Wolfire Games filed a lawsuit against Valve over abuse of their market position

Valve need competition against Steam. The reality is that it's the main place to get most games, and it's the primary point of purchase for just about anything. I've seen a good many comments on this very site that if a game isn't on Steam, they won't buy it. If a developer wants a game to be successful, they've practically no choice but to put in on Steam (exceptions exist of course, but for the vast majority this is quite true).

Valve have far too much influence as a distribution platform. It's not healthy for the gaming ecosystem. They can pretty much do what they want with impunity, and that's really not good.

At about this point I'm sure several people will be foaming at the mouth and already typing out something furiously, but at no point above did I say Valve were bad or evil. They've reached this position by being good at the business. My point is that the situation is bad, and the situation is harmful to gaming, particularly on GNU/Linux.

Let's put this in context: Does Valve have competition in the Linux gaming world? What are the features that other stores offer that would make me switch?

For me it's simple: Valve offers the best Linux support out of the box for even the most novice Linux users and it also offers regional prices (at least for my country). And if that wasn't enough, they also allow me to go to my preferred dev web and directly buy a game code, guaranteeing me that the dev will get 100% of that money. Seriously, Valve needs competition but all the other contenders stores are just "yet another place were you can buy your games". Out of itch.io or GOG, the others stores doesn't offer any ground breaking feature that I can appreciate as Linux user.

On a parallel note, the flood of crap on Steam is really harmful to developers, and customers too. Part of the reason I continue to support GOL is for discovering nice games. Something like Vaporum I'd never have seen were it not covered on this site. Valve's so-called "algorithm" is basically just a way for them not to have a hand in any sort of store curation. While there are arguments for and against that, if Valve don't have a hand in it, they shouldn't take money for it. That 30% cut of theirs is, I believe, too much.

How do you know that "it's too much"? The 30% cut is just propaganda at this point as Steam is not the only store that ask for 30% cut (which is not a constant BTW), but it's always the argument that makes it the bad guy. Not to mention that Steam has curators, so you can get GOL recommendations from their platform as well. I'm starting to think that the people that complain about Steam mostly don't use it.


Last edited by x_wing on 30 April 2021 at 3:04 pm UTC

The reality is that gamers are as much to blame as Valve. Take Wolfire for instance, they sell their games on Steam but also Itch.io and Humble Store. If a gamer wanted to give them maximum profit Itch.io would probably be the best bet as Itch.io allows developers to set what revenue goes to Itch and what they keep. The option is there but the issue is that most gamers prefer to buy from Steam to keep their games in one library. In other words they should be as mad at gamers as they are at Valve as gamers choose where to buy their games. Of course getting mad at your customer and suing them doesn't play so well from a PR standpoint. Just to make clear, i'm not saying they should sue gamers or even be mad at them but it makes as much sense (or as little) as being mad at Valve. I for one try to buy from Itch.io and GOG as I prefer to support those businesses that give me a DRM free product and support open source (in Itch's case not GOG). I'm the minority though, most gamers don't care. They just want their games and don't care about ideology or business practices. As long as that is true then Valve will remain king and no lawsuit will change that.

Richard Geldreich, that guy has a huge chip on his shoulder about Valve, I don't believe a word he's saying. Of course he's siding with Epic.

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX
then you may believe that directX was a good thing...
also, that the earth is flat

I performed heresy and read some of the arguments laid out in the lawsuit file, combined with various discussions the last time this cropped up, and from additional discussions in years past when the whole Greenlight thing started.

Whatever you did was mere speculations. As I mentioned several times, Valve isn't a public company so we don't have their numbers. But we have Epic numbers, so you can see how profitable it's a 12% cut.

And yes, Steam has curators, my very point being that this wasn't Valve doing anything. This is Valve getting others to do the work of quality control and have the community self govern.

Valve creating a feature were game journalists can freely share reviews of games of the platform isn't doing something for you? What's your point here? That Valve should contract reviewers for the platform?

All true, but doesn't change how I think about it.
As I said, I hope it succeeds and I hope they eventually lower their cut.
But do I think this will happen, and soon? Nope.

And it won't change because unjustified biasing is a characteristic of stubborn people.

All this hate towards Steam based on the silliest arguments:
1- Steam is a monopoly, just because Microsoft, EA, GOG, and the same Epic with all that Fortnite/Chinese money hasn't been able to break Steam dominance, I guess the one to blame here is Steam because their competitors are weak or cant offer better services.
2- If you leave game devs which services to use to get a lower cut, they will use the cheapest package. They already have the cheapest package available, it is called Epic, a barebone online store. Microsoft Store, EPIC, GOG, Origin are stores. They don't go far from that, and just because there are a bunch of people who do not like cards, Play together and other Steam features that doesnt mean these things should be "optional".
3- If this silly lawsuit has some success, I guess any developer can demand consoles for having stores that have 100% dominance of the digital market in their own consoles. This is PC gaming, you are not forced to install this or that store, you can buy your games whenever you want, even PSN!
4- Siding with devs to the detriment of the customer is also a silly move, you haven't thought (I bet not)the reason people keep using EVIL STEAM who takes 30% of these poor devs who doesnt have anything to eat is the services? The reason EPIC can offer 11% is that they don't have even half the services Steam offers, if you think that way 11% is a RIP-OFF to those poor devs.

While EPIC rip-offs those poor devs 11% just for being on a front store, I see nobody saying a single word about it!

Any Steam despiser on this site has no single valid argument against Steam.
The 30% cut argument is not valid when you compare a store versus a service.
An 11% for a store is a ripoff, a 30% for a full service both for customers and devs is not.
Even If Steam lowers the cut to 11% and sells the services for a higher cut I'm sure you'll be saying Steam is still evil for not offering those services for the same 11%.

But that is the price to pay when you are on the top, you'll always get this army of despisers behind you.
This is PC and this is a Linux forum, we should be the ones to understand that we are not forced to anything, we were not forced to install Windows, we chose Linux over Windows Dominance, people can choose what store to use as we did with our OS.
Instead of hating Steam try to understand why of their dominance of the PC gaming market.

They got $265 Million from third parties, which means that they got a profit of 26.5 million. Remove the millions they spend with exclusives and free games plus Fortnite benefits and you will be far from making any profit with that 12% cut.

The very article you link to also has Epic stating that 12% is enough to cover their running cost. Yes, no profit from that alone. So increase it to 15%. Now you've got profit (3% is a very good profit margin as every trader on this planet will tell you) and still only take half of what Valve takes.
Hell, take 20%. Now your profit margin is in the "investors' wet dream" area and STILL 1/3rd less than Valve's...

Weird how that goes, huh?

BTW, seems that GOG takes a similar cut from devs and had financial problems not long ago. Anyway, what a greedy bastards!

Not anymore, though. So the same cut you imply was not enough now suddenly is.
Seems to me they just didn't know how to run a business in their field and then wisened up a bit, cutting costs.
Besides, don't forget that Valve also gets their share of MTX from games, which is a large amount. GOG doesn't, afaik.
Also don't forget about DLCs, which often enough mean practically 0 additional cost for the storefront (DLCs tend to be tiny and they share the same infrastructure as the main game).

And finally, GOG is simply MUCH smaller than Steam.
Costs scale inversely to size - probably in all fields, but especially when it comes to IT infrastructure. Based on that alone, Steam could affort a smaller cut than GOG.

Steamplay 2.0 aka PROTON, from my point of view, is a service for the consumers (and developers) and is paid with that 30%.

Paid indirectly by the developers, who will maybe get AT MAX 1% more sales due to it. Doesn't make up for the difference between 30% and a more reasonable cut.

Besides, as a developer, I honestly don't care in the slightest what else Valve does with their way-too-high-cut.
And I shouldn't care. If I (as a developer) don't benefit from it, why the hell should I pay for it?
Out of the good of my heart?

Valve implemented the discovery queue and curators recommendation. And during the sales, you have to explore the discovery queue in order to get a trading card. At least in my case, I was able to discover many nice games with the DQ.

That's a drop in the ocean. It changes practically nothing for developers having basically 0 visibility just by being on Steam.

To be fair, I don't think that's Valve's fault.
They could still curate and the problem would be mostly the same - now devs would struggle to get on the platform due to the number of competitors instead of struggling to be on the platform but have no customers find them due to the number of competitors.
There are simply too many developers putting out games - the only way through that is to do good old PR legwork. And/or luck, of course.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 30 April 2021 at 4:06 pm UTC

I follow a lot of indies on Twitter who genuinely despise Steam. Not just for taking a 30% cut, but for taking that cut and giving almost nothing back. They argue that the lure of the biggest audience for gaming is useless when Steam's algorithms are geared to only highlight AAA or "popular" content.

The same argument and frustration is often voiced around Play and Apple's store - they take their 30% cut but unless you magically put out the next minecraft, factorio or limbo, you're gonna languish with pitiful sales until you go out of business.

So, good luck to the lawsuit. It's doomed though, for sure. I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that you have to have some fairly hard evidence that Valve actually abused their market position to suppress competition. And the clauses in question have already passed muster in other law suits... so I'm not sure the point to all this is.

LOL, I can't even think why this was brought to the table, the 3 stores/services have something in common, they'll leave almost every game these "poor" devs dare to submit to be there.
SO of course these guys want more attention to their game. Of course, they would like to be in the front all the time. Of course, they hate Steam because Valheim and other quality games appear in the front Store.
Damn Steam showing me Fall Guys, Valheim, or any Total War game in the front store instead of the spinning toy game or those hentai VN's with furry characters, or that horror game where the player gets stuck at doors.
That doom algorythm that show me quality indy games instead of the buggy and trashy ones. OMG please Steam put whatever trash this poor devs submitted so I can complain again Steam is not doing quality checks.

Seriously, Valve needs competition but all the other contenders stores are just "yet another place were you can buy your games". Out of itch.io or GOG, the others stores doesn't offer any ground breaking feature that I can appreciate as Linux user.

I would say actually owning the games you buy is quite the groundbreaking feature in this day and age.

The same argument and frustration is often voiced around Play and Apple's store - they take their 30% cut but unless you magically put out the next minecraft, factorio or limbo, you're gonna languish with pitiful sales until you go out of business.

I'm sorry but that is the case for all creative industries. Most musicians do not make it and will never be able to make a living out of their music career. Same goes for actors. Video games on PC are a very open market, the barriers to entry are getting lower and lower, you even have free game engines nowadays, so anyone can jump in and try his luck. That necessarily means more and more people will not make it, there isn't enough market for everyone. Even if Steam drops their cut (and I think they should), allowing devs to get extra 10% or so won't solve people going out of business due to poor sales.

All true, but doesn't change how I think about it.
As I said, I hope it succeeds and I hope they eventually lower their cut.
But do I think this will happen, and soon? Nope.

rofl

That fanboy rambling is hilarious, I can see more strawmen here than I would if I watched Wickerman on 20 TVs at the same time and less coherent logic than if I did the same with Fast & Furious.
Please continue

And no, I do not hate Steam. And I bet nobody else here who criticizes Valve for their business practices does, either.
I just don't turn a blind eye to the bad stuff Valve does because of the good they do.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 30 April 2021 at 4:16 pm UTC

I follow a lot of indies on Twitter who genuinely despise Steam. Not just for taking a 30% cut, but for taking that cut and giving almost nothing back. They argue that the lure of the biggest audience for gaming is useless when Steam's algorithms are geared to only highlight AAA or "popular" content.

The same argument and frustration is often voiced around Play and Apple's store - they take their 30% cut but unless you magically put out the next minecraft, factorio or limbo, you're gonna languish with pitiful sales until you go out of business.

If you don't sell anything, you won't pay. And if you have to rely on the additional few percent per sale you can get on alternative stores you have been doomed from the get go.

Are you trying to say that one company to rule them all is....good? If you honestly can't think of why that situation is harmful, then I suggest you do a bit of digging around on what happens when there isn't competition. From what I hear, Internet connectivity options in the USA is a good example to start with.

He said the situation at the moment is bad. No company at the moment is the one that rules everything.

If you don't sell anything, you won't pay. And if you have to rely on the additional few percent per sale you can get on alternative stores you have been doomed from the get go.

Obviously, but if you think in the low-margin world of indie development a difference of 10-15% in income cannot make the difference between "can live from it" and "nope!", then you are sorely mistaken.

The reality is that gamers are as much to blame as Valve. Take Wolfire for instance, they sell their games on Steam but also Itch.io and Humble Store. If a gamer wanted to give them maximum profit Itch.io would probably be the best bet as Itch.io allows developers to set what revenue goes to Itch and what they keep. The option is there but the issue is that most gamers prefer to buy from Steam to keep their games in one library. In other words they should be as mad at gamers as they are at Valve as gamers choose where to buy their games. Of course getting mad at your customer and suing them doesn't play so well from a PR standpoint. Just to make clear, i'm not saying they should sue gamers or even be mad at them but it makes as much sense (or as little) as being mad at Valve. I for one try to buy from Itch.io and GOG as I prefer to support those businesses that give me a DRM free product and support open source (in Itch's case not GOG). I'm the minority though, most gamers don't care. They just want their games and don't care about ideology or business practices. As long as that is true then Valve will remain king and no lawsuit will change that.

Totally disagree with your statement that I bolded.
Here the thing. Why most gamers especially in developing/emerging countries (which includes me) choose Steam because of one thing: Convenience

I can buy Steam wallet code anywhere! 7-Eleven, Tesco (now called Lotus as Thai company bought it), some mom-and-pop shops, telcos and even a bank! (Maybank Malaysia link). Some country such as India also have Cash on Delivery option.

So, Why should we get blame for choosing a company that offers better service to us. The one who willingly takes extra mile to reach us the gamers, as their customers. Don't mad at us for exercising our consumerism.

Without extra mile that Valve took, piracy will be rampaging again. Just like the old times. As Gaben said:
Piracy is an issue of service, not price

Apologies. Just share our sentiment (and some facts) here. And I do bought some games on itch.io if possible too.

The point is how they get popular. If the algorithm was fairer for new titles, then indies would have a better chance at leveraging Steam and becoming the next big thing. But since it doesn't, they never hit the front-page and the same tired (but popular) games are constantly regurgitated on the carousel and in the discovery queues.

My carousel:

Total War: Rome - Ark - Rimworld - Under Leaves - Last Epoch - Poly Bridge - Rain on Your Parade - Space Haven - 7 Days to Die - Universim - Project Hospital

Quite a mixture I'd say...

Discovery New Releases:
Battle in the City - ADD - Lair Hockey - Neon Nights (Boooobs!) - Creatura - ....

An endless stretch of indie titles. And in all honesty: neither do I pay attention the carousel (never) nor do I care about the queues. Must have been the first time that I clicked through the first couple of entries.
Interestingly are all those successful indie titles not only successful but also f*cking good. Hundreds of them: Dead Cells, Everspace, Limbo, Factorio, Mindustry, Opus Magnum, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Among Us...
One could say: That's the reason. And not because they got a popular spot on the carousel.

I just realized something.
If you hate the 30% and you hate Steam because of that...
You hate Open Source.
You hate Linux Gaming.
You hate people being well paid for their hard work and for having 48 hours a week jobs.

When I see posts from Pierre Louis Griffais, when I see Steam doing pushes in Open Source API, libraries, and projects, when I see new features and fixes for Proton, when I read development was halted because an employee got sick or got pregnant, when I see new features on the Steam store, like Play Together, Steam Labs and Streaming, when I see Steam offering keys for crowdfunding campaigns...
There I know that 30% cut is not going straight to Gabe Newell's Belly.

Lowering the cut could mean Steam should cut staff including those ones who made possible Gaming in Linux being as easy as pressing a button, I mean any game!!

From Sonic ASRT to The Witcher 3 I have enjoyed playing these games on Steam every single second in my Ubuntu installation, I have the convenience and the freedom.

You are free to support the 11% cut of EPIC and their up to 100 hours a week jobs and their ZERO collaborations to the Open Source community.

Keep hating and feel free to flag this commentary. Happy hating.

Are you trying to say that one company to rule them all is....good? If you honestly can't think of why that situation is harmful, then I suggest you do a bit of digging around on what happens when there isn't competition. From what I hear, Internet connectivity options in the USA is a good example to start with.

He said the situation at the moment is bad. No company at the moment is the one that rules everything.

Sidestepping the issue there. Valve have far too much control over gaming. Any one company with the amount of control that they have, is bad. It doesn't matter if Valve themselves aren't trying to abuse the situation (and they most certainly are not altruistic with their intentions either of course), the situation is not good.

--edit:
I think this is relevant, but do look up the requirements for PAX Online 2020. It was a requirement for indie games to be on Steam. As in you could not even put a submission to the event if the game wasn't on Steam. That's....not good.

I'm not sidestepping in the slightest. I don't see that issue at the moment. Gaming makes billions. Everybody can develop and publish games now without any hurdle. It's never been better.

The very article you link to also has Epic stating that 12% is enough to cover their running cost. Yes, no profit from that alone. So increase it to 15%. Now you've got profit (3% is a very good profit margin as every trader on this planet will tell you) and still only take half of what Valve takes.
Hell, take 20%. Now your profit margin is in the "investors' wet dream" area and STILL 1/3rd less than Valve's...

Weird how that goes, huh?

Please, take a look on the numbers. They're leveraging their store with Fortnite, the profit they get from selling third party games is nowhere near to cover their store expenses.

Not anymore, though. So the same cut you imply was not enough now suddenly is.
Seems to me they just didn't know how to run a business in their field and then wisened up a bit, cutting costs.
Besides, don't forget that Valve also gets their share of MTX from games, which is a large amount. GOG doesn't, afaik.
Also don't forget about DLCs, which often enough mean practically 0 additional cost for the storefront (DLCs tend to be tiny and they share the same infrastructure as the main game).

And finally, GOG is simply MUCH smaller than Steam.
Costs scale inversely to size - probably in all fields, but especially when it comes to IT infrastructure. Based on that alone, Steam could affort a smaller cut than GOG.

As far I know, GOG cut is still the same. It's fun to see that GOG store can ask for more as they are small but, at the same time, 12%, 15% or 20% should be the gold number to follow (with 20% being actually a possible cut for Steam as well) as it should cover all the expenses.

I think that making every complain so focused in this 30% cut number is what definitely makes all this discussion just a mere mirror of Epic BS. There is only one job that Epic has to do in order to be a better store than Steam, and it's just to make a better platform that Steam. The problem is that they don't want to, they just want to have a guerrilla war with Steam, not giving any benefit to us, the users.

I just realized something.
If you hate the 30% and you hate Steam because of that...
You hate Open Source.
You hate Linux Gaming.
You hate people being well paid for their hard work and for having 48 hours a week jobs.

When I see posts from Pierre Louis Griffais, when I see Steam doing pushes in Open Source API, libraries, and projects, when I see new features and fixes for Proton, when I read development was halted because an employee got sick or got pregnant, when I see new features on the Steam store, like Play Together, Steam Labs and Streaming, when I see Steam offering keys for crowdfunding campaigns...
There I know that 30% cut is not going straight to Gabe Newell's Belly.

Lowering the cut could mean Steam should cut staff including those ones who made possible Gaming in Linux being as easy as pressing a button, I mean any game!!

From Sonic ASRT to The Witcher 3 I have enjoyed playing these games on Steam every single second in my Ubuntu installation, I have the convenience and the freedom.

You are free to support the 11% cut of EPIC and their up to 100 hours a week jobs and their ZERO collaborations to the Open Source community.

Keep hating and feel free to flag this commentary. Happy hating.

By the same logic you hate open source if you don't support Epic because Epic throws money at FOSS projects like Blender and Godot Engine. So maybe the issue is a bit more complex than this, and your comment doesn't really make a good argument?

Are you trying to say that one company to rule them all is....good? If you honestly can't think of why that situation is harmful, then I suggest you do a bit of digging around on what happens when there isn't competition. From what I hear, Internet connectivity options in the USA is a good example to start with.

He said the situation at the moment is bad. No company at the moment is the one that rules everything.

Sidestepping the issue there. Valve have far too much control over gaming. Any one company with the amount of control that they have, is bad. It doesn't matter if Valve themselves aren't trying to abuse the situation (and they most certainly are not altruistic with their intentions either of course), the situation is not good.

--edit:
I think this is relevant, but do look up the requirements for PAX Online 2020. It was a requirement for indie games to be on Steam. As in you could not even put a submission to the event if the game wasn't on Steam. That's....not good.

I'm not sidestepping in the slightest. I don't see that issue at the moment. Gaming makes billions. Everybody can develop and publish games now without any hurdle. It's never been better.

Never been better doesn't mean it's as good as it should be.

What should it be like then? And if it's as terrible as he said, what was it like 20 or 30 years ago?