Valve reportedly almost delisted Rainbow Six Siege from Steam after Ubisoft attempted to sell it cheaper on Uplay

[Redaktion]

The new report has brought attention to how aggressively Valve handles pricing and distribution decisions for games.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Valve-reportedly-almost-delisted-Rainbow-Six-Siege-from-Steam-after-Ubisoft-attempted-to-sell-it-cheaper-on-Uplay.1312602.0.html

[SteveDanger105]

Just list it on your own service or on epic if you have issues with trying to rip off steam gamers

[Duh]

When they control 90% of the market this type of behavior is considered Monopolistic. If Steam did not have that control of the market they wouldn't be able to bully companies that they also rely on to survive (30% kickback from each game sale). Do you really think that WB lowered their game price on steam to match parity to their competitors? More than likely they just raised the prices at the other locations to match the steam price. So who is ripping off Steam gamers? Steam could have lowered the prices on THEIR STORE THEMSELVES but instead wanted every other store to have the same high price as them in order to protect their bottom line. This is a company, not family, and they only care about the money gamers provide not the gamers themselves. Stop deluding yourself, big brother Gabe doesn't care about you

[Stormin]

Steam could have lowered the prices on THEIR STORE THEMSELVES but instead wanted every other store to have the same high price as them in order to protect their bottom line.

No they couldn't. Steam is just a platform to sell games, the only games valve sets the price for are ones they've made themselves. The dev/publisher is responsible for setting their own prices.

Stop deluding yourself, big brother Gabe doesn't care about you

You should probably read the Bloomberg article that's referenced, cos whilst he's no saint, this assessment of yours is well off the mark based on the evidence that has been provided.

[Huh]

I don't even like steam but I don't see how it's monopolistic behaviour? Nobody is obligated to use them.

There are tons of indie dev games being sold on their own site or on platforms like etch.io.

If people want to keep supporting steam then by all means, but how is anyone being forced or coerced?

It's only bullying if you've no place to go. But people do.. just nobody really chooses to. None of the big companies anyway. Dunno why.

If anything, it's steam fan base creating the monopoly of bullying. You've got people on Reddit saying they refuse to buy a game because it's not listed on steam. Not a valve employee saying you shouldn't, rabid fans. lol. Can't make this up.

[opening cases is gambling]

VALVE, opening cases is gambling.

[Huh]

etch.io

...
*itch.io

[Huh]

VALVE, opening cases is gambling.

Yeah, they shouldn't do that but I don't believe they're the only ones doing it. This is kind of like and industry plague, like micro transactions, many others are doing it too. Games on mobile, etc.

It's kind of funny how valve has lost the good will of the people after ducking machine launch so badly and deck price increases. Feels like everyone going after them now :P

[Heresor]

I think I know where the issue lies.
Steam usually doesn't have a problem when companies sell their games on an entirely different platform for cheaper.
What they do have a problem with is when companies try to use Steams' infrastructure, but not pay for it through the commission fee.

That's why it's illegal for companies to sell Steam Keys for their product on non-legitimized sites. The game would still use the Steam Workshop, Community Pages, Updater. Everything that is the actual things that cost the distributor (Steam) money.
In this case: The game is F2P on Steam. You only can't play competitively without DLC. So someone would download the game for free on Steam, enter UPlay for the secondary launcher, then purchase the full version on UPlay, because it's slightly cheaper than the Elite Edition (Retail: 20€).
As it seems: Usually when you buy a DLC through the external launcher, it would sync the DLC to Steam. Since you launched the game via Steam, giving Steam their cut. But because it is not available on Steam at all, Ubisoft gets to keep all the money, while still using Steam's infrastructure.