It will be interesting to watch the suit unfold. David is claiming that Valve de-facto forces the pricing through the threat of de-listing on steam. So he will need to prove it. We don’t see many games sell below steam price, but I do think that there is kind of an incentive for devs to have one consistent price across all retailers. At the end of the day, there is a price customers are willing to pay for a given game, and you don’t want to lower it on the platform that give you a higher cut of revenue. It’s why it would kind of be silly for Valve to engage in this price fixing behavior, but there are plenty of instances where for-profit companies and employees do silly (and illegal) things, so we will see as this case plays out.
The only way steam falls off is if another store beats them on volume, which also means provides a better customer experience than steam. It’s a really tall order - how do you get people to move to your game libary management sytem? The only real way is to have an exclusive game that players can’t get on steam. That is the core of EGS - the place where you play fortnite. EGS actually makes a lot of sense as long as epic making the hottest game on earth. Half Life 2 was essentially why Valve was able to launch Steam. The issue is that Fortnite is on the decline and EGS just loses money. I don’t know how you make enough money to outdo Valve in the near term.