Steam Lawsuit (US only)

[Maniakkid25]

So, this year, a US antitrust lawsuit was brought against Valve by publisher Wolfire Games, claiming that they are using their functional monopoly on PC gaming to charge fees that hurt both publishers and consumers. No, this one is actually real, this time! So, what does this mean for you, random gamer? It potentially means that, as the crappy ad goes, "you may be eligible for financial compensation"! Yes, by either going to steamclaims.com or steamrefund.com, you can get yourself represented in this suit, and potentially get some money out of it. Again, this one is actually real, I swear! You will need your Steam ID and your login name (not your name as it appears when you are online, the actually name you use to log in). If you don't know your Steam ID, you can use this site, and look for the "SteamID64 (DEC)" one. Please note, this is only available to US users of Steam, but if you've bought a game in the last 4 6 years and live in the US, you may be eligible. Good luck to anyone else that goes for this.

Edit: Made an error due to bad information. According to ClassAction.org, the eligibility period is "Janurary 28, 2017 trough the present".

[Moonface]

I was about to put my stake in on one of those two refund sites, but the huge page of legal jargon stopped me in my tracks because I want to read through it first and make sure there's nothing in it that holds me liable for any fees anywhere if something goes South.

I do wonder how much weight this case holds though, only because how does this not end up applying to the digital storefronts on the big three consoles? I know Sony takes 30% of a cut from digital sales and if a developer only has a digital release of their game they have no choice but to use the digital store of that respective console to sell their game. If Steam can be sued for the level of control they have over the PC digital marketplace, what's protecting the digital stores on consoles, if anything?

[Maniakkid25]

Probably because there are consoles. As in plural. They can control their own individual marketplace, but Valve controls upward of 3/4s of all PC gaming transactions. Think of it this way: Valve is to PC gaming what Standard Oil is to the Oil market, and the Big Three of Consoles are to gaming what the Big Three of Automobiles (Ford, GM, Chrysler) are to cars. Ford has it's own way of ordering its cars separate from GM (dealerships), and you can only buy Ford cars at those places, but no one is saying that they hold a stranglehold on the car market. Meanwhile, Standard Oil was so outright blatant in abusing its monopoly that the antitrust suit against it split the damn thing into multiple companies (ExxonMobil, Marathon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and many, MANY others). You wanted Oil in any shape or form? You went to Standard Oil. You wanted to start your own company (*cough* EA and Ubisoft *cough*)? Standard Oil will bring you to your knees, and then hoover up your assets.

[Moonface]

Think of it this way: Valve is to PC gaming what Standard Oil is to the Oil market, and the Big Three of Consoles are to gaming what the Big Three of Automobiles (Ford, GM, Chrysler) are to cars. Ford has it's own way of ordering its cars separate from GM (dealerships), and you can only buy Ford cars at those places, but no one is saying that they hold a stranglehold on the car market. Meanwhile, Standard Oil was so outright blatant in abusing its monopoly that the antitrust suit against it split the damn thing into multiple companies (ExxonMobil, Marathon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and many, MANY others). You wanted Oil in any shape or form? You went to Standard Oil. You wanted to start your own company (*cough* EA and Ubisoft *cough*)? Standard Oil will bring you to your knees, and then hoover up your assets.

The car analogy tripped me a little bit because while you can only buy Ford cars at Ford dealerships, the PS Store/Xbox Store/Nintendo eShop are also selling third party games as well as their own first party stuff which is different to the car company dealerships. But I get that the difference is PC isn't a platform exclusively for a particular company to require everyone goes to only one marketplace, and that one marketplace doesn't have a "free pass" so to put it to funnel everything to itself.

That said, is it really Steam's fault if their platform is the go-to one compared to others that already existed like GOG and so developers have to publish on Steam if they want to reach the largest audience? Like, those developers could have just used GOG but didn't or used both, and GOG is only five years younger than Steam. I get that GOG was focused on old games and not new releases for a long time but if Valve were the only company for a while offering a digital marketplace for new games to the point they became the place to go for both consumers and publishers, I wonder how much fault Valve can be given. Not that I like to defend corporations but it isn't Valve's fault if there was no competitors on the market for a long time to the point that when things like Epic Game Store came on the scene people didn't have any interest in using it.

It's kinda like how Phil Spencer recently spoke about how Xbox One selling poorly against the PS4 was a big hit to the company because that was the generation a lot of people started building a digital library and the likelihood anyone will switch to another console platform now is very low if they've already established a large digital library on one of the big three systems. I know EGS has been working hard to carve a spot for itself but I've seen so many people refuse to use it and stick solely with Steam, which isn't really anything Valve can control.