GAME Denies Colluding with Publishers to Boycott Steam

The fact that certain THQ and Bethesda games aren't immediately available to purchase on Steam has led to rumours and calls of foul play by retailers to lock out games on the digital distribution platform. GAME has flatly denied that this is the case, of course.

A forum post this week highlighted a trend in the delay between THQ and Bethesda games being available in GAME stores and Steam, and suggested that the retailer was making shady agreements with the publishers to boycott Valve's platform.

"Some time around the start of this year GAME started talking to multiple publishers regarding their games being on Steam. This was somewhat out of the blue and surprising however their goal was effectively to gain some monopoly or power over Steam," reads the forum post.

"They basically want (at least) one month from release date where the game cannot be purchased by those in the UK on Steam. And this applies to all games released by that publisher. If the publisher doesn't agree to (what I presume is a bluff as other publishers haven't done this) then they'll supposedly refuse to stock and sell that publishers games via their stores."

GAME, for its part, is quite perturbed that anyone would think such a thing. Company spokesperson Neil Ashurst said, "we can categorically state that these rumours do not relate to GAME Group or any of its employees. We have had no such conversations with any publisher and have been in contact with various publishers who can confirm this for you as well."