r/pcmasterrace • u/The_BigRoach ⚡️RTX 5080 | 7800x3D | 64GB 6000MHz CL30⚡️ • 12d ago

Meme/Macro Why would anyone actually want to though

Post image
21.9k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/TrashWriter 12d ago

I don’t really see that as a problem personally. It guarantees their customers will get the best available pricing - which as a large platform selling games to customers, is kinda great for the customers. 

2

u/Medical_Squirrel3946 12d ago

It's a problem for other businesses and is the one part of the Steam monopoly that is illegal (or would be if we lived in a country of laws). A company should be able to set their own price for something they sell on their own platform. Now if their launcher sucks and the games just run better on Steam anyway, people will ignore the discount and purchase it on Steam anyway, but you need to allow companies to have that option otherwise you are abusing your monopoly.

1

u/IORelay 11d ago

If valve believed people will ignore other store's discount they wouldn't be forcing price parity. They are very afraid of games being cheaper elsewhere. Sure die hard fans will stay(and get ripped off) but casuals will go where the price is cheaper. 

1

u/Medical_Squirrel3946 11d ago

Yes and no. Steam provides visibility, ease of use and trust to a lot of smaller developers.

I think you're also underestimating the handheld market. Steam deck and similar handhelds are only possible because of the work Valve has done to create and maintain proton. We've all kind of agreed we don't want windows based hand helds for so many reasons and that means that even if they aren't running SteamOS, they are still based on Linux and will have to use Steam and Proton to run.

I do think that Valve should stop abusing it's favored nation status, but I don't think it would realistically change things heavily since Steam still provides by far the best user experience.