Last year, they all came crawlin' back to Steam, and this year was another strong one for Valve.

From the opinion piece:

Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.

  • The HobbyistEnglish
    68·
    11 months ago

    I don’t see how any of that justifies that valve prohibits publishers from selling their games for cheaper on a platform other than steam.

    If anything, the 30% cut is significant and if a developer finds a cheaper platform elsewhere, why wouldn’t he also be allowed to sell his game for cheaper there too?

    It’s really dubious to see valve try to control developers market strategies on platforms other than steam.

    • HeavyRaptorEnglish
      121·
      11 months ago

      I think it only prohibits them from selling steam keys for cheaper elsewhere. It serves to protect steam from bad actor publishers that would try to cut steam out by selling keys on their own website, not paying the 30% platform fee while still using steam’s infrastructure to deliver the game to players. Source

      It’s amazing that steam offers this functionality at all, not even mentioning they don’t charge anything for generating keys.

      • Wilzax@lemmy.worldEnglish
        51·
        11 months ago

        Reddit is not a source, but the source linked in that post isn’t really clear.

        However, in this Ars Technica article they state ‘Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this “parity” rule only applies to the “free” Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn’t responded to a request for comment on this story.’