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.

Are you saying that there are workarounds for the MFN? :grin:

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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.

I got many examples of that being false, but who knows, maybe there were "rogue sales" going on? Because that's my first reflex: when I see a sale on other stores, on a game in my wishlist, I check Steam if the sale is on Steam too and I can say that in many cases, there are no sales or the prices are different (higher by a couple of $ on Steam). What's the explanation? I don't know...

Edit: Just to be clear, regularly I find exactly the same sale on both stores.

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Quoting: ZlopezAlso the EPIC has it's own flaws

You said it. Instead of working on a better store, let's bring down the dominent platform? Maybe if Epic wanted to offer a better service, they would realize that the 12% cut is unsustainable too?

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: MohandevirReally not sure about this one... Nothing forces them to sell on Steam, anyway.

This is not how the PC gaming industry works, unfortunately.
You either sell on Steam or you can't sell your game because you don't got a large enough audience anywhere else.

It's either that or hoping for some kind of deal with Epic, Stadia, etc.

Sure, there are a handful of devs who managed to make some small profit without Steam, but those are so few and far between, they can be considered the exception that proves the rule.
EA tried to do that - as everyone knows, they failed and came crawling back to Steam.

Maybe, but my main point is that they are not doing this for the customers. This is just a false excuse. This one makes me really cynical.

This said... Blizzard is not on Steam, as far as I know? Overwatch? COD Warzone? WoW? Anybody?

Xbox, Playstation or Switch markets are not dictated by Steam either. Many developers are not publishing their games on PC at all.

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... they could lower their prices...

Looking forward to witness that. Quite sure that in the vast majority of cases it will lead to higher prices on Steam. End of story.

Really not sure about this one... Nothing forces them to sell on Steam, anyway.

Lets wait and see, but playing the white knight that will save the customers... Sorry, I'm not buying it. To me, it's just words.

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If I may add to this...

Personally, when it will become officially available on Android TV boxes (Project Hailstorm?), it's probably going to become what will take the relay of my PS4 or any other console. The experience is good enough, in my case, with the sideloaded app (which means not fully featured yet), on my Nvidia Shield.

I even deactivated GeForce Now because of the weird desktop integration and lack of customization; some default parameters are wrong (ex: language support) and there is no way to change them. The loading times are not that great either. Add to this that not all Steam games are available on GeForce Now... I much prefer the Steam Link app, at this point.

All that Stadia is still lacking is the gaming catalog that is still limited, but it gets better by the day (just like any other new console launch).

I already have 3 HDTV with Android TV boxes (ipTV)... One gaming service to rule them all. :wink:

Edit: Oh yeah! Forgot about the family share that is the best proposition out there... My daughter completed a Jedi: Fallen Order run (on her phone, on top of that :happy:) while I was playing Rage 2, thanks to Stadia family share that didn't lock the whole library when I logged in.

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Quoting: Comandante Ñoñardo

Quoting: MohandevirIs there anyone that can confirm?

Just got to the Blasphemous Steam store page and saw the ProtonDB rating of the game... I'm not even logged into my Steam account. Is this a new Steam Store feature? Did I do something to my browser (Firefox) that I don't remember?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/774361/Blasphemous/ [External Link]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/379720/DOOM/ [External Link]

Sorry if I just came back from hibernation under a rock...

Is a Firefox complement that you have installed.

Yeah... Probably got automatically synced to my Firefox account. I tought I had to log into my Steam account to activate it, but no. And I can't find the culprit.

It's probably just the fact that I rarely, if ever, use my web browser to access Steam store pages. Forgot about that plugin.

Sorry!

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Quoting: const

Quoting: LachuSomeone's told, this USB stick should contains Steam Link OS. I think, Valve should create Steam Link for Android instead.

I'm pretty sure this exists. Have it installed.

Yep! Using it on my Nvidia Shield and my other Android iptv box.

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Personally, I still think it's probably a tool Valve developped, for their needs, to maintain the futur "Steamos-3.0/Gamescope/Whatever that will be used for". They just decided to release it in the wild because it can't do no harm, requieres no additional effort to maintain and may be usefull for some other usecases (niche?).

Let's wait and see what's Valve's master plan (cloud gaming?) because I surely lack insight and imagination to figure it out. 😉

Personally I could imagine "Steam servers" with hot swappable drives(?), to stream to local thin clients, but I'm not sure what's the use case for that (cafés?)... I've never been to such places so there are others, here, who know better than me if it's a valid use case.

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Quoting: alkazarIn any case, running an OS and games off of a USB stick is going to be a very poor experience and likely turn people off if anything.

This. Exactly my tought. In an era where gaming in general is praising the blazing speeds of nvme drives... Is there any external enclosures that may deliver similar performances, at a descent price? If not, imo, it won't have much of an impact.

Edit: thinking about it... Could it be a "nice to have/side effect" caused by a wider initiative?

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