Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: randylThe contract between Valve and the publishers/developers may have clauses or stipulations which give an "MFN" status and that has to be determined during the hearing.

Aaaah! MFN is a term used to qualify a situation... They want to convince the court that some part of Valve's contract acts like a MFN. Is that so?

Edit: For the record... Don't know why I haven't tought about that in the first place:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_favoured_nation [External Link]

This seems to be so and more so that if their contract has an MFN clause that it harms both consumers and developers. If you have the time to listen to the YouTube video that was posted earlier the lawyer explains what this is and how it could apply to Valve. He goes over the highlights of the law suit and explains what it means legally and what it might mean for Valve or the plaintiff.

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: MohandevirFunny... Thinking about it... 5 "random" (Yeah right!) gamers that seem to be unable to correctly read a EULA learned of the MFN which is closed behind an NDA between developpers and Valve... Who broke the NDA then? Will the plantiffs be able to produce the proof of the MFN without compromising the identity of the NDA leaker(s)? Because that could legally cost them a lot. Like it was said... Follow the money.

Did I get something wrong?

That one thing is no problem for the plaintiffs, if this goes to court then Valve will be forced to disclose the MFN to the court and to the plaintiffs during the discovery phase. So there is no need to produce who was the leaker, however the court could of course deem that this whole affair is nothing more than a fishing expedition to make the MFN public so the whole thing can die right there.

This is not accurate. There is no "MFN". An "MFN" isn't a contract in and of itself. There is a contractual agreement with an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) between Valve and the publisher. This may or may not be introduced, but it isn't an absolute given and the plaintiffs don't necessarily have the ability to include that. The fact that they didn't include it in the complaint, and the implication behind that, was discussed in the video.

The contract between Valve and the publishers/developers may have clauses or stipulations which give an "MFN" status and that has to be determined during the hearing. And then it has to be proven to be proven unfavorable to consumers. And then they have to prove that Valve and those publishers colluded to set prices to the detriment of the public while also harming those publishers who colluded to set prices.

The video linked earlier in the article is really worth watching. It helps clarify a lot and can eliminate some of our lay assumptions and understandings. A lot of the comments in this thread are emotionally based on what posters think should happen, but the court proceedings will be based on law and precedence.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: F.UltraTook me until I read the actual filing to realise that the 5 plaintiffs where all gamers, I for some reason thought that they where game developers.

Are you sure about this? That does make the whole thing indeed sound incredibly weird.

It's 3 people that have bought games on Steam for themselves, and 2 people that have bought games on Steam for their children (which they think means they aren't themselves subject to the Steam Subscriber Agreement, despite them necessarily checking the box to say that they are). They aren't the sharpest pencils in the box.

Just to clarify, as explained in the video above, the 2 adults are buying games for their minor children on the accounts of their children. The lawsuit doesn't stipulate the age of the children but Steam does not allow children 13 and under to have an account. That muddies the water a lot.

Quoting: EagleDelta

Quoting: Purple Library GuyHuh. Well, I guess if the allegation is true, that Valve's secret contracts involve making developers not sell their games cheaper anywhere else as a condition of being able to sell on Steam, that's kind of anti-competitive in that it stops other stores from trying to gain market share by underselling Steam. And if you foreclose on the whole concept of competition on price, that's likely to be bad for consumers.

Given the high hurdles in US antitrust law, even if the allegation is true that might well not be enough for Valve to actually lose the lawsuit, as noted by EagleDelta etc. But it's still a practice I'd find somewhat annoying--sure, you can understand why they'd want to do it, but then it's easy to understand why any company would do any anti-competitive practice . . . no company wants to be successfully competed against.

Of course if it ain't true then the filers are just assholes. And whether it's true or not, the filers could have questionable motivations and backing.

If you watch the video I linked, he talks about how MFNs are actually fairly standard across several industries. Additionally, without seeing the contracts, which I might add may require permission from the game developers to show, we only have the SteamWorks docs to go off. The video author noted that the contents there are not written in a way that constitutes an MFN. It's pretty much a "We don't know" right now.

Agreed! The video is very much worth a watch if anyone is truly interested in the legalities and details. There is is a strong legal argument for Valve having crossed some legal lines with their market share influence. But as the lawyer in the video explains that area in general is very gray.

The lawsuit further muddies the issue by naming several game publishers in the lawsuit including CD Projekt, Ubisoft, and several others. They claim these publishers have colluded with Valve while also being the victims of Valve which is an awkward position to sell.

There isn't much evidence actually presented by the case outside of economic theorizing and Tim Sweeney tweets. However the one part of the case, concerning Valve's market share influence, does have some evidence and statements by a Valve employee that support their claim that Valve is misusing its market dominance. Again, the problem being that there are many factors the claimants will need to clarify and solidly support in order for them to win unless they get a very sympathetic judge and jury.

TL;DR - watch the video because it is informative.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: ZlopezThey are saying that you can't have different prices on different platforms. So they actually dictate the price you need to have elsewhere. So if you have a game on Steam and GOG and there is GOG sale going on, you need to lower price on Steam too.

They don't.

A game dev can sell their game anywhere, at any price they want. No skin off Valve's nose.

If a game dev sells Steam keys (which Valve generates for free, just for the asking) through a store that isn't Steam, at a lower price than they sell them on Steam, then they also need to sell them on Steam at that price at some point. So, as an example, a lot of the games sold in the recent Humble sale were distributed as Steam keys at a lower price than they were going for on Steam; those prices then got lowered on Steam itself once Humble's sale was over.

The lawsuit is talking about the main Steam distribution agreement though, not the Steamworks Steam Keys agreement. They're two different things. As far as I can tell, the Distribution Agreement is confidential and so we cannot see it. This is where the MFN clause is contained.

The agreement does not state as such. Did you do some digging to find out what the agreement is or did you assume it's all private? You source the Hollywood Reporter which doesn't actually do good diligent investigative journalism and find out what the contract says. The lawsuit makes claims it hasn't substantiated and won't until it goes to court. The wording, at the very least, can be misleading, if not outright false.

I've seen that agreement before and it says something to the effect that that publishers must provide Steam users with a deal that is as good for their users as other users. That is they can't provide Steam users with a worse offering. It does not say they must be the same price.

Ubisoft sells some of their Assassin's Creed games (the Ezio collection for example) cheaper on their platform in different bundles than they sell on Steam. Steam users get those games bundled in different packages at a different price, but they aren't exactly the same offering.

What many Epic exclusive developers have done in the past is use Steam as an advertising platform while not selling their games through the Steam Store, but pointing to Epic as the exclusive vendor.

The lawsuit makes many claims which are based on social media rants, such as clause 67 which states "Game developers overwhelmingly believe that the Steam platform does not justify a 30% commission fee on their earnings." Meanwhile they seemingly have no problem with Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (PlayStation), and Nintendo (Switch) all charging that same 30% fee. Rhetorically speaking, why are they singling out Valve as the market manipulator when all 3 of those other platforms have greater market reach and influence?

Maybe Valve is abusing their market position, but neither this or the Hollywood Reporter article even scratch the surface, dig deeper, and ask probing questions. In fact, both assume the plaintiff is correct and draw leading conclusions based off the claims in the lawsuit.

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Quoting: Egonaut

Quoting: rkfgThis is very bad and stupid. They basically force Valve to set the same prices everywhere, no matter how strong economic is in certain countries. I

No they don't. They force Valve and other Publishers to redeem keys all over the EU no matter in which EU country they have been bought. If Valve changes the Prices due to this, it's all up to them and not forced by anyone.

Valve doesn't set the price of a game, publishers do. Valve applies publisher set regional pricing and key validation restrictions so some countries don't have to pay the same price as more economically powerful nations and regions. This was asked for by both players and publishers.

This will just result in poorer countries paying more, or video game pricing going up for all. It sounds to me like richer Euros don't really care about that though. Let those poor nations eat video game cake if they can't afford bread!

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Quoting: ziabiceBefore I can't play the game because Proton can't run it, now I can't play it because Steam keeps on downloading the Windows version instead of the Linux one.

Yes, I already unchecked the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" option, deleted all the original downloaded files, restarted Steam several times, (re)downloaded several times, but nothing helped me. Any advice?

You could try forcing the Steam Linux Runtime which should install the native version.

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Linux gamers demand a native port, "no tux no bux", etc.

An official supported native port is released within 6 months of the Windows release, but then balk because "the price is too high".

Linux gamers are then puzzled why commercial game developers continue to balk at releasing and supporting native ports.

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It looks like things are shaping up nicely for Stadia as a value package. Their library is growing nicely. The Ubisoft integration is great.

On the other hand it's kind of odd and almost sleazy scammy they stopped a promotion because it was too successful. They advertised it being valid until the 17th and that should be honored. Stopping it so people will have to pay instead is pretty low brow.

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Zelda meets Sonic meets Galaga. :D

It looks charming.

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Wow, WINE has really come a long way in the last ~15 years since I started using Linux. It has really made huge strides in the last 2 - 3 years. I remember when Windows apps barely ran and very few ran well. Now a lot of programs run like native. Well done to that team. They deserve a lot of credit.

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