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[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/Steam_Spy/status/898208219675447296

Valve will no longer automatically fullfill key requests from the developers to combat game sales outside of Steam.

_____________________

The people complaining about this do not even understand enough about the Steam ecosystem to realize why this is happening.

This is going to affect developers (and I use that term in it's most liberal interpretation) who request half a million keys and sell (or "sell") them on Russian sites you've never heard of for 3 cents a piece.

How does it work?

Suppose I'm a developer. I fire up the free version of Unity, browse the Unity asset store and download some free assets, package them together and put it up on Steam. It costs me $100 for the Steam Direct fee. These are the low quality, trash asset flips that bother everyone except Jim Sterling who loves to shine a spotlight on them. So, no one is going to buy my crap game. No way to earn money from sales. What do I do now?

I request 300,000 keys from Valve. Once I have them, I activate those 300,000 keys on 300,000 bot accounts that are used for only one purpose; card farming. Suppose I added 6 Steam trading cards to my game. That means each of the bots will idle 3 cards per key, which is 900,000 cards in total. I then go and sell them on the Steam market. It does not even matter what price they sell at. The absolute minimum price for a card is 3 cents and the developer gets 1 cent from every sale. There are people on Steam who are in love with their Steam profile level and will buy any badge to increase that level. These people will buy up all my 900,000 cards and even if I got 1 cent per card, that's $9000 earned. For a $100 investment.

This is the reason Steam is plagued with all these asset flip games. Nobody is buying them or playing them. It's the developers putting up anything on Steam so that they can earn money on the backend with card sales.

What Valve is trying to do here is to stop this trend. If they stop giving out keys in bulk then this sort of 'business practice' hopefully dies and that in turn will mean all these trash games stop getting onto Steam because it's not worth it to do this anymore.

But of course this won't stop some from crying out about how Valve is abusing their 'monopoly' and how terrible it is for consumers and developers and how evil they are. So, carry on with that I guess...

 

[CertifiedFP]

...RIP Humble Bundling of Bomba indie games?

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Can't say I blame them. A lot of people just use Steam as a showroom, and then buy the game for $20 less somewhere else.

 

[Hero Prinny]

I get where theyre coming from but still, fuck that ☹️

 

[Rellik]

I'm surprised they didn't do this in the first place.

Can't say I blame them. A lot of people just use Steam as a showroom, and then buy the game for $20 less somewhere else.

Then maybe Steam shouldn't be so expensive for new games.

 

[MUnited83]

...RIP Humble Bundling of Bomba indie games?

This likely won't affect anyone but shovelware Devs selling hundreds of thousands of their games for 3 to 6 cents in Russian websites.

 

[killatopak]

rip cheap games.

 

[funkystudent]

Valve won't automate something?


Shocking.

 

[Shiggy]

With almost 200 games on Steam, I haven't bought any through their store. So I can see where they are coming from.

 

[CertifiedFP]

I'm surprised they didn't do this in the first place.



Then maybe Steam shouldn't be so expensive for new games.

Publishers set their own prices on Steam and are in total control.

GreenmanGaming, places like that, are just key resellers buying directly from publishers.

 

[Übersandvich]

They haven't really revealed how far this policy may go, like the ratio of keys / steam sales yet. I would hope this does not cause trouble for kickstarted games offering backer keys. In all, seems reasonable, but Valve often does not often implement their policies with the most foresight...

We'll see.

 

[BTA]

I hope they're smart about this.

It'd suck if small devs who, for example, did well on Itch while promising keys to people who buy it there get screwed over when they get on Steam.

 

[pretty done]

...RIP Humble Bundling of Bomba indie games?

Sounds like great news to me. I'm all for higher quality bundles.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Then maybe Steam shouldn't be so expensive for new games.

So Valve should start dictating what publishers and devs can sell their games for?

 

[xabbott]

Incoming press release from GoG, Origin, or Windows Store about how they won't limit keys?

 

[jonno394]

So Valve should start dictating what publishers and devs can sell their games for?

When issuing key requests like this, do valve get paid?

 

[Axial]

About fucking time.

 

[Tizoc]

This likely won't affect anyone but shovelware Devs selling hundreds of thousands of their games for 3 to 6 cents in Russian websites.

I was thinking this same thing, and hoping this'd be the case.

 

[Timeaisis]

Hope they are reasonable about this.

 

[Shiggy]

Publishers set their own prices on Steam and are in total control.

GreenmanGaming, places like that, are just key resellers buying directly from publishers.

Games sold outside of Steam don't have the 30% cut that Valve takes, thus they are often cheaper despite offering the same.

 

[Dmented]

Valve won't automate something?


Shocking.

Huh? Valve IS automating everything. This is just them being money hungry asshats.

About fucking time.

Why would you support this? It's bad for both the developer and consumer.

 

[Lister]

I'm surprised they didn't do this in the first place.



Then maybe Steam shouldn't be so expensive for new games.

They don't set the prices, the devs/pubs do.

The devs/publishers just don't want to pay Steam it's 30%. I've suggested this many time sbefore: Stema should lower its cut to 20%. IT would probably curtail a lot of these second hand sales, and would make devs more willing to lower prices during sales.

 

[CertifiedFP]

Sounds like great news to me. I'm all for higher quality bundles.

Sales are not a measure of quality. Where's my multi-million selling Trails in the Sky SC?

Y'know what, I agree, Humble Bundle should totally be an exhibition for games that are already mega-hits. Because fuck being an underrated gem's chance at finding an audience.

Spoiler

LEH SARCMARK

 

[Daedardus]

I do wonder where the cutoff is though. Denying 500K keys for 1K of sales sounds reasonable, but is denying 50K keys for 100K steam sales too?

 

[Visualante2]

I suspect this is only a small number of exploitative developers but I thought this honey moon would end sooner or later. Just because Steam is on a negative trajectory and the whole idea seemed too good to be true in the first place.

Valve is going to want to tread lightly because the competition has been improving and I think Valve overall has lost a lot of good will.

I do wonder where the cutoff is though. Denying 500K keys for 1K of sales sounds reasonable, but is denying 50K keys for 100K steam sales too?

Valve will never share to stop people exploiting it but I think disgruntled developers will probably share their data if they are kicked off Steam. Another reason why Valve should tread lightly.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

When issuing key requests like this, do valve get paid?

No, they only get paid for games bought directly through Steam.

 

[sangreal]

Its not surprising to me that Valve doesn't want to be the free distribution network for other resellers who undercut them. If anything I'm surprised they are only concerned with games that are selling better off Steam

 

[sibarraz]

I guess that big publishers like sega or paradox will not have this kind of restriction

 

[Lister]

I hope they're smart about this.

It'd suck if small devs who, for example, did well on Itch while promising keys to people who buy it there get screwed over when they get on Steam.

I doubt even the biggest kickstarters woudl have much issue. How many keys would even a large kickstarter need? 40k?

They're talking about thousand sellers, requesting half a million keys.

 

[Josemsar]

As long as it's reasonable the proportion I'm ok with this. Steam is a really good and solid platform that's been offered for 'free' for users.

Let's hope it won't backfire on them. But the alternatives are Origin/uPlay or DRM-Free services, which... Well, publishers don't like for obvious reasons.

 

[Lister]

Huh? Valve IS automating everything. This is just them being money hungry asshats.



Why would you support this? It's bad for both the developer and consumer.

What the hell are you even talking about?

 

[ZombieSupaStar]

No, they only get paid for games bought directly through Steam.

Yeah I could that getting abused. They don't get their cut but still are hit with the bandwidth cost, online forums use, workshop support, etc for that end user.

 

[barber]

I hope it is mainly about the shovelware that is mainly bundle material. I really doubt some of those games sell that much unless you get 10+ for 1 dollar.

 

[shanafan]

Goodbye CDKeys.com then..

 

[Dec]

I'm pretty sure this is to stop these bundle sites from selling steam keys for like 5 cents for people to boost their game-counts.

In general I feel like most games that will be affected by this hard will be crappy bundle fodder.

It's their storefront in the end and if a developer is costing Valve money instead of making I think they should be able to do this.

 

[BasilZero]

So bundling from sites like humble, bundle stars and indie gala will get affected?....😭

 

[LordKano]

So bundling from sites like humble, bundle stars and indie gala will get affected?....��

Nah, but shady keys resellers will.

 

[Bony Manifesto]

It would be really interesting to know what the ratio for games sold through Steam is. Personally speaking, I only ever buy games on Steam when they're on sale. If it's a new game or a pre-order, it's always far cheaper to buy a Steam key from a reseller.

 

[cyba89]

This likely won't affect anyone but shovelware Devs selling hundreds of thousands of their games for 3 to 6 cents in Russian websites.

Does this junk really sell that much?

 

[Abelard]

Nah, but shady keys resellers will.

What about CDkeys? They basically resell keys bought from other regions.

 

[Dmented]

What the hell are you even talking about?

I'm talking about the potential of developers who're using Steam but want to sell their game on their own website. Valve are the ones who offered Steamworks (which this is included with it) for free and now are taking features away. They just want their 30% cut from games being sold on Steam. But they knew and even told you that you could sell elsewhere and they wouldn't take a cut. Now they want it again. So this is just a way to ensure that they get something.

Edit: Put it like this: Steamworks should have never been free/or it should have never had a key system to sell your games elsewhere.

 

[BasilZero]

Nah, but shady keys resellers will.

Oh okay, I am fine with that lol

 

[DeathoftheEndless]

Valve is going to want to tread lightly because the competition has been improving and I think Valve overall has lost a lot of good will.

Steam only has one competitor (GOG) and it dwarfs them.

 

[LordKano]

What about CDkeys? They basically resell keys bought from other regions.

I don't know how they work. Do they buy keys from others regions but still within Steam ? If that's right, then they shouldn't have an issue.

 

[messiaen]

I don't want to use Steam. I hope this opens more developers up to using GoG and other stores.

 

[big fake]

Please don't tell me this means Cdkeys will basically stop from existing.

 

[Mifec]

Goodbye CDKeys.com then..

They buy boxed copies so nope. I doubt devs will ever be denied keys for boxed copies.

 

[AtomskEater]

...RIP Humble Bundling of Bomba indie games?

I feel like if you provide evidence that you're using them for a bundle, they'd give you keys. They aren't saying they'll deny all large key requests for bomba games carte blanche, they're just no longer automatically accepting those requests.

 

[Glass Shark]

So they will pay their own staff to have a human actually look at something if it affects their bottom line, but outside volunteers are expected to do most of the curating work on their storefront. Got it.

 

[balladofwindfishes]

This likely won't affect anyone but shovelware Devs selling hundreds of thousands of their games for 3 to 6 cents in Russian websites.

The way it specifically calls out games that sold a few hundred copies on Steam, but want 500k keys, it sounds like this is the case.

For the most part, I don't think anyone will notice any difference from this