Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: CatKillerDo we know if they're partnering with someone, or doing it themselves?

Probably not.
I honestly don't know, which dorpbear Valve had to kill, but since their release misses any reference to their future partners and such releases are prime real estate for partnership announcements I feel safe to assume that they're not partnering with anybody except Australian quality control.

That suggests to me that they did want to partner with someone like they've done for the Asian countries it's been released in (they said that Japan and Australia were "furthest along" when asked about other countries during the conference around the launch), but it fell through and they've taken it on themselves - hence the delay. You're right that if they were partnering with someone they'd probably have said so in the announcement so that they were treating that partner well.

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Do we know if they're partnering with someone, or doing it themselves?

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However, like we've seen from a few games over the last year, desktop Linux users have issues since the game appears to look for the Steam Deck specifically. To get around it you need to spoof your desktop Linux PC to appear as a Steam Deck with this Steam launch option

It's so weird that game devs do that, especially when there are fewer Deck users on Steam than non-Deck Linux users on Steam. It's just so sloppy.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualThreatening to de-list a publisher's game from Steam if they do not bring the price down to match the game's price on other stores has a direct impact on other stores—namely, Epic Games Store (EGS).

Note that it's not just that they don't want publishers to specifically rip off Steam customers on price, they also don't want them to shaft Steam customers on content. If, say, a game bought on PlayStation has a PlayStation exclusive item, and bought on Xbox has an Xbox exclusive item, and bought on EGS has an EGS exclusive item, then they for sure want the game bought on Steam to have an equivalent Steam item.

As to whether games can be sold cheaper on EGS (or wherever), they absolutely can.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI agree with all of this, though assuming all of these emails are factual, I don't think any amount of context will change my opinion. But we'll see.

What Valve have said is that they want their customers to get a fair deal, and if it looks like they aren't they would like to find out why and if there's anything they can do to change that. Is that "getting a good deal for your customers" or is that "monopolistic price-fixing"? Given that it's publishers that set their own prices, and you can find games cheaper than on Steam, is there any actual harm from Valve's actions even if their intent was super nefarious? Those are the kinds of questions that the court would have to find answers for.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualDo you have a link to Valve's rebuttal? I'd be interested in reading it.

It's the first two attachments (reports from two expert witnesses) on the motion to exclude testimony of Dr Schwarz, as I recall. The first one is about 300 pages. It's a while since I read it. Um... these two, I think: Attachment 1 [External Link] and Attachment 2 [External Link]

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI won't pretend to understand the specifics here (and there are a lot of documents to sift through), but my understanding is that these are direct quotes from emails. I think the only way Valve could come out of this cleanly is if the emails were completely fabricated.

But it does seem early to conclude whether that is evidence or not.

Oh, I'm sure they were excerpts of actual emails sent from actual people at Valve. Discovery dredges up a tonne of stuff - from other companies, too, as you noted. The court will look at the context of the documents, and both sides will make their arguments, and the court will decide whether it shows a policy or pattern of wrongdoing, or whether it's just perfectly fine course of business stuff.

Plaintiffs have to throw every accusation they can, since they can't generally add them afterwards, and then they have to dig around to find something that might support their position; the court case is what determines whether there's any validity to it.

Media and commentators love to look at accusations of the plaintiff, since they get to go first and they necessarily have to throw in the most salacious stuff, whereas actual court cases are really long and kinda boring.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanualIn the Exhibit 85 document on Aug 23, 2024, there is some reference to emails from Valve about price parity that is being submitted as evidence.

For context, the plaintiff's expert witness produced a report saying what the plaintiff wanted; Valve's expert witness (compellingly, IMO) said that plaintiff's report was terrible and shouldn't be allowed in the case, and the document you're looking at is plaintiffs arguing that their export report should totally be allowed. None of it's actually in the case as evidence yet. Both sides are still in the "what is this case actually about" stage. Although, to be fair, once "what a case is actually about" is decided in anti-trust cases, the outcome tends to follow directly - hence the years of haggling before that point.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the anti-trust stuff

What about the price parity enforcement Valve has been doing?

There's been no evidence that that's a thing that they've done.

Maybe some evidence of that will turn up, but it hasn't yet.

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Quoting: KithopI'll echo the sentiment here though: good news for publishers, but they're doing *nothing* for consumers, so why should we care?

Their plan is to starve Steam users of games, so you should probably care. There's definitely no reason to welcome it, of course.

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Quoting: ElectricPrism

Epic Games reduce their cut for Unreal Engine games for same-day Epic Store launches

I'm pretty sure that is illegal and that other companies have been litigated against for this kind of thing.

You'd have to show that Unreal Engine had a dominant market position in game engines, and that they were using that to unfairly tie the Epic Games Store. It's a feasible argument, but not a slam dunk.

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