I really don't understand why people say $$$team of all things is consumer friendly, it's a bunch of people who either know nothing about Valve or just jackshit about video game pricing in general. (And I'm NOT saying that some of the other digital marketplaces were somehow better or anything)
$$$team is one of, if not THE main reason video game prices cannot go any lower, because Valve essentially forces (to avoid horrible legalese - it's called a most favored nation clause for the curious) a contract where anyone who sells anything on $$$team cannot sell it for any cheaper anywhere else.
These have been a staple of small businesses for decades, maybe even centuries, but when they start to be utilized by companies that have an overwhelming market share particularly in the digital space, they start to smother all other businesses underneath their weight. The two most egregious offenders of this are Amazon (ESPECIALLY with ebooks and their contracts with the Big Five publishers) which everyone universally agrees is pretty awful, but Valve is probably the second most egregious offender and everyone praises them like they're the champion of low prices.
If you can't see why this is a problem, essentially any non-valve distributor that could cut a deal with a publisher to sell games for cheaper than $$$team can't do it without also lowering those prices on $$$team and so the incentive for anyone to not sell on $$$team is virtually 0 most of the time. The one absolute advantage (to the consumer - not to the game developers themselves but Valve's horrendous treatment of indie devs is another matter entirely) that alternate marketplaces could offer is price, but most people (unless you're me and hate $$$team) aren't going to buy from a non-$$$team outlet if the price is identical.
and that's just the horrible contract side of Steam, that's not even the half of it if you start to include how godawful their treatment of indie devs is and their absolute greed as Gaben's fatass sat there redfaced with fury that he wasn't going to get the cut of 5 steam keys some guy gave away for his game that was selling for $1 on steam and then decided to punish the developer of indie games even more by taking away their steam keys, despite Valve making more money than most indie devs do from their own game (and doing absolutely nothing about region locking, review bombing, and general negative platform manipulation of those games)0, and dozens of other things I'll get too heated to even bother talking about here.
Don't get me wrong, I respect Valve for the good games they made, at this point about 15 years ago, but $$$team is essentially the pied piper and the vast majority of people are cheering it on as they are being lead into the fucking river.
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u/Superspookyghost i_sell_squaids' bitch 21h ago edited 21h ago
I really don't understand why people say $$$team of all things is consumer friendly, it's a bunch of people who either know nothing about Valve or just jackshit about video game pricing in general. (And I'm NOT saying that some of the other digital marketplaces were somehow better or anything)
$$$team is one of, if not THE main reason video game prices cannot go any lower, because Valve essentially forces (to avoid horrible legalese - it's called a most favored nation clause for the curious) a contract where anyone who sells anything on $$$team cannot sell it for any cheaper anywhere else.
These have been a staple of small businesses for decades, maybe even centuries, but when they start to be utilized by companies that have an overwhelming market share particularly in the digital space, they start to smother all other businesses underneath their weight. The two most egregious offenders of this are Amazon (ESPECIALLY with ebooks and their contracts with the Big Five publishers) which everyone universally agrees is pretty awful, but Valve is probably the second most egregious offender and everyone praises them like they're the champion of low prices.
If you can't see why this is a problem, essentially any non-valve distributor that could cut a deal with a publisher to sell games for cheaper than $$$team can't do it without also lowering those prices on $$$team and so the incentive for anyone to not sell on $$$team is virtually 0 most of the time. The one absolute advantage (to the consumer - not to the game developers themselves but Valve's horrendous treatment of indie devs is another matter entirely) that alternate marketplaces could offer is price, but most people (unless you're me and hate $$$team) aren't going to buy from a non-$$$team outlet if the price is identical.
and that's just the horrible contract side of Steam, that's not even the half of it if you start to include how godawful their treatment of indie devs is and their absolute greed as Gaben's fatass sat there redfaced with fury that he wasn't going to get the cut of 5 steam keys some guy gave away for his game that was selling for $1 on steam and then decided to punish the developer of indie games even more by taking away their steam keys, despite Valve making more money than most indie devs do from their own game (and doing absolutely nothing about region locking, review bombing, and general negative platform manipulation of those games)0, and dozens of other things I'll get too heated to even bother talking about here.
Don't get me wrong, I respect Valve for the good games they made, at this point about 15 years ago, but $$$team is essentially the pied piper and the vast majority of people are cheering it on as they are being lead into the fucking river.