QuoteHonestly it amazes me companies, bigger ones especially, don't see how these projects can benefit them and instead send the lawyers.

Agreed but I wonder if this is not happening the other way around, aka this is 100% the lawyers and the company is not involved at all.

Lots of publishers outsource IP management like this to external law firms who then act on their behalf filing DMCA take downs left and right without consulting the publisher before.

Not to mention that in a behemoth like T2 there are probably zero low level people that can even act in cases like this and some small open source project for an "obsolete" old game will not reach the people at the top unless they themselves are avid gamers and very interested in their own products, most of them are just economists and/or lawyers anyway.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI notice that the allegation in the blog post says nothing about the actual contract wording. He claims that a threat was made, presumably by someone with the power to enforce it, to kick his game off Steam if he didn't stick to price parity, even if no Steam keys were involved.
There are a couple of problems with that when it comes to mounting a lawsuit. First, it could be very hard to prove. If they have emails or something then sure, but if it was a threat uttered in a non-recorded Zoom meeting, then they deny it and what have you got? Second, even if the specific threat was proved, it could be very hard to prove that such threats represented company policy. It might not even be the case that it represented company policy. Valve disavow the loose cannon, say that their conduct in no way represent Valve's practices and they will redouble their training efforts to make sure such misinterpretations of the company's position by staff don't happen again, and that's that. I suppose if you were lucky you might be able to go on a Discovery fishing expedition and shake loose some internal memos directing people to pull that kind of stuff, but I would figure that to be a long shot.
If as F.Ultra says this stuff isn't in the lawsuit, on a positive interpretation it could be that it's true but they realized they couldn't get anywhere suing on that basis.

On the other hand . . . the other thing about an allegation like this is that, well, it may be true, but if it's not true it's a great way to lie precisely because it's almost impossible to either prove or disprove. Nobody expects you to come up with the evidence because there may well not be any. And the victim can't refute your claim, so you've tarred them forever.

I looked deeper into the filed paper and perhaps the Wolfire blog is a reference to claim #155:

Quote155.Valve has also threatened publishers that offered lower prices on other platforms, insisting that customers using the Steam Store should get a similar deal or else Valve may remove the publisher’s games from the Steam Gaming Platform altogether.

Valve has also interrogated publishers about their deals on smaller platforms like Humble Bundle or Discord that offer lower commission rates than Steam.

For example, Valve contacted publishers who released their games at a lower price on those competing platforms to demandsimilar deals on Steam.

Because of Valve’s pressure tactics, publishers were forced to revise their deals with Humble Bundle and Discord or withdraw their games from those platforms all together.

But it's presented as just hearsay when Wolfire as the litigant having first hand experience according to the blog so why do they just write that "publishers" where contacted and not "they contacted us" when the latter have a much higher value as evince since that is something that Wolfire could testify to in court while the claim that they actually make is not something that they can testify to.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: GuestAgree or not with Valve's price parity clause (disclaimer: I don't agree with that) but at least look at it on its own merits.

If there even is one...

Have you read the lawsuit?

And this topic is about a blog post of someone who is in a position to know if there is this clause or not. He's seen the clauses.

Unless you're calling him a liar. In which case I'd say that David Rosen has far more credibility than you do.

And I have quoted Chet Faliszek (ex-Valve employee), who said that such a clause doesn't exist.

Great. Show me the quote.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/05/david-rosen-of-wolfire-games-explains-why-theyre-taking-on-valve-in-a-lawsuit/comment_id=202951

Yeah....that doesn't say what you think it says. Someone is asking explicitly about price parity and there is, at the time of writing, no response to that.

If that's not the main point, what is?

Welcome to the world of manipulative language.
Most of the lawsuit is, in my opinion, full of it. But the price parity for places where there are no steam keys involved, is possibly quite serious, so it pays to be extra explicit about it.

Agreed that it would be quite serious, but I have one major problem here and that is that this whole affair sounds and looks like a Rudy Giuliani lawsuit where they say one thing out of court and one thing in court. What I mean by that is that on this blog Wolfire claim that they have personal experience with Valve threatening to withdraw their games if they sold it cheaper elsewhere even if no Steam keys where involved but in the actual paper that they filed with the court they only mention that a 3d party got that exact threat from Valve when Steam keys where involved.

So why not include their own experience of which they would have good evidence of unless this is just smoke and mirrors.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Mountain ManOf course this lawsuit is meritless like similar lawsuits before it. If a developer doesn't like Valve taking a 30% cut and not allowing the developer to undercut Valve on another platform, then they are free to sell through another store. If an indie developer wants better sales then they need to take it on themselves to do some marketing rather than thinking all they have to do is dump their game on Steam.

That's not the whole story of the lawsuit though. It's not just about a 30% cut, it's also about if you want to sell on Steam and another store, then Valve are (allegedly) forcing certain conditions related to using the other store. That puts a different perspective on the matter - it is (allegedly) using the market share of Steam to keep other stores from offering better prices.

I need to read more on it to form my own opinion on right or wrong, but the lawsuit is about it not being a simple matter of being free to sell through another store.

Again, Valve simply says upfront that if you want to use their platform to sell your product, then you agree not to then take your product to a competitor and undercut Valve. In other words, Valve doesn't want a developer using them as a promotional tool to gain exposure and then the developer driving business to a competitor by offering the competitor a lower price, and that's perfectly reasonable. If a developer doesn't like those terms then they are free to sell elsewhere.

Now if a competitor wants to sell at a lower price -- in other words, dip into their own profit margin -- then that's their business, and Valve can't do a damn thing about it. But the developer can't initiate it per his agreement with Valve.

That's where it gets a little murky. The last part, selling elsewhere at a lower price, is what the wording in sections 147 and 148 of the lawsuit appear to deal with. That's what I want more time to read about, and the part which might actually have merit in my view.

147 seams to be that Valve requires publishers to have the same discount on Steam if the game is sold with a long term discount on another store:

Quotewe’d just choose to stop selling a game if it was always running discounts of 75% off on one store but 50% off on ours. . .

And 148+ seams to be Wolfire arguing a possible slippery slope based on that.

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This bit is also interesting from the lawsuit:

QuoteValve blocks pro-competitive price competition through two main provisions—the Steam Key Price Parity Provision and the Price Veto Provision

Talk about being sneaky with words, in reality this is only about creating free steam-keys that you then can sell on other stores. So this have zero to do with abusing market dominance. Also the wording here is basically verbatim from Tim Sweeneys twitter from 2019: https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/1090663312814157824 so this does indeed sound like another Epic sponsored attack.

And I write attack since that is what it is, no one at Wolfire or Epic truly believes that this lawsuit will get any traction with the courts so this is just another PR attack against Valve. Not sure if Epic understands that they are fighting a well funded private company and not someone who needs to attract venture capitalists to raise funds.

Quoting: fagnerlnI find interesting how Linux users which spread "freedom" loves a law to hurt the freedom of a corporation. Google, Apple, Valve...

Those three it's on a comfortable state because they make good services. Instead of make the state interfere, just praise the alternative one

How in the hell a large cut is bad for competition? Wtf? This means that the competition have a wider cut to work: 25, 20, 15...

Just go to another store there's a bunch of them: itch, GoG, EGS, Windows Store, Humble, Origin, uPlay...

Having antitrust laws is not to "hurt the freedom of a corporation", they are there to prevent monopolies from abusing their market dominance. Just as we have say criminal laws that "hurts the freedom of the people with the largest capacity for violence", as a Linux user I "love" such laws as well.

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Fantastically fun and silly little game. Also somewhat refreshing to be able to finish in just under 3h, sometimes I'm just not in the mood to spend 300h+ on something.

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Fantastic news. Will buy a copy myself so no need to be included in any give-away.

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Quoting: Sayuri

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: hardpenguin

Quoting: CatKillerIt's generally quite straightforward: they aren't very good at game development.

The, "oh, but the sales," or, "oh, but the fragmentation," or, "oh, the graphics drivers," are just flimsy excuses because they don't want to admit to themselves that they kinda suck at their job.

No. And saying things like this only proves you have no idea not only about game development but also project management.

Making a game multiplatform from the start lets you make your game better cheaper, faster, and easier even if you never make a single sale on another platform. When you're looking for bugs to squash you want to throw your code at everything you can find. Different compilers, different environments. Bugs in your code might be elusive (but still present) in one environment, but be able to be replicated every time in a different one, which lets you find it and fix it. Making something work on Linux gets you a whole bunch of different compilers and environments for free, which helps you debug your code that you might also be using on Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, wherever. And, hey, now that your application is nicely modular and spec-compliant, with separation of tasks, and survives all sorts of changes in environment, you've got handy entry points should you want DLC, or to help with modding through Steam Workshop if you want.

But please, tell us more about how sloppy coding practices aren't a sign of sloppy coding practices.

Experience has taught me none of this is true.

25+ years experience in software development have taught me that @CatKiller is spot on. I can't even count the number of bugs that we fixed in our software for Windows when we initially ported it to Linux at a previous work place.

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Quoting: FeistI think I'll give this one a try as well!

FMVs have a bad reputation but I have enjoyed or even loved most of those I've played: Phantasmagoria, Realms of the Haunting, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within, Under a Killing Moon, Pandora Directive, Overseer and Tesla Effect.

So this is one special sub-genré that I'm very fond of.

Tried Contradicion? Not native (but works great in proton) and worked extremely well for a FMV.

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Quoting: GuestI just watched the trailer and noticed the Xbox, PS4 Logos and Switch Logos ... according to their Kickstarter they did not even reached that tier but now dropping Linux support!?

This is shady...

Well to be honest there is where the purchasing power is, which also makes it so strange that games have those as stretch goals.

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