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I use the Heroic launcher instead. No "Chinese App" for me
So it seems to be an unofficial policy rather than a written rule, if those allegations are true (remember that those are Wolfire's claims of what Valve said). Certainly there doesn't seem to be consistent enforcement - for instance Tales of Maj'Eyal is free, but $7 on Steam. Apparently there are some minor differences - does that mean that they can claim that it's a "separate version" and hence doesn't need price parity, even though 99.9% of the game is identical? There's also VVVVVV, which is open source (albeit years after initial commercial release) where you can freely build the exact same copy as on Steam ($5), including steamworks support. Does that count as a "separate version" when you just have to compile code? Admittedly these are two indie games, albeit extremely well-known ones, but then - isn't Wolfire Games also an indie studio?