I would give them remote play otherwise most other things are better off on Independent platforms or are just bloat (who the fuck cares about cards???)
Yup, gamers just like that specific monopoly because they feel like they’re getting something good in return but they don’t take into consideration the door that it leaves open.
Again, what do you do about your multiplayer games that your purchased on Steam if they decide to start charging money for the online services? They actually are stuck there, you can’t take them with you to another platform, you are dependent on their goodwill to be able to download them and there’s tons of people who got banned from Steam and that don’t have access to the games that they paid for anymore.
The fact that the launcher isn’t as good isn’t the point.
If you grow tomatoes and sell them in a small grocery but barely manage to sell any because they don’t have that many clients because there’s a Walmart across the street and you decide to start selling your tomatoes at Walmart as well, is it because the grocery sucks or because Walmart is in a monopolistic position?
Once a distributor gets big enough that they become the default solution for clients and selling through an alternative distributor means forgoing profit simply because clients won’t bother buying from the alternative no matter how good it is, you’re in a monopolistic system.
Let’s be clear here, no matter how good EGS gets or no matter how good a new alternative made their launcher, the vast majority of people won’t do the switch for the simple reason that their library is centralized in a single place and that place is Steam.
What’s funny is that I’m sure most people who don’t care about how big Steam gets must be pissed whenever there’s centralization in other markets. Hell, what platform are we on and why did it suddenly become popular? Because the giant that had cornered the market decided to turn to shit. Well, why wait until that happens with Valve instead of taking preventive measures and helping the competition? “Competition is good, it forces innovation!” Well that doesn’t happen if even the customers are automatically turning against the competitors and never giving them a chance to improve.
Not to rain on your parade but Gabe Newell collects yachts so if you’re against multi billion dollar mega corps then your option is itch.io and buying from indie devs directly and that’s pretty much it.
Let’s reverse the roles for a second: EGS is the big player and Steam is just getting started. EGS suddenly starts paying all publishers to only publish on their platform. Does that sound like competition to you? You don’t break a monopoly by using tools used by monopolies.
You’re so close to figuring it out yet you pass right by it…
Also, Steam can have all the extras you mentioned while also making Gaben a billionaire so they do in fact get a huge surplus by charging 30% and found absolutely afford to give you all those extras with a smaller cut
That’s like saying that Walmart doesn’t have a monopoly in your little town because there’s this one other store that stays open even though most clients don’t go anymore.
Hell, the first sign that a monopoly exist is that independents that said they wouldn’t deal with the company with the monopoly start to do it because they realise that their sales aren’t up to par because customers won’t buy from them unless their product is available in the bigger store.
It’s not that people didn’t want to play their games (otherwise they wouldn’t sell on Steam either), it’s that people didn’t want to play them unless they were available on a specific launcher and that means Steam is in a monopolistic position.
You can have a monopoly without abusing it, you’re still in a monopolistic position and in a position where you can start abusing it and people are left without an alternative.
All your games are on Steam and stuck there, tomorrow they decide to start charging users a monthly fee for online services, what then? You purchased multiplayer games telling yourself the purchase price was all you would need to pay but now you need to pay every month to play those games all because Valve can do whatever they want since they don’t have any real competition.
So yes, monopolies are a problem because they open the door to abuse even if it doesn’t happen at the moment.
What extra value do you actually need? Hell, I use a third party launcher so I don’t have to deal with the other ones and their bloat and can just launch my games.
Also, that 30% bought Gaben six yachts so let’s stop pretending that they need 30% in order to develop the extras you talked about…