A few weeks ago, Overgrowth developer Wolfire Games filed an antitrust lawsuit against Valve, alleging that Valve is taking advantage of Steam's dominant position in the digital games market to "collect extraordinarily high fees from nearly every sale that passes through its store."

Wolfire founder David Rosen explained the reasons for the lawsuit in a blog post published last week.

One of the central complaints in Rosen's lawsuit is that Valve is preventing price competition with other stores by forcing developers to promise not to sell their games on Steam at lower prices on other stores. Rosen claims that Overgrowth was released at a lower price on other storefronts because the developers were not willing to pay the low prices. Rosen stated that he faced this problem when he decided to release Overgrowth at a lower price on other storefronts

in order to take advantage of the lower commissions.

"When I asked Valve about this plan, they said they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I would allow them to sell Overgrowth at a lower price anywhere, even from their own website with no Steam key and no Steam DRM," Rosen wrote.

"While talking to other developers about the problems we were having with Steam, they kept referring to Steam as a 'monopoly' and said there was nothing we could do about it. So I consulted a legal expert, which ultimately resulted in the complaint."

Rosen said that while most developers will get the bulk of their PC game sales through Steam, because they cannot try the lower prices at other stores, Steam's higher commission rate (30% compared to Epic's and Microsoft's 12%) actually added that it is impossible to determine if it is justified. I think they are taking away the freedom of developers to use different pricing models," he wrote.

"In my opinion, this is part of the reason all competing stores have failed. This lawsuit argues that Valve should stop interfering with other stores' pricing and allow gamers and developers to make their own decisions."

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In response to this blog post, Chet Faliszek, a former Valve writer who worked on "Half-Life 2: Episode One and 2," "Left 4 Dead," and "Portal," challenged Rosen's claims. According to him, Valve has not actually stopped developers from lowering the prices of their games on other platforms.

"His blog post reads like something he posted on his forum based on what he heard his brother talking about. His main argument today is wrong," Faliszek tweeted. When asked what he meant by "today," Faliszek continued, " I am not going to speculate about what he was told 10 years ago, but today you can see evidence online that this is not true and it is not in the contract."

Faliszek was associated with two games-Dying Light: The Following and Ghostrunner-which were available on GOG at the time for a lower price than on Steam.

However, indie developer Joe Wintergreen questioned Faliszek's conclusions, stating that he knew "some developers" who were told they were not allowed to undercut Steam prices on other storefronts. He also suggested that this policy does not necessarily need to be codified in order to have an impact.

"I think you'd be hard pressed to find a developer who is subject to Steam's whims who shares your trust that Steam will not have an extra-contractual policy," he tweeted.

"All you said was that you don't think their contract has anything to do with this. I know a number of developers who say this has happened to them, and Valve doesn't need to reach out and just say no once they confirm it's okay. Both "there are plenty of examples of price discrepancies" and "Valve may not admit it" could both be true. "

Wintergreen also posted an image of part of an online form for requesting Steam keys for sale on other platforms. The language is notably flexible:

Wolfire's lawsuit also mentions this key request form, stating that Valve allows developers to sell a limited amount of Steam keys through other stores, but that "the Steam Keys program is designed to maintain Valve's advantage and . is rigged to serve as a tool to maintain Valve's dominance."

"Valve has made it clear that it does not want to 'put customers in a situation where they get a worse offer on the Steam store. But that's the same as preventing gamers from getting better offers from competing sellers.' The effect of this rule is to stifle competition."

There seems to be a great deal of confusion over what should be a very simple question: what policy does Valve have regarding pricing on other storefronts, and if so, is it yes or no? Faliszek did not speak in an official capacity He did not, and left Valve in 2017, and now works independently for the Stray Bombay Company.

Nor is Rosen's lawsuit the only one to claim that Valve has the final say on Steam game prices; Valve requires game developers to sign an "MFN" clause in their Steam distribution agreements, which allows game developers , agree that the price of their PC games on the Steam platform will be the same as the price at which game developers sell their PC games on other platforms."

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has also previously accused Valve of having a "veto" over pricing and using it to enforce price parity.

Given the uncertainty over the years, it is possible that Valve is taking a discretionary approach to prevent developers from crossing the line too far on other storefronts, and does not have any firm policy on the matter unless and until a court forces it to do so It seems likely. On a related note, Valve has been quietly adjusting its Steam Direct submission guidelines, a decision that has puzzled at least one adult game developer.

We have contacted Valve and Rosen for more information and will update if we hear back.