Business & Finance Lawsuit Against Valve and Developers

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ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
This one is pretty interesting.

Valve doesn't dictate the pricing of games sold through Steam, but the contract includes a "Most Favored Nation" clause (this is standard legal terminology; they don't actually think they're a nation or anything like that) where developers agree not to sell the same software for a lower price on competing marketplaces than on Steam. Note that this clause applies only to regular pricing and not discount sales events.

Nonetheless, a lawsuit has been filed claiming that this is an abuse of monopoly power to inflate the price of games, on the somewhat shaky claim that prices *could* decline if developers were not contractually obligated to equal pricing on competing marketplaces. Somewhat curiously, the lawsuit names not only Valve but also a random scattering of developers, accusing them of "colluding with" Valve by agreeing to the MFN contract.

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Now, my opinion is that this supposed class action suit by five random gamers is pretty obviously a proxy for Epic Games. It's pretty clearly trying to set the stage for Epic to demand that developers *must* set lower prices on Epic than on Steam, and/or make further claims of "monopoly collusion" if developers decline to do business with Epic, all of which is clearly bullshit.

Epic's paid exclusives are *infinitely* more anti-competitive than an MFN clause, and MFN clauses are entirely standard in retail business in the first place -- you didn't think it was an accident that the retail prices in brick-and-mortar stores were consistent, did you?
 
Yeah... this goes in my file of why I refuse to use Epic Store, Steam is nearly (though not quite due to plenty of competition outside of Epic like GOG and the MS Store) monopolistic in digital distribution of games, and maybe they take a larger percent of the cut than is entire fair to developers, but they seem way more on the up and up than Epic.
 
From what I've heard, the only thing they're controlling is the cost of key generation or something like that. The keys can be sold cheaply just about anywhere.
 
Epic is only good for free big games.

But as for thos, I doubt any gamer would actually file this that uses Steam
 
Zachowon said:
But as for thos, I doubt any gamer would actually file this that uses Steam
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Which is why I'm saying that the five individuals filing for "class action" are a pretty blatant front for Epic Games. The precedents set by a victory in this case would be *massively* advantageous for Epic, especially the idea that "anyone who does business with an alleged monopoly is guilty of 'collusion'."
 
ShadowArxxy said:
Which is why I'm saying that the five individuals filing for "class action" are a pretty blatant front for Epic Games. The precedents set by a victory in this case would be *massively* advantageous for Epic, especially the idea that "anyone who does business with an alleged monopoly is guilty of 'collusion'."
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And that they had chose specific companies besides valve to include ij it
 
ShadowArxxy said:
Which is why I'm saying that the five individuals filing for "class action" are a pretty blatant front for Epic Games. The precedents set by a victory in this case would be *massively* advantageous for Epic, especially the idea that "anyone who does business with an alleged monopoly is guilty of 'collusion'."
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That's ridiculous. Is everyone using MS-Windows guilty of "colluding" with Microsoft?
 
Meanwhile, pretty much every AAA Epic Exclusive has been priced at the same $60 newly released games have always been sold at.

Quite frankly, most developers want to raise prices on all platforms, not lower them. EA and others have been trying to push a practice of selling next-gen games for $70... Its probably so unpopular so as to be unviable, but that's besides the point.

There's no way - even if Epic became really popular - that you'd see substantially lower prices on Epic compared to Steam.

A $25 game on Steams earns the developer $17.50.

If they consider Epic's lower cut, a $20 game earns them $17.60.

However, at that rate, there's no reason to take the time to place a game on Epic. The whole point of Epic is earning more $$$ per sale (though even more frequently its the free cash Epic gives to timed Epic Exclusives - that got Epic way more games than the higher cut ever did).

Even if you scale that up to a $60 game (developer gets $42), at $50 on Epic, a developer gets $44. Again though you run into the same problem - at that point, why place things on Epic?

If this actually passed somehow (and I doubt it will), it would hurt a lot of consumers on Steam and wouldn't really benefit anyone.

Even if they could, I doubt Ubisoft and EA would actually lower the standard price of games below what it is on Steam.
 
Ubisoft would not care and still have thiwr own platform, same with EA
 
Scottty said:
That's ridiculous. Is everyone using MS-Windows guilty of "colluding" with Microsoft?
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The ones they're accusing of "colluding" are third party developers rather than the retail customer, but the same ridiculous logic would apply.

ParadiseLost said:
Even if you scale that up to a $60 game (developer gets $42), at $50 on Epic, a developer gets $44. Again though you run into the same problem - at that point, why place things on Epic?
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Under the precedent Epic clearly wants to set, third party developers would be legally obligated to place things on Epic because if they don't, they're guilty of "colluding with monopolistic practices".

I would argue that is clearly the entire point of this lawsuit. A slightly higher percentage cut wasn't enough to draw developers to their shitty feature-incomplete platform, so they bribed developers with paid exclusives. That's still not working out for them, so now they're trying to abuse anti-trust law to *force* developers to comply.
 
Thinking about it some more, I think there's a very high likelihood of this case being thrown out on the basis that the plaintiffs cannot show any damages. The plaintiffs claim they are harmed by the MFN clause by being forced to pay higher prices than they otherwise would, but the claim that the prices would have been lower in the absence of the MFN clause is speculative at best.

Valve can point out that the price set via MFN is the standard retail price, that the MFN does not in any way prohibit discount sale events, and that the lower retail prices that plaintiff claims they would otherwise enjoy are not only purely hypothetical, but highly unlikely.
 
ShadowArxxy said:
Which is why I'm saying that the five individuals filing for "class action" are a pretty blatant front for Epic Games. The precedents set by a victory in this case would be *massively* advantageous for Epic, especially the idea that "anyone who does business with an alleged monopoly is guilty of 'collusion'."
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Or it could just be a group of acquaintances who all complained to a lawyer friend who sees a big payday out of it. I think I had to sign up for Epic in order to get Watch Dogs: Legion (which I enjoyed but OTOH was really pissed that they won’t allow it on Steam until October.

Also, reading the actual lawsuit it seems like two of the plaintiffs are moms who are pissed about their kids spending tons of money on Steam...

Scottty said:
That's ridiculous. Is everyone using MS-Windows guilty of "colluding" with Microsoft?
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Well, there was that big case back in the 1990s, remember. It ended up with a settlement but it ultimately didn’t do much...IE continued to be added until Mozilla and Google came along.

Anyway, I don’t know if it’ll necessarily be dismissed for lack of standing. It’ll be interesting to see what happens, but if this were to somehow go in the plaintiffs’ favor, maybe it could be a way to sue over things like exclusivity arrangements for third party content?
 
Airedale260 said:
Or it could just be a group of acquaintances who all complained to a lawyer friend who sees a big payday out of it.
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Not when the law firm involved is Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease. That's one of the "Big Law" megafirms that work exclusively for the rich, famous, and well-connected. Moreover, the plaintiffs are five people from four different cities across the country, and none of those cities even contain an office of this firm -- only one of them is even in a state this firm practices in at all.
 
ShadowArxxy said:
Not when the law firm involved is Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease. That's one of the "Big Law" megafirms that work exclusively for the rich, famous, and well-connected. Moreover, the plaintiffs are five people from four different cities across the country, and none of those cities even contain an office of this firm -- only one of them is even in a state this firm practices in at all.
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...that makes it sound like there is an unrevealed 3rd party coordinating things...
 
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