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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • … but I want to acknowledge that at least for now there’s no actual evidence of it.

    I wouldn’t call a multi-year class action asserting that a clause exists “no evidence”.

    (I mostly continue on this point because I will continue to go around saying Valve uses a PMFN clause, and it’s not unfounded for me to do so)

    What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

    For games being the same price on different store fronts? Whatever the justification for selling digital games at the same price as physical games was back when digital purchases were becoming mainstream, or for the same reason that Nintendo games will rarely go on sale: because there are still people willing to pay.

    Alright, if you’re not convinced that there ought to naturally be differentiated pricing, and that the uniform pricing we see is artificial, I don’t know where else to go.

    Is it? Because I pulled the term from the complaint filed Apr 27, 2021 under the Price Veto Provision section. Where did you see a valve employee saying it?

    Ah, I was thinking of the “TomG” quotes here. I see what you’re referencing now, though that doesn’t really make the language as less ambiguous.


    Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion but I’m going to call it here. Cheers.


  • Valve also doesn’t use shopping platform monopoly methods such as artificially making process low by selling at a loss, which is the main problem with other monopolies like Amazon.

    That isn’t the only method. There is also the “[Platform] Most Favored Nation” clause, which eliminates the ability to undercut the platform elsewhere. This allows the platform to leverage it’s market share and benefits to maintain dominance, raising the price floor of the market so nobody can compete on cost. Being the dominant platform, with better economies of scale and consumer intertia, this gives them an advantage in that competing platforms have a difficult time being the better choice.

    Valve uses a PMFN clause. See my other comments for links to relevant court cases.

    The moment steam starts enshittifing, it will be very easy to switch to another platform. Compared with other platforms, like any social media or YouTube.

    Being familiar with “enshitify”, you should go read more of Cory Doctorow’s (who coined the term) writing over on pluralistic.net. He writes frequently about monopolies (his writing on Amazon’s monopolistic practices (skip to the part about high fees and raising prices) are applicable to Valve’s PMFN clause). He also has explicitly given social media platforms as examples of platforms prone to enshitification because of the high network effects.


  • We can go back and look at the historical prices for The Division 2 and see that Ubisoft didn’t have a lower baseline price on their own store compared to the epic store. So either Epic has an MFN policy as well, or Ubisoft would most likely want to keep their prices consistent across platforms and stores.

    Thanks for digging that up, interesting to note. Epic might have an MFN, or maybe Ubisoft’s internal publishing overhead is roughly 12%.

    That’s the thing: you’re being given a random game every week and that’s still not enough to get people to stick around

    I don’t know what you envision when you say “stick around”. Do people uninstall Steam when they install Epic? No, they don’t. You just have both installed. The free game gimmic is for you to download the platform; that’s the first hurdle, but it does little to change your preference between platforms when it comes time to make a purchase.

    And looking at the store now, it seems they’re just giving back 5% of the money you spend, meaning if you opt into their ecosystem, all their games actually are cheaper.

    Interesting point on the 5%, I was unaware of that.

    We also don’t really know that they do. The source saying that the MFN policy exists at all is the CEO of Epic Games saying so on twitter. And I’m pretty sure the lawsuit says that it’s “selectively enforced”, so there aren’t any actual examples of Valve vetoing a game’s price based on the price in another store.

    What evidence would be needed to convince you?

    Clearly, there is a business case for listing a game for less on Epic (or a publisher’s own site!). We can trust the MFN policy most likely exists. What other explanation for the observed behavior can be put forth?

    “Selectively enforced” is the wording used by Valve’s own employee. That could mean anything from “only big, noteable games” to “only enforced when we noticed it” to “actually enforced consistently”. Regardless, it can have a chilling effect that causes everyone to step in line.


  • It’s also not about whether 30% is the right number or not. It’s about how Valve has made it impossible to choose a different number at all.

    The argument has little to nothing to do with Epic’s business strategy—it’s 12%, along with the 30% of Steam, is merely a feature of the landscape in which publishers operate. Whether 12% is sustainable for the platform long-term or not, Valve is coercing the market so that publishers cannot take advantage of it.



  • So if you want to sell steam keys…

    Yeah, to be honest that portion of the Wolfire case is pretty weak in my opinion. The Wolfire case isn’t only about steam keys, though, it also alleges that the PMFN clause applies to all game listings outside of Steam.

    I’m not even close to being a lawyer so I don’t know why exactly, but this video seems to make a pretty good argument for why this isn’t a good legal argument.

    I watch the timestamp provided. The video appears to me to suggest that it is a well-founded legal complaint given you can establish the MFN is the cause of the lack of differentiated pricing. The commentator seems to dismiss the idea that such an effect is evident in the information provided, and seems wishy-washy on a lot of his claims about economic principles. I’ll take his word on the legal front, but for the economic side I will turn to the plethora of academic and legal publications on the effects of MFN clauses (which support the anti-competitive effects alleged by the filing).

    Also it looks like the Colvin wasn’t dismissed, it was consolidated into the Wolfire class-action.

    There’s also no telling whether or not other storefronts have similar conditions in place, because apparently these kind of Most Favored Nation clauses are fairly standard in some industries.

    Yep, and the MFN is also a point in the monopoly proceedings against Amazon.

    Looking at your other comment, I can say that Ubisoft tried ditching steam, but their prices didn’t really change even though they were paying a lower commission to epic than they would have to valve. So they would have had the ability change their prices to whatever they wanted on the epic store without fear of valve vetoing the price, because those games weren’t being sold on steam.

    This is interesting, I was unaware. I’ll have to look into it.

    Not to be nitpicky (because this might be solid counter-evidence), but do we know that in a universe without the Steam MFN policy Ubisoft wouldn’t have listed the games concurrently on Steam for 18% higher?

    Is there any actual proof of this? Epic is well known for giving games away for free, the best price customers can hope for. Yet they still can’t seem to retain a loyal customer base. Maybe the price isn’t the most important factor for a digital distribution platform.

    Strikes me as a little beside the point. A randomly rolled free game once a week is almost nothing compared to the sea of purchases in the game industry. If I want to buy game XYZ, the free weekly does me no good—at most, it gets me to install Epic (which is what they want). But it isn’t going to change the fact that Steam gives more bang for the buck, all else equal.

    The fact remains, that Steam is preventing games from being listed for less on Epic. So if price isn’t the most important factor, why does Steam feel the need to impose such a policy?