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On the other hand I don’t see why being there in person has to be required for anyone. He can say exactly the same things remotely.
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A court room with stale air and only him with his mask on. Surely, what could go wrong? I see no risks at all.
Just let him join remotely. What is the big deal here?
It states everyone else will wear a mask too and he will remove his during his deposition. Like it or not, the courts require in-person attendance.
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cause you would then have to dispatch a 3rd party audit to make sure Gabe isn’t reading from a teleprompter that his lawyers prep to answer any questions on the fly. You can prep your script “before” but not during, once you are on the stand you are on your own, subject to the court rules, etc.
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They will have to face the consequence because then the lawyer will bring up stuff that shows:
- you know and you are lying
- you said/did/wrote something and you forget but here is the internal email etc.
- use that to their advantage when possible.
Target is to make the case, through Gabe is just a attacking vector.
It’s not even a valid excuse any more at this point. People can get vaccinated at their leisure against the current variants no problem, and other fat old dudes don’t get to bail on an uncomfortable situation either, this is just special treatment for the rich. Also all the accommodations that are already being made with everyone wearing masks. Also I’m sure they can open a fucking window or so for some fresh air
I might be more inclined to agree if there was some benefit to having him show up in person, but I don’t see why he can’t just attend this remotely. People get sick after being vaccinated too. Maybe is a minimal risk, but it seems like a pointless risk nonetheless.
It’s a court of law. People appear in person to ensure they are who they are, their answers are theirs and they fully own them, they aren’t being coerced or manipulated, and so on. FaceTimeing in from the bathroom at his home isn’t cutting it.
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Counterpoint: Cardinal George Pell tried to pull the same move in a child sex abuse case. Here’s Tim Minchin’s Come Home (Cardinal Pell) for your viewing pleasure.
Minchin is a goddamn treasure, and I will never not upvote posts highlighting him.
I don’t really understand the antitrust argument here. There are a literal ton of other market places to sell PC games on, such as Humble Bundle which apparently Wolfire started. You could also sell directly to consumers if you wanted without going through a marketplace at all.
Also the main point is valve does not do anything to prevent you from selling the game directly or through other stores.
Just move to a shitty store like EGS.
Their store is to shitty? Pay the 30%.
Either way, never heard of this publisher. I’ll just know not to buy their games anymore.
They kind of had their store. Wolfire games created Humble Bundle, then it became its own company and now belongs to IGN.
If they kept going for the initial spirit of HB instead of letting it become just another way to buy on Steam, maybe they’d be that competition.
If I remember correctly, at the time Valve justified the 30% by pointing out that Apple was charging the same for music and video content. And Valve immediately started building value-added services like forums, updaters, multiplayer support, achievements, etc. to justify the price.
If you compare what Valve was doing to the physical media distribution methods of the period, it was a MASSIVE improvement. Back then, you could sell 10000 units to Ingram Micro or PC Mall, or whatever, and you only got paid if they sold. And any unsold inventory would be destroyed and the reseller would never pay for it. And if you actually wanted anything other than a single-line entry in their catalogs, you paid a promotional fee. Those video games featured with a standup display or a poster in the window at the computer store? None of that was free; the developer was nickeled and dimed for every moment their game was featured in any premium store space.
They are very indie. I had only heard of one of their games, Lugaru, before today.
They seem to be getting better at making games, but they still look to be visually lacking.
Huh. So, I actually own Lugaru, which I purchased through Humble Bundle in May 2010.
It… was not a good game. Basically anthropomorphic rabbits beating the crap out of each other, which SOUNDS good, but was not executed well.
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Is there a way to read without the invasive trackers? I’m fine with ads, just not the cookies.
There you go, here is an archived version https://archive.is/cyApm
You browse the internet without adblock in 2023? What the fucking wrong with you?
FYI, you’re on a Beehaw community right now. This type of needless aggression may be acceptable elsewhere, but not on Beehaw.
Just from a quick search about the case, it seems to hold very little water.
Hell, it’s already been dismissed once.
Fuck this company, I’m glad they’ve made their name known so I won’t buy any games they have anything to do with.
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We’ll have to see what evidence they submit. I’m skeptical given that this lawsuit is funded by Epic. I have other skepticisms, but learning that Epic is the root of the lawsuit is what makes me doubt any legitimacy the claimants have. I posted a very long series of thoughts just elsewhere in the thread that goes into more detail. It’s mostly nothing though since it’s just my thoughts and we can’t truly know until the case is settled or releases details.
My opinion, it comes down to Steam’s ToS is regarding Steam Keys. Steam Keys sold not on Steam do not get 30% taken by Valve, but Valve still provides its services - cloud saves, forums, per game notes, complete controller remapping support and more. So, for example: A developer sells a game on Epic and generates 1,000 Steam keys - has 500 on Steam and 500 on a 3rd party site. The developer can sell the game on Epic for whatever price they want. $5. $20. $50. Whatever. Steam asks that whatever Steam Key is being sold is priced the same on every store front. No matter what they sell for though, none of that 30% is taken by Valve from the 3rd party sale. The Epic storefront in unaffiliated to the developer since they are not Steam Keys.
500 of those keys are now utilizing Steam’s services without any of that sale revenue going to Valve. I have 20gb of Cloud Storage, if every user has that much and there are how many users on Steam… (120 million active users turns into 2 billion 400 million gigabytes, or far over two hundred thousand Terabytes. I think I mathed it right). They must have some serious cloud storage.
With that in mind, it seems reasonable to me that Valve not want developers to advertise other storefronts, nor does it seem unreasonable that they ask to have equitable pricing between store fronts i.e. if it’s $5 on Itch then at some point it should go on sale for $5 on Steam.
Out of curiosity, what do you think Wolfire is in the right about? From my understanding, Humble Bundle can do whatever they want within the developers wishes regarding sales, and if they want to continue to sell games then they don’t have to sell Steam keys to do it? It seems to me that Humble Bundle is trying to sell games for even cheaper on their storefront, while providing Steam keys which would be actively be putting strain on Valve, while Humble Bundle gets to benefit from the services being provided. What exactly is the issue here? Is it just that Valve is so large? So then at what point have they used their size to prevent games from being sold? I didn’t see them during Control, Metro Exodus, Chiv 2, or Kenna or Mechwarriors 5 or really any of the other ~100+ games this has happened to. Or what about when Epic bought Rocket League or Fall Guys and removed it from Steam’s storefront? Hm. I guess the video game giant that literally makes the Unreal engines doing far more egregious business is exempt from the same critiques.
I see a lot of instances of $$$ gating games, specifically away from Steam, but I feel like I’ve yet to see an example where Valve actively restricted the sale of a game from itch.io or Fanatical or quite literally any kind of exclusive whatsoever? So I’m just really curious what merit someone thinks that this suit actually has? It’s just that none of what I’ve seen anywhere puts Valve in a bad light. Funny, the only actual bad court case I can think of was against AUS and resulted in worldwide refunds across the entire platform. Looking at Apple in the EU, I doubt U.S. will have any of those changes come our way. The other lawsuit I’m familiar with Valve is how Corsair is suing them for the bumpers on the Steam Controller. Patent trolls.
Basically, I see nothing to suggest that Steam is using their size to inhibit the sales of games on other platforms, only that they ask that it be equal. I saved the closest I ever came to seeing “some merit” and of course the info is from a now deleted user, so I can’t even say what that was anymore. Though I’m sure it will be the evidence provided in court. For posterity, here is what Wolffire has to say about it.
Anyway, like I said I am curious if there is any legitimacy surrounding it, or if there’s an aspect that I’ve been missing. However, I am very skeptical simply because it’s being spearheaded by Epic. He straight up is saying in the blog post that “no cheaper game anywhere, not even if they’re not Steam keys!” Overgrowth is not some hugely popular game, he was literally doing this move to try and sell more copies of the game. I highly doubt that Valve as a company threw their weight against this guy over this. Especially to the extent of which he claims "it’s why all other storefronts have failed*.
I will say, I could understand more an employee mis-speaking or a miscommunication, but then to take what a random employee person allegedly said to court… Furthermore it goes onto say that developers are afraid if they don’t sell on Steam then they will lose a majority of revenue… It has no acknowledgement of why that may be, like say the value of services that are provided by Steam? That whole cabal of devs could happily go to Epic or Itch or the Nintendo Switch. Only a fear of losing revenue for not supporting a platform because of the immense value it provides.
Literally, if it were any other series of storefronts - like if Fanatical, GMG, Itch.io all came together with a civil suit then I’d hear the fuck out of that antitrust case.
But… Humble Bundle complaining and Epic funding it? Hard pass, pass so hard I didn’t even hit it pass. If Humble Bundle has an issue they are in a fine position to no longer sell Steam keys and that solves their problem. I don’t think there is much merit in “I lose revenue because I chose not to sell my game on Steam.”. About as much merit as making that argument for any console.
I mean, seriously! Just think of how many sales were lost by Wolffire just because they chose not to port the game to Switch PS4 and XBOX!
I don’t really see a difference between the two, and I definitely do not see a monopoly or antitrust where Valve meddling in store sale pricing affects the success of competing stores. For one, price parity is standard everywhere - whether that’s wrong or not is irrelevant, it’s the reality that the case is ignoring. For two, as I said it completely ignores the services Steam provides which in my opinion are far more likely reasons for why people continue to use Steam. Steam gets us with the extreme sales and keeps us with the stellar services. Other store fronts are free to have those sales, but if they do not succeed I doubt it’s due to price meddling and has far more to do with the services that are missing.
sigh sorry, I didn’t mean for it to get this long. Especially since I just posted another comment about this length. However, I do feel this one does a better job explaining my understanding of the situation so… lol
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Regarding your last point, that is not what Steam T.O.S nor the blog post from 2 years ago specify, it said “within a reasonable amount of time” which has been what I’ve been familiar with, releasing a SteamPlay title back in 2012. Fairly, that could have been within the time period of it just being changed (after, I think my time) However…
Yes, it has been about price parity from the beginning. If parity didn’t depend on Steam keys, that doesn’t make sense. For Valve to try and use that pull against Ubisoft/EA, and more recently Epic. They were they only doing it to indie? And that affected these indie stores so heavily they failed? Okay… They still exist and have devs selling on them. Selling… .steam keys… so if it were an issue, don’t use steam keys?
If they were failing, why would they continue to sell on Steam? Until they felt safe enough to be protected by… Epic money? That seems laughable. So Valve has been actively inhibiting sales towards Fanatical, Itch, and Humble Bundle but allowing Ubi/EA/Epic whatever they want? If the evidence shows it, okay sure I’m game. Evidence. Please?
Like I said, if small devs came together with some kind of class action or similar antitrust, but the Wolffire case from the start seems to be pretty much composed of Epic has been-exclusive signers - that is to say more clearly, the nameless “group of devs” Wolffire mentioned in their blog have since yet to have show their support to the case. I’m not sure if I mentioned this here but I genuinely loved Lugaru and the 24-Jam Receiver - but I always was unable to buy Overgrowth because of how highly priced it was. Come to learn that Wolffire then led to HB before being bought out by IGN. I’ve been a HB subscriber from very early on and have had it going for a long, long time as active (only until recently due to personal fund prioritization).
It seems like since that acquisition in 2017 Wolffire’s.existence has been ever so slightly involved in post HB transition and, now seemingly since 2021 about 2 years after that has been trying to make excuses to “lost sales” on their overpriced game (funny how only Overgrowth is the only game ever mentioned) by going after Valve for the… 3rd time now? There was the one filed April 2021 (dismissed afaik), the one in August 2021 (blog post and dismissed) and the recent February 2023. All funded by a certain T.S. of E.G. would you guess??
Why would these devs Wolffire mentioned not actively and vocally boycott Steam? Oh man! Valve totally shut down our only chance, I guess now we’re forever relegated to Steam! …as if GOG and Epic don’t exist?
At this point, I just want some legitimacy behind a Valve lawsuit if they’re going to happen, but from my understanding this ain’t it, nor is Corsairs scuff bullshit. If you’re going to take on a giant , have some merit.
Why go after the platform that is providing so much to its users? Why side with the Epic platform that came out swinging with a whole lot of nothing in 2018 and have since literally been pushing money and litigation while providing gamers with absolutely jack shit? Frankly, I will never understand siding with Epic (though crazier things have happened in my lifetime).
Look - I admit I am pro Valve, but I feel this way because they have proven to me they are pro service when they were the only storefront outside of Mac-specific ones to support OSX (SteamPlay Titles). Did it take a court case to make them more pro-consumer? Yes, unfortunately. And look at where we are, with Steam now known as the storefront that provides a safety net for gamers that until that case nowhere was able to provide, something that happened globally, not just rolled out to a single or small set of countries. In terms of hardware I have gotten replacements for my steam controller and steam link and valve index at the drop of hat free shipping no charge, The first two years after they had stopped officially supporting these devices.
I would feel different if Epic had even attempted a sliver of what Valve delivers. They do not. They have actively shown they care otherwise with their timed exclusives paid off to devs and free games that only pay devs per-install, not per claim, and have actively removed support for games - Paragon and Rocket Linux to name a pair. I am anti-Epic because the CEO is a vocal nutjob who is all too happy to work with Tencent (though I’ll admit, at least it’s in the open - the one good thing) who is all too happy to try and utilize the features of Steam when they can (proton) all while undercutting the actual developers - short term payments are not long term support. We.know this because the 2019-2021 Epic exclusives had no advertising, save for Metro, why would they, Epic paid them for their games.
Tim Sweeny takes any kick at Valve he can and I simply have yet to see any validity to the case to prove this isn’t more of that. I’d be interested in seeing any of the developers Wolffire mentioned and I’ve been following these cases closely. With all this in mind to me it seems this remote deposition is nothing more than an attempt to bring discomfort to Newell who has shown to be not particularly open to public showings outside his will (like his medical showings).
Anyway again, like I said, should any evidence or congregation of devs come to light condemning valve then I am more than on board, I have no love for any corporation that pervas evil but at the moment with the options available, no vocal, no believe. Why not GOG? Why not Epic? No itch? No indiegala or GMG? Not good enough to be bought by EA/Ubi? Hm, that’s a lot of options that don’t provide nearly as many services as Steam and yet are all clearly viable storefronts that aren’t providing the same service.
To me, it seems kind of unfair to generate some ~5000 steam keys then expect that even the half 2,500 utilize Steam services while Valve gets no portion. But maybe to some it’s what Valve deserves for offering so much and subsequently being successful. Surely, they only could make that by being shitty (lootboxes not withstanding here, lol), definitely not by providing a litany of services everywhere else seemingly refuses to.
I don’t think Valve is perfect nor exempt from critique. If anything, I hope this makes them more pro consumer regardless of the outcome. However, none of what I have seen from any of this makes me feel angry at Valve, it only makes me disappointed in a developer I previously believed in.
Of course, my mind is open.
steam is one of the good guys. maybe instead of suing they should just make better games
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Ah yes, because rich == bad
It’s possible to be successful and have a good influence on the industry. Valve is the perfect example of that.
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It’s a private company. They don’t have shareholders to report to, so they’re not remotely as scummy. Fuck the rich, but choose your battles and go after the ones who are really the problem.
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Don’t play games then, they are only being made to get your money. Screw those!
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Uhm, I’m Not against your argument, but have you informed yourself in any manner before making this Statement.
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Why does the title say Valve v. Wolfire when it’s Wolfire that sued Valve? Or does the order of versus not actually matter for titles?
Is it an appeal? That would explain it
I don’t get wolfire’s point here. Yes steam takes a hefty 30% cut but game developers are free to sell directly if they want to. Unlike apple who have completely locked down the iOS app ecosystem or Google who allow sideloading but scares and warns people against downloading apps from non Play Store sources, steam does nothing to hinder games not sold through it. If there was a competitor who was as good as steam but took a smaller cut, then that competitor would have been the market leader in place of steam.
Exactly, I mean you can even add Non-Steam games to Steam. Yes, you don’t get achievements that way and there’s no support for workshop or big picture or the community plug-in, but you can launch the game from the steam library.
On another note, can Steam, even for a small payment of 2 dollars, add those functions for games not bought in the Steam store, but that could have been bought through Steam? I really want to have TW3 with achievements, but don’t want to buy it again.
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What role do you think the Steam workshop plays in this?
Obviously the people playing the AAA franchises don’t care, but when you see the sheer quantity of workshop content for some games (Cities:Skylines and Space Engineers come to mind for me, no doubt there’s other examples in genres I’m less familiar with), you see how much the modding community has contributed to the commercial success of these games. I’m wondering how this factors in to steam as a whole.
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If that is the biggest problem, I wouldn’t keep myself from buying from them. I think Valve is generally a “good behaving” company, probably mostly because they are not on the stock market, and I would expect mostly any other company to do much more shitty and monopolistic things when (or before) it has grown to the size of Valve.
It seems pretty fair to want equal pricing. You’ve been speaking as if Valve is actively killing small storefronts like itch.io and these little guys would be the one to gain from something like this. They might, but not nearly as much as Epic Games would which is the lead in a very similar lawsuit. Epic wants to be able to sell games available on Steam at a lower price to influence people to use their storefront instead. They’re literally giving games away so I think they’d love a chance to try and recoup some of that while still getting to look like the pioneers of cheap.
I honestly don’t think that’s a viable strategy. Retail businesses mostly have the same practices, so one could say that Valve just doesn’t want to start doing game price-matching like Best Buy. The closest I’ve ever seen is a store not having stock of something and a worker there suggesting a different store that might have it. But I’ve never been on Gamestop’s website and seen that Funkopop for sale cheaper at Walmart or Target? An individual working there might tell me because they’re not a corporation.
Given they also have pretty steep sales, I would imagine cheaper pricing could influence sale availability as well - if the game is always $20 cheaper somewhere else maybe the dev doesn’t want to put the game on sale as often/at all. None of that is antitrust though, so why use that as their argument? I guess the case will tell us for sure.
I also think that, probably to a lesser extent, it’s been to help Valve prevent the grey-market key selling. I’m of the opinion that Valve likely doesn’t care too much about you or I selling our Humble Bundle key of a game for $3.74, however they do want to avoid stolen credit card key sales and revoked licenses. I personally don’t think that Itch or Fanatical relates to this, but I do think there’s a general misunderstanding that people conflate Fanatical/Green Man Gaming and grey market sites like G2A and Kinguin. It can’t look good for Valve when a user buys 3rd party and their key is revoked and the user gets mad about it, and boy are there a lot of angry vocal people out there complaining about this very thing.
Frankly, you buy on Steam because you get the Steam Overlay to completely change your controller scheme and use community templates, access to per-game notes, and the Steam Workshop, in addition to whatever other peripheral things like cloud saving. It’s all very user positive so of all things I don’t really understand why this is the move that influences your decision when the other options, save literal indie stores, are decidedly worse.
Itch.io is great, it’s unfortunate that devs who want to sell on Steam can’t advertise to their alternate store listing but it also seems sensible? No business actively advertises the ability to buy somewhere else to give the devs 20% more of the sale. Does anywhere actively promote anything like this? Not as far as I’ve seen, so it seems odd to single out Valve when literally every single business in existence works the same way? And I’m not saying that I personally think it should/shouldn’t, I’m more trying to see if there’s any precedent in existence that would implicate Valve to have to do this in order to not be… “shitty?”
For posterity I just opened up Epic and checked out a few games and there’s no place where the storefront shows the existence of its availability on other stores. The Witcher 3 has no references to GOG Galaxy, Red Dead 2 has no references indicating to buy it on the Rockstar Launcher anywhere. For that matter, nor does Itch.io or Fanatical, ironically neither of these have links to go buy it on Steam instead either.
I’ll happily change my opinion if the arguments in court make sense but as of right now I’m skeptical. Personally when I google a game I discover it from a series of sources and Steam is where I end up choosing to buy it. I choose Steam because it offers the best service. I’ve regretted buying Control during its hostage situation on Epic because it’s caused me nothing but problems (lost saves, validation issues, needing to redownload the game every time instead of pointing to the existing location). Ubisoft and EA only have games that were bought on Humble Bundle and because of it I didn’t have access to Need for Speed: Heat for about 2-3 months while the Origin/EA App transition was happening. “You need to play this game on the EA App!” says Origin. “Sorry, we’re working on getting this game to the new EA App! Check back soon!” says the EA App. A waking nightmare.
I feel like the chances are high that these are the winners if the outcome of a suit is against Valve, not itch.io. Itch will just get drowned out by Humble Bundle and Epic and only indie indie developers will get sales through itch. I also doubt that the point of this suit is to allow devs to put everywhere else the game is available.
From Valve’s perspective I think it’s important to note that their ToS seems to indicate that other developers are allowed to sell on store fronts, but Valve does not get any of the commission despite providing Steam keys. However, since Steam keys are being provided, Valve is still providing quite a large service with cloud saves, forums, everything I mentioned earlier. I actually didn’t know this, so I can also understand Valve not explicitly wanting to give that service away for free and not get anything from it. I mean, that would basically mean that by advertising on the store that the developer can get 20% more if you buy on Itch while still getting a Steam key and access to all of its features…
All told, I am personally of the camp that I think equal sales on storefronts is fair. If Steam has a sale, other store fronts don’t have to have one. Other store fronts are allowed to have sales as long as an equitable sale is had on Steam in “a reasonable amount of time” per the ToS. And it legitimately seems insane to expect one store to advertise an unrelated store just because it’s available at both.
Anyway, these are all just thoughts. I don’t know anything and no one will until the evidence is shown and it’s settled. However, having liked Humble Bundle and the Wolfire team I personally am disappointed to see this suit coming from them. If I’m not mistaken this is literally being funded by Epic Games, they actually are the same case. If you’ve scrolled by the Epic. vs. Valve lawsuit ad on Instagram or Facebook, I’ve seen it quite a bit. That’s this one.
Fucking Tim Sweeny man.
Denying references to other places that directly compete with you seems pretty reasonable to me. You don’t see toaster boxes at Walmart saying it’s also available at Target or whatever
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Remember, if Valve actually lost this suit, which they almost certainly won’t, it won’t improve the videogame ecosystem. It will possibly make it worse.
I see a lot of covid misinformation going on around this story which is extremely worrying. Just because the human race not currently at risk of imminent extinction from it doesn’t mean it’s not still a serious illness. Some people get long term complications from it. Some people are extra vulnerable to it. Some people are still dying from it.
“Just get the vaccine” is the worst kind of uninformed handwaving response to the concerns and worries of other humans, it’s upsetting it is becoming the norm.
These are some heavy accusations for Gabe
Wait that lawsuit is still going on???
Judge: I further order you to complete Half Life 3
