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Steam/Valve Class Action lawsuit?

I have a REALLY bad feeling about this. But Valve has billions to hire the best lawyers. Steam is what's saving us from having to make a damn digital account for every dang game publisher out there. Imagine having 100 accounts for your 100 AAA games from different publishers.
 
WelshBloke said:
Arguing that Steam has a monopoly is weird. Most of the games on Steam are available to purchase from the makers as well aren't they?
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They are saying that Steam forces the game developers/publishers to sign a contract that they can't have their games on competing platforms selling for lesser price than on Steam. This is their whole argument that this practice violates free market economy principles.

Question arises: Do they have a copy of said contract? Then whoever shared that copy is likely in direct violation of their NDA with Steam.
 
igor_kavinski said:
They are saying that Steam forces the game developers/publishers to sign a contract that they can't have their games on competing platforms selling for lesser price than on Steam. This is their whole argument that this practice violates free market economy principles.
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Thats only if they want to sell on Steam as well though. If they don't then Valve has no leverage over them. And the PC games market isn't a closed shop. It's no more difficult for me to buy from Steam or 'random game developer with a payment system '.
 
igor_kavinski said:
They are saying that Steam forces the game developers/publishers to sign a contract that they can't have their games on competing platforms selling for lesser price than on Steam. This is their whole argument that this practice violates free market economy principles.

Question arises: Do they have a copy of said contract? Then whoever shared that copy is likely in direct violation of their NDA with Steam.
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Apple does this with their products
 
igor_kavinski said:
Steam is what's saving us from having to make a damn digital account for every dang game publisher out there.
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Sure, sure, they do that by...forcing us to make a digital account for Valve (the publisher) games. At least some EA and Ubi games are on other platforms like GOG. Please show us to how buy, install and run Valve games like Half-Life and L4D without a Steam account.

Steam is just as bad as the rest of them. The only difference is they got there first.
 
Show me a better digital platform. Steam is a market leader for a reason and it's not down to just being one of the first, that's just disrespectful. Looks at Microsoft "Games for Windows Live".

Look at what Valve has done with Steam deck. You can play now play what was a Sony exclusive on a Steam deck. Sony is now embracing Steam(and PC).


Yes please continue to tell me that Steam is the big baddy. A lot of corporations have billions to spend on development and haven't achieved anything close to Steam.

You are stuck in the past If you're still bitching and moaning about not being able to buy Half Life or LFD without a Steam account. Get with the times.
 
Them requiring you to sign a retainer is different. Paragraph 4 could be a problem.


If your claim is successful, then you agree to pay to the attorneys a fee equal to 40% of the gross amount recovered for you.

Under no circumstances will the attorneys collect an unreasonably large fee.

Under no circumstances will you ever owe attorneys’ fees beyond a portion of your recovery.

If your claim is successful, you agree to reimburse the attorneys from the remainder of the recovery for the expenses the attorneys advance on your behalf to pursue your claim. These expenses only include things reasonably necessary to pursue your claims, such as filing fees, postage, arbitration costs, court reporters, transcript fees, payments to expert witnesses and consultants, travel expenses, and all other litigation and arbitration expenses that we in our professional judgment determine to be reasonably necessary in connection with prosecuting or settling your claim. If we represent more than one client with claims similar to yours (which we intend to do), we may apportion expenses that go toward pursuing the claims of all clients on a pro rata basis among you and similar clients, but only if those expenses can reasonably be viewed as benefitting you and the other clients. Also, the law may, under certain circumstances, allow us to petition the court or an arbitrator for an award of attorneys’ fees that the Company (not you) would have to pay. You agree that the attorneys may petition for that award and that any such award will belong to the attorneys. You grant the attorneys a lien to secure payment of the fees and expenses described by this agreement.

The 40% is not unreasonable, but making me agree to expenses beyond the 40% fee is getting a bit greedy, and could be shady.
 
Jeffrey Zaiger, nine-time “Super Lawyer”
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Sign me the **** up!

Seriously though, of all the stupid reasons to sue someone, this is definitely up there. Trying to blame Valve because nobody else created a competitive digital distributor is actually insane; not to mention their games weren't even overpriced to begin with. Maybe I misunderstood that link, but it seems stupid to think anyone would be entitled to compensation simply because they looked at their library and realized they've purchased over 1,000 games. Hell, I'm pushing 750 games on Steam and I can guarantee that I bought at least 95% of them on sale.
 
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GodisanAtheist said:
I mean, how does this lawsuit and every "Steam Sale - Abused Wallet" Meme intersect.

My fragile mind can't square the circle.
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I’m certainly not a lawyer
I am going to guess simply by Steams huge size they will be going after steam sales hurt smaller digital publishers by sometimes selling the game(s) below cost and/or the predictability of steam sales and listings is setting a market minimum and the lawyers will pursue some sort of collusion angle.

fun fact and the details may be slightly off because it happened 98-ish.
I worked in telecom, telecom is terrified of collusion like behavior since they have a bad history of it. When I went into sales one of the mandatory training I had included a video of these two furniture salespeople from I think the 60s. Simple summary I remember was salesperson one sees competitor salesperson at some furniture show in VA, he says to the other guy something to the effect “I hate going to CA because my stuff ships from NJ and it never arrives in time and nearly all my orders get cancelled”
West coast competitor says “yeah something similar happens to me when I go to NY, it’s a waste of my time to head to NY”
That’s all nothing else happened. One salesperson stopped going to the others territory and the other ultimately did the same. Office(?) furniture prices rose in those two areas because one major operator stopped visiting the territory.
The Gov got involved and I think both salespeople were fined, lost the ability to sell furniture and possibly some jail time.
Point was collusion doesn’t have to be the typical quid pro quo. There doesn’t have to be a spoken agreement.
Again be careful with this story because I watched that damn training video more than two decades ago.
 
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igor_kavinski said:
They are saying that Steam forces the game developers/publishers to sign a contract that they can't have their games on competing platforms selling for lesser price than on Steam. This is their whole argument that this practice violates free market economy principles.

Question arises: Do they have a copy of said contract? Then whoever shared that copy is likely in direct violation of their NDA with Steam.
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Is that just for regualr price? I've seen games on sale be lower elsewhere than on Steam sales.
 
Artorias said:
Show me a better digital platform.
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Oh, that's easy: GOG. The only platform where you actually own your games.

The rest (including Steam) are simply perpetual subscription which can be revoked at any time. No concept of ownership, just a "service".

Also Steam happily allows multi-DRM. Just look at EA and Ubisoft with Denuvo, VMs, and external launchers required all at once. With GOG you have none of that crap.

Steam is a market leader for a reason and it's not down to just being one of the first, that's just disrespectful. Looks at Microsoft "Games for Windows Live".
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Nah, if they didn't have the HL franchise it would've never taken off because HL2 was used to blackmail people into using it.
 
Is this legit? Should I sign up? I am not sure. I could get money, or I could get a bunch of email spam...
 
Steam is one of the more obnoxious platforms out there. I have the vast majority of my games on there and many features like VR or workshop mods require it, but that doesn't make it great. It still lacks basic features like setting game install folders or rolling back game updates. GOG's platform (including Galaxy) is better in every way, but Steam is not going anywhere at this point. It became the market leader precisely because it came many years before all the others.
 
I would imagine that the PMFN type clauses are commonplace for digital goods, where the storefront tells the publisher that if they want to use the storefront they can't favor another storefront. That makes sense. No storefront is going to want to take on the burden of hosting a product just to be used as free (or relatively free) exposure or marketing when it will be easy for consumers to turn elsewhere for a better deal. Valve doesn't set the prices on Steam, so they can't drop the price to match another storefront where a game is sold for less (normal price, not sale price). This extends to the control of the Steam keys, where Valve is saying that any Steam keys you sell independently must be sold in the same manner (at the same price), because you're effectively piggybacking on Steam.

The "enabled for Steam" phrase is interesting. Sounds like the lawyers are trying to double up on the accusations by saying that games that don't use a Steam key for verification aren't the same game and that Valve is therefore trying to control non-Steam games. I think there have been a couple cases where some save files can't be moved between different storefronts due to the hosted version (note: googled real quick but couldn't find anything, would appreciate some confirmation if this is true or not) but for the most part this sounds like legal nitpicking to try to say "look at all these other bad things they're doing".

Valve might be a bit greedy but publishers and developers get something for Valve's higher cut in exposure to the relatively large Steam-dedicated userbase. Worth it? Maybe, maybe not. Illegal? Not at all. This lawsuit is dumb.
 
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