Hm. Does the Steam contract allow you to have multiple pricing levels on other platforms, where people can pay the difference in order to also get a Steam key?
Viewing post in Steam wishlist page & debut trailer! comments
My current understanding is that if you’re selling the game for less than it is on Steam on a different storefront, you’re not supposed to provide Steam keys. I really like the idea of being able to pay less to skip getting a key – I just haven’t every seen anyone do it or talk about it.
I have been advised to not play too many games with schemes like that because you want to stay on Steam’s good side, but who knows how much of that is hearsay.
Another possible option if we want to keep the price low here is “grandfather in” everyone who’s already bought it on itch before it was available on Steam, but not provide more going forward. I think it is an important priority to make sure people don’t have to buy it twice if they got it early, whatever form that ends up taking.
It kind of has to be legal, because otherwise Steam would be declaring war on all sales-on-other-platforms-but-not-on-Steam, including the popular megabundles, even if they don't provide Steam keys - which would be nuts. They have an obvious and legitimate interest in discouraging people from buying Steam's own services for cheaper than the way that gets Steam money, but not in restricting sale of non-Steam products, i.e. the games themselves.
One cannot always trust lawyers to be reasonable. However, you probably can trust it if you've emailed them saying "this is my understanding of the contract, tell me within two business weeks if it's wrong" and gotten no response within a fortnight. (I am not actually a lawyer, and my having-of-legal-opinions is not endorsed by an academy of law, nor am I in a position to pay reparations if you get sued and the courts turn out to be spectacularly corrupt my advice leads you astray. Heed it at your own risk, small though I judge that potential risk to be.)
It might go better to call the keyless-version-at-current-price a bundle sale that you just happen to run most or all of the time?
There are differences between sales and regular list price. Sales/bundles/etc happen, in theory they can't stop that. Read their fine print carefully about list prices though. This is most likely out-of-date Youtube based "knowledge", with extra quotes around """knowledge""",so...
Don't listen to us armchair lawyers for legal advice; please be careful.
We appreciate you, your work is worth it, so price accordingly.