i think personally Steam’s/Valve’s dominance is really good here’s why:
- Improving Linux gaming,improving Wine and DXVK for gaming,so you dont rely on Microsoft for your OS.
- Great client(i like the: inbuilt Chromium based browser,Community features)
- Not so awful and maybe simple DRM methods(eg, needing the Steam client doesnt tank the performance that much,compared to something like denuvo which i think makes modding impossible,needs consistent internet connection,and tanks the game’s fps alot )
- I can buy with cash giftcard to buy games(I wish GOG had that)
- Workshop for modding on supported games.(ik some games have workshop and dont let you mod everything)
- Makes/has good games(Half-life 2 is the best game i ever played)
but the bad things: - Steam Client is still 32 bit and Steam doesnt target ARM(E,G. For like M1+ macs,those need rosetta )
- third party clients arent a option
- You dont own anything you buy on Steam.
- Having the Steam client open at all times(ik not all games have this, but i assume CEF based Steam will lower the performance like slightly)
- TF2 neglect
- lootboxes/battle pass in some games(i am aware Valve was the first company to have a battle pass and fortnite popularized it)
alright thats what i think of the Good and bad of Valve/Steam
How to explain Steam’s success on PC for console players: “Think of it like the X1 vs PS4 era. Steam is the PS4 and every competitor was the Xbox One”
That’s far to generous to other companies, they were far more like the WiiU.
Steam had been one of the good companies so far. Until they showed clear signs of enshitiffication, I will patronise Steam.
I think valve has the absolute worst skins market out there but their store is really good.
Steam kinda killed gaming piracy for many. Hope they won’t go the Netflix way in the future.
i kinda agree:
but its still possible to pirate some Steam games without the Steam Client,
and some still require it.it’s crazy how you offer people convenience and they willingly pay for it. I remember steam killing piracy before DRM or anything like that existing
You make it sound like drm didn’t exist before steam or like steam isn’t a form of drm itself. Old drm was more basic and far less nefarious, like entering a cd key or codes in your manual. This later escalated to online activated cd keys. At the very least, these forms of drm didn’t run all the time like steam did- I remember steam getting huge pushback (from myself included) because it ran like absolute dogshit. Later forms of drm got worse with checks in the discs that collected data on your pc (securom, anyone?). Steam did a lot of good things but it did not erase drm- it merely created another form of it (I.e. You no longer own your games, you are buying licenses they can revoke at any time)
I remember CD keys but that’s about it
I’m curious what you mean by this.
Netflix only went the way it did because they were liscensing shows and movies from other publishers/studios who could have, and finally did, take their shit back and start their own subscription service.
It’s not just Netflix that sucks now; it’s the whole of legit streaming video services becoming what cable was that got Netflix popular to begin with.
This is unlikely to happen with Steam, given that competitors are already trying to do what they can similarly and it has yet to actually do anything.
I mean that although the good shows got removed by the other competitors and streaming got downhill with that, they increased prices, put ads, removed account sharing and their only focus is profit.
Edit: also they removed shows by themselves to countries that the particular shows were not that popular just to save money. That started before the rise of other streaming platforms.
Yeah streaming has an assumption of an exclusivity deal whereas in gaming it’s unpopular and financially not worthwhile (though subscriptions would rapidly change that).
If Netflix and HBO and everyone else all were equally able to buy content and no service was the primary sponsor of content you’d get services competing on price, quality, and selection rather than each of them aiming to always have something worth the subscription price coming out.
Steam is the very, very rare case of a major company that is both not beholden to shareholders, and has a pretty good guy at the helm.
I simply do not understand the sentiment that not being a total bastard is something celebrated and not expected or required.
And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?
Honestly 20 different companies would probably suck for the consumer. That’s 20 different storefronts to compare, 20 different libraries to manage, potentially 20 different sets of logins, 20 sources of data breaches. It’s unlikely they would adopt an open standard to allow a shared library. Maybe you have a 21st company that makes a product like heroic launcher. You’d likely run into regionality issues where a particular store is unavailable, so you may not be able to play purchased games. You would have all sorts of odd exclusive dlc and pre order bonuses so a cosmetic item you like could be locked to a store you haven’t used. Multiplayer likely wouldn’t be global cross play between all companies, you likely get some set of 20 companies working together for multiplayer. Some games may develop a good scene available to a single store, requiring a game to be repurchased. Exclusives or timed exclusives would be annoying to track, as each store would likely have different catalogs.
I simply do not understand the sentiment that not being a total bastard is something celebrated and not expected or required.
It’s simple really. If you don’t give positive feedback, you’ve lost the major lever that can be used to get what you want.
Using negative feedback is a useful tool but it’ll never achieve the same outcomes if used by itself.
That would mean exclusives everywhere. Everyone would try to force some game pass on us, until our only choice to get an OK selection would be having 4 subscriptions. Or piracy.
With Steam, I get a well integrated platform for buying, updating and launching everything with the correct compatibility layer.
That’s more convenient than piracy, so I use it.
Exclusives are a bastard child of oligopoly, where the distribution platform has more power than the publisher.
Before Steam physical games were NEVER sold only in ToysR, they were sold in all shops.
they’re still sold everywhere…just nobody buys em cause why the fuck would you when you can buy em online?
It would likely result in endless corporate backstabbing, exclusive deals, contracts fights, and patent trolling
Which would likely result in horrid quality of life for the end user. Having to maintain countless accounts and subscriptions to have even fractional access to games.
It would likely also fuck over the studios and indie developers who would be shoved aside or relentlessly bought up in a ever growing attempt to grow.
More competition does not always mean things are better for the consumer. You can see the exact same thing played out with the recent rise and now slow descent to streaming services. As we went from one good one that turned into a horrible one as the sharehold is demanded it, then more rows and then things only became worse.
When you start operating at the sort of scale that the internet does, true, the whole competition thing being better for the consumer rarely works out.
You more frequently just end up with a bunch of greedy companies endlessly trying to one-up each other f****** over everyone in their attempts resulting in no one-winning, not the company, not the developers creators or middlemen nor and definitely not least the consumer.
True competition benefiting the consumer also requires there to be a connection to the consumer in a reason to actually service them. The companies need to be fighting for the consumer and not just each other. But that is all capitalism is turned into. The consumer is no longer the end goal. They’re just fighting each other to stomp them out so that all that’s left is themselves.
It’s been shown time and time again for decades now at at sufficient size competition just by itself does not help. The only thing that is repeatedly shown to be helpful is private companies with a good person at their home. Not trying to be a greedy f***.
And it’s showing time and time again. Every time that person retires the company sold their holders. Found public offerings made things just get worse.
The problem is not monopolies are bad. It’s not. The competition is good. It’s at public companies are a problem in the law forcing companies to do everything in their power to please. The shareholders is killing everything.
More competition does not always mean things are better for the consumer [cut], e.g. streaming services
I don’t believe this oligopoly is competing with each other?
(I’m not arguing with the rest of your post because capitalism bad :) )
“Not being a total bastard” is a weird way to describe overhauling the gaming on linux experience at no additional cost to the end user, among many other incredibly pro consumer choices they’ve pushed in the last twenty odd years.
Yeah. Steam is fucking solid.
step aside jesus, we have a new savior and his name is gaben
And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?
More comptetion wouldn’t just benefit consumers, it would benefit devs. A dev could shop their game around go with a store front that suits their needs better.
I only buy games on Steam, GOG and ItchIO. The main reason I don’t give a cent to stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic Games anymore is their services and terms are horrible. I’m all in for supporting competition when it’s good competition.
I bought Anno 1800 through uPlay and, to be fair, the app is not too bad, but now that I’m on Linux idk if I’d be able to get it working again. Not that I necessarily have interest to play again.
I would buy from GOG too, if they provided Linux support in form of an official launcher. And if available also official Linux builds. Back in the days GOG did that, but they stopped doing it. And before someone comes after me, I know there are alternative launchers on Linux. But I don’t want to give GOG money for work others doing it for free. I don’t want support a company who only cares about Windows.
I used to be the same.
I have changed to prioritizing GOG though since I try to limit purchases from US companies and I despise how Steam knowingly profits from making children addicted to gambling.
They started supporting and cooperating with heroic launcher.
Thus heroic is the defacto official GOG launcher on linux.
What type of support and cooperation? And where it is documented, so I can read about it?
Weird. I can fibd no source on it. However I seem to distinctly remember that GOG announced to help heroic implement more cloud features.
That does not mean it never happened, we just can’t find the source. I had this with my own statements in the past too, sometimes it was true sometimes I was wrong. Therefore I cannot trust everyone in the internet. What I can imagine is, that GOG worked on the GOG API (the programming interface for other tools) to add access to the Cloud features in example. It might came out of a request from the Heroic Launcher project. So in a sense GOG would cooperate. But this is just speculation on my part here.
Still the Heroic Launcher is a separate project doing all the work on their own.
In the past, before Proton, if a game was available at comparable prices on GOG and on Steam, I’d buy it on GOG, also because no DRM meant better compatibility. After Proton, my purchases from GOG went way down.
You can run GOG games via Proton these days btw!
You always could, but they don’t get to take credit for that
I could understand this sentiment for any pc-platform but GOG. After all, they are the only ones (afaik) that make their launcher optional. And while i do ocassionally use launcher-functionalities from for example steam, i would much rather not have to bother with it if i didnt have to.
I bought Resident Evil 0 on GOG yesterday but Heroic wouldn’t download the game for some reason (stuck at 0%). Refunded, got it on Steam for cheaper and it launched right away.
Sometimes I purchase on GOG out of principle and for some reason they always punish me for it.
If you login to the Lutris client with your GOG account it skips GOG Galaxy and install the game for you in proton.
Yeah they were ahead of Steam there for a while.
You can just add it to Steam as a non-Steam game and launch it from there
This does not address the issue I brought up in my reply. Besides the brought up point, it would not solve all other issues I would have. I know the functionality to add non-Steam games since I am on Steam over 12 years ago.
Oh cool then just be a prick about it for no reason. Go fuck yourself, I was just trying to help you.
I told you that it does not address my issue. No need to be mad, I have no bad intentions. I expressed what issue I have and adding the game as a non-Steam game does not solve the issues I have.
It came off as hostile but maybe I misread.
How does it not fix the problem? You can buy a gog game, add it to Steam and launch it with Proton. You’d just be using Steam instead of the gog launcher you want.
The problem is the launcher. He does not want one.
Is there a place that highlights these bad terms in the ToS?
stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic
Better yet, games
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Is discovery a dumpster fire? I mean sure it could be better but I dont think its a dumpster fire. It seems there are constantly new small team indie games doing wild numbers on the platform. If discovery was truely bad we would be seeing the charts dominated by big studios.
The regular Next Fests have probably been the single best thing for game discovery I’ve found in s long time. Nothing beats an actual hands-on demo for deciding if I’ll wishlist a game.
As a player, I feel like discovery is great. I found literally dozens of interesting games just by scrolling down the main page.
I don’t know how it’s for devs, but it’s probably all but impossible to get traction if you’re just throwing your game in there, Fests being a compromised solution to an impossible problem
i kinda wish we had greenlit, there’s so much shovelware assetflip shit…lotta crap to wade through to find the good stuff.
but greenlit itself is probably worse in the longrun, maybe they should just increase the cost to post a game (that deposit is refunded after certain number of sales, iirc). larger deposit would make it less lucrative to throw out shit
Devs complain thats it hard and feels like a lottery but thats just because there are so many good games on steam its so hard to standout. Game making is very competitive, very work intensive and very unpredictable.
I guess he talking about the search system, which is a dumpster fire relative to other Steam features.
Are we using the same product? There’s a vast array of quality tags that seem to genuinely work to find stuff?
You can’t filter using more than one tag as an “and” filter, only “or”. That’s pretty basic for a filter feature, isn’t it? It’s just surprising given how well implemented other Steam features had been in my experience.
He wasnt talking about search it was about algorithmic recommendation.
But you can filter by multiple tags. When you click search select the advanced search at the bottom of the dropdown. It does all the things you mention and far more
Did I really missed such a feature? I’ll try it out later.
Mr biggest problem with tags is that it’s user curated and you can recommend an unlimited number of them.
Just because a game has a few funny moments, doesn’t mean it gets the comedy tag. Just because it has a brief driving sequence doesn’t mean it gets the racing tag. Just because there’s some reading involved doesn’t mean you get the visual novel tag.
It’s getting to the point I feel like there’s a conspiracy where there’s teams of people intentionally sabotaging the tag system and teams trying to counter it, all so they can control views and sales. It’s really noticeable when a publisher stops marketing and moves to another release.
I’m the opposite, I find user assigned tags to be far more accurate. Otherwise every game would be put into the most generic categories. From my experience the tags are generally accurate.
I don’t think you can create new tags can you ? At least I have not seen a place to do that.
But I do also think that there could be more specific tags.
And yeah, being able to AND / OR would be hella good.However, I would not describe it as a dumpster fire, it’s pretty good all things considered.
Competition keeps them honest, and right now we need more real contenders, not just storefronts throwing money at exclusives.
Then the competition should put in the work.
That’s kinda his point.
That’s hard to do when Steam has all but cornered the market. Say what you will about Epic’s ineptitude, but even investing billions, the publisher of the biggest game ever can’t break into the market. Now imagine how hard it’d be for a smaller player.
Epic can’t break into the market because of their own shitty launcher, not because of anything Steam has done to lock down the competition.
Now imagine how hard it’d be for a smaller player.
Not very hard, if they were willing to create a decent launcher and engage in sustainable business practices (and regional pricing).
I sincerely doubt that even if another launcher did everything Steam does, it would rival it without huge amounts of money being thrown around. People already use Steam.
And that’s assuming they get to this point, ignoring that Steam had decades to get there. It used to be ass.
Not every company can pull it off, but I’m certain if Epic had invested in their launchers it could have worked.
A few years in and their launcher has stagnated completelyI sincerely doubt that even if another launcher did everything Steam does, it would rival it. People already use Steam.
At that point, you can start grabbing business from steam via promotions and such. You don’t need to rival or outgrow Steam to break into the market, you just need a bit of the market.
And that’s assuming they get to this point, ignoring that Steam had decades to get there. It used to be ass.
It’s not even that other launchers have less features than Steam. It’s just that other than GoG, which has a very limited catalog and no regional pricing, there is not a single store that is not actively anti-consumer to a hilarious extent.
The epic launcher is a fucking piece of shit. It being a bloated unreal application to serve as a glorified web browser does not help at all
There being a barrier to entry isn’t Steam’s fault. If someone comes and makes a competitor launcher and storefront that is just as good, people can easily switch. Both developers and customers. Nobody is locked in
The competition is at work, but too many fanboys blindly bashing on anything that isn’t Steam is making it very hard for them.
The only competition is GOG and they will never succeed with DRM free for the big AAA. Epic succeeding is the worst case scenario
Which competition are you referring to?
Steam took years and years earning customers trust slowly but surely. Why would we greet Epic, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard with anything other than suspicion?
Looking at how other tech areas have all consolidated into monopolies or oligopolies, valve is the best case scenario for PC gaming.
Imagine anyone else being in control. Activision? EA? Ubisoft? The gaming industry is not immune from disgusting money hungry corporations stepping on the users to squeeze out every little penny they can. Valve has never done this and has kept others in check for the longest time. The day we lose the current version of Valve will be disastrous for the industry, I’m pretty sure.
I think you might reconsider what qualifies as “best case scenario” if you end that statement with “when this thing goes, it’s taking the industry with it”. Like, best out of a bad bunch, for sure, but the best possible outcome?
My personal opinion is that better than this in a money driven capitalistic economy is not possible. The pressures to keep growing and to make more are too great and most companies will do anything to make line go up. Valve has been very steady and metered in their ways over the years compared to any other company I am aware of.
If we change the external pressures, as in change our entire economic model, then sure, better can be had, I assume for all companies everywhere not just valve.
This is a bot ^^
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You’re saying a lot of words as fact for what is an opinion.
Watch your determinism.
And it will last til Gabe dies. Then I guarantee it enshittifes so fast it will make your head spin.
As long Valve doesn’t become publicly traded they will be fine. The problems start when companies optimize for shareholder value rather than customer value.
So tencent or a saudi prince buys them and it will be fine guyyyyssss haha
Nothing ever bad happens under private ownership either right?
Na. Even privatly traded companies can enshittify when it gets inherited to people not sharing the same vision as the one that made the company successful.
If you want to prevent enshittification more long term, convert it to a non-profit cooperative, with a work ethic that promotes providing the best service over short term profit.
That would be amaze balls, but hard to see happening in reality.
How cool would it be if Steam split* into a non-profit, giving rebates back to developers for platform fees collected in excess of costs (including generous salaries for their employees, of course) with directives to make the platform as good for gamers and developers as possible?
One can dream.
- I’m assuming a split because game development and sales don’t really mesh with a non-profit in the same way. Hard to make competitive multiplayer-only live-service games (let alone The International for DOTA 2) and loot crates your business model that way, at any rate.
Private equity buyout would be the same problem but even faster.
You think there aren’t a bunch of greedy finance whores biding their time until Gabe dies in order to take over and enshitify everything so they can squeeze as much money out of Steam as possible?
You’re right that going public would virtually guarantee they enshittify, but staying private does not guarantee they remain customer focused. It’s still a business, and right now the only thing making it so good for customers, IMHO, is an ideological vision that favours long term stability, and steady profits. That is not the norm in the business world (of tech platforms).
Well yeah, that will be the potential first sign to look out for. If that happens no need to think it won’t get worse like everything else.
I think Valve has a lot of good people there. Hopefully succession has been planned and leadership will go to someone as good as GabeN.
100% this. He’s definitely keeping a bunch of bad stuff at bay.
Maybe. I’ve heard Gabe’s son is set to take over when the time comes, hopefully he’s been raised right.
Hmm. The founder’s son usually just squeezes the company for profit.
citation needed
points to all of human history
Maybe this will be one of the exceptions. At least I hope so.
There are millions of successful companies and businesses on this planet and a lot (historically almost all) are taken over by the children or protégés. I‘d argue that nepo babies who got pampered up until adulthood (like probably Gabe‘s kids) have a worse track record of leading a business, that’s probably the examples you’ve been thinking of.
But you don’t have to do anything at all to get rich off of steam
Really!? Gives me hope!
He should turn it into a non-profit right before he dies and put the ip under a foundation or something so it can’t be sold off in pieces.
He wont though
OpenAI is a non-profit
OpenAI started as a non-profit and pivoted to being for profit whether the paperwork has kept up or not.
Pretty sure that was the plan all along though.
A non-profit which owns a portion of OpenAI, the for-profit company.
And FIFA
As soon as the business people gain control they will pivot everything to maximize profit. Enshitification is just a euphemism for business.
I feel like they’ve earned it because they’ve put in the most work. They are the best in the game because they make the user experience the best there is. EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft have/had their own storefronts or launchers but they are clunky and unpleasant to deal with and the only benefits they had were exclusives. They’ve never put any effort into user experience and were mainly doing it to make themselves more money and it definitely showed. The only one that’s ever been a real competitor is Epic Launcher. And while it has gotten better over the years, the user experience is still not anywhere near Steam. And even now the Epic Launcher is still unpleasant to deal with in a lot of cases unless you just use it to play Fortnite.
With Steam everything just works and is basically seamless. Not only that, before Steam the modding community for most games had an immense learning curve and most people just avoided it save for Minecraft. And as far as I can tell you can’t even mod games you buy on the Microsoft Store because their file structure is atrocious.
The only storefront I wish was better/more popular was GOG. It’s not bad and has a lot of benefits (Like no DRM and offline installers), but Steam just makes everything so easy it’s hard not to get stuck with them once you’ve started.
While Steam is more or less the best big solution we have, it does leave a lot to be desired. The only reason they are the best is because they clawed their way to the top early, kept themselves “good enough” compared to the competition, and haven’t yet sold out their entire customer base.
At this point, they completely dominate. It’s insanely difficult to compete with them. So long as they make half of an effort to improve things and continue to be somewhat benevolent they’ll likely keep their crown.
However, Valve is not ideal. They are still looking out for themselves, primarily. Many of Valves improvements have just been reactions to competitors and other threats not an inherent desire to deliver the best product possible or do the right thing. It’s just the fact that most competitors are more obviously greedy and immoral that makes Valve look like the heroes.
Without Epic and others throwing cash on the fire trying to compete I doubt we’d have seen even the slow upgrades to the Steam experience we’ve seen in recent years.
Without the Australian lawsuit, we’d have no return policy.
Without the clever abuse of arbitration by a group of lawyers, Valve would still have forced arbitration in the agreements.
Steam OS was only a thing, and Proton only got backed by Valve, when Microsoft first started positioning itself to eat Valve’s lunch by exerting control over Windows and pushing for things like UWP and the MS/Windows/XBOX storefronts on PC.
The vast majority of Valve’s storefront improvements are algorithms and crowd sourcing solutions. They want to be as hands off as possible because being hands on is hard and comes with liability. The whole skins market and gambling fiasco kind of shows that they’d much rather just not get involved if possible - same risk/reward cost/benefit analysis used by every greedy company. If that means lying about how aware they are of it that’s what they’ll do.
Don’t get me wrong. The least worst is, unfortunately, the best we’ve got. I love gaming and use Steam a lot. It’s just that the other big players are just so terrible that I think Valve gets a free pass. Hell, much of the tech industry is swallowing tactical nukes hoping that the radiation will somehow mutate them into a good business. In the meantime they are using the illusion of “expansion” from the resulting explosions to make themselves look bigger for investors. I support anyone not doing that.
Offline installers are the reason I only use my money on gog. I like to have control over the things I own, though it’s getting harder and harder these days. But where it’s still possible I use it, and gog is the only storefront that offers this service (which beats every other service I could think of).
The only storefront I wish was better/more popular was GOG. It’s not bad and has a lot of benefits (Like no DRM and offline installers), but Steam just makes everything so easy it’s hard not to get stuck with them once you’ve started.
Well the no DRM/offline installer part is the most important part. I buy a game, I download and install it. If I need more features I may be better off with Steam anyway.
As far as I know the Steam DRM is not mandatory to use for developers.
Yes, I still need to go through Steam for every install.
Non-drm steam games can actually just be copied around like you would copy the installer
I still need the client once (RIP Windows 7), and installations are not guaranteed to be portable.
Devs are still free to sell their game outside of Steam and charge whatever price they want for that version
Alan Wake 2 didn’t make its money back for a year despite being a huge game on the second-biggest service.
Steam doesn’t care about other stores because other stores do not matter. They can let other stores sell Steam keys, and it still doesn’t threaten their untouchable market share.
Not and keep their listing in Steam they can’t.
You can though
Steam’s “most favored nation” contracts with devs explicitly prohibit this
I provided the example of Krita in another comment.
You’re only required to match deals outside Steam if you sold Steam keys. I haven’t found any other clause online.
I think you’re not allowed to “sell” it for free with the same version and features. Which should be unsurprising.
You can, and plenty do
Steam’s “most favored nation” contracts with devs explicitly prohibit this
Krita is open source but paid on Steam
Same with Aseprite. You can buy it from their store or Steam. If you’re cool enough you can compile it yourself and get the full program for free.
While many accuse Valve of monopolising the PC gaming market, others argue that Steam’s dominance is simply the result of doing things right.
These assertions do not contradict. I cannot overstress that.
This whole article is ‘Valve’s monopoly is fine because they did things right.’
Having one good store is not, in itself, a problem. But it does mean we’re one fuckup away from having no good stores.
And if his yacht sinks, we’re boned.
lol I’m imagining a line item on all transactions like
Subtotal 13.21 Taxe 6.02 Platform fee 6.33 Yacht fee 10.00 --- Total $35.56 CAD
People feel good about Valve because they don’t rely on anti consumer behavior. It does what I want and doesn’t enforce me on other crap.
I’m a fan of Valve and Steam too. But you cannot deny that Valve does shitty stuff too. In example Valve is the company who either invented or popularized Loot Boxes. And they don’t do anything about the Black Market for the item trading and selling, such as Counter Strike skins and so on. And there are other little things that could be done, but nothing else upsets me as this.
But besides that, for the most part I love Valve. The commitment to support on Linux is unmatched in the gaming world. As a private company, Valve can do whatever they want. I genuinely think that PC gaming wouldn’t be this good without Valve. If anything, Microsoft would have the power… which in an alternate universe people have to suffer.
The skins and loot boxes is the only negative thing I ever see brought up about steam, and it is a completely voluntary system that applies to a few of their own games. In fact, I keep forgetting they even have them unless someone brings it up and despite being a terrible thing people apparently love them and would be mad if they went away.
So I’ll forgive them for one stupid thing they do and appreciate the other 99% of things they do.
I will say they were less weirdly invasive than whatever it was EA had me running just to play sims 2 in 2017ish. Why tf do you really need to protect you IP that hard for a game that old with newer sequels for???
So we’re acknowledging it’s a monopoly? Cool. Defense is still an acknowledgement. I’ve had the weirdest goddamn arguments with people insisting they’d never shop anywhere else, and if games aren’t on there it’s their own fault they’re doomed… but how dare anyone use the m-word! Obviously that can only mean one seller with absolute control, like how Standard Oil owned all 85% of the market.
The question is, is it a monopoly because they are doing something to force their way into that position, or does every other offering just suck?
And what is the solution to said monopoly? Because as far as I can tell, the only way to give the other shitty stores a chance is to deliberately make the steam experience worse.
There’s also the question of if this is even a real problem. For instance, if two people are trying to sell lemonade on their street, and one is just throwing a lukewarm cup of haphazardly crushed lemons at you for $2, and the other is charging $3 but giving you a cool glass of carefully squeezed lemons… the second one may have a monopoly, but that’s because the first isn’t competent. Should the second be punished in some way because of that?
Should the second be punished in some way because of that?
It’s not a punishment. It’s a correction, required to maintain a healthy market.
Your lemonade stand would be more like if there was a stand on every block: By virtue of the scale of their business they could afford to undercut any competition that tried to start up. If they did that they could be slapped on the wrist for being anti-competitive.
Is Valve/Steam anti-competitive? IDK. It’s a monopoly, though, so you have to watch it extra carefully to ensure it doesn’t abuse its position as a market leader.
Your lemonade stand would be more like if there was a stand on every block: By virtue of the scale of their business they could afford to undercut any competition that tried to start up. If they did that they could be slapped on the wrist for being anti-competitive.
Cough Walmart cough
Walmart has been accused of selling merchandise at such low costs that competitors have tried to sue for predatory pricing (intentionally selling a product at low cost in order to drive competitors out of the market).
In 2000, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection accused Walmart of selling butter, milk, laundry detergent, and other staple goods at low cost, with the intention of forcing competitors out of business and gaining a monopoly in local markets.
Crest Foods filed a similar lawsuit in Oklahoma, accusing Walmart of predatory pricing on several of its products, in an effort to drive Crest Foods’s own company-owned store in Edmond, Oklahoma, out of business.
However, in 2003, Germany’s High Court ruled that Walmart’s low cost pricing strategy “undermined competition” and ordered Walmart and two other supermarkets to raise their prices. Walmart won appeal of the ruling, then the German Supreme Court overturned the appeal.
Walmart has been accused of using monopoly power to force its suppliers into self-defeating practices. In 2006, Barry C. Lynn, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation (a think tank), said that Walmart’s constant demand for lower prices caused Kraft Foods to “shut down thirty-nine plants, to let go [of] 13,500 workers, and to eliminate a quarter of its products.”
The bottom line on what I’m trying to say, is that valve isn’t doing anything to correct. The only way to make them less competitive would be to actively make the user experience worse.
Is it a potential problem that valve could go anti consumer and fuck everyone over? Absolutely. But until that happens, there’s nothing to actually do beyond point out that it has a monopoly. Which… I mean, doesn’t actually do much more than trigger the “monopoly = bad” thought in people’s minds.
Saying it’s a monopoly doesn’t mean it needs solving. Anti-competitive behavior is a problem - but being a monopoly doesn’t require that abuse, and you don’t need a monopoly to exercise that abuse.
Yet people get deeply fricking weird about saying it’s a monopoly.
It’s naked taboo. It’s people feeling icky about a word, and actively refusing to engage in rational argument about meaning. When someone has dogmatically internalized that monopoly=bad and Steam=good, the text doesn’t matter. Even pointing out things they just said gets dismissed as some kind of attack against The Good Store.™
We have to start from plain acknowledgement that Steam’s competitors do not matter. They are plentiful and irrelevant. Explaining why they are doesn’t change that they are.
There should be case studies about the ineptitude of competing stores. A small handful aside who have found a niche and serve it well (itch.io and GOG come to mind) the other stores just dish out a store front that is under-cooked for what is there and lacking features beyond that and then are surprised when people prefer Steam.
For example I’m not aware of a Workshop style system in any other store, so any game that features community made content will be a better experience on Steam.
I still don’t feel like it’s a monopoly when there is nothing stopping developers from selling the game as a paid download off their own site. Players can even add that game as a non-Steam game and still get a mostly complete experience as if they brought the game from Steam. Companies selling their game on Steam was always a option and not a necessity.
None of that is what defines a monopoly.
There’s only one store that matters. They have unthreatened supermajority marketshare. Customers go there by default - sometimes exclusively. Developers can sell there, or they’re basically fucked.
What you’re concerned about are anti-competitive practices. But some businesses don’t need those, to lack any relevant competition. It can just happen. They didn’t do anything wrong. They’re still monopolies.
