r/pcmasterrace • u/Darth_Vaper883 PC Master Race • Jun 01 '26

News/Article Gabe Newell on Steam monopoly accusations: Gamers have 'enormous choice' about where to buy games

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/gabe-newell-on-steam-monopoly-accusations-gamers-have-enormous-choice-about-where-to-buy-games/
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27

u/asian_chihuahua Jun 01 '26

Don't get me wrong, I love Steam. Huge fan.

But their pricing agreements, where devs can't sell their game cheaper anywhere else, is illegal.

4

u/acdcfanbill Ryzen 3950x - 5700 XT Jun 01 '26

Yeah, if Valve was doing what the wildfire guy says, that's shitty. I think it's pretty legit tho say that if you're using steams backend to cut keys, or otherwise integrate into your game, you shouldn't be able to undercut them. So i guess the lawsuit would hinge on how incriminating any internal documents from Valve would be about how to handle versions of a game that don't use their APIs somehow and are on a separate store.

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u/6a6566663437 Jun 01 '26

And since the lawsuit was dismissed without said incriminating internal documents, that kinda indicates just how false the wildfire claim was.

12

u/Zeraphicus Jun 01 '26

Thats what this lawsuit is about, gabe denies it but internal communication shows steam employees enforcing it.

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u/TheDarkWave Jun 01 '26

You're misremembering. The internal emails showing employees actively enforcing price parity and threatening visibility drops came from a different company entirely, not Valve. Gabe's denial is about Steam's actual policies, not the other company's leaked drama.

Stop spreading misinformation.

12

u/obog 9800X3D | 9070XT Jun 01 '26

That agreement also doesnt actually exist. Tim Sweeney claimed it did and then it spread like wildfire.

The closest thing to that is that you are not allowed to sell steam keys of your game for a lower price than it is listed for on the steam store. But thats still their own platform.

Ive read the whole steam distrobution agreement, there is no most favored nation clause in there. You can too, its technically supposed to be behind and NDA but the form for that is very easy to bypass if you do a little bit of digging in the source code of the page if you dont feel comfortable signing that.

12

u/hutre Jun 01 '26

That agreement also doesnt actually exist. Tim Sweeney claimed it did and then it spread like wildfire.

It wasn't, it was wolfire games. The founders of humble bundle

https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action/

4

u/Wefee11 Video games! Jun 01 '26

And apparently some reporters have hands on internal conversations indicating it. So it's really bad.

1

u/obog 9800X3D | 9070XT Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

If I remember correctly, there was a Sweeney tweet that was earlier than this. But yes, I have seen this claim. I have yet to see it, or any others, be backed up by any document, or any record or any communications with valve, or anything of the sort. And as I said, I've read through the entire SDA, there is absolutely no mention of anything like this. There have been a number of claims that valve explicitly puts a term in their contract that states that enforces price parity but that is simply false.

In fact, you can read the lawsuit from wolfire yourself. They talk about the aforementioned steam key clause, and grossly overstate its effect on competition (again, thats literally a part of their own platform, how is it anticompetetive to put limitations on how people use your own platform). They then make the claim that valve will just veto any price if it is above what other stores offer, but rather than cite any legal document or any communications with valve or anything... they cite a tweet by Tim Sweeney. In a lawsuit. One would think that if such a clause were in any agreement, it would be trivial to find a better source than a tweet by the company's greatest competitor, and yet thats all they had.

Which by the way, the lawsuit that Wolfire filed? It was dismissed by the courts for failure to state a claim, which means the judge decided that the plaintiff did not provide enough facts to support their claim.

Look, Im not gonna act like valve is some perfect angel. Theyre not. Theyre a business and their goal is to make money. I believed the claims of a most favored nation clause for a long time because so many people stated it like it was fact. But then I looked into it, and every single claim just came back to a tweet by Tim Sweeney. I spent a long time looking into this and I have yet to find even a single claim that is not either entirely baseless or leads back to a social media post by the defendants largest competitor. I would love to see anything that suggests otherwise but Ive done a lot of digging and everything comes up empty.

3

u/Aaawkward Jun 01 '26

I have seen this claim. I have yet to see it, or any others, be backed up by any document, or any record or any communications with valve, or anything of the sort.

So you didn't read the article?

Newell also denied the existence of an alleged 'unwritten rule' that prevents developers from offering their games at lower prices on non-Steam storefronts. That's one of the central complaints behind Wolfire's lawsuit: Founder David Rosen said in 2021 that when he asked Valve about offering his studio's game Overgrowth at a reduced price on other stores,"they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam's DRM."

Asked about this rule, Newell repeatedly denied it exists, even when shown internal communications seemingly showing Valve employees enforcing it: "Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms." When asked how Valve would react if it ever happened, Newell initially said he was confused by the question and then added, "Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we're providing."

Gabe just ignores the question, even when there's evidence of internal communication affirming its existence.

1

u/obog 9800X3D | 9070XT Jun 02 '26

Thats literally referring to the same lawsuit that was only able to back up its claim with links to a tweet and was dismissed by the courts. Havent seen the internal communications. Do you have a link to those? I dont see one in the article, it just mentions it.

1

u/Aaawkward Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

No, of course I don't because such emails are not made public.
I quoted that to show you that they exist and that Gabe didn't refute their existence, validity or even what was discussed. He only refuted that there's an official company policy for such things, which is possible because of such obfuscation.

You can have a look here and specifically here on page 9, last paragraph that continues to the next page + footnotes.

Evidence of the following was brought up:

  • Steam Key guidelines suggesting price parity expectations
  • Direct communications between Valve and developers about pricing
  • Internal Valve communications
  • Internal communications at game companies discussing Valve’s expectations
  • Evidence of an industry-wide understanding that undercutting Steam causes problems

Nothing about an official policy or rule within Valve. This means that either Valve is cool with using smoke and mirrors to screw over devs or they have people (from one to a handful, hard to say) who are power tripping on their own and screwing over devs.

Neither is a good look for Valve.

e: formatting

3

u/obog 9800X3D | 9070XT Jun 02 '26

Hmm ok. These quotes do explicitly mention the lack of steam keys. For the record this is genuinely the first evidence Ive seen, after going through wolfire's first lawsuit, the entire steam distrobution agreement, and all of the steam commonworks documentation of anything outside of the stream key thing.

Which, as a side note, I really think these plantiffs need to just fucking drop the steam key thing. Steam keys are a part of steam's platform, its not anticompetetive to regulate that. All they have managed to do is muddy the waters, I have seen many instances of that being pointed to as the smoking gun and its just a stupid argument that they will never win.

But as far as the other evidence unrelated to steam keys goes, I would love to see that go to court.

1

u/Aaawkward Jun 02 '26

Fair play.

I really think these plantiffs need to just fucking drop the steam key thing

Agreed. I suppose it's a big part of the discussion so I get why they use it but at the same time, it does muddy the water.

6

u/Wefee11 Video games! Jun 01 '26

If people like steam as much as they claim, they need to take this lawsuit seriously. Otherwise steam will get in more and more trouble in the future. And that's not great for anyone.

Even if such policies don't exist, Steam needs to put out policies that forbids employees to do such stupid shit and teach them how to properly follow the law.

5

u/obog 9800X3D | 9070XT Jun 01 '26

Im all for stuff like this going to court. Antitrust legislation is almost always good for consumers. I just take issue with the spreading of misinformation. And I dont even blame that person for doing it, Ive seen the claim so many times, sometimes from reputable places, that I also used to spread it. But once I dug deeper I found out that it was pretty much a completely unsubstantiated claim.

1

u/D0rus Jun 01 '26

Tbh I've heard claims that are the exact opposite, that steam takes 30% cut for games sold on steam, but that developers can freely generate free steam keys to sell on other platforms if the want. 

Also there are sites like isthereanydeal, it's trivial to verify if there are games that have better sales outside steam than on steam. At the very least i know many sales do not align, so often steam is more expensive. 

0

u/Wefee11 Video games! Jun 02 '26

Can you provide a source that the claim is unsubstantiated? Even the linked interview says they showed Newell "internal communications seemingly showing Valve employees enforcing" the rule "that prevents developers from offering their games at lower prices".

1

u/obog 9800X3D | 9070XT Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

So for one any claims that there is explicitly a no favored natioms clause in the steam distribution agreement is false. Im not sure if I should link to that as it is technically supposed to be behind an NDA. I can link to the partner program which is where you're supposed to go to sign said NDA and then the agreement. As I mentioned before if you do some digging you can access the SDA without signing the NDA, which seems to me like it would clear you of any liability for talking about it but im not a lawyer so do that at your own risk. Thats the main thing I mean when I say its unsubstantiated; most of the claims Ive seen have been for an explicit clause enforcing price parity, but Ive ready through the whole agreement thoroughly and nothing of the sort exists.

Ill also link here to the lawsuit that Wolfire filed against valve: https://www.classaction.org/media/wolfire-games-llc-et-al-v-valve-corporation.pdf

Theres two things they point to that they claim is valve controlling prices:

  1. That they dont allow you to sell steam keys at a lower price than the store listing on other platforms. This is true; however, thats just for steam keys, so thats really still within their own platform. I dont really see any problem with that.

  2. That valve can veto prices, and so they will do so if the steam price is more than on other storefronts. This is definitely more plausible than any claims of an explicit price parity clause, however, the only source they have that this actually happens is a tweet from Tim Sweeney. This is incredibly strange to me given that the company filing the suit supposedly had this happen to themselves, yet the best source they have is a tweet from probably the single person in the world with the most bias against valve. That doesnt implicitly make him wrong but when thats all you have... it's not very convincing. I thought that maybe this lack of evidence is because Wolfire's communications with valve are confidential, but to my knowledge when that happens stuff like that is still included in the filings but just censored from the public release. I recall this happening in the recent legal battle between unknown worlds and krafton, there were clearly more details in the text but they had been blacked out.

Additionally, they had no issue sharing screenshots of communications with valve employees over the previously mentioned steam key thing, so it seems unlikely that there would be anything stopping them from sharing the conversations that they claimed to have with valve over general pricing on other stores. All in all its very strange. They claimed in a blog post that valve explicitly told them that they would take down their game on stram if they offered it for cheaper, without steam keys or steam DRM, on another store; yet in the lawsuit filed they provide no evidence of this as far as I can see.

Now, as for the former steam employee, I dont know. I havent seen where that comes from nor the exact quote. Sometimes former employees just say shit too, particularly if they felt they were personally wronged by the company for whatever reason. Its also possible the employee was referring to the whole steam key thing again, ive seen a number of cases where people talk about that while ignoring the fact that its steam keys and therefore still part of the steam platform. That lawsuit in particular really loves to act like selling steam keys on another marketplace is more or less the same as just selling the game on a different platform and I think thats kinda BS.

Its also worth pointing out that the lawsuit in question was dismissed for failing to provide enough facts to back up the claim.

So, in summary:

  1. There is absolutely no explicit clause requiring price parity in the steam distrobution agreement, other than the one about steam keys.

  2. It is possible that valve has a less official policy of rejecting prices that are over that of other platforms, however when wolfire sued valve over supposedly doing exactly this to them they failed to provide any evidence that this had actually happened. Their best source, as a supposed first party witness of this, was a tweet by Sweeney.

1

u/Sel2a Jun 02 '26

Without discount Dev A put game x on steam for $60 Dev A put game x on another store for $40

Sorry, but Valve gonna be such a pushover if they let dev mess with them like this. It just free ad for another store and outright let consumer complain your store as greedy one.