After it seeming like Valve might have won in the lawsuit from Wolfire Game, the story appears to be far from over.
Last we heard it was in part being dismissed, seemingly like Valve had the upper hand as Wolfire didn't have sufficient evidence of their claims. Now though, as reported by Bloomberg Law, part of the case has been allowed to continue as the judge now seems to believe that it's "plausible" Valve uses their position to mess with the market in their favour.
The issue here, as before, is that Wolfire claim that Valve and Steam use a "most favoured nation" clause with a mixture of "written and unwritten rules" to "prevent price competition from rival storefronts". Wolfire are again sticking to their claim that Valve would remove games from Steam that are found cheaper elsewhere, noting that a "Steam account manager" told Wolfire that Valve would "delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys" and it's this that has the judge saying "These allegations are sufficient to plausibly allege unlawful conduct" and so it's going to continue on that point.
Other claims like the 30% cut Valve take being "supracompetitive", and another antitrust issue of Valve tying together the Steam Store and Steam Platform seem to be dismissed.
Whenever we hear what happens next, we'll let you know.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: EikeI feel it would be something different though, on one hand just selling the game for less somewhere else, and on the other hand explicitly telling the customers "If you you would buy on Steam, you would pay more for our game!" The latter sounds like actively hurting Valve's business.Of course it would be. But you get way less sympathy with, say, a judge, or the gaming press, if you say "we threatened to piss a business partner off so much that they wouldn't want to do business with us any more" than "big bad Valve is pushing around the little guy." They said
QuoteWhen new video game stores were opening that charged much lower commissions than Valve, I decided that I would provide my game "Overgrowth" at a lower price to take advantage of the lower commission rates. I intended to write a blog post about the results. But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam.
This is the don't take the piss provision about Steam keys that Wolfire had already agreed to:
QuoteYou should use 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.
It's OK to run a discount on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
Occasionally it may make sense to offer your game in a bundle or subscription, timed at the right point in a game's life cycle. Keep in mind that the perceived price in the bundle/subscription should be a price you are willing to run the game at a standalone price or discount on Steam. Philosophically, you can think about it like any other discount: if you’re making an aggressive offer in one place, make it elsewhere too. We want to avoid a situation where customers get a worse offer on the Steam store, so feel free to reach out to us via the Developer Support tool if you want to talk through a specific scenario.
Wolfire's specific scenario of "I'm going to publicise how I'm giving Steam customers a worse deal" was never gonna fly.
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