Eeeeh, at least then there would theoretically be public accountability. The FCC has limited censorship power that they’re generally unobjectionable with.

I’m honestly more concerned with the censorship from private enterprises than with government consorship currently. Less accountability and less recourse.

It also really only becomes censorship if the rating system is used to prohibit speech. If we instead made it more like the nutritional guidelines on food it could instead give more of a content breakdown than setting an arbitrary age.

Yeah… Of all the antigovernment people to latch onto it’s vaguely unfortunate that we landed on fawks. Like, I do get that it’s a pop culture reference more than an actual historical reference, but still.
There was legitimate persecution of Catholics in England at the time, so it doesn’t least have a veneer of fighting tyranny, but he didn’t even actually succeed.

Shoulda gone for Louis Lingg. A bit more modern, and had the awesome criminal defense that “it’s his right to fill his house with dynamite”.

Sometimes things line up in a way that seems intentional.

You mentioned a handful of games without doing any research on them, and one of them accidentally proved my point.

You asked for a list of games that fit my “steam hasn’t impacted pricing” statement, so I gave you games that had prices inline with what steam prices games at and industry standard. Like I explained in my previous comment. I know how much those games cost: between $50 and $70 dollars, which is what games have retailed at for decades.
Games on steam and off steam have had roughly the same price, and games not on steam have had perfectly reasonable times making sales. Except the one on epic.

They set the $50 price tag to maximize revenue

My point was that even with lowering the price to the low end of standard, they have had some difficulty getting enough revenue to cover the cost of the game.
If other retailers are able to compete just fine, and one isn’t despite lowering prices and paying for exclusives, and it’s the one that, as you mentioned, people complain about when they buy an exclusive, then maybe the issue is with that retailer.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1388073/average-price-of-video-games-by-platform/

If you want more discussion, you can Google “video game prices over time”.

Given that you’re starting to ignore large bits of replies and have been repeating yourself pretty consistently without expanding on the point, I’m not sure that there’s much value in continuing. You think it’s anticompetitive, I don’t think it’s so obvious. We’ll see what the courts say.
Have a nice day, and I hope you find the same passion for your next endeavor. :)

So, a court document is an argument, not a smoking gun. The court didn’t dismiss the case because it has enough merit to be argued, which just means it isn’t plainly false at first glance. The court did dismiss earlier versions of their claim. Earlier versions being rejected and this one being allowed to move forward have little to do with anything.
Repeatedly asserting that it’s “anticompetitive bullying” doesn’t actually make it anticompetitive bullying.

This isn’t going to end well for you when Valve becomes as openly evil as Google.

Lol, what do you think is going to happen to me? I think maybe you’re taking this conversation too seriously.

Yes, Alan wake 2 was lower priced on epic than on consoles by about $10, after epic financed the game. it also has yet to turn a profit, with most revenue coming from titles that aren’t exclusive to epic. You also ignored the list of other games I mentioned, each of which launched for $60 to $70 and wasn’t on steam.
Half life 1 cost $60 on launch. Same for 2. Same for the original star craft. Same for basically every full featured game for years.
It’s not “sus” that most games sell for the typical price for a game. It’s a sign that valve isn’t driving up prices, since prices are roughly the same regardless of platform, vendor or time, including when steam didn’t exist yet.

I know you think you’re arguing against a mindless steam fanboy, hence you’re starting to break out some insulting language and condescension. I can assure you you’re not, just like I assume I’m not dealing with a dense contrarian more interested in punishing valve for success than actual critical thinking.
I don’t think that suing someone necessarily makes you right, and that a financially motivated lawsuit is an inherently slanted description of events, when the trial hasn’t happened and none of the claims have even been responded to.

And of course it’s not possible that they’re despised and not doing well because people don’t like their platform.

You still haven’t convinced me that they are price fixing, to say nothing of it hurting consumers. Full feature games on steam are still around the same price console games are, and that games have been for many years. If they’re price fixing to artificially inflate prices, they’re doing it in a way that hasn’t really kept up with inflation and has been in line with retailers on platforms they don’t even sell on.

Listing your product on Steam isn’t advertising.

They literally present your product to people as recommendations and make it discoverable by the people likely to buy it. No, it’s not banner ads, but you use them because they get your game in front of consumers likely to buy it. That’s the entire reason the platform has appeal to developers.

This entire lemmy post is about someone being upset that Epic is successful enough to have an exclusive

Yes. Because it’s a worse store. People being upset that a thing they want has a hurdle they’re not willing to jump over doesn’t mean the preferable system is a problem.

Is it reasonable for Nordstrom to go after a company selling the same product at Wal-Mart cheaper?

If they signed a distribution agreement, then yes. It would almost be like a game signing an agreement to sell exclusively on the epic game store and then deciding to sell on steam anyway.

It’s a flawed analogy though, because Nordstrom’s and Walmart buy the product and then resell it, rather than facilitating a sale. Valve doesn’t buy 50k licenses from you for $20 each and then try to sell them while keeping all the revenue for themselves.

They know their price fixing department would have to become a “watch for prices on other platforms and adjust our prices / cut to be competitive” department.

🙄 That would make sense if valve set the prices or adjusted their cut in real time.
Epic is allowed to compete with steam on price. Games don’t have to be on steam to be successful. Valve has no way if stopping you from choosing to use a different store, and as you pointed out in the beginning: This entire lemmy post is about someone being upset that Epic is successful enough to have an exclusive. You can’t be mad epic isn’t “allowed” to compete when they’re actively competing.

How much does Diablo cost? How much did StarCraft 2 cost? Alan wake 2 ? Every Nintendo game? PlayStation or Xbox console exclusives?

It’s trivially easy to find full featured games that didn’t launch on steam and have the same price point as a full featured game on steam.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the economics of an exclusive launch on a smaller platform are going to be completely different”.
Isn’t your whole point that the smaller platform can compete by taking a smaller cut and allowing developers to offer lower prices for the same revenue?
How does developers not doing that become irrelevant?

And it’s two small publishers who had their remaining claims joined by the court after variously having them dismissed and reframing them. Class action doesn’t mean that a large number of publishers have actually made the complaint.

Valve not letting you use their advertisement and distribution network at the same time you undercut them on sales elsewhere doesn’t feel anticompetitive to me.

Some games choose to skip steam and use epic. Epic pays them to do so, and the publisher doesn’t lower prices.

If you’re a publisher, why would you want to offer a lower price elsewhere? The appeal to a lower cut to you is higher revenue, not equivalent revenue.

Or blizzard, riot or epic. All of which are perfectly successful without using steam.

Communication between valve and publishers about TOS violations is only an issue if it’s an anticompetitive clause.
If publishers want to offer lower prices, they can use a different storefront like the others. If they can’t make sufficient revenue without valves advertisement and distribution network, then maybe the service is worth the price valve charges for it.
Valve has done nothing to stop consumers from using other stores, so I’m not particularly sympathetic when the stores are upset about consumer choice.

Price fixing is, as your highlighted bit says, a conspiracy to not compete on prices. Valve isn’t conspiring with their competition to fix prices, nor does valve even set the price.

The lawsuit alleges that it’s anticompetitive, not price fixing.

I personally don’t think it’s anticompetitive , given the number of popular games that don’t use steam. I just think that epic has a worse product, which isn’t valves fault.

I literally said “companies that don’t use steam”. If a publisher opted to not use steam, it should have lower prices, right?

Except we see games not released on steam still selling for the same $60 for a full feature game that we do everywhere.

… That’s not price fixing.

Do companies that don’t use steam offer comensuratelty lower prices?

That’s not why epic has to pay for exclusives. They have to pay to cover the income gap developers would face from eschewing the better store.
Publishers are free to skip using steam and pass along their savings, but they invariably don’t. They just pocket the difference.

That epic game store exists, takes a lower cut and gives away free stuff, and still struggles to be viable is an indicator that valve isn’t be anticompetitive.
It’s not illegal to have a better product, only to use your market position to keep other products from trying to compete.

It’s one thing to be generally against big companies, and another to be against one in favor of another, when the stakes are “which company keeps money”.

And also based on chrome. That’s the thing that people seem to keep ignoring. Your browser options are Firefox or something based on chrome.