’s a publisher involved, and publisher contracts often cover specific platforms, the dev would get much less than 70% on Steam.
Comparing Steam to traditional stores is incorrect. Even Valve’s own argument in the same Wolfire case was that monopoly power requires a market share of 75%, which Steam exceeds.
So the dev wants all the benefits of selling on the Steam store while at the same time earning profits that they would if they sold it independently?
Am I reading that correctly?
As I said, we don’t know the terms of their publishing contract, if any, so that would be a baseless assumption to make. I could also flip your argument and say they might not even want to sell on Steam, but feel forced to because of its monopoly power. It’s one of the points of the class action lawsuit.