• brucethemoose@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    They give you free keys to sell elsewhere if you choose

    To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.

    That’s very far from monopolistic behavior.

    I mean, imagine if, say, Walmart or Amazon did this (assuming they don’t already). Every price is every other store has to be at or above theirs, or their product gets delisted, which is apocalypse for a supplier.

    How does that not sound monopolistic to you?

    Imagine if Amazon took 20% more cut that Newegg and passed that to hardware prices for literally everyone.

    EGS literally can’t be monopolistic because they have like no market share, but yes, they’re being anticompetitive and bribing in an unsustainable way. It’s not good either. And their store is barebones, no question.

    But the double standard of bothers me. Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform and they’ve been fine in other areas so far.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.

      That depends. For GOG and EGS, yeah, those stores don’t want to sell Steam keys, they want to sell keys for their own platform. But other stores like Fanatical sell Steam keys, and I’m not exactly sure how those work.

      My point is that devs can sell keys on their own and take 100% profit if they want, they just can’t undercut Steam. And that’s pretty common in retail, if you see a product in store, it’ll be a very similar price to buy direct. It turns out, retail stores don’t like providing marketing just to get undercut on your website or a competitor store.

      Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform

      Neither does EGS just because they take a lower cut and give away free games.

      AFAIK, Steam isn’t doing anything differently than other retail stores. If EGS were in Valve’s position, you can bet they’d be way worse.