The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Sentinel]

Valve replies:

Earlier today, the European Commission ("EC") sent Statements of Objections ("SO") to Valve and five publishers in an investigation that it started in 2013. The EC alleges that the five publishers entered into agreements with their distributors that included geo-blocking provisions for PC games sold by the distributors, and that separately Valve entered into agreements with the same publishers that prevented consumers in the European Economic Area ("EEA") from purchasing PC games because of their location.

However, the EC's charges do not relate to the sale of PC games on Steam - Valve's PC gaming service. Instead the EC alleges that Valve enabled geo-blocking by providing Steam activation keys and - upon the publishers' request - locking those keys to particular territories ("region locks") within the EEA. Such keys allow a customer to activate and play a game on Steam when the user has purchased it from a third-party reseller. Valve provides Steam activation keys free of charge and does not receive any share of the purchase price when a game is sold by third-party resellers (such as a retailer or other online store).

The region locks only applied to a small number of game titles. Approximately just 3% of all games using Steam (and none of Valve's own games) at the time were subject to the contested region locks in the EEA. Valve believes that the EC's extension of liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law. Nonetheless, because of the EC's concerns, Valve actually turned off region locks within the EEA starting in 2015, unless those region locks were necessary for local legal requirements (such as German content laws) or geographic limits on where the Steam partner is licensed to distribute a game. The elimination of region locks will also mean that publishers will likely raise prices in less affluent regions to avoid price arbitrage. There are no costs involved in sending activation keys from one country to another and the activation key is all a user needs to activate and play a PC game.

 

[Merlkir]

Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind - April 15, 2019 – 20:00:00 UTC
ooh hope that's real

Sorry, it's not. My guess (as I'm not working for Kitfox who are publishing) would be a temporary date filled in just because you had to put something in the release date field.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

What tags do you guys exclude?

 

[unfairlight]

None. You will filter out shit you do want to look for eventually.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Why the fuck have AMD GPU's become so unpopular in the last 5 years?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Why the fuck have AMD GPU's become so unpopular in the last 5 years?

because they have bad linux drivers

 

[Gerrard]

How did all those Radeon 4800s disappear in the span of one month?

 

[Astral Rag]

Looks like Steam nuked all my personal Categories overnight. Now all my games are listed under "GAMES" and "VR". It's the same on both my computers.

WTF Gabe, this is triggering my autisms something fierce.

Hopefully it's only a temporary issue.


edit: It's still fucked up:

 

[J_C]

Why the fuck have AMD GPU's become so unpopular in the last 5 years?

Nvidia cards having better price to performance ratios.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

I remember when I bought my GPU some 3 years ago that the RX480 was very close to the GTX1060 performance wise and costed around 100 euros less.

 

[Metro]

Nvidia cards having better price to performance ratios.

In what universe?

 

[DalekFlay]

Why the fuck have AMD GPU's become so unpopular in the last 5 years?

nVidia have better drivers and enhancements for older games, in my experience, which is the main reason I use them. Seems like every other game I read about has some issue with AMD.

 

[Latelistener]

Why the fuck have AMD GPU's become so unpopular in the last 5 years?

Crypto mining happened. Miners are buying AMD GPU's like cakes because they have better price to performance ratio.

 

[J_C]

Nvidia cards having better price to performance ratios.

In what universe?

In the last few years there was no Radeon card on the market which was reasonably priced, thanks to mining. That's why the GTX 1050 Ti was one of the most popular cards.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Nvidia cards having better price to performance ratios.

In what universe?

In the last few years there was no Radeon card on the market which was reasonably priced, thanks to mining. That's why the GTX 1050 Ti was one of the most popular cards.

OTOH it's pretty easy to pick up a decent card used by a miner for cheap. Make sure the warranty is covered for at least a few years.

 

[LESS T_T]

Fresh ones and returning ones. Cool to see some smaller games are doing better than cookie cutter industry productions.

#10 - No Man's Sky
#9 - Grand Theft Auto V
#8 - Generation Zero
#7 - Tropico 6
#6 - Grim Dawn - Forgotten Gods Expansion
#5 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#4 - Outward Day One
#3 - Survivor Pass 3: Wild Card (PUBG thing)
#2 - Risk of Rain 2
#1 - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Totally accurate top sellers.

Outward is doing pretty well.

#10 - Grand Theft Auto V
#9 - Borderlands
#8 - Outward
#7 - Tropico 6
#6 - Survivor Pass 3: Wild Card (PUBG thing)
#5 - MONSTER HUNTER: WORLD
#4 - Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
#3 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#2 - Risk of Rain 2
#1 - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

 

[Metro]

In the last few years there was no Radeon card on the market which was reasonably priced, thanks to mining. That's why the GTX 1050 Ti was one of the most popular cards.

That's a pretty big caveat to your argument.

 

[Jigawatt]

Looks like Steam nuked all my personal Categories overnight.

Looks like I've been stung sometime in the last day or two as well Put some bloody competent coders on the client Gaben! None of this choose your own work (to fuck up) shit

 

[DalekFlay]

It's their new tactic to combat the Epic Store, take some features away and then be like "keep buying on Epic's store and we'll take more." If Borderlands 3 is a hit on Epic Store then offline mode sleeps with the fishes.

 

[J_C]

Yesterday Valve nuked the review bombing of Borderlands 2. This was the first time they did this after they announced their new policy about review bombings. Thanks to that the review score is untouched on the store, although you can still see the reviews at the bottom of the page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/49520/Borderlands_2/

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Technically you can change your personal settings so the reviews don't get censored, it just defaults to censoring it.

 

[Don Peste]

Seems the Team Fortress 2 team recently went down from 15 members to just 2...

 

[unfairlight]

I'd like to hear a citation on that, from what I gather their team is still 10-15.

 

[Don Peste]

Can't find the tweet now. Someone (@HL_Inside, @ValveTime, @LambdaGen...) liked it, and that's how I saw it. Now I can't find it. But I found this:

Sorry, I thought I would score a bunch of brofists, but look what I've done...

 

[Black]

Have my pity-fist.