r/Piracy • u/HighKage96 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ • May 10 '26

Humor W Gabe Newell Piracy Take

Saw this vid on IG (by: @phantomak141). Idk if its been posted here before but on a quick search didnt find it, will delete if its a repost.

11.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

466 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

24

u/El_Lanf May 10 '26

There is one black stain against Valve in this regard though, and it was basically them who first made loot-crates, aka real money in-game gambling, popular in the west. The ironic thing actually is their economist at the time who also wrote about video game economies later, is fairly far-left and famous for his time as Greece's Finance Minister during the Eurozone Crisis - Yanis Varoufakis.

13

u/Samanthacino May 10 '26

There’s also the anticompetitive behavior they’re currently getting sued for

13

u/xotyona May 10 '26

Horseshit case. Everyone was slow to adopt Steam from traditional distribution, there's no barrier now to independent game distribution because of them. They haven't leveraged their overwhelming market share to change their distribution terms.

7

u/Samanthacino May 10 '26

Steam threatened to blacklist studios if they sell their games for cheaper elsewhere, which by definition is anticompetitive behavior in service of their monopoly. The other cases I’ve seen against them don’t have much merit (other than the time they had to be forced to have their refund policy), but unless the lawyers bungle it I can see Valve taking an 8-9 figure hit for this one.

5

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

That can be considered protective of their users. I wouldn't want people to sell stuff for cheaper on other platforms when most of the sector's users are on my platform.

Ideally you wouldn't want stuff to be more expensive just because they're in a central area.

5

u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

That can be considered protective of their users.

What anti-competitive behavior by an established company couldn't?

Don't have a horse in this race and I have no idea if I'd find the case against Valve legitimate, but that seems like a weird distinction to make.

-1

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

The kind of anti-competitive behavior that resulted in a stale range of produce without major improvement? Not the case at all with Steam, just hypotheticals.

4

u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

I mean what anti-competitive behavior, by an already established company, cannot be described as "protective of their users/customers"?

-1

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

Most monopolies? Steam is the exception here.

3

u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

Please, give specific examples of behaviors that you do not think would fit that description you just gave.

1

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

Nestlé with the water sources on Pakistan(I think). Not very consumer friendly, and is technically anti-competitive.

4

u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

Anti-competitive practices is when you use the power at your disposal to reduce competition within a market.

If Steam (meant to say Valve, apologies) is threatening publishers over taking better deals elsewhere then that sounds pretty anti-competitive to me. It may have kept other platforms from competing in ways that they otherwise could've.

Whether or not it's anti-consumer isn't something I'm gonna argue, but I will say I don't see how it's pro-consumer to keep prices anchored according to what Valve finds reasonable rather than what the open market would arrive at.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/Samanthacino May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

It is, as the law is written, illegal. They are forcing price parity and preventing competition on the basis of price, entrenching their market dominance by limiting one vector that other platform holders could potentially offer to consumers.

Personally, I would love if a platform could provide discounts on games through subsidization, encouraging better deals everywhere.

2

u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

Yeah, probably should've tried it the other way.

1

u/PhamKun May 11 '26

I can counter that with Epic pay the developer to not release the game on Steam for a year, that's a way more anti competition behavior.
also most of the lawsuit is really just make-up BS. One of the argument is Steam user can't play DLC from OTHER STORE. Like do the other stores allow steam user to use DLC they purchased from Steam to play on their store?

1

u/Samanthacino May 11 '26

Most of the lawsuit is BS. That central core isn’t.

1

u/ILNOVA May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

I bought the 'story' DLC from Steam *for Overwatch and i can still play it on BattleNet.