The lawsuit - filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London - alleges Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms.
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It claims that as Valve requires users to buy all additional content through Steam, if they’ve bought the initial game through the platform it is essentially “locking in” users to continue making purchases there.
It was filed in 2024, and given approval to go to trial at the beginning of this year. It hasn’t happened yet.
/Edit: The other person responding to this suggests that the “you can’t charge lower elsewhere” clause exists when you use certain Steam features. (Selling Steam keys, using Steam’s multiplayer backend.) And if that’s the case that seems pretty reasonable to me. (I hear they’re VERY kind about keys actually.) But I hope you’ll understand that when articles I see why the case don’t mention them, I don’t know that’s the case.
At the same time, I would almost understand outlets that don’t cover digital goods like this may not understand this, or may not see the importance of them. So maybe they’ve dropped the ball here.
Do you have something to show for it or not?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2g1md0l23o
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It was filed in 2024, and given approval to go to trial at the beginning of this year. It hasn’t happened yet.
/Edit: The other person responding to this suggests that the “you can’t charge lower elsewhere” clause exists when you use certain Steam features. (Selling Steam keys, using Steam’s multiplayer backend.) And if that’s the case that seems pretty reasonable to me. (I hear they’re VERY kind about keys actually.) But I hope you’ll understand that when articles I see why the case don’t mention them, I don’t know that’s the case.
At the same time, I would almost understand outlets that don’t cover digital goods like this may not understand this, or may not see the importance of them. So maybe they’ve dropped the ball here.