Gamers have gotten quite lucky so far that the company that has been in the position to turn the screws and establish a monopoly has been content to only make gobs of money, instead of trying to make all the money like pretty much every other entertainment industry.
Yeah, the reason why Valve can do that is that they are not a publicly traded company but a privately owned one. Gabe Newell doesn’t have a fiduciary duty to any shareholders, so they don’t have to squeeze every penny from their users or abuse their quasi monopoly.
The whole idea of investments always going up is an absurd idea that needs to go. At this point I infinitely prefer a private company over a publicly traded one.
It’s a bit of an inherent issue sadly, if your goal is to multiply money why would you invest in a company whose profits stay the same over one whose go up? And you have no reason to care if the company eventually dies as a result, you just move your money into the next one.
And most people investing money will be doing so with the only purpose of multiplying that money, as it’s mostly banks and similar institutions. In theory if the main investors of a company want it to prioritize user experience over profits, the companies’ duty to its shareholders would also be to ensure good user experience. But that’s never going to happen.
Multiplying your investments is the basis of capitalism. To speak to your point of it being an inherent issue - I find the idea of removing the profit motive from capitalist enterprise to hilariously reactionary. Not because I like capitalism, but because so many people that support capitalism want to “reform” it by ripping its heart out (one artery at a time, at least). I want to rip its heart out for the express intent of killing it - what strange allies we make!
If Gabe ever leaves Valve and the powers that be decide to go public I hope it’s done in a way that gives power to the users instead of faceless investment firms. I don’t even know what that would look like but I fear the day that Valve comes under control of an ex-AAA game company CEO or the like.
Perhaps a transition to a not-for-profit organization structure might be what folks would prefer? It seems like a potentially better alternative than going public, but I’m not sure how it might work in practice for something like a digital storefront.
In a weird way, one could almost argue that’s roughly how Valve’s been operating anyway, except I imagine they’ve been lining their pockets more than a not-for-profit organization’s owners/employees do.
I bet they make a shit ton of money but they certainly seem to reinvest enough of it too. There is a interesting concept called purpose companies here in Europe but it’s not especially wide spread or planned by regulators so the transition is extremly complicated and expensive. The search engine Ecosia is a relatively well known one, it’s basically a company in self ownership where no one from outside can become CEO and no one can sell or go public, they are obligated to their chosen purpose and that’s where their profits go (in the case of Ecosia that’s planting trees), not sure how it works exactly or if it’s doable in the USA at all tho.
I said this elsewhere but that’s not true. The idea that publicly traded companies have a duty to maximize shareholder value is a myth, and anyone privileged enough to sit on a board of directors likely knows this. See this article for an explanation. Every time a board squeezes a company for short term profits at the cost of long term good will, long term profits, etc., that is because they chose to do so.
Well the relation is wrong but it’s a real thing, they have a duty to grow infinitely or the sroxk price will crash and since that’s impossible to achive they essentially have to squeeze their users for short term gains to seem like they still grow sooner or later
“People like me” meaning “People who cite their sources and investigating claims before making them?” Yes, I can understand why you might find it difficult to convince “people like me” to believe something that’s trivially shown to be false.
The idea that publicly traded companies have a duty to maximize shareholder value is a myth, and anyone privileged enough to sit on a board of directors likely knows this. See this article for an explanation. Every time a board squeezes a company for short term profits at the cost of long term good will, long term profits, etc., that is because they chose to do so.
EDIT: See also This NY Times article. And note that I’m not saying that corporations, board members, etc., aren’t pressured or incentivized to maximize shareholder value - I’m saying that they do not have a legal duty to do so.
It’s not a myth, it’s called Fiduciary Duty. The board, officers, and executives of a public company have a legal responsibility to put the financial interests and well-being of the company above other personal interests. The article you linked doesn’t deny this, and it also isn’t discussing the legal definition of it. It’s discussing what you might call “toxic fiduciary duty”, or more or less the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. It’s the idea that profit is the primary motive and should always trump all other considerations.
Fiduciary duty is important to create a concrete stance against corruption and misuse of the company’s assets for personal gain. But when taken to an extreme, it becomes toxic and has negative consequences for the company. Employee wages are probably the most obvious example. There has to be a balance between underpaying and overpaying. If you chronically underpay, the best employees will seek more gainful employment elsewhere and the company will suffer from a poorly qualified workforce. If you overpay, like 100% revenue share with employees, the company will cease to make a profit and will be unable to function. A balance has to be struck to retain the best talent in order to drive success for the company; that is the point of the article you linked.
TL;DR extremism is always bad
(Please don’t mistake this for a pro-capitalism rant, there’s nuance to be had here)
It isn’t. If it were, that would mean that in practice, board members act to maximize shareholder value because they are legally obligated to do so, and that simply isn’t true.
In practice, board members and C-suite employees are incentivized to maximize shareholder value. They are not legally obligated to do so.
Fiduciary duty is a legal requirement, meaning that if you don’t fulfill your fiduciary duty, you’re liable. But nobody has been successfully sued for not maximizing shareholder value when their actions were in line with the business judgment rule (“made (1) in good faith, (2) with the care that a reasonably prudent person would use, and (3) with the reasonable belief that the director is acting in the best interests of the corporation”). Successful lawsuits regarding breach of fiduciary duty (in the context of corporate law) require the defendant to have acted with gross negligence, in bad faith, or to have had an undisclosed conflict of interest.
The closest instance of legal precedent that I know of (aside from “” of course) that eBay v. Newmark (Craigslist), which Max Kennerly took as meaning that corporations . In this case, Craigslist was found to have violated their fiduciary duties to eBay because Craigslist, in Max’s words, “tried to protect the frugal, community-centric corporate culture that was a hallmark for their success.”
Except, if you actually read the case notes, it’s clear that the issue wasn’t that Craigslist wasn’t maximizing their profits, but that they were diluting the percentage of stocked owned and flexibility of selling those stocks of other stockholders. The issue wasn’t that Craigslist wanted to spend half their profits supporting charities or anything like that - no, it was that they were trying to artificially limit, thus directly devaluing, the shares they had already sold. In other words, I agree that this was a case about minority shareholder oppression as opposed to being an edict to maximize profits / shareholder value.
And other than people threatening legal action, the most recent case we have (other than eBay v. NewMark) in favor of shareholder primacy is 124 years old - Dodge v. Ford. But the opposite is true:
Shareholder primacy is clearly unenforceable on its own term because the business judgment rule would defeat any claims based on a failure to maximize profit. 40 Corporate managers formulate business strategy. A rule‒sanction is antithetical to the core concept of the business judgment rule. In over one hundred years of corporate law, there is not a case where a state supreme court imposed liability for breach of fiduciary duty on the specific ground that the board, in managing operational matters, failed to maximize shareholder profit, though it made the decision informedly, disinterestedly, and in good faith.41 That case does not exist. In fact, many cases show just the opposite. Courts have held that shareholders cannot challenge a board’s decision on the specific grounds that, for example: the company paid its employees too much; 42 it failed to pursue a profit opportunity;43 it did not maximize the settlement amount in a negotiation;44 it failed to lawfully avoid taxes.45 There are classic textbook cases where courts have rejected attempts of shareholders to interfere with the board’s decisions on the argument that their views of business or strategy would have maximized shareholder value.46
The belief that a corporation is legally obligated to maximize shareholder value isn’t just wrong; it also:
Implies that no other model is feasible
Removes accountability for the negative effects of such policy from the people who are responsible for perpetuating them
Reinforces the fallacy that this should be resolved through legislation
One of the big reasons many companies go public is it’s naturally a really nice retirement package for the owners of the company. The owners of the company may have put so much time and money into building the company that they don’t have sufficient retirement savings, so by going public they turn a portion of their ownership into a boatload of cash as well as a boatload of wealth that can be leveraged, then simply elect a new CEO, retain their significant voting power on the board so they aren’t entirely abandoning their baby and then peace out
People saying Steam doesn’t have a monopoly because other stores exist, is the same as saying Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly on PC Gaming because Mac and Linux exist. Technically true, but ultimately meaningless because its their market power that determines a monopoly, not whether there are other niche players.
While Valve and Steam have generally been a good player, and currently do offer the best product, they still wield an ungodly amount of influence over the PC gaming market space.
Epic is chasing that because they really want what Valve has, though no doubt they plan to speedrun the enshittification process as soon as they think it safe.
When people say Valve doesn’t have a monopoly, they usually mean they don’t engage in anti-competitive practices (like making exclusivity a condition for publishing on their store, cough cough).
Actually, Valve’s recent moves represent what free market capitalism should be about - when competing stores started to appear, they instead made massive contributions to Linux gaming and appealed to right-to-repair advocates with the Steam Deck. Now both of those demographics are suckling on Gaben’s teats, myself included.
I hate DRM but really like Steam, they put in a shit ton of work to achive that! It’s certainly a monopoly but I think one of the biggest differences is that it’s not a publically tradet company so they don’t have to chase that infinite growth many very influencial idiots don’t see any issue with and there for aren’t willing to destroy everything for short term gains.
Despite not having pressure from shareholders Valve pioneered or at least popularized and normalized many of the worst practices in videogame industry designed to milk players dry: microtransactions, battle passe, loot boxes, real money gambling, you name it, Valve has it
Capitalism and a free economy are good when it's serving customers by making the best product or service possible, while balancing that with paying labour to make that happen.
The problem is that nowadays, there's a third party to this for the megacorps: Shareholders, which is where the enshittification begins.
Valve is a private company, so it is not beholden to any external shareholders, which is why it's been able to chart its own course. Still, I do worry what will happen when Gabe steps down.
I just don’t think that’s the case with Valve, they work on steam and add new features consistently, it’s not like they’re providing no value for the cut they take.
I get where you’re coming from though and way too many companies get away with that kind of situation. Just what capitalism often gives us :/
I’m not talking about Valve giving things back to us. I’m talking about the fact the owners of the company get money simply by owning the company. They take money they didn’t work for. Even if the company isn’t manipulative or scummy, they’re enriching people who don’t deserve it.
Generally companies do provide a service of some sort, the problem is that the higher ups who generally do less actual “work” rake in way way more then the average worker of the company.
That may be so, but that’s not the way that the initial tweet is using the term, and not the commonly understood definition.
I’m not denying that Valve as a whole have been a force for good in the PC gaming market, but it’s pointless to argue semantics and make up definitions to better suit personal bias instead of debating the actual point that’s being made.
they usually mean they don’t engage in anti-competitive practices.
But they do. They forbid devs to sell their games cheaper on other storefronts (outside of timed sales). Basically they enforce anti-competitive pricing on products in a way that makes it impossible for the devs to move the platform costs into consumer prices.
Devs could sell the product on Epic for example for $49 and make the same amount of profit as they do on Steam when priced $59 due to lower cut, but they can’t do it because Valve forbids it. It anti-competitively protects Valve and their 30% cut against competitors who would take lesser cuts, at the expense of end customers.
Epic is chasing that because they really want what Valve has, though no doubt they plan to speedrun the enshittification process as soon as they think it safe.
Like what Steam did with Greenlight and the plague of early access asset flips that clogged its home page for years?
Greenlight had nothing to do with selling out the end user experience to cash out on providing value and leaving the service near unusable, unless you have some kind of compulsion where you have to buy everything on Steam.
The trading card feature created an ecosystem allowing cheap asset flips to quickly make the threshold. And make their money back, creating a positive feedback loop.
Steam allowed its store to be flooded with these games at the expense of its customers because it got it’s cut.
Steam is a natural monopoly, which although still not entirely good but are a wholly different beast from monopolies made by exploiting flaws in the system
What’s a natural monopoly? Valve currently has the freedom to implement anything they want within an extent because they’re so popular. If they decided they wanted to charge devs 35% would people stop using it? Probably not. Steam’s monopoly is as bad as any other for the same reason any other monopoly is bad.
A natural monopoly is when an industry is difficult to break into, making competition difficult or impossible. This favors incumbents, in fact, a lot of industries are natural monopolies (pharma, aerospace, chip production).
The difficulty of breaking into an industry may be because:
new players cannot compete with established scale
start up costs require a nearly all-or-nothing approach, high risk
Look it up? It’s an actual term, not something I made up for whatever reason you assumed to argue against something I didn’t even say. I already said it’s still not a good thing, it just would have happened regardless of whoever that was able to do it on scale first.
You may want to read up on Ma Bell or Microsoft’s legal issues with Internet Explorer in the 90s to see what specifically was so bad about monopolies like those, and then revisit this idea.
Is Steam really a monopoly when Valve doesn’t try to stifle competition and no other company could be bothered (besides maybe GOG) to make a half decent store?
Yes. Nothing you said doesn’t change the fact it’s a monopoly. Sure, it might not be a Microsoft-level-evil monopoly, and as far as monopolies go, this is probably the best one, but it’s still a monopoly.
Monopsony - a monopoly but instead of controlling production, you control the marketplace, like Amazon
Steam is almost at that level, but they at least do it by tempting people with features and don’t try to lock you in… Trouble with exchanges is that fragmentation really sucks for everyone
As I said, I agree that Steam is great. But a monopoly (or monopsony - never heard the word before) is always bad. Yes, Steam is great, but the ownership will change one day. And as it seems everyone wants to take every company public, I’m pretty sure that Steam will be taken public eventually. And the whole wheel of shit will start rolling.
True, but steam is about as good as it gets. They aren’t actually a monoposody, they’re just the biggest marketplace.
They don’t do exclusives, don’t restrict you from selling elsewhere, they’ll integrate with any piece of software (including things you’ve installed externally or will install other launchers for you - even if they contain competing storefronts)
They do have competition, except they did the one thing companies hate to do most at this stage - they compete. They’re the only real option because they limit nothing from their customers and offer better features. Epic offers free games, Microsoft comes pre-installed on most gaming computers, Amazon has everyone’s payment details already, and despite it all these alternatives steam is still the best option in every regard
Yes, it’s almost guaranteed to go to shit eventually, but what better system is there? There’s no one more trustworthy to run the primary gaming marketplace… They’ve even built their company structure and policies to resist the pull of enshittification.
A new company isn’t a good answer, a distributed system wouldn’t work well for this application, and even nonprofits struggle to resist enshittification as well as valve has done
What can we do except keep watch and push back if valve goes out of bounds?
One aspect through which one could argue that they might stifle competition is their price parity rule, for which it seems they are being sued. See here (not sure if there is any new development.
Hard to compete with steam if you cant at least do it through lower pricing. Although this article suggests that at least for epic exclusives publisher seem to prefer to just pocket the difference, rather than pass on those savings.
Isn't that just saying you can't sell access to a game on steam (through a steam key) for a lower price than what's on Steam? It's not like they can't just offer a lower price... just that they can't offer it for a lower price bundled with Steam access.
So they can offer a lower price, just not as a third party through Steam itself.
I think you are right, the first article I linked was a bit ambiguous about it, but rereading the second one it seems that I misunderstood it and you are right.
Doesn’t explain all the other games sold for cheaper than steam when you take a look at isthereanydeals. Or the bundles fanatical offers with no charity involved.
I believe it means base price and not sale prices. It’s fine for a game to go on sale for lower than Steam, but the base price can’t be $60 Steam $50 Epic as an example.
No it means that if the game is for sale on Steam then it can be sold elsewhere (GOG, EPIC…) but it’s in the contract with Steam that it can’t be sold for a lower price elsewhere, it’s not about Steam keys sold by third party vendors.
It is a monopoly - they just don’t abuse it as much against their audience.
For developers it’s either take their 30% deal or just don’t sell your game because a lot of people only use steam.
Not even Cyberpunk or the Witcher could sell more on gog than on steam even though you knew that there the developers got 100% of the money spent. Gwent standalone flopped so hard on GOG that it had to be rereleased with limited features on steam and sold more there
People are just fundamentally lazy so it totally is a problem that you have one store with such a massive market share even if it’s very convenient for the end-user they can completely exploit their position against publishers.
Sure EPICs way of making games exclusive to their store is not elegant but without that no-one would choose that store over steam
I am not sure if it’s just people being lazy. Steam legitimately is a good gaming platform. It just has so many features that really bring the PC platform to the level of consoles in terms of UX. Social features, discussion boards, reviews, matchmaking, chat, broadcasting, remote streaming, all this alongside a kickass store. That’s why Valve could roll out something like Steam OS and not have it feel woefully inadequate compared to what consoles offer.
Don’t forget notes for games, steam workshop, and for those of us open source enthusiasts, making easy/reliable gaming on Linux. It has never been so good being a Linux gamer.
Many years ago I bought some old DOS game where Linux runtimes using the original files exists on GOG. What I expected was a disk image or a zip containing the files - what I got was some exe containing the files. Why would I ever try to buy something from someone fucking up something that simple again?
I might buy some indie games from a developer directly - but with a middleman steam is the only option.
This is partially on these companies for failing to provide an equal experience to Steam on their platform. I bought Witcher III in GoG to support the devs, and my reward was a lost save by the time the DLCs came out, because their client didn’t have cloud saves. So guess where I bought their stuff from there on? Sure, they added these features later but for some people the damage is already done.
If you’re so sure Steam is a monopoly, can you please provide any evidence for that? To be clear, being very successful does not make someone a monopolist.
How many games are actually steam exclusive on PC though, not counting 50 cent shovelware crap? A good chunk of the best selling PC games ever (minecraft for example) are not even available on steam.
I just went through the top 10 on steam and other than counter strike, which is literally made by valve, all of them are available elsewhere.
They account for about 75% of game sales on PC from what I’m finding, it’s a “virtual monopoly”, i.e. they have enough reach to control the market even if they have competitors.
75% of the units sold or 75% of the overall revemue. Given that the most successful PC games aren’t even on Steam, the latter seems unlikely to me. Roblox alone is a sustained revenue stream in insanely high numbers.
Do they block the competition in any way? They aren’t the stewards of Windows. Epic buys exclusive rights to games. Does Valve do the same? On Steam Deck, there’s even an entire independent app store (Discover with Flathub) enabled right out of the box. That’s how the community made Minecraft and Heroic Game Launcher available. Official EGS, GamePass, and GOG launchers could be made available via Flathub but MS etc. choose not to.
They have their own unethical business practice they’re getting sued for (preventing sales at a lower price on competing platforms) and just because you agree with what they do now doesn’t mean it’s not a risk to have such a behemoth in the market, Gaben is nice now, it just needs him changing his mind or retiring/dying and shit could hit the fan real quick.
It’s not about Valve or Newell being nice or not, it’s about whether Valve has a monopoly and the EU just recently looked at digital markets closely and determined that Valve is not a gatekeeper.
Find me a source confirming that they actually studied Steam’s position in their market. They have specific criterias, including financial and user ones, and Steam doesn’t meet them… oopsy!
Find me a source confirming that they actually studied Steam’s position in their market.
I found a super recent source that does not list Valve as a monopolist. Maybe you should go and find a credible source other than “Trust me, bro” that Steam is a monopoly.
They have specific criterias, including financial and user ones, and Steam doesn’t meet them… oopsy!
So Steam does not rake in so much money to hog the market and also does not have enough users to hog the customer base. If anything is an oopsy, it’s you accidentally admitting that Steam is not a monopoly. Good we cleared that up!
No, what I’m saying is that they didn’t check the PC gaming platform market at all because it doesn’t fit the criterias necessary for them to pay attention to it, which means that Steam not being on the list doesn’t mean they’re not a monopoly. You try to use that as proof, yet the European Union just didn’t check what’s happening in that market at all!
There’s tons of monopolies they don’t list because the market they’re in is too small to bother, it doesn’t mean they’re not monopolies.
You try to use that as proof, yet the European Union just didn’t check what’s happening in that market at all!
Funny how nobody other random commentators on the internet and their “Trust me, bro” line of evidence sees Steam as a monopoly and you people conveniently keep forgetting that the biggest PC games – Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite – are not on Steam and the combined active user base of those three games dwarf the active Steam user base. So the gatekeeper list by the EU does not count. Great. Where are the antitrust rulings on Steam by the USA, the UK, Japan, Brazil, Kenya, or any other regulatory body on the planet?
As a video game store they are the biggest one in term of total users and number of games for sale, are you questioning that?
How many users get Fortnite from Epic Games Store and how many get Minecraft from Microsoft Store? What does the “Trust me, bro” line of evidence say about those? None of you provide anything facts-based after all…
You’re the one that needs to provide a source since this was your original claim to refute someone else’s cited source. Don’t sealion and constantly ask someone else for more and more and more sources when they’ve already provided one and you’ve provided none.
They haven’t provided a source! They extrapolated from data they don’t understand! The criterias for companies to be analysed under the DMA are public and the PC video game market just doesn’t fit! The reason Steam isn’t on the list isn’t because it’s not a monopoly, it’s they the industry they I operate in isn’t taken in consideration by the law.
You could be the only online windmill hat seller, the EU wouldn’t put you on the DMA list because you wouldn’t sell 6.5B euros worth every year and your market valuation wouldn’t be 65B euros. It doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have a monopoly!
Heck, Valve doesn’t even have a market valuation because it’s not public! They’re evaluated to be worth less than 10B USD and it’s purely surveillance, that’s a long fucking way to the minimum threshold required be the DMA isn’t it? They’re still the biggest player in the PC video game sales market.
Nintendo accounts for 100% of games on the Switch. Microsoft with the Xbox. Heck, even Sony. And people making games for PC don’t have to ask Valve’s permission.
Shit. Bestselling PC game of all time. Minecraft. Not available on Steam.
One can have a monopoly without directly trying for it. Especially when it comes to services with a lot infrastructure involved. Once you make those investments, it's hard for anyone to compete against them.
A monopoly just means you control a significant amount of the market. I think, technically, they would fall under oligopoly. Where a few businesses have control of the market instead of just a single business. But the point is they have a far larger share of the market than most others. This is mostly because they create a product that people want to use, instead of making a service that unfairly captures the market through things like game exclusivity or hostile takeovers.
*Because they don’t meat the minimum financial and monthly user criterias to be taken into consideration when analyzing the monopoly status of their platform
Because they don’t meat the minimum financial and monthly user criterias to be taken into consideration when analyzing the monopoly status of their platform
So Steam does not meet / meat🥩 the financial and monthly user numbers to count as a monopoly? So Steam is not a monopoly then. Great.
No, the PC videogame market is too small for the European Union to analyse it.
If the local hardware store is the only one selling screws for 100km around and it doesn’t show up on their list, does it means they don’t have a monopoly or it simply means that they don’t bother checking that because the hardware store doesn’t:
Make 6.5B a year/doesn’t have a market capitalization of 65B
Doesn’t have 45m monthly users in the union AND 10k business users in the union
Meets those criterias three years in a row
Because these are the criterias required for the EU to take the time to analyze a companies’ position in their market.
The European Union considers some companies to be a monopoly with a smaller market presence than Steam has in the PC video games sales market. That comes from your own source buddy.
Your whole argument to show that it isn’t is based on ignoring their market dominance and referencing the DMA that hasn’t even been used to analyze Steam’s position in their market because the PC video game market as a whole isn’t big enough to be covered by the DMA.
It’s a monopoly, but it’s one that a big company like EA or Epic Games can defeat. But, they have to actually put in the work and effort to present an experience that isn’t an enshittified version of Steam.
So far, none of them are willing to put in the time, so they don’t get the prize.
Not even Cyberpunk or the Witcher could sell more on gog than on steam even though you knew that there the developers got 100% of the money spent.
Most gamers don’t know and/or don’t care, so they will take the least resistance path, which is Steam.
Steam has a “most favoured nation clause” which prevents companies from actually selling for cheaper on other platform. This is how steam maintains its monopoly. If it were possible for CD Projekt Red to sell it cheaper outside of steam it would force steam to actually charge developers less.
They could sell for cheaper, they just can’t sell Steam Keys specifically for cheaper than what’s on Steam itself. Which makes sense honestly, you’re literally using their service for both presence and distribution.
Looking at steam’s own policies, this is true for steam keys, but there is an an going lawsuit that claims steam also makes this apply to non steam-enabled games: arstechnica.com/…/valve-issues-scathing-reply-ove…
But looking mosre closely than I did previously this is based on:
An contract that is apparently not public
A 1 time example that Valve denies
So I don’t really know, but if what valve says is true (which looks like it is), then I don’t see any monopoly abuse indeed.
They do have a monopoly, but it’s in large part for providing a better service. As a Linux user, I prefer Valve 100% over Epic that buys Rocket league and discontinues linux support. I do prefer Itch and GOG for the possibility of no-DRM games, but I’ve got to say it’s overall a worse experience (no auto updates, no social features etc…)
I made my initial comment after watching: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEG5qmMQas which suggested that Steam applied the MFN for non steam - enabled games too, but was done prior to Valve’s response.
For the price parity thing, there’s the game Tales of Maj’Eyal that is $6.99 USD on Steam but is free on their website te4.org. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is an open source project, but is on Steam for $19.99 USD. Caves of Qud is actually on sale now on GOG, but the Itch.io and Steam version aren’t. Sure, these may just be because traditional roguelikes don’t garner that much attention, but they are cases nonetheless that show otherwise.
The lack of auto-updates can sometimes be good. StarSector updated relatively recently and if they actually updated automatically (even if they offered an option to disable it, they update so infrequently, I’d probably have neglected it), my save and all my mods for it would just break, or worse break silentl until it was too late.
This is still easily verifiably untrue in practice. Go to isthereanydeal and you’ll see verified, approved Steam key retailers running sales for under the Steam price on hundreds of games literally every day. Humble offers a global discount on all keys in their store if you’re s subscriber, undercutting virtually every Steam page. That’s not to mention the bundles they sell which regularly cut hundreds of dollars of keys down to a few bucks.
The steam documentation mentions for keys that while it is OK to run sales on different platforms at different times, the steam store must have similar sales within a reasonable time period, and he base price must not be higher on steam.
I think it’s better to reframe the question as “Are there downsides to Valve’s PC market dominance?” or “How is Steam’s 30% cut different from Xbox or Playstation?”
For the latter: it’s worth noting that Microsoft and Sony sell their hardware at a loss, and make up the difference through software, so there are obvious developer benefits to the 70-30 split. For Steam, the equivalent value-add for developers is only the platform itself, and I would wager for many of those developers the biggest reason for selling on Steam is not the feature set - though obviously useful - but because that’s where the users are.
So, users get a feature-rich distribution platform, and developers (and by extension users) pay a tax to access those users. So the question is, how fair is that tax, and what effect does that tax have on the games that get made? Your view on that is going to depend on what you want from Steam, but more relevant I think is how much Steam costs to operate. How much of that 30% cut feeds back into Steam? My guess is not much; though I could be wrong.
But anyway, let’s imagine you took away half the 30% cut. Where does that money go? Well, one of two places: either your pocket, or the developers (or publishers) pocket (depending on how the change affects pricing). The benefits to your pocket are obvious, but what if developers just charge the same price? Well, as far as I’m aware, a lot of games are just not profitable - I read somewhere that for every 10 games, 7 fail, 2 break even, and 1 is a huge success - so my personal view is that this is an industry where developers need all the help they can get. If that extra 15% helps them stay afloat long enough to put out the next thing without selling their soul to Microsoft or Sony or whoever is buying up companies these days, and Steam isn’t severely negatively impacted, I’d call that a win.
But of course, that won’t happen, because Steam has no reason to change. That’s where the users are, and they are fine with the status quo.
I think you undersell how feature rich steam is for both users and developers.
They offer community forums, reviews, mods through workshop, cloud saves, automatic controller support, openish vr ecosystem (epic cant even do vr, if you buy a vr game you likely need to use steamvr anyway), broad payment and currency options, regional pricing and guidelines, remote play, and more I’m sure.
This is much more feature rich than even console platforms, so I think the 30% fee is justified.
And they do this all without really locking down their ecosystem.
To which the response is: I don’t care. I would have paid the same amount of money for games no matter which of the stupid funny numbers you picked out.
The beginning and end of how much one should care is “are the devs happy with it? Is that the standard for digital stores as well?”. And the answer to both is Yes, so the concerns are abated.
If it opens them to driven out of the market by a more generous competitor: Cool. But that alone doesn’t impact me, the costumer. The generous competitor needs to do more. And you know, they know that. That’s why Tim gave me so many free games.
No you wouldn’t.
Immortals of Aveum cost 70 monetary-whatevers and killed its studio and no one commented on it. It would have cost 60 whatevers two years ago and still would have killed its studio. But if they did 70, they would have torpedoed that price point in the news circles as a death sentence. They only had the gall because literally no one dared release a game for 70 till Activision did it and others like Sony and Nintendo followed along.
Steams share has zero impact on my wallet. The market is dictated by things way more arbitrary. Everyone with brain knows this.
“are the devs happy with it? Is that the standard for digital stores as well?”. And the answer to both is Yes
I fully disagree. On the first point, do developers accept it? Sure. That does not at all mean they are happy about it. Money is tight for games, and I guarantee you every developer would much prefer to take a bigger piece of the pie.
To your second point, it is the standard but it is not universal. Epic Games Store takes 12%. Itch.io defaults to 10%. Google Play Store takes 15% on the first $1 million in revenue.
But that alone doesn’t impact me, the consumer.
I don’t believe this is entirely true. The more cash flow developers have, the more stable they are as companies, and the more able they are to put out good games. You are indirectly impacted because a larger tax on developers means fewer, or lower quality, games that get released.
Steams share has zero impact on my wallet.
Disagree, unless you exclusively play AAA.
Edit: Actually I’ve changed my mind on this. I mostly agree the percentage cut doesn’t affect the optimal price point.
Why would developers care about steams “features”? That’s Valve’s problem, not theirs. 30% is fucking highway robbery for a distributor. The only reason they get away with it is because they’re a monopoly and devs have no choice but to publish games there. It’s crazy that you can’t see that.
Developers care about steamworks, making cloud saves, multi-player, matchmaking, voice chat, anti cheat, drm, microtransactions, user authentication, and more significantly easier than doing it yourself, it’s also basically free to use where many alternatives only support some features for significant fees.
30% is fucking highway robbery for a distributor. The only reason they get away with it is because they’re a monopoly and devs have no choice but to publish games there.
So, users get a feature-rich distribution platform, and developers (and by extension users) pay a tax to access those users. So the question is, how fair is that tax, and what effect does that tax have on the games that get made? Your view on that is going to depend on what you want from Steam, but more relevant I think is how much Steam costs to operate. How much of that 30% cut feeds back into Steam? My guess is not much; though I could be wrong.
But anyway, let’s imagine you took away half the 30% cut. Where does that money go? Well, one of two places: either your pocket, or the developers (or publishers) pocket (depending on how the change affects pricing). The benefits to your pocket are obvious, but what if developers just charge the same price? Well, as far as I’m aware, a lot of games are just not profitable - I read somewhere that for every 10 games, 7 fail, 2 break even, and 1 is a huge success - so my personal view is that this is an industry where developers need all the help they can get. If that extra 15% helps them stay afloat long enough to put out the next thing without selling their soul to Microsoft or Sony or whoever is buying up companies these days, and Steam isn’t severely negatively impacted, I’d call that a win.
Would you claim that devs who also port their game to console are guilty as the consoles also take 30% cut? The entire console scene is basically what Valve is doing, except valve decides to compete on an open platform instead of a walled garden.
The consoles justify the amount they take more because they are selling hardware at a loss to bring in users, so as a developer, you are seeing direct, tangible, and ongoing benefits to giving the manufacturers a cut. Every console cycle, there is renewed investment in the ecosystem to keep users interested.
For digital platforms, the continued investment in the platform itself is both less tangible, and I would wager less overall (though we can’t know this for Steam because we don’t have access to numbers like that). The longer Steam continues as a platform, the more true this is, unless you believe that Steam will continue to improve at the same rate. I don’t see my interaction with Steam being much different 5 years from now as it is today, so it is less obvious to me that such at steep rate is justified.
Like, imagine they “perfected” Steam. They made all the features users could ever want, and there becomes no reason to make any more changes. Should they keep charging the same rate? Or, maybe a better way to frame it, would be that rather than investing some of that 30% rate into improving the platform, they invest in developers themselves to make better products, because it’s the only place left to make the platform better than it was before. This would be equivalent to just lowering the rate across the board, in my opinion.
Not all consoles sell at a loss. Nintendo outright sells for profit, and the ones that didnt are the WiiU and thr Virtual Boy, and I don’t have to remind you how those sold.
And we are also at an age where even Valve is in the console space. They sell the steamdeck at a severely lower price point compared to its competion.
Look at the ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, Aya Neos entire catelog, GPD Win 4, Ayn Loki and a bunch more.
The argument about consoles selling it at subsidized price is justifyable means your saying Valve is in the right to given they are now in that market.
This is an interesting perspective, and gave me something to think about!
I don’t think the Steam Deck is quite there in terms of adoption to justify an across the board tax. The order of operations is kind of reversed, where Steam is reinvesting money made from previous sales towards R&D and Hardware ambitions, rather than using the Steam Deck to bring in users. But if you’re developer that benefits from the Steam Deck’s existence, or saw a sales bump from Steam Deck sales, or some other benefit like that, I agree it’s a pretty good trade-off in that case.
Nintendo is a bit different because they sort of focus on their own thing and everyone else is secondary. Something like 80% of software sales for Nintendo platforms are first party, so it’s mostly a Nintendo machine. Frankly, I think they should take less of a cut. Indies do really well on Nintendo though. They have a kind of pseudo-monopoly of a younger casual gamer demographic, and they maintain that user base by putting out great software. It is an interesting counterpoint though.
Retail stores get a 30% cut from a game sale. Console manufacturers get a further $10 in licensing fees from that sale price, on top of the retail fee. That license cost is what goes to closing that loss leading pricing of the consoles. The retail fee they can charge through their digital storefronts is new to them but only helps them pay down their gap quicker, but they are also still taking that further $10 of licensing on top of the 30%.
That’s why some PC games are $10 cheaper than their console versions.
The reason it’s the same price on Steam and Epic is that Steam prevents the sale on their platform if the game is sold for cheaper on other platforms…
I would also gladly increase the developer’s profit instead of the platform’s profit if the price is the same on both as I don’t use all the extra crap that Steam comes with…
Oh if you’re talking about exclusives then pricing is all over the place because they have exclusive in all categories (AAA to indie)…
There’s also more than them in the balance to determine the price at which games sell, 2K games won’t sell the new Borderlands for 60$ while other AAA titles are selling for 70$, they still need to maximise profit and if the market has determined that 70$ is a fair price then so be it.
Anyway I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want the devs to make more money so they’re able to produce more games instead of the launcher company making more money so they can develop “trading cards” as a way to make even more money.
Yes, that’s much more credible - thank you for sharing that. This part in particular is concerning:
The ruling makes particular note of “a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].’” The amended suit also alleges that “this experience is not unique to Wolfire,” which could factor into the developer’s proposed class-action complaint.
I wasn’t able to find any instances of Steam actually de-listing a game because it was listed cheaper elsewhere, but a credible threat to do so is almost as bad (possibly worse, really, since such a threat hints that Steam might have used other underhanded tactics when dealing with game devs). I wasn’t able to find any more recent news on the case, but hopefully we’ll learn if the issue was that particular Account Manager + lack of oversight or something more.
Ironically this is actually an example of Valve using its dominant marketshare to suppress rivals - Steam’s ToS require devs to have equivalent pricing across all storefronts if they want to sell on Steam at all, so making it harder for cheaper storefront cuts to translate to lower prices to consumers, who might otherwise move to a different storefront.
Devs aren’t going to drop Steam as a store, so they’re stuck.
It’s not ideal, but I’d say the reason they require equivalent pricing is, so that people don’t just use Steam as a marketing platform, while diverting all sales to their personal website where they sell the game for $X cheaper.
Plus, it only applies to base price, not sale price. If a platform states “you can have your game on sale 100% of the time”, and a game undercuts Steam that way, Steam wouldn’t do anything about it. Well, they wouldn’t have to anyways, it’s illegal to have goods on sale 100% of the time, but the point is there.
It’s a perfect example of them abusing their position in the market. But since you’re a valve cultist, you make up a bunch of weak excuses for it. If epic or ms did the same thing you’d blow a gasket.
Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.
Ars Technica tries to spin it in favour of Steam, but if you read between the lines it is there:
Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.
IMO, it’s reasonable to say “If you want to sell Steam keys off Steam, you need to follow our pricing rules,” but it is not reasonable to say “If you want to sell your game, sans keys, off Steam, you have to follow our pricing rules to keep selling on Steam.” You’re talking about the former here, right? Or does that mean that the following situation is prohibited:
Your game is listed at $50 on Steam
You sell keys from your own site for $50
You sell your game directly from your site for $40
and if so, that the mitigation is to either stop selling Steam keys entirely or to raise the price on your own site to $50?
That’s somewhere in between the two but I dislike it. I suspect it’s more legally murky, too, like tied selling.
The article briefly talks about the latter (emphasis mine):
Wolfire’s David Rosen expanded on that accusation in a recent blog post, saying that Valve threatened to “remove [Wolfire’s game] Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website, without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.”
However, it also says “Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this ‘parity’ rule only applies to the ‘free’ Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn’t responded to a request for comment on this story.” I wonder if the lack of comment was because of Wolfire’s lawsuit?
I’m also now curious if the reason for Steam saying that was related to the in-between situation I talked about above.
@Kecessa shared this ArsTechnica article from 2022 that covers an update on that lawsuit - I haven’t seen anything more recent. In it, Wolfire makes the same claim, in court, that they’d already made in their blog post, which was sufficient to convince the judge to re-open their case.
The ruling [to re-open the case] makes particular note of “a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].’” The amended suit also alleges that “this experience is not unique to Wolfire,” which could factor into the developer’s proposed class-action complaint.
Except it means everything. The EU, not really friendly towards US companies, declared that Valve is not a gatekeeper of digital markets. That means they don’t have a monopoly on PC gaming.
Well, what makes a monopoly is the position in the market, without the obligation to infinite growth that doesn’t have to involve anti-competitive prectices.
Even if they are considered a ‘monolopy’ it seems like people haven’t thought that we are the ones that have thrown our money at Valve and it is the ONLY reason why they are in the position they’re in now. They offer a fantastic service to the gaming community and Valve is supposed to apologise for that? I’m not aware of any abuses within their own company that has contributed to their success or any anti-competitive behaviour?
It’s definitely not merely a matter of not bothering to make a decent store though. I mean, do you think Epic is held back by not being bothered? The way they pour money into their store, I’d it were easy, they’d have it. And having a decent store isn’t enough. It’s kinda like social media in that you need the crowd effect. People want all their games in one place with integrations like friends, mods, achievements, etc. AFAIK, there’s no open standard for most of these things, so you need a big market share to convince devs to make the change.
Not to mention family sharing. I'm not sure of another PC store front that does the same, but it's been a bit help with my friends in being able to show games to each other and letting us try things before buying, similar to sharing discs back in the day.
It kind of doesn’t, though. Because you can still launch non-Steam games through Steam, and activate retail Steam keys without Valve taking a cut, there are plenty of ways for things to compete against the Steam Store without needing to also compete against the Steam launcher.
You don’t even need all of that really. A lot of Steam functionality can be utilized just by adding it as a Non-Steam Game. Steam Workshop isn’t the necessary if you have a modding scene, you just need a good mod manager.
The key point on whether I’ll use your storefront or not is whether your plan for success is to buy out anti-Steam contracts (remember that it’s not exclusivity to EGS, its to not release on Steam) to get customers and low revenue cuts to get developers and most importantly, to run a loss leading business for a number of years until you are profitable. If EGS were to ever become profitable, how long until they switch to squeezing out as much as they can? They’ve already rescinded their “curated” catalog.
This is not a good way to look at it. Competition is good regardless. It doesn’t matter how good Valve is today, if a viable competitor comes out, Valve will be forced to get better in order to compete.
All we need is some way to guarantee valve doesn’t become public.
This is wrong. Valve can enshittify without going public. If you think that public corporations are the only ones that are greedy/evil/anti-consumer, then you’ve never heard of the “private equity” industry. Look up the recent fight between the FTC and U.S. Anesthesia Partners in Texas for a clear example.
In capitalism, free market forces are what keep tug of war between produces and consumers fair, and competition is the fuel that keeps those free market forces moving. The fact that the Valve of today is both good and a monopoly is just a temporary rounding error/outlier. Over time, Valve will go to shit and consumers will suffer simply because Valve has almost no competition. This isn’t a question, it’s a fact of the mechanism of the economic system they exist in. It’s like gravity; just because you haven’t hit the floor yet doesn’t mean jumping off that building was a good idea.
Epic games, whether you hate them or not, is fighting the good fight. They are doing shitty things (exclusivity, etc), so maybe they aren’t the chosen one who will take challenge Valve, but they are on the right side of that fight. Hoping that Valve will stay great forever is foolish.
…but I will add that I don’t think Epic alone should be trying to take down Valve. Valve is way too entrenched in this market to be taken down with any realistic competition (probably why Epic is resorting to exclusivity deals). The FTC needs to step in and regulate the market. Idk what that would look like, but it’s possible to do it in a way that makes everyone happy. For example (off the top of my head, so probably flawed but whatever) the FTC could enforce interoperability between digital marketplaces so that consumers don’t need to install 30 different launchers to access their purchased libraries. That relatively small change could lower the bar to entry for competitors by a lot, and not be a burden to consumers at the same time. EDIT: and it would not be anything drastic like forcing a break up of Valve.
“hmm… a well thought out, reasoned response. But I disagree! How should I express my opinion effectively, to both this person and others who wander by?”
What a shittake
“Ah, yes. My masterpiece. Everyone must see this.”
Its funny how you credit the invisible hand of free market forces to keep things fair but acknowledge everywhere else that the only thing that actually intervenes to promote fairness is the FTC as government regulatory body.
If we could drop the obvious bullshit romanticism of capitalism this would be a mostly accurate post.
Unregulated capitalism doesn’t work. I don’t think anyone has ever seriously claimed that it does. The FTC isn’t the only thing keeping the market fair, the free market does that on its own. When a company does a shitty thing, they lose customers and die. That’s true in pretty much every market in the real world, except for a few problematic ones where there are bad actors trying to cheat the system.
Plenty of people claim that it does. That is the entire ideological premise you invoke with the free market fetishism (laissez faire, Chicagoan school, Austrian economics) the “free market” means free to exploit consumers, not free to choose. Consumers do not have enough capital to afford any meaningful check against corporate snake oil. This over simplistic narrative youre spinning doesn’t match up with the track record.
Also, you don’t have to be an authoritarian communist to know that the free market is a crock of shit. Anybody with the ability to look at the past few hundred years would know Friedman hayek rothbard and most all libertarians are absolutely full of shit or just plain misguided
Tankies are specifically defenders of Marxist-Leninist communism and their one party state rule (which is ironically not communism, it’s Stalinism which is a form of autocratic socialism)
So I operate on the assumption that anticapitalist people on Lemmy are tankies. It’s not true in all cases ofc, but without more info, I think that’s a safe default.
That dude calling my post “bullshit romanticism of capitalism” gives a bit more confidence that they’re a tankie with a strong case of grassphobia.
Great example of oversimplification and reaching for conclusions that reinforce your bias. An effective way to shield yourself from valid criticism or any self reflection is to automatically discredit the person who brings it to your attention, whether its true or not is of little importance right?
So I operate on the assumption that German people on Lemmy are Fascists. It’s not true in all cases ofc, but without more info, I think that’s a safe default.
And before you call my flawless reasoning stupid… I don’t really have anything to say.
Epic games, whether you hate them or not, is fighting the good fight. They are doing shitty things (exclusivity, etc), so maybe they aren’t the chosen one who will take challenge Valve, but they are on the right side of that fight. Hoping that Valve will stay great forever is foolish.
My dude… If you’re doing shitty things, you are in fact not “fighting the good fight”. if anyone is doing that it’s someone like GOG.
I meant that they’re fighting Valve, which is “the good fight”. They’re not the only ones doing it, and they’re definitely not the best ones doing it, but they’re doing it. If they do manage to take a big chunk out of Valve’s marketshare somehow, that will be good for everyone, even people who decide to stay on Steam.
Apologies for the confusion when I said to stop preventing steam becoming public. I was just too lazy to write something along the lines of defining some kind of perpetual way to prevent the downfall of steam. Ideally it becomes an open source utopia tomorrow… but that’s not exactly realistic for a game store or as a business decision by valve and without people beying able to fork it we are never safe.
All of the following? Why would you need to be better in every way? There’s a perfectly valid use case for trade offs. Eg, let’s say some competitor had exclusives, no VR, the store interface was a little worse, and it was only roughly comparable on many other points. If it’s simply faster and more lightweight, that’s its competitive advantage. Or if it focuses on being open source and DRM free like GoG, that’s a competitive advantage.
Expecting something to be better in every way (than something with a massive head start) or else it might as well not exist? That’s just unreasonable. I don’t require a clothing store to be better than Walmart to shop there. I mean, the clothing store doesn’t even sell fruit! Why would anyone shop there when you can go to the Walmart and buy some grapes with your jeans?
Except these aren’t two different kinds of stores, they’d both be gaming marketplaces and if one has better features in every regard… Why use the inferior one at all?
If It’s not better in every way why would I swap? I’ll just keep using steam. The only selling point you could use to get me to swap is the promise of feature parity with steam and open source. I would support that even if it hurt a lot along the way, but I doubt it will happen.
It can’t exist. You can’t launch a new competitor to a mature and well-developed platform and hope to come anywhere near its feature set right off the bat. That’s never gonna happen, especially when a lot of the “requirements” you presented there are expensive shit that takes years of hard work to develop. You’re gonna have to give them time. And money, as it happens. They’re not gonna be able to develop that VR you present as a requirement if everybody refuses to use their platform because there is no VR. It’s a catch 22.
I’d be happy to support any kind of platform aiming to do these things even if it doesn’t have them yet, so long as it was open source or had some kind of structure that prevented enshitification. I’d contribute, probably force myself to use it where possible much like I do with other things. The issue is that the current competition trying to do what steam does (epic) is just trying to do it but worse.
As soon as it has linux support for more than wow… people praise valve for proton lots but workshop has also done so much for Linux nmodding which is otherwise a nightmare.
If only they supported Linux better, or really like at all… I know you can grab the files and install without DRM. But, the whole lack of a client makes it a nuisance to use. I used to buy everything on GOG when possible. Since I got a Steam Deck that’s changed. I shouldn’t have to use Heroic Launcher IMO…
Yet, ease of access is what appeals to the average consumer which leads to preferring steam for Linux for the same reason people get hardware restricted consoles. If a company wants to appeal and expand their market making themselves more accessible is how they do it. Otherwise alternative is to be an overlooked option.
Yeah, had Valve tried to push Linux again without trying to make it accessible for the average user it would have flopped like the Steam machine. Or at the very least users would have tossed Linux for Windows. Accessibility is very important, and technical users should not be looked to as guides on what is acceptable for the masses.
Because they should be able to make a launcher that works. The Windows GOG launcher (GOG Galaxy) is a joke. They want to make one launcher to rule them all but it struggles with almost every one. I have a Windows computer for games that require it (Valorant mostly for me) and even on PC I use Heroic. I don’t want crazy features. I just want an officially supported GOG client that works well on Linux and Windows.
Galaxy works fine on windows. It’s far more stable than steam btw.
In the meantime heroic or lutris work very well. So why is there even a need for something else? I’d argue it’s better if a company don’t hold your game hostage for you to play them.
I’ll admit I’ve only used Linux for the past 5-6 years, but I think the last time steam crashed for me was almost a decade ago or something? Is it not stable on windows anymore?
It does crash regularly, or it stops working and you need to restart it, and it always did this kind of thing. The obnoxious “I need to update before you’re allowed to play” is hardly a selling feature. The videos and the adds are both obnoxious and intensive on resources.
Galaxy has its ups and downs, but overall I feel its lighter and much more responsive. The interface is much less cluttered, much more logical and clear. And it’s not a fucking drm.
I thank vavle for what did for Linux gaming. Proton is brilliant and incredibly useful and valuable. But I also despise them for steam being litteraly a DRM. So I will forgive cdpr if they need time to develop galaxy on Linux and I’ll use lutris and heroic game launcher in the meantime.
It is trivial to disable all the video content (and some more) on steam if you happen to be on low-end hardware that needs that (or just if you don’t like it, really)
It does crash regularly, or it stops working and you need to restart it, and it always did this kind of thing.
Then you use it wrong. No idea how that’s possible but I run Steam on Windows, macOS, and Linux and except very early in the life cycle of the Steam Deck, I can’t remember Steam ever crashing on me in the last 10 or so years.
It cannot possibly be the fault of a shitty software and it must be me…
If you were correct, there’d be widespread reports of crashes. While no software is always free of bugs, if a piece of software is crashing for you all the time and hardy for everybody else, it’s the logical conclusion that the underlying problem is on your side, probably by installing unstable drivers.
Hahaha like people will fill a bug report everytime a software crash… I wonder whether you’re delusional or blinded by your faith into this piece if shit of a software.
I have the exact opposite experience as you. I have never once seen steam crash. My steam account is now 9 years old. I was absolutely stoked when I saw GOG Galaxy was trying to handle not only GOG games but games from other platforms as well. But my experience with that has been so bad. It’s fine for GOG games, but I’d much rather just add all my games into steam at this point. So as for stability, I don’t see any way that GOG Galaxy could ever beat Steam.
For Linux support, Steam is a DRM which is a detractor. But with all they’ve done with proton, steam input, steam deck OS… I’d say that Steam is definitely doing more for the Linux ecosystem than GOG.
Steam has been working on the steam deck for how long now? 5? 10 years? Gog has that much time to catch up.
And as I said, I don’t deny the role steam played and is still playing for Linux gaming. But it’s still a drm. And that’s something I simply cannot ignore.
I do use steam mind you. But I’ll use and support gog everytime I can. If steam did the most for Linux, gog did and still do the most for players.
It’s incredibly frustrating from an ideological perspective that the whole PC gaming industry runs on a benevolent dictatorship by Valve.
I mean they have near total control not just over sales, but over the gaming software installed on our PCs. They have the power to do whatever, whenever, to whoever.
But at the same time, they’re cool people with good products who have good stewardship of this role.
The day Gabe dies and pathetic bastards with business degrees take over and ruin everything that’s made Steam great for all these years, is the day I begin pirating everything.
Exactly. Steam is a load-bearing member. After seeing what happened to Twitter, Reddit, Unity, Wikia, etc. it’s reasonable to think ahead. If Valve gets enshittified that’s basically the end of PC gaming.
I don’t even play games that have Denuvo. But I’m happy to see many of them remove it after a few years because they can’t afford to keep paying for their game to literally be worse and several had been cracked (although it’s my understanding that only one person was cracking those games).
…but… Literally, benevolent, sectionalized dictatorship is the only response to the Tragedy of the Commons.
…that is to say, individual responsibility and exercise of power. Work primarily on responsibility until you’ve got one area covered - then expand your power. Know your limits, and don’t try to expand your power beyond what you’re capable of handling responsibly. Encourage others to do likewise. Steam is good because they haven’t sold out, but are managed by people who have genuine interest in the industry, and who are willing to exercise power responsibly.
Valve may not be the cheapest by any means, but that’s because they’re offering a product 30x as valuable. The other launchers companies have are shit, across the board, nothing but shit. It’s not even in the same continent. If any one of these companies actually wants to ever see this change, they are going to have to set their greed aside. That’s impossible for CEOs in this day and age, so I don’t see Steam ever losing their stranglehold unless they do an about-face from everything they’ve done so far. In the grand scheme of things, Valve is one of the most customer friendly companies on the face of the Earth and they continue to be innovative and supportive to users. Epic on the other hand is everything wrong with capitalism, and much the same can be said for any of the other companies with competing launchers/game stores.
What’s so wrong with Epic? I prefer Steam but Epics client has a better UI, I haven’t found any problems, and deals seem better than Steam, especially with free games.
No communities, no guides, no VR , no game streaming, annoying download manager, annoying friends tab, no steam deck, no game collections AFAIK. When Fall Guys came out for free I gave the Epic launcher a real chance and it was incredibly limited in it functionality and frustrating to use compared to Steam.
Steam is shaping up to be your all in one library for anything games be it PC, VR or portable. The Switch, Quest, Playstation, Xbox and Epic launcher all offer a piece of that experience but having a unified platform that syncs your saves and doesn’t nickel and dime you for features and accessories is why Steam is more popular.
I haven’t been using Epic enough to really compare with Steam sales but stuff gets really cheap on steam really fast. I would also gladly buy my games for money on Steam just to be able to play them easily on my Steam Deck. Also Epic is only doing the free games because they have unreal and Fortnite money, there’s no telling when the free games will stop.
You’re right about most things, and Linux/VR support is often a deal breaker for me so I rarely use Epic. But you really think its that unusable? I’ve heard mostly positive things from my friends. I don’t care how or why they’re giving out free games but its a huge plus. I just really don’t understand all the hate.
I remembered some more stuff epic doesn’t have. Steam input and launch option customization. I can play Civ 6, a game meant for kbm, on my steam deck with the controller buttons. Epic obscures their exe files to make it hard to know which to add as a non steam game to steam.
It was annoying to go from steam with it’s deep and helpful functionality to epic with what essentially just feels like the iOS appstore. I especially hate being forced to use epic online services on a game I bought ON STEAM. I couldn’t play the sackboy game with a friend on steam deck because something along the way broke and epic services wouldn’t let me. This game is P2P there’s definitely no servers being involved so why the heck can’t they just use steamworks?
Epic being unusable is a bit of an exaggeration but in terms of the platform they offer it is inferior to steam in every single way and they have done almost zero to make up the gap. Instead they pay money to keep games away from steam and force you to use their launcher in the most annoying and inconvenient way. That’s why they get so much hate from people.
Adding to what Natryamar said, epic once bundled actual malware with their client and is partially owned by Tencent, the chinese company known for turning games into garbage.
Oh, I dunno. Everyone seems to bitch about Apple not wanting to give any leeway to Epic on the App Store. Personally I find Epic ridiculously hypocritical, so I say let them eat dirt.
Everyone likes to shit on Epic so it’s probably not a very unpopular opinion ether but there is a big difference between the App and Play store and Steam, only one of them doesn’t use anti-competiive practices and the other two also force their payment provider which is rather shitty!
This opinion is in no way unpopular. Valve is privately owned and headed by a single individual with tremendous purpose of will, which is how they’ve done so many great things for the gaming industry. The issue lies with said leadership vacating their role (GabeN is getting old) and some greedy bastard taking the company in a wholy different direction. tl;dr: we need a strong competitor, but not now, and ABSOLUTELY not Epic.
But Steam doesn’t have a monopoly. There’s Epic and GOG and whatever Origin’s called now and probably others. They’re all free to exist, Valve doesn’t do anything to stifle competition, and even lets other companies sell games that start their launcher from Steam.
The only thing you have to lose by using a different system is that it’s probably not as good.
All they’ve done is produce a really fucking exemplary product and it’s become really popular because it’s honestly just good. The second it stops being good or Valve stop being awesome there’s plenty of alternative ways to buy games that I’m sure will be there to replace it.
And Valve is perhaps the best PC store since they have continually pushed PC gaming forward, for example:
Valve Index - still one of the best, if not the best, VR headset out there; it made VR a lot more interesting
Steam Controller - didn’t make as big of a spash as they wanted, but it was really innovative and lead to…
Steam Deck - yeah, they weren’t first, but it’s affordable and made a big enough splash to get big studios to care; now we have a lot more options as well for handheld PC gaming
Not to mention their Linux support, awesome customer support, free dev keys, and Steam Link app. What did other stores do?
GOG - DRM-free is great! But that’s about it.
EGS - free games and lower store fee are cool
Xbox Game Pass - pretty good for users, but it’s troubling long term, and it only works on Windows
everything else - can’t think of anything special here
So no, I don’t think Valve is bad in any way. Quite the opposite, they’re the best behaved games store on PC.
GOG Galaxy is actually amazing in what it accomplishes, GOG just don’t have the resources to make it frictionless.
Gamepass is probably the main competition for Steam at this point. Publishers have been busting to make games run on the cloud, it’s the ultimate DRM, the ultimate goal of the erosion of ownership.
There will be a time where there is a push towards partial-cloud gaming and then fully cloud gaming, and it will be hard for PC gaming to compete in the mainstream when you buy an Xbox dongle for $50 and game as soon as you plug it in. That’s the real threat to Valve.
GOG just don’t have the resources to make it frictionless
They had enough budget to make Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, I think they can handle making a decent desktop client. They just don’t prioritize it.
But yeah, subscription and cloud gaming is where the industry wants to go, and I sincerely hope they don’t succeed.
Then they’re either not meeting the needs of potential customers or not finding new customers.
For me personally, I would buy more from them if they supported Linux with GOG Galaxy. I would but a lot more from them if GOG Galaxy had a good experience on Steam Deck. I can’t speak for anyone else, but that’s my price, and apparently it’s the most upvoted feature request for GOG Galaxy.
I didn’t have a Steam account until they made a Linux client (they released in 2012, I made my Steam account in 2013). I bought a few Linux native games here and there, and when they launched Proton in 2018, I bought a lot more games. Before that, I mostly bought games directly from indie devs (Minecraft, Factorio, etc), or tried my luck buying Windows games and running them through WINE (e.g. Starcraft 2).
That’s my price. If they want me as a customer, they need first class Linux support. That’s why Steam gets my money, and GOG could win my business by offering DRM-free games on top. But to me, a Linux desktop client is more important than DRM-free, so that’s why Steam gets my money.
The Valve Index is the least popular VR option and doesn’t rank near the top of VR headsets. Still being beat out by entry level Oculus.
The Steam controller was poorly made flop and has been discontinued. The vast majority of reviews put the controller well below the Xbox controller, which was already PC compatible.
Steam Deck is very expensive and has a very poor battery life. Making the handheld cable tethered. It also went against its open promise by including locked down proprietary software.
Steams customer support ranks the third worst of all top level game stores. Just above Ubisoft and Blizzard.
You mention their Linux support yet the majority of games are yet to be supported and plenty of game will never be supported due to their nature or inclusion of anti-cheat. The only thing Valve has done was release the Steam Client to Linux.
Steam popularized gambling for children and continue to be one of 2 PC companies that continue to do so.
Valve’s goal isn’t to sell a lot of headsets, but to show what’s possible with high quality VR and encourage more VR games and headsets. Valve’s ultimate goal here is to sell more VR games.
Oculus wants to sell a lot of headsets so they can push some kind of SM interaction and profit from having lots of ads. The priority there is adoption, not quality or compatibility.
Steam Controller was poorly made
No, it was well made, it just wasn’t popular. And again, it wasn’t their goal to sell a ton of them.
The goal was to design a flexible controller to build out their controller API and give an option for a decent desktop mouse replacement for a PC “console” format (i.e. Steam Machine). I think they succeeded at that, but the market wasn’t interested, probably because Steam Machines didn’t go anywhere. It was never intended to replace existing controllers, but to complement them.
Steam Deck is very expensive
It’s $400, which is really competitive. Direct competitors like the AYANEO cost ~$1k twice as much, or even more. The Switch cost $300 at launch (OLED is $350, even today) and wasn’t even competitive with current console hardware at launch, while the Steam Deck is competitive with both price and hardware.
And it’s not cable tethered. I get a few hours of battery life as long as I’m not playing the most heavy games. Most of what I play are older AAA games and newer indie titles, and I get 3-5 hours of battery life, which is longer than my play sessions anyway. If I switch to a modern AAA titles, it’s like 1-2 hours, which is still enough for most play sessions.
Their goal, again, isn’t to sell a ton and corner the PC handheld market, it’s to make PC handhelds popular so there’s more demand, thus more competition, and thus more game sales. They also want to show what’s possible with a Linux-based PC, so there’s a credible alternative to Microsoft (and most games seem to be playable, check out ProtonDB for a larger picture than just Steam’s official stamp; look at Proton DB medals, 77% are Gold or Platinum, which usually refers to “playable” and “verified” accordingly).
Steam’s customer support
You claim it’s worse, but you don’t give examples of services that are better. Here are some examples of worse customer service:
Nintendo estore - no returns
PlayStation store - no returns if you have started to download it, unless it’s faulty (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077), and even then you have 14 days
Xbox - within 14 days and don’t have “a significant amount of playtime”
And Steam’s policy is 14 days and <2 hours playtime (so the same or better than above), yet there are countless examples of refunds being issued being both the time and playtime limit, provided you don’t abuse it.
I’m not going to go through other examples because I believe I’ve proven my point, so now it’s your turn: give specific examples of other stores having better customer service than Steam.
No, they’re just one example, and perhaps the most clearly documented one, and IMO the most important one (i.e. the one that most users will need to use).
If you want to discuss another metric, then please do so.
The only thing Valve has done was release the Steam Client to Linux.
*countless improvements Valve engineers have made to the the Mesa OpenGL and Vulkan drivers as well as to the kernel graphics driver components. Not just to the AMD graphics drivers for benefiting the Steam Deck’s hardware but also to Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan and then other common infrastructure. But in this area of the Linux graphics driver support, Valve’s contributions and those of their partners have been incredibly beneficial to the Linux desktop ecosystem even outside gaming. *
I guess that depends on your priorities. It has a competitive resolution and frame rate, is a bit heavy, has fantastic controllers, and has Linux compatibility. It’s also expensive and is best to pair with high end hardware.
So if you’re looking for Linux support (like me), it’s pretty much your only option, unless you’re willing to buy used or accept a lot of compromises. If you’re looking for cheap, lightweight, or compatible with lower end hardware, it’s not going to score well.
But on the whole, outside of pricing, it does a good job in almost every category. If money is no object, the Index is one of the best.
The position makes a monopoly so I would say they are but they remain the good guys because they don’t engage in anti-competitive practices, you can have a monopoly wven if you don’t abuse it.
Monopolies aren’t based on the mere existence of competition. It’s based on power and market share. Eg, Chrome has a monopoly. Firefox, Safari, and a few niche browsers exist. But Chrome is the utter vast majority of the market and has pretty much all the power on dictating web standards as a result.
Microsoft had competitors when they got sued for their IE + Windows monopoly. But they had an utterly massive amount of the market share and used that to push their own browser.
No they don’t lol. GOG doesn’t even have a client, you have to use Lutris or Heroic Launcher that support it.
Itch has a half implemented Linux client that they gave up years ago and is straight up unusable/broken. The client is worse then a web wrapper and nas no support for Wine, so if the game doesn’t have native Linux support, it just won’t run through the client. It will download exe’s that won’t actually run and silently fail, and doesn’t have any wine support.
They don’t have a client but both allow you to just download the game and run it from a .sh that installs it in the local folder. That’s enough for me but I agree it may not be for everyone.
Lol, Epic cut Linux support when it bought Rocket League.
But you are right, no one even tries. Everyone wants to have Valve’s income, but no one wants to do the legwork of innovation that Valve does. If someone would compete with Valve where they don’t already have a massive foothold, there might be some better results. For example, Linux. If any of these funding-gorged companies were to put serious money into competing with Valve in the Linux space, it’d be a real competition. Then you could leverage your stake in that to compete in different sectors. But the Linux market is small, and averse to paying for things (userwise) so not much to gain. But Valve understands that if gaming parity with Windows happens, then it will have a compounding effect. It would unshackle the PC market from Microsoft. It would make spending funding on a gaming device that DOESN’T have to have Windows involved a much more appealing prospect. Hell, the phone gaming market. No need for these re-skinned Skinner boxes when you can have the actual PC version on your phone. Whole new market, right there.
The companies that innovate tend to lead. And those who follow the coin and not the music, do not.
Steam’s de-facto monopoly is so strong, Epic can’t break it. Epic made four billion dollars per year on one game. Epic licenses the engine for like half of all noteworthy games. Epic has the only platform not seizing one-third of all revenue from developers, and that platform throws free shit at customers in constant desperation. And they still can’t move the needle.
Monopoly doesn’t mean there’s zero competition. It means the competition does not matter.
PC gamers have alternatives to Steam the way that Android users have alternatives to Google Play. Yes, there are dozens. And that’s how many users each one has.
If it’s even possible it would take years or decades of work building up good will. It’s kinda Valve’s game to lose right now. They just need to not make any enormous mistakes and they win by default. Fortunately for Valve, they seem to be one of the few companies in game dev that isn’t managed exclusively by misanthropes and buffoons.
Would it though? Being a competitor to Valve, not sucking, and not pulling shady anti-consumer shit would result in immediate good will for a decently large (though disproportionately loud) section of the market. Hell, EGS failed at the 2nd and 3rd thjngs in that list and they still got a loyal fanbase
Epic can't make a dent because their product is dogshit.
Customers don't care that Valve takes a well earned cut (that only applies buying directly from Steam); they care that their games are on a platform that's actually fucking useful. If Epic didn't insult gamers shipping that piece of trash and had put work into actually providing a product that could possibly be considered acceptable, they might have been able to make a dent.
You're not going to take market share with shitty gimmicks if your actual product is a crime against humanity no one wants.
For starters, they put so little developments money into EGS that they went two years without a shopping cart, a feature that effectively every other online store has and could be custom coded properly in a day
And every one of them comes back because paying Steam 30% is by far the most profitable way to do business. They absolutely deserve every single penny of it.
30% commission on an all margin product is not even sort of unusual or unfair.
The fact that using their services and paying them their cut is more profitable than not doing so absolutely, in and of itself, proves beyond discussion that their cut is fair.
Yes, sales should cost money. Moving units is a fucking massive value add. Valve deserves every penny they take and more. They're the best thing that ever happened to PC gaming and nothing else is remotely close.
Continued use only proves this is a way to make money. Probably the best available way. But to suggest that, so long as people are doing it, there cannot possibly be problems, is obvious crap.
Especially when you add “and more.” Oh: so this isn’t the exact right amount, as decreed by mighty god himself? We can talk about the middleman’s cut, so long as the rent goes up?
If your complaint is the money they take in exchange for sales, it's literally impossible for anything but the fact that paying them nets you significantly more money to be meaningful.
Valve built PC as a platform. If they never existed, you wouldn't get 10% of the PC sales. That absolutely means they're entitled to their share. Platform development is a massive value add, and useless jackasses trivializing their contribution by pretending that the massive development project of building a platform isn't every bit as important as single products on the platform can fuck right off.
Valve could take a lot less and it wouldn’t kill them. Or PC gaming. Wouldn’t be whatever frothing insult you pretend it is, either. It’s just… less money. They’d still make a shitload of money. Just… less.
The number can be smaller and the sky wouldn’t fall.
The number right now is obscenely high. It’s the most they think they can get away with. And they can only get away with it because of their de-facto monopoly, which should end.
Also key activations cost the dev zero on Steam. And the dev can generate keys for free to sell elsewhere. details here: partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Weird because I provided actual services and functionality that steam provides in exchange for that cut, and your response was that me mentioning devs do have other options isn’t “understanding criticism”
Your response to criticism of Steam was ‘there’s other services.’
That does absolutely nothing to deflect from criticism of Steam.
Praising their various features comes a little closer, but still doesn’t justify taking an entire third of every game’s revenue. It takes a whole fucking lot of hypothetical work, which you imagine developers would have to do, to amount to the slice Steam takes right off the top.
What Valve offers that makes companies put up with that is their de-facto monopoly presence. They can sell many copies through Steam - or they won’t sell many copies.
Then developers can release games off steam, and some do.
‘There’s other services.’
But steam has many features people want and use that would add development costs if every dev had to make similar tools in house.
’ It takes a whole fucking lot of hypothetical work, which you imagine developers would have to do, to amount to the slice Steam takes right off the top.’
Do you think it’s simple for a developer to create a friends list network, host/moderate community forums, host/moderate a mod website integrated into the game, achievements syncing, ability to share the game with friends, and integrate VR functionality for the above, on their own dime?
These are recurring ongoing costs for server and continued developmental changes, you are severely underestimating the time and money cost to create/host/maintain all those services?
You are asserting without evidence that Valve needs to take all that money. As if they would go broke if they only took a quarter of all the revenue on most PC games.
Valve makes ten billion dollars on Steam, every single year. Their margins are not slim. And being an established de-facto monopoly, people go there because that’s where the products are, and products are there because that’s where the people go. They could slash costs to nothing, do the bare minimum work going forward, and still rake in the money on sheer momentum, for years and years and years.
The only feature that really matters here is adoption. And that’s not a feature you can design. Even Valve didn’t rope people in with a convincing sales pitch. They forced Steam onto everyone who wanted to play Half-Life 2. If you didn’t want to put up with an always-online DRM service aimed to take over PC gaming - you didn’t get to play the most anticipated game of the year. Whatever benefits you ascribe to the service, whatever functionality you argue developers would otherwise budget for, the core was always ‘accept this or pound sand.’
I can’t name a single other digital service anywhere near steam level of trust. things you bought don’t disappear. they are on the record saying there is a contingency in case of shutdown. they havnt a used their position. as far as market leaders go, you could do worse
I don’t want a curated store though and would rather have people be able to release games, and let users decide if it is something they want or not. I can access reviews myself and don’t need companies deciding what game is or isn’t worthy of being available. And users is who I trust more anyways, which is why for so long search term + reddit is what I’ve relied on.
I mean, isn’t community self-policing and an overly tolerant attitude towards picking what type of games are allowed on your platform exactly what we want from them?
Quality control is another word for "high barrier to entry", and especially with their market position, being rejected by Steam for some arbitrary reason would effectively kill your project.
Not only should they not restrict the ability to sell your games there without a concrete reason; they shouldn't be permitted to do so. A company with that much influence shouldn't be allowed to be a gatekeeper of what constitutes a "good" game.
Their review system and strong return policy are more than enough.
I didn’t ignore it, you just didn’t think it through.
You’re complaining about having more options as if it’s some kind of moral stand. But the only reason to be mad about those things is if you were forced to buy them. Steam doesn’t only have to sell games that you specifically approve of and it’s not some kind of moral failing to sell games that are low quality.
This isn’t even getting into how you’re ignoring history to make the claim that they did it all for their bottom line and not the huge amount of user demand for them to open up the store. This also isn’t getting into how any money coming in from asset flips specifically is negligible, and not at all like some kind of NFT scam level of dubious behaviour like you’re referring to it.
The only reason to be this mad about more games being sold on Steam is if you feel a need to buy it all.
That’s an extremely loose idea of “promotion”, to the point of manufacturing upset. A storefront does not inherently promote something merely by offering it, that’s like saying a convenience store promotes Pepsi and Coca-Cola because they sell both even though both those companies have extremely strict promotional initiatives that ensure no crossover.
Because there is a gamer. Someone who plays games.
And Gmer. Someone who’s entire personality is based around games, and not in the fun healthy way. But in the justifying a monopoly because it’s their colour way. Just look at some of the comments here and you’ll see a lot of Gmers.
Ok, so that is the what, but what is the why? Why the censored word? I don’t get it. Nonetheless I’m closer to getting it now so thank you for that much
I absolutely love their client and prefer GOG over Steam. I remember how their client GOG Galaxy is highly praised in the developer community, because it is so well designed and runs so performant. It also allows you to play any previous versions of games you own.
What has GOG done for Linux? I care about OSS and companies supporting my preferred OSS operating system. To that end, Valve continues to be a steward without peer.
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