Steam Lawsuits

[Pete Dero]

Call me crazy... I don't see anything in any of this to indicate Steam has caused me any damage. 

I am old enough to remember the time you had to search the internet for game patches on websites that generated pop up ads by the dozens.

Then you could look for a no-cd patch on even shadier websites, so you didn't have to put the cd in the drive every time you wanted to play a game.

For these reasons I will leave Steam alone  .

[Father Ted]

Yeah, I think Steam is a great system for consumers.  If anyone has a reason to go up against them it's the game devs who get their products repeatedly sold at massive discounts.

[Jarhead0331]

Yeah, I think Steam is a great system for consumers.  If anyone has a reason to go up against them it's the game devs who get their products repeatedly sold at massive discounts.

That is exactly the point of the lawsuit. Steam is engaging in unfair practices by unfairly forcing developers to undersell at prices that can't be competed with by other retailers. Again, I explain some of this in the thread I have linked above. 

[Jarhead0331]

Here is what I wrote in the linked thread:

If I understand the claim properly, the fact that you've paid less for games on steam is precisely the problem. Steam, according to the theory of the case, forces developers into contracts that requires the developer to permit steam to list the game at a lower price on its platform, while forcing the developer to sell everywhere else at higher prices. This is "anticompetitive" conduct that is purportedly unfair and unlawful in that Steam uses its market dominance to eliminate price competition.

I suppose the argument would be that despite offering a lower price for a game on Steam, the purchaser may have been harmed since the prices elsewhere were artificially made higher due to the contracts Steam imposed on developers. Thus, had the market been open and not unfairly influenced by Steam, the customer may have been able to pay even less.  This kind of unfair competition could subject Steam to "treble damages", as well. So, if some fact finder was to determine that the actual damage to a plaintiff was $100, and that due to the violation of the law, treble damages were appropriate, the actual award would be $300.

I think establishing liability will be the easy part, while establishing damages may be much more speculative.

[SirAndrewD]

I agree with JH, I don't think the lawsuit is illegitimate.

I love Steam now, but to be fair, as much as I agree with Pete's sentiment about the horror show of dispersed updates and content, Steam had its fair share of early teething problems and it was not at all a popular choice when Half Life 2 was locked to the platform, and then CA and Total War followed suit.

I remember a lot of frustration about it on my end, and from others, and also to be fair, I was using other online and even physical retailers and sometimes deliberately not buying from Steam because I was concerned that they would try to create a monopoly on distribution.

I was, like a lot of others, forced onto the Steam platform first by games requiring it exclusively, then by the deep discounts that sites that I frequented like Gamers Gate at the time couldn't match. 

Heck, at this point the only use I have for my, very large, Gamers Gate library has been to poach off the Steam Codes.  Valve completely undercut them and lost me as a very long term and happy customer with their system, and they lost me because I didn't feel I had much of a choice. 

I doubt I'm the only experience like that.

So yes, I do love Steam now after it has grown as a platform, but I can remember when I didn't always feel that way and Valve's business practices were largely what forced me to change my mind initially.

So, I can see the point even though I didn't quite initially. 

[greengiant]

I'm a little confused over all this. After reading the intitial thread and now this one, it primarily seems to be a thing for devs when Valve slaps discounts on their products to the point they may as well be handing it out for free. As a consumer who has admittedly taken advantage of sales for probably 80% or more of the games in my Steam library I've A: got nothing to be angry about at Valve and B: don't see how a consumer who has taken advantage of said discounts has any business being part of this battle. In fact, I don't hold it against them either if they've ever  hiked prices up since at the end of the day it's my choice to purchase or not. Folks here jumping on the bang wagon despite acknowledging all this are coming across as rather slimy in character.

[DesertFox]

Call me crazy... I don't see anything in any of this to indicate Steam has caused me any damage. 

I am old enough to remember the time you had to search the internet for game patches on websites that generated pop up ads by the dozens.

Then you could look for a no-cd patch on even shadier websites, so you didn't have to put the cd in the drive every time you wanted to play a game.

For these reasons I will leave Steam alone  .

Hit the nail on the head with this one, brother..

[Jarhead0331]

Call me crazy... I don't see anything in any of this to indicate Steam has caused me any damage. 

I am old enough to remember the time you had to search the internet for game patches on websites that generated pop up ads by the dozens.

Then you could look for a no-cd patch on even shadier websites, so you didn't have to put the cd in the drive every time you wanted to play a game.

For these reasons I will leave Steam alone  .

I'm old enough to remember the time before there was an internet and developers released games that were more or less bug free and complete. When and if there were patches, you got them on CD-Roms that came with a magazine that you had to buy in a store.

[Gusington]

I assure you I am the least slimy type you have ever not met.

[Pete Dero]

I'm old enough to remember the time before there was an internet and developers released games that were more or less bug free and complete. When and if there were patches, you got them on CD-Roms that came with a magazine that you had to buy in a store.

And modify the config.sys and autoexec.bat to have a few bytes more to run those games.

[greengiant]

I'm old enough to remember the time before there was an internet and developers released games that were more or less bug free and complete. When and if there were patches, you got them on CD-Roms that came with a magazine that you had to buy in a store.

And modify the config.sys and autoexec.bat to have a few bytes more to run those games.

Oh yeah, the bane of getting Dos Extended Memory to work properly. Or dropping your floppy disk on a carpeted floor by mistake and instantly destroying all data as a result. I'm certainly happy to not have those issues anymore. On the flip-side, half-baked game releases are so common these days that I do certainly miss knowing that everything I will ever need for a game to run was in the box when I purchased it.

[Pete Dero]

^ Don't forget the Expanded Memory ...

[Sir Slash]

One of my greatest tech accomplishments was to download and install mods for CM 1 back in the day. I was SO proud. Probably couldn't even come close to doing it today. Steam has spoiled me and I love it. 

[Father Ted]

I'm old enough to remember the time before there was an internet and developers released games that were more or less bug free and complete. When and if there were patches, you got them on CD-Roms that came with a magazine that you had to buy in a store.

And modify the config.sys and autoexec.bat to have a few bytes more to run those games.

I spent more time doing this for Elite 2 than I did playing the game