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Comment by Fire-Dragon-DoL | Hacker News Reader

I thought about that and realized they have a good reason. If they didn't do that, people would use Steam as a storefront to find games and then buy them on a different platform.

So if this wasn't in place, Steam would be unable to make money.

That being said, the indie developers could just set the game price to the same everywhere when they want to make a discount (which is what most do)

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> people would use Steam as a storefront to find games and then buy them on a different platform

FWIW I do that anyway whenever I can find a platform that lets me buy and own the game outright, rather than depending on Valve having then good graces to continue allow me to log into Steam.

I would do that (I was doing that with GoG), but the Steam Deck bought me back

I also have a Steam Deck and still prefer buying games from GOG, when possible. Heroic Launcher is a nice GUI that let's you easily install GOG+Epic store games, sets up the proton stuff and gives you the option to add the games to Steam as non-Steam games.

I tried, but it doesn't seem be anywhere near the simplicity of buying games on Steam.

Not to mention, it needs double the size of the game when patching (with baldur's gate that's like 180 GB)

Valve dont actually demand of developers to run the same discounts everywhere at the same time. You can still for instance sell game cheaper on other store, but eventually you have to run the same discount on Steam.

People would still buy on Steam to have it all in one place, and for the features that steam provides, like achievements and multiplayer with your steam friends.

That only really applies if the other platforms are as good as/better than Steam, which they aren't for most people.

that is not a lot considering they get a 30% cut off of every sale.

Why is this comment being downvoted? It's reasonably interesting point, and a fair off-the-cuff stab at a spot of second order thinking.

Thank you!

How do you know it’s being downvoted? I thought scores for comments were not visible

Comment gets grayed out?

> use [store] as a storefront to find [products] and then buy them [elsewhere]

Like every brick and mortar store had to contend with due to the rise of internet shopping? Did any of them have market position to prevent manufacturers from doing it?

It is a serious problem for them too and I have no answer to that. I understand their position too. It sucks, and it sucks for steam store.

I have no idea why people would have physical store in modern days, unless it's one of those spots that shower you with money due to foot traffic.

>If they didn't do that, people would use Steam as a storefront to find games and then buy them on a different platform.

sounds good to me. If people want those advantageousfeatures or to stay in Valve's garden, they will pay more for that even if a cheaper pricing appears. Especially with so many complaining about non-steam releases and even claiming they will pay more just to say "fuck you" to EGS.

People who don't care (like me. I still have my game exe's on my desktop like a boomer) will research and find a better price, if possible. As is, Steam seems to discourage this.

>That being said, the indie developers could just set the game price to the same everywhere when they want to make a discount (which is what most do)

yes...because pricing parity. I'm assuming you can't just have a game on eternal sale on an alternative storefront as a loophole. I don't know the details of the sales period, but if GOG or Itch ever wanted their own fest, devs may be afraid due to risk of de-listing on Steam.

The most dangerous thing is that a lot of Valve is fast and loose behind the scenes. They are generally good enough to know when something is bad PR and let it slide. But there's plenty of old school Nintendo-style blurry lines when it comes to submitting.

Does Steam provide anything as a storefront? I thought it only shows that a game exists and not more.

Reviews, discovery queues, search, crowdsourced tagging, minitrailers, events, splash ads, wishlist, an entire overlay to support controller configuration (and any controller) for any videogame that's accessed through steam (even non-steam games). Discussions, mods, leaderboards, market. I suspect I can continue. You could argue some of this features are not necessary "storefront", but the line is blurry. The point is when I want to discover new games, I go to Steam.

I'm not sure what else I could ask for as a storefront.

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