Price parity obligation clauses: We say that Valve Corporation imposes price parity clauses that restrict and prevent game developers from offering better prices on PC-games on rival platforms, limiting consumer choice and harming competition.
This seems to be common practice, but is anti competitive. If another platform would charge 20 instead of 30 pct and the publisher would give half this discount to the customers this would be against these clauses. Good that these are looked at.
Tying: We say that the restrictions Valve Corporation imposes, that mean the add-on content for games must also be purchased from Steam, restricts competition in the market.
And vice versa, steam dlc does not work with games on epic. Interesting case here too.
Excessive pricing: We argue that Valve Corporation has imposed an excessive commission, of up to 30%, charged to publishers, that resulted in inflated prices on its Steam platform.
The 30% market standard seems to be under fire across the board, so if there is a solid case to be made that this is excessive, I’m glad the watchdog is trying to make it.
In all good that this is investigated, cause just paying for another yaght or house for Gabe is not nessecary.
The part about another platform charging less and they passing the savings on to the consumer… Yea I’ll believe it when I see it. All these “pro consumer” arguments are usually just a masked way to keep more profits.
Now, a middleman keeping 30% or even 20% seems high to me all over so it will be interesting to see it play out.
The part about dlc purchased from competitors being incompatible is definitely anti consumer and should be challenged.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m plenty sceptical about the whole ordeal. I just argue mega corps should be audited when there is even a wiff of impropriety.
And I don’t understand the rabid defence of a corp like valve. Just look at the downvotes and the users defending valve. As if it’s their sports team.
And even sports teams move to another city if the money there is better.
All of these same points can be made about microsoft, sony, nintendo. I agree that all these things could change and be better for the consumer but they should have gone after the mega corporation who lock content not only behind a platform but also a special computer you have to buy.
https://lemmy.world/comment/10610894
The issues at hand:
This seems to be common practice, but is anti competitive. If another platform would charge 20 instead of 30 pct and the publisher would give half this discount to the customers this would be against these clauses. Good that these are looked at.
And vice versa, steam dlc does not work with games on epic. Interesting case here too.
The 30% market standard seems to be under fire across the board, so if there is a solid case to be made that this is excessive, I’m glad the watchdog is trying to make it.
In all good that this is investigated, cause just paying for another yaght or house for Gabe is not nessecary.
The part about another platform charging less and they passing the savings on to the consumer… Yea I’ll believe it when I see it. All these “pro consumer” arguments are usually just a masked way to keep more profits.
Now, a middleman keeping 30% or even 20% seems high to me all over so it will be interesting to see it play out.
The part about dlc purchased from competitors being incompatible is definitely anti consumer and should be challenged.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m plenty sceptical about the whole ordeal. I just argue mega corps should be audited when there is even a wiff of impropriety.
And I don’t understand the rabid defence of a corp like valve. Just look at the downvotes and the users defending valve. As if it’s their sports team.
And even sports teams move to another city if the money there is better.
Valve is better than most corps but they are not perfect. No corporation should be worshiped.
All of these same points can be made about microsoft, sony, nintendo. I agree that all these things could change and be better for the consumer but they should have gone after the mega corporation who lock content not only behind a platform but also a special computer you have to buy.