Valve and Sony Sued for Establishing Digital Monopolies with Their Stores - Wccftech

Both Valve and Sony have been sued for establishing monopolies with their digital stores, respectively Steam on PC and PlayStation Store on Sony's consoles.

In short, he believes Valve is using its dominant position to enforce game developers to sell their titles for the same price on Steam and any other competing store, threatening to remove the game from Steam if a developer opts to sell it for a lower price on, say, the Epic Games Store or even their own store.

I believe that other developers who charged lower prices on other stores have been contacted by Valve, telling them that their games will be removed from Steam if they did not raise their prices on competing stores.

As the dominant platform, when developers list their games on multiple PC stores, the majority of their sales will come through Steam.

In this case, the consumer is lamenting that a little over two years ago Sony removed the ability for other retailers like Amazon, GameStop, or Best Buy to directly sell digital codes for PlayStation games, which led to 'supracompetitive prices' for digital PlayStation games as they can only be acquired through the PlayStation Store now.

Because delivering digital content to PlayStation consoles requires access to Sony’s PlayStation Network, the new policy established the PlayStation Store as the only source from which consumers can purchase digital PlayStation games and the only source to which video game publishers can sell digital PlayStation games.

Sony also requires publishers who sell digital games on the PlayStation Store to relinquish full control over the retail price.