Alright, fuckit, I’ll be Devils Advocate.

Bellular News reported on some emails that came up in Discovery from a recent lawsuit. Many people have heard the story “They just don’t want devs to sell Steam keys below their price.” This was not that. There is E-mail evidence of Valve preventing Ubisoft from selling a version of Siege for $10 on their store, while the Steam price was $15; and there may be similar examples coming up.

This is more important for indies than a shitty AAA store, but basically a dev should be allowed to run their own store and skip Valve’s fees if they are committed. Minecraft did it, for instance. Part of the issue is, while I’m pretty sure people can come up with counterexamples, Valve doesn’t seem perfectly consistent with any one policy.

I still love Steam and I consider most “monopoly” claims to be Epic-paid astroturf. But I won’t default to defending them on all fronts when they also tacitly allow child gambling.