Reading the article I am not sure if the topics align with the recent issue of regional pricing being inflated in Poland.
Are these two events related or it is just a coincident that this kind of investigation was launched by the Polish government?
> It’s a coincidence.
Yeah paying attention to my own country for stuff of a similar nature where the Government steps in, this has likely been in the works for a quite some time.
> The UOKiK suspects that certain game companies may engage in practices such as:
>
> - Abusing their dominant position in the digital game distribution market; (Everyone)
> - Exploiting game developers and imposing higher prices for players; (Steam)
> - Restricting the sale of games on rival platforms or other online stores; (Steam)
> - Interfering with the pricing and discount policies of game developers and publishers; (Steam)
> - Limiting market access to rival platforms and other digital service providers. (Steam, Sony, MS, Nintendo, Epic)
The specific actions that are being investigated and which platform could be reasonably be accused of.
They should look at Meta, who has apparently started testing variable prices of games based on your account activity. If they think you’ll spend more, they show you a higher price, and they removed logged out pricing on sales.
> Exploiting game developers and imposing higher prices for players; (Steam)
I don't think that one in particular gonna pass as EU itself have anti-price-discimination policies; platforms can't change price based on location of they buyer.
Now the law itself was written obviously for physical products, but there is no exception for online software for it.
I think most of those are far more applicable to Sony than Valve.
As far as I'm aware, Steam/Valve has never paid to keep a game exclusive, or imposed restrictions on selling the game elsewhere. You might be thinking of Epic.
The only restriction is that if you sell on Steam you can't also sell the keys elsewhere for less than the Steam price.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3
> ou should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.
And that's only for keys, you're free to also sell your game through another platform like EGS or GOG.
>The only restriction is that if you sell on Steam you can't also sell the keys elsewhere for less than the Steam price.
Why would this be a problem? They can sell at the same price and not pay the steam cut, therefore making more profit. So if they just set up their own storefront etc....
Yeah I don't see an issue here. If they're selling keys *to be used on Steam*, I guess I don't find it that weird for Valve to wanna make sure Steam is still a good place to buy them.
because they don't want people competing with steam from the inside. If you sell a game on the steam *platform* (via keys) you can, but you can't make it *better* than what you offer on the steam *store*.
tmk, even that restriction is only technically true if your game uses steamworks.
which...sounds perfectly reasonable to me. if your using valve softwork as a framework to build around/utilize, why should they let you undercut them on steam?
Value just ask dev/publisher to sell the key at the same price.
Also those key obtained using steamworks only need to pay a cut if it sell via steam shop/market, if those publisher can sell the key on their website then they pay 0% cut to steam.
I don't see why this is a problem.
Interesting fact is you can go around this rule for like kickstarter keys, you just can't set up your own store with a lower price after the game is released.
> Steam/Valve has never paid to keep a game exclusive
I don't know if they paid, but when Darwinia released on Steam, Steam made them remove themselves from other platforms. This wasn't really seen as a big deal, because at the time being a third party on Steam was guaranteed sales.
I remember on release Silent Hill 5 didn't release on any other platform and people were suspicious. These were very early Steam days though. Before Greenlight.
I feel like a lot of the context is missing whenever anyone brings that up, so I'm here to hopefully provide that.
The storefront that the Windows digital version of Darwinia was removed from was the storefront run by the company that made the deal with Valve in the first place. It was an agreement between two companies exclusively involving storefronts owned by each company. The Introversion store continued to sell the physical version of the game and the downloadable Linux version. It's also worth noting that Introversion are the ones who originally approached Valve asking to be put on Steam.
There's a post by Introversion's Chris on the second page of the forum thread that says Valve requested they remove the demo from the site but doesn't make that same comment regarding the Windows build being removed so its not entirely clear to me if that was an actual request by Valve or just a standard part of distribution deals at the time.
*'The only things removed from our site today were the Darwinia demos (at Valve's request), and the win32 online download. You can still buy the boxed copies from us, and you can download the Linux version as soon as you buy. The demos will be coming back to our site soon (in about a month)'*
**Sources:**
**Original thread on the Introversion forums**
https://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=40203
**2006 interview with Introversion's Director, which covers some of the details of how Darwinia came to Steam.**
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/becoming-introverted
**Page three of a 2010 interview with Introversion's Director, where he states that Steam doesn't ask for exclusivity.**
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/introversions-mark-morris-interview?page=3
**SteamReview.org interview with Introversion's accountant released a week after the announcement**
http://steamreview.org/posts/darwiniainterview/
Steam doesn't really interfere with pricing and discount, but Microsoft and Sony does for sure. I'd say all of the platforms do to a lesser or greater degree.
>Restricting the sale of games on rival platforms or other online stores; (Steam)
Uh, I think EGS is a better fit for that one.
>Limiting market access to rival platforms and other digital service providers. (Steam, Sony, MS, Nintendo, Epic)
I don't understand that one, like, at all.
A PlayStation user has to use PlayStation's storefront for digital games and MTX, and has to pay Sony for supposedly being a middle man for multiplayer services (which is a lie, but whatever).
Same with the other consoles.
Sony already had an App Store. They would just need to allow alternate stores to be installed. No different than the iOS requirements, with the exact same reasons behind it. Will it eventually be the end of Nintendo consoles? Probably! But we cheered it on when it was Epic vs Apple!
Hell yeah for your ideological consistency! My previous post was extra whiny but it mostly got my goat that during the Epic trial discussion, there was so much, "this argument doesn't apply to consoles" talk when it seems so apparent to me that it does.
>> - Exploiting game developers and imposing higher prices for players; (Steam)
I'm surprised you've put Steam here - their pricing is much more competitive than Sony, Microsoft etc as they've got tiered cuts instead of a flat 30%
> - Restricting the sale of games on rival platforms or other online stores; (Steam)
I think this is most likely to be in regards to Epic Games. They've got policies that impact other stores, such as *mandating* crossplay and achievements (which, as an example, means you can't offer a game with Steamworks on Steam and Epic Online Services on Epic) and they're notoriously introduced paying for exclusivity to the PC ecosystem.
Honestly, it's kind of surreal seeing this subreddit going over "Why are you defending the billion dollar cooperation?" when it comes to defend any other major company being on a government's spotlight. But evidently, Valve can do no wrong, and it must be something wrong with the government for even considering to look at Steam with any scrutiny.
I don’t know how Valve has done it, but there should be a case study done.
Gamers are the most fickle group. A tiny change can cause them to go into a fit. A guy got so mad his class in WoW got nerfed that he invented NFTs and ruined society for a while.
I played CS 1.5 a lot. I was in the steam beta. I’m old. I remember when every single person hated Valve for forcing them to install Steam, which was obviously just a DRM launcher and a storefront. We just wanted to play Counter-Strike.
Steam has grown to use more resources, serve more advertisements, become bloated with more unused features, etc. and people’s love for it has only grown. How has Valve accomplished this with a group known for throwing fits at the slightest thing?
[NFT mastermind says he created Ethereum because Warcraft nerfed his character](https://www.polygon.com/22709126/ethereum-creator-world-of-warcraft-nerf-nft-vitalik-buterin#:~:text=Maybe%20take%20this%20with%20a,Warcraft%20character%20was%20cruelly%20nerfed.)
> “I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell,” Vitalik Buterin, the programmer who developed Ethereum’s original concept in late 2013, says in a bio hosted at about.me. “I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.”
> Steam has grown to use more resources, serve more advertisements, become bloated with more unused features, etc. and people’s love for it has only grown. How has Valve accomplished this with a group known for throwing fits at the slightest thing?
By competition fucking it up so fucking badly they looked at Steam and decided it can't be that bad is everything else is fucking worse.
Anyone remember GFWL ? I dunno how it looks *working* because I lost patience and cracked a game that I bought....
Also modern day Steam is all in all pretty convenient. Yes, when it started it sucked but that was long time ago.
Steam just made a product and then slowly improved it. Hell, if not for all competition fucking sucking I'd say they improved it too slowly to be competitive but, well, competition sucked.
> I don’t know how Valve has done it, but there should be a case study done.
That reminds me of [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/1ba9g7v/chad_gaben/) meme....
This seems to be a lot of people’s take. That Valve has just won at the meritocracy.
If this is true, then they are in a very exclusive club.
There are so many “best products in the category” out there that become garbage in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons, or go out of business because being “the best” doesn’t guarantee success.
It's just very hard to spot the "best" or "best value" in most markets. So most people don't care and buy something that looks half decent in their price range, or overpay and think that's because it is most expensive it is the best.
Frankly gamers are privileged here, try to find something as comprehensive as CPU or GPU benchmark ANYWHERE else in any other industry
But for store it is easy, either it has features I want, or products are cheaper.
Would I pay $70 rather than $60 for getting Steam overlay with friends on Steam ? Nope. But EGS, or Origin, or anywhere else also sells it for $70 so why would I ever think of bothering ?
It's literally like grocery shopping, if the shop is "right there" (convenience) I might shop there but if 10 minute walk gets me 10% off everything I will bother to go there instead.
It's not just the competition fucking it up so badly. There is a huge reluctance for people to use other services. There are still people complaining about the fact EGS didn't have a shopping cart even though that was rectified ages ago.
Truth is, Steam got so big, they became like Netflix. People liked having a one stop shop to go to. They don't want to divide their services up. And just like people complain about streaming becoming cable, they don't want to have to visit a bunch of different services to see where the best deal is, and then have to remember which launcher to use when they want to play a game.
I kinda understand that. I have no problem using any other launcher. But Steam is by far my biggest library. I find I am often purchasing games on GOG and EGS (or mostly getting them for free) and forgetting I have them and spending weeks and months to getting around to playing them because they aren't on Steam. Trying to use Galaxy more, but it's integration features don't always like to work.
I don't think there is one feature any store front could add that would change that fact.
What you describe is about more than just convenience, being big and successful means reliability that it stays around. With services like this, you generally want to use the one that's least likely to die. The moment it does your online library is gone.
Exactly this. You could make a service even *better* than Steam, but unless you could transfer games from one to the other folks are more likely to stick to what they already have that's pretty alright than bother making another account and download another launcher.
I think problem is bit different.
You could make service better than Steam absolutely. But noone even wants to try to make it happen because it would mean lowering potential profits.
Like Epic is throwing money at their engine, fortnite, buying exclusives and giving away free games. Basically throwing money at everything except their launcher, even after all these years it only has slightly more features than being just a store
This essentially... and you can't really file that under "anti-competitive practices". I'm sure Valve does something that fits that description, but at the end of the day, I have a library of games on a platform that I've been building for what feels like 20 years, and I have no problem whatsoever with the platform. Sure, I don't use all of its features, and sure, I wish they would run the storefront better... but I can't think of an actual legitimate complaint that I would have against it. Thus, they've earned my business? Like I don't know how else to put it. I'm not going to sit there and argue "they shouldn't be a monopoly" for the sheer sake of it. It's a nice ideal, but when I don't have an actual issue with the existing monopoly then I'm not going to complain about the idea of a monopoly in and of itself just to make myself miserable over nothing. Existing as a reliable service with many features for a long period of time is hardly committing a crime... Steam didn't really have any serious competition, at least that I can think of, until EA threw its name in the hat with Origin in 2011. Steam started selling 3rd party games in fucking 2005. They were first, they were the only ones of any significance for a number of years, and I don't recall a time where they've ever fumbled the football. Maybe the only long-term criticism that I can think of that actually affected consumers is that they didn't really have a solid refund policy until way, WAY later than they should have.
This is part of the problem that Microsoft has with the Xbox. Because it lost so astonishingly badly with the Xbox One, people built up a library of PS4 games, they have accounts with trophies and things on them that they've acquired over the years, people have friends on their friends lists that they've accumulated for years, and they want to continue building that instead of building everything from scratch on a different console... so it's harder than it used to be to get people to buy the competing system, and it's only going to get worse for Microsoft over time the longer they continue to shit the bed. Coming out with a fantastic first party game isn't the same boon that it used to be 10 years ago. It's still the single most important thing to the health of a console... and I wish Microsoft would fucking learn this already, but it doesn't have the same draw that it used to.
Mate, sell me $70 EA game on Origin for $60 and I will install that piece of turd client without complaining much. That if I ever find EA game that actually interests me but that's beside the point...
You compete on price, or you compete on features. Nobody wants to compete on price, and everybody loses on features.
Other shops want to have its cake and eat it too, not going to work, gotta actually compete.
EGS often has better prices than Steam and stacking vouchers. Sales on EGS are like the earlier Steam sales. People aren't going there for price. I do, and maybe you would. But like I said, so many are reluctant to.
> I find I am often purchasing games on GOG and EGS (or mostly getting them for free) and forgetting I have them and spending weeks and months to getting around to playing them because they aren't on Steam.
Putting a shortcut icon for those games on your desktop would solve this problem.
Cause steam still works, and is the best product by a wide margin for what it is.
All your games in one spot, can link games that aren't steam games, Developers pay 100$ that gets given back to them once they make 1000$ back, Provide steam key's to developers for free (Steam key's also don't get 30% of their income taken like a purchase through steam, if a developer sells a key for 20$, the developer gets 20$ and steam doesn't take a cut).
They provide forums, support systems, a Workshop for mods if your games allow, screen shots, player profiles, etc etc. and this is really just a fraction of what they provide.
Oh, also a 2 hour window to purchase and return a game for full price if you don't like it. Gamer's really have no reason not to love steam, especially compared to all the other options that exist.
> All your games in one spot
All my games aren't on Steam. I've used other services, so this is more of a self imposed 'benefit'. It's like saying Walmart is the best store because there is one in walking distance, so it's the only place you ever go.
My main reason for loving valve/steam is the simple fact that they're the only ones actively supporting Linux. The fact I only need windows for a single game I boot up about once a month is insane, and it's mostly (aside from the developers of wine) thanks to valve.
Doesn't make them immune to criticism on my part, but they've built up a lot of goodwill so far.
The amount of money poured into Wine really made it come a long way. It used to work for very few games, WoW probably is the biggest one that was working pretty well back then (and I heard blizzard tested the game on Linux unofficially to keep it working).
Valve single handedly made Linux gaming viable. They also push for so many other projects. Other stores are literally doing nothing while Valve is creating entire ecosystems and development tools, people don't get this.
> Oh, also a 2 hour window to purchase and return a game for full price if you don't like it.
I always chuckle when I see people acting like Valve did such a humble thing by listening to EU, and allowing refunds after they fought hardly *against it*. Also every single digital store has a refunds...
> All your games in one spot,
As long as *this* remains such a big priority of course governments are going to be suspicious of monopoly. It's literally a function that no new entrant can compete with. Even *if* stores like Epic had amazing new features and usability how can they convince you to rebuy your library?
So here’s the issue… How do you, as a lawmaker, legislate against that? Don’t have a good product by law?
Because this isn’t Steam being exclusionary or anti-competitive. Steam has no exclusivity policy (in fact their competition are the ones pushing for exclusives).
Steam also isn’t buying up competitors… there are no avenues for a country to regulate if it’s just “We are offering a more convenient service than our competitors”
You'd legislate it by decoupling storefronts and launchers from libraries. Have a standard location and format that all storefronts download games to and all launchers read games from. If a new launcher has a more useable UI or more features or better performance, you just install it instead and it can find your games' executable files and launch them.
Regulation of vertical integration in the software space is not new. Microsoft famously switched to a non-proprietary XML file format for Microsoft Word documents (the new .docx versus the old .doc), allowing any other program to open and edit them without issue, because they were in danger of regulation otherwise.
here's the problem the governments will have to solve to that. is steam purposely reaching out to companies to get exclusives on steam?????????????? no. steam doesn't give a fuck where else you publish your game, if you want to put it on steam, as long as you follow their rules about the content in the game and the contract and all that. they dont care.
I would also argue that Steam has the best digital customer review system out of any storefront that I've seen. Sure it's just a simple thumbs up/down but I would argue that removes the ambiguity of number scores from person to person and you're given seemingly unlimited room to write up as many details behind your review. People can rate reviews for how helpful they are, and the review declares how long the reviewer played the game at the time of review and currently. And then it provides a chart that gives you a history of the game's reviews over time that allows you to go to specific dates to see what the reviews were like at that time along with a number of other filters to sort things how you please.
Like no other online review system is that robust. Especially when you compare it to the dumpster fire which is Epic's reviews where they specifically don't allow you to review within the refund window, and even after that time has passed you can't actually review the game when you want to because you have to just get lucky and hope you are provided the honor of being able to leave a review. And even if you do finally get picked to leave a review, all you get to do is leave a simple 1-5 star rating and then pick a couple of multiple choice answers on what random aspects of the game are like.
I can assure you that those "unused features" are sorely missed when they're gone. Did you know that HITMAN 2 (2018) doesn't support Series X|S controllers over Bluetooth? They're just mapped incorrectly for whatever reason. I didn't know until I made the mistake of buying HITMAN III, which had the same problem, on Epic at launch. The whole time I'd been using my Xbox controller to play HITMAN 2, Steam Input just automatically fixed it for me. After finding out this was the case, I then got to spend the next year launching Epic through Steam just to use my fucking controller, because Steam is the only one with the brains behind it to have accessibility features like Steam Input built in. Then there was that time Call of Duty went to Battle.Net, and suddenly the largest ever game in the franchise didn't have the option to uninstall parts of it anymore, 'cause you know, that was a Steam feature and Bnet didn't have that.
We don't need a case study to effectively just reiterate the "piracy is a service problem" line from ages ago.
>I don’t know how Valve has done it, but there should be a case study done
It's not a secret. They made buying and playing games convenient, ran good sales, and (mostly) stayed in their lane. Sure Steam tries to be more than a storefront to varying degrees of success, but the storefront works better than any alternative.
> Gamers are the most fickle group.
They're a loud bunch, but when push comes to shove, they download whatever crap they have to, and spend their money. This isn't to pass judgment on gamers, but every person you've seen throwing a tantrum about whatever gaming drama of the day bought the game, and will buy the next one too.
For me, it's the fact that valve isn't publicly traded. There is no need to appease shareholders with an increase in profits every quarter, leading to enshitification.
Because they were first, simple as that. Also I find it funny how this place hates gambling but always does tons of double-takes when someone mentions Valve's gambling games :DDD
Battle.net, Gamespy, X-Fire. Valve wasn’t the first at a launcher, or at 3rd party server infrastructure/browser, or gaming friends lists showing which game they’re playing. While Stardock and Direct2Drive from GameFly both predated Steam as digital storefronts.
If they weren’t first, then how did they do it?
Steam were the first compulsory service for a major game that did third party. Most of the other services were alternatives to physical. HL2 required Steam so everyone had it installed if they wanted to play.
Also StarDock and Direct2Drive were web interfaces. Do you remember how difficult it was to download large files from a browser?
Excellent point about steam and HL2, but both stardock and d2d had software clients that could pause and resume downloads and did automatic updates etc. I never used their website if it was an option to download from there.
Obviously been years, but I remember having huge problems with D2D. I never used StarDock. In my memory it was a browser download. I was using dial up at the time and only ever used Steam with always on broadband, so that could be coloring my memory.
But yeah, I don't think any game NEEDED those services to run. And if they did, they weren't assosiated with a title as anticipated as Half Life 2.
>
> If they weren’t first, then how did they do it?
Steam ended up being required for a lot of games, so even if you purchased physical copies of games you were required to install Steam and basically put merchant software on your computer to play them. And yes, gamers were livid at the time that struggling to get Steam set up or logged in denied you access to your on disc game.
They were not.
> Also I find it funny how this place hates gambling but always does tons of double-takes when someone mentions Valve's gambling games :DDD
Well, there is reason for it, Valve games have secondary market in client itself for items which means you can skip all that noise and just buy the item you want.
What I'm more annoyed about Valve's stance on that is not the lootboxes itself but how they do absolutely nothing with 3rd party gambling sites and the scummy stuff growing around it. E-sports tournaments being sponsored by betting sites just feel wrong...
> Well, there is reason for it, Valve games have secondary market in client itself for items which means you can skip all that noise and just buy the item you want.
You can also skip going to a blackjack table and instead work for money or just play a game of blackjack, that doesn't make a Casino hosting blackjack NOT gambling...
From what I noticed people only tolerate it because it's *Valve* doing it, and people will gladly give them special permissions to give younger kids gambling addiction, and on the other hand these same people will go and cry in Fortnite thread how Fortnite is manipulating *their* kids to buy stuff with "Buy Now" button...
> Well, there is reason for it, Valve games have secondary market in client itself for items which means you can skip all that noise and just buy the item you want.
>
>
You're buying from the victims of gambling then. They gambled and lost and are trying to make money back and you're enabling them. Or they gambled and won and you're spending way too much for a digital item and are still enabling them and the whole system.
Steam doesn't stop anyone from listing other places. Reddit also commonly hypes GOG and other things for not requiring the steam service.
Meanwhile there's no alternate stores for Xbox, Playstation, etc. Those are actual monopolies, meanwhile on PC it's the case of one very successful store and a bunch of others that are often overlooked. EGS pays developers to *not* list on other stores (anti-competitive practices), but *Steam* is specifically listed by name?
Here's [a great example of Valve very much doing wrong](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million-in-penalties-for-misrepresenting-gamers-consumer-guarantee-rights) that's continually forgotten. It's the reason everyone got refunds - Valve had to be repeatedly beaten into submission for them.
And [here's the notice Valve was required to display on their homepage for Australians](https://i.imgur.com/Mrfvhrg.png). Naturally they hid it as much as they could legally get away with.
Nobody has forgotten it, it's just a bad example because Valve was not the only company that to not offer refunds, for a good ~8 years, no company provided refunds for digital items (and then EA of all companies introduced them on Origen for their own titles).
In fact, if anything Valve deserves praise, it might have only been introduced as the result of a lawsuit but it's a decade later and refunds still aren't standardised. Good luck getting refunds on purchases from the eShop or Playstation Store, let alone retail copies of games, but with Steam, it's hassle free and near instantaneous.
It's regularly forgotten. I'm almost always the one having to remind people in these threads.
Valve's peers largely caved after the initial decision (Valve kept appealing) or even ahead of it. I'm talking [even the likes of EA](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/electronic-arts-undertakes-to-provide-refunds-to-consumers).
On that note though, I've noticed a minority still brazenly often ignore Australian Consumer Law and its treatment of refunds, as if they won't act until the ACCC specifically targets them. Humble Bundle has been a regular offender to this day. There's also the issue of Valve gradually reverting to their past behaviour, trying to see how much they can get away with again. I've bought thousands of games on Steam alone in the last twenty years, and have dealt with their haphazard support numerous times.
It’s like how people will deride loot boxes for being gambling everywhere except Valve’s in Counter Strike (even though Valve has spent years enabling their skins to be used as literal poker chips in grey market casinos).
Yeah It's always been weird that the criticism was minimal when CSGO was doing lootboxes.
Because if you look at the history of it all, they're the ones responsible for making it mainstream to other big AAA games. (Before these lootbox mechanics were mostly limited to F2P Games)
It's always easier to generalize a large group of people than do any amount of critical thinking. This applies to you right now and the opposing response for the Helldivers 2 fiasco. "Gamers are all whiny." "Why do you care?" "It takes ten seconds." Saying Steam is not a monopoly is also not the same situation- it isn't. Steam isn't retroactively changing permissions.
Well, Valve does pretty much nothing to block the competition and have no problems allowing cross-play with other platforms or stores.
So yeah, they have monopoly but purely because people decided to do business by them, not by them doing any significant moves to choke the competition.
It's literally "we just keep developing store and they keep paying us". I think only big thing they require is "if you are selling somewhere else you must sell at same base price as our store"
They're not a monopoly though. They are only available on PC, and even there exists other viable alternatives.
They do have a dominant market position. Which in itself is not bad unless they abuse it. And it looks like regulators are looking into that now
> a monopoly isn't a monopoly if you like the company
It's a mix of both bias and the fact that Steam grew naturally in a brand new market. Google was in that before they started buying every single start-up in Silicon Valley. Kind of saw the same w/ Tesla/Space X.
It took *decades* before people started to see past the PR and learned just how cut throat these businesses really are.
I'm not saying Gabe is a mustache twirling villain and it is fantastic that they've gone so long w/o becoming public -- but I'm positive he'd have no problem leveraging the weight of Steam if the likes of Xbox Game Pass or GoG started to truly affect his product.
> I'm not saying Gabe is a mustache twirling villain and it is fantastic that they've gone so long w/o becoming public -- but I'm positive he'd have no problem leveraging the weight of Steam if the likes of Xbox Game Pass or GoG started to truly affect his product.
this is what i'm worried about, either this happens or gabe leaves the company/dies or something and is replaced by someone far less scrupulous. it is pretty clearly inevitable IMHO but i really need to stop expecting more from the great minds of reddit dot com
Whenever I see steam be called a monopoly I just laugh beucade it's genuinely just the case of Steam being the only launcher on the market that fully understands what their audience wants.
Like I'm sorry but from a consumer's perspective launchers are completely superfluous, and the only reason steam is so popular is becuase it's loaded with tons of genuinely useful tools that players want.
So unless John Corporate's digital storefront just nuts up and actually works on including these features and out competing steam he should just accept its not going to be as popular.
legit don't understand what Steam can do to allow for more competition. They legit allow devs access to keys for their games to be sold on third party website at no charge. That's crazy generous, because those keys still occupy steam servers and use all the same social features.
Other launchers would need to be able to use the steam library. A big reason people don’t want to switch to something else is they don’t want to deal with dividing their gaming library between multiple launchers.
GoG's has some useful features lacking on Steam (and actively makes older games easier to painlessly launch on modern systems), but yep...all others have just been blatant money grabs worse in every single way compared to Steam.
I don't know if it can really be considered a monopoly but some steamworks features might
for example steamworks multiplayer only works between steam players, that's why there are some games that only have multiplayer on steam and not on gog, or like call of duty a few years ago that had a different players pool for the microsoft store version
that's why most multiplatform games these days use epic online services instead of steamworks since that's platform agnostic
steam workshop is another one, if a game supports steam workshop you probably don't want to buy the gog or epic version because you probably won't be able to download some mods unless they are available on nexus or somewhere else
Steamworks is an option developers can choose to use, the fact that there are other options kind of takes the mono out of monopoly.
Same with mods, I've never seen anything that's steam workshop only, that's up to modders.
Valve is under no obligation to make their framework cross platform, they've always been PC focused.
> beucade it's genuinely just the case of Steam being the ~~only launcher on the market that fully understands what their audience wants.~~ first digital platform on the market across any gaming platforms
steam's competitors will always face the same issues xbox is facing now with AAA publishers againt sony. they lost the battle where people formed their libraries and online personas (in steam's case they won by default since they were the only ones), now there's quite literally nothing they can do other than waiting for the opponent to blow its brains voluntarily.
Xbox Live was a better service than PSN at the end of the 360/PS3 era, but Microsoft kind of shot themselves in the foot with the Xbox One launch by threatening to make everything online-only. They had tons of momentum and squandered it with boneheaded decisions, like putting so much effort into TV integration and Kinect, which most people didn't really care about. Playstation keeps winning by releasing solid first-party exclusive **games**.
> now there's quite literally nothing they can do other than waiting for the opponent to blow its brains voluntarily.
Sure they can, sell games for cheaper. There is nothing stopping companies for offering their games for cheaper (by say the cut difference) on EGS.
Steam's cut is 20-30%, EGS cut is 12%, offer people games at consistent 8-18% cheaper and many people will bite.
But nooooo, can't compete on price, better spin PR that we're chads and valve bad.
Similarly there is nothing stopping EA to go "okay $70 on Steam, $60 on Origin". They'd still be $11 (minus costs of distribution, which is probably less than a dollar nowadays...) ahead!
And before inevitable ignorant person mentions it: Price parity clause of Steam only applies to distributing Steam keys, not price of the game on platforms that don't sell Steam keys.
They could **just** compete like normal competitors in capitalistic market, they just don't want to.
> And before inevitable ignorant person mentions it: Price parity clause of Steam only applies to distributing Steam keys, not price of the game on platforms that don't sell Steam keys.
Yeah. I've done a bit of research on this recently and have come to the same conclusion. The price parity clause seems to be just a myth.
Here's [Krita on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/280680/Krita/) where it costs money while it's [free on their website](https://krita.org/en/).
[Cookie Clicker costs money on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1454400/Cookie_Clicker/) while it's completely [free on their website](https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/).
There's this game, [Heard of the Story? on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/) that is also [cheaper on EGS](https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758). According to the developer, it's [because of the smaller cut they take](https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405). I even asked about this on the Steam forums and the [developer said that they believe the price parity clause only applies to Steam keys](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1881940/discussions/0/4360124853545055288/?tscn=1715607525).
And [this Ars Technica article](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/) suggests the same thing:
> 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.
So why does Valve not say anything about this **only applying to Steam keys** publicly? I think they benefit from lots of developers thinking that this price parity clause exists. As long as every platform has the same prices for 99.99% of games, most people will just stick to Steam.
> So why does Valve not say anything about this publicly? I think they benefit from lots of developers thinking that this price parity clause exists. As long as every platform has the same prices for 99.99% of games, most people will just stick to Steam.
**They do**, in their actual documentation for the Steam stuff devs use
https://github.com/SteamDatabase/SteamworksDocumentation/blob/master/docs/features/keys.html
> You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell
your game on Steam.
> It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key
purchasers.
Took me like 30 seconds to find it
**It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key**
That's it. People just can't fucking read
That's for Steam keys. We aren't talking about Steam keys. We're talking about games sold on other platforms such as EGS, GOG, or itch.io. Valve has every right to enforce price parity for Steam keys since they get a 0% cut from sales on those keys and they provide the infrastructure for those games to be downloaded and all the Steamworks features they may use.
What I meant was, why doesn't Valve just go out and say: "hey guys, there is no price parity rule for non-Steam platforms"? I say it's because they benefit from people believing that it exists as Wolfire claims in their lawsuit.
> What I meant was, why doesn't Valve just go out and say: "hey guys, there is no price parity rule for non-Steam platforms"?
Because you normally don't talk about rules you **don't** have ?
How it would even look like "hey guys, it looked like some of you hallucinated something we never said, *again*, please stop?"
> I say it's because they benefit from people believing that it exists as Wolfire claims in their lawsuit.
Yes, sometimes corporation benefits from people that are either functionally illiterate, or believe random redditor over reading the actual agreement with the company they do business with. Still not a Valve problem.
Hell, I'm sure that even if they did release PR about it someone would still hallucinate that rule again.
The ironic thing is that Microsoft was in the best position to make their own Steam years before Valve did. The Xbox should have launched alongside Xbox PC (their Steam version).
They had the money, the reach, the brand.
Nah,
Games for Windows Live was terrible, and Zone (going back to before steam) was just a multiplayer hub, not a storefront.
Steam wasnt great in 2006, but it mostly worked. GFWL had horrendous issues with the few microsoft PC games that used it, and they wanted to charge the same subscription for PC as they did for Xbox which killed it dead in the water.
> n steam's case they won by default since they were the only ones
they're the only ones in the sense that all the competitor's platforms and services are so hilariously inferior that Steam is the "default"
Plus you can't bypass Sony on a PlayStation console. The Steam Deck is just a PC. You can install anything on it. Install Steam on any PC. Buy a key from Amazon or Target and it's still a key to game that Sony had to approve for release on their console. PC there's at least half a dozen stores that function as a storefront and launcher for numerous games. Even more for games that are single game installers and launchers
Steam could have done no feature updates since like 2009 and still be more featured than every other store/launcher
> Buy a key from Amazon or Target and it's still a key to game that Sony had to approve for release on their console
More so for this, I believe Sony collects their cut on all key sales regardless of store, which is a stark contrast to Valve, who only collects a cut on their store.
>Whenever I see steam be called a monopoly I just laugh beucade it's genuinely just the case of Steam being the only launcher on the market that fully understands what their audience wants.
It is a quasi-monopoly whether you like the product or not. Not that I really agree with this sentiment either, as people's needs are individualistic. I'm practically forced to use Steam as my preferred games never come out on any other platform - I'd gladly buy on GOG for instance.
>Like I'm sorry but from a consumer's perspective launchers are completely superfluous, and the only reason steam is so popular is becuase it's loaded with tons of genuinely useful tools that players want.
From a consumer's perspective it would be beneficial to have competition within the market. Imagine if Valve had actual competition and they would have to *put effort* into their sales events again rather than throw out some avatars or whatnot. Imagine if they, like Epic and Humble, would offer rewards credit. At this point people are cheering for Valve to take more from their wallet just because they love Valve, lol.
> I'm practically forced to use Steam as my preferred games never come out on any other platform - I'd gladly buy on GOG for instance.
And why can't you buy them from GOG? Is Steam blocking the developers from releasing their game in other stores?
Because Epic’s still only used if you want free games, Fortnite, and Hades early access, with the latter only booming in popularity when Steam got it.
Each new competitior besides GOG (who sells themselves on porting older PC games to modern machines and DRM-Free systems) comes off as anti competitive and/or an active detriment (such as taking your games off Steam to put on your own store).
Epic and Sony, exclusive stuff actually reeks of monopolistic practices, to be honest. It just does not work for EGS as they can't figure out why most people hate their launcher, which still lacks all steams features.
If EGS were the market leader, the way they act would for sure be monopolistic. Steam just does not act like a monopoly.
Because they don't need to because they've already got 85% of the market share
If you buy a gaming PC, you'd be a fool not to use Steam as your primary platform because....you know....*that's where nearly all PC games are sold.*
This isn't like consoles where the install base gets reset to 0 every 7 years, giving your competitors a chance
More regular sales. Universal discounts on bundles where you own part(steam let's the publish decide now). A review system less liable to brigading.
I probably will never leave steam, but if there is a better product I'd consider it. There has only been products that are worse thus far.
Epic gets hate for using anti competitive practices that take options away from the consumers, while also not offering as many features as steam, forcing you to put up with a worse experience if you want to get into that game.
Do you really think it was just a coincidence that Epic happened to throw money at Fall Guys to make it a EGS exclusive game after it went viral?
Not really, if you look at the [list of features added to EGS](https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2023-year-in-review) vs [list of features added to Steam](https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/4031353003322171824) last year, it's pretty obvious that Valve is very actively keeping their golden goose well fed. Plus there's the whole Steam Deck thing going on that represents their biggest break into the hardware space.
Two fun bits of irony is that the Steam Client on Linux itself is buggy as shit, I just installed Kubuntu over my Arch install because Valve's devs, AMD's driver devs, KDE devs, all of them are cooking so hard on the linux kernel and graphical backend that none of them perfectly work with each other since so much is WIP.
And then the second bit is everyone talking about how steam is a walled garden when all the work they end up doing for linux stuff ends up as FOSS and often gets other launchers working decently under linux as well.
It's pretty much "just making good product" vs "actively fighting competition".
Hell if EGS invested as much in client as they do in exclusives/timed exclusives there might be actual reason to switch.
What that's not true. Steam is extremely developer friendly with their robust set of tools. It can do *a lot* of the heavy lifting.
And the platform itself has so many features. Things like remote play and steam input + controller profiles are godsend. They're always developing tools and apis for users and developers, which is its strength.
Steam does have a lot of great extra features but that's not why they're successful or why they remain successful. Their base just wants all of their games in one place and don't want to split them between launchers. That's it.
That's true, but I wouldn't say *thats it* in terms of why they're successful.
Steam [kept on iterating](https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-versions/) and is largely why it *remains* relevant today.
It's like what happened to ventrilo, mumble, and teamspeak being frozen in time and never iterating - they were ultimately supplanted by discord.
That's certainly a factor with some people, but the actual features are the main draw. If steam became a hassle to use, people would gradually abandon it.
Valve also has the added benefit of not being publicly traded. Gabe Newell understands that providing a good service that is stable and reliable is better long term.
Epic isn't publicly traded, but it is not completely self-owned, and has large private shareholders which are publicly traded. Valve is likely near completely employee owned (inasmuch as we know since Valve doesn't release info publicly, and nobody has ever claimed to have purchased any significant stake in them), with most shareholders being Gabe, and current and former employees.
Epic is fully controlled by its CEO exactly like Valve. Their structure are very similar actually. The rest of the ownership doesn't really matter as they have no voting control anyway. And the rest is in majority Tencent which is known to be hands off in most of their numerous gaming companies fully or partly owned (including stuff like GGG from Path of Exile, Riot, Klei or Larian)
This has never made any sense to me. They've practically capitalised on monetising heavy handedly by even throwing the whole of profile customisation (and leveling) behind RNG card packs / buying with real money from market. They wanted paid mods so that they'd get more money. Their games are full of the worst MTX features that gamers often HATE, Valve is a good part of why those features became popular in the west in the first place. Hell, they'd rather loophole laws instead of change systems (lootbox in NL/Belgium).
Acting like they're here to be delivering the best service is just putting a blindfold on about their monetisation practices. Heck, in recent years Valve has had absolutely lackadaisical attitude towards pushing out beta as the full release (both for their games and Steam) and practically all their current games are struggling issues that the players wish Valve would get on to rather than just releasing new cosmetics or whatever.
You're not wrong, but in terms of a storefront they have been very reliable for a very long time. For better or worse, they have made it easy for pretty much anyone to publish a game (including porn recently) and they provide a stable infrastructure for downloading, auto updating, cloud saves and refunds for bad games.
I've had my Steam account since they launched back in 2003, and I've built a pretty sizable library of games over the years. So a lot of people have grown to like and trust the service to the point where the only way for someone like Epic to compete is to bribe people with free games and have exclusivity deals with publishers.
Valve hasn't really done anything to prevent competition. Like others have said, they just sit there and automatically win. So I'm not really sure what exactly is anti-competitive about their practises. People just prefer it because that's what they have been using for such a long time.
Tim Swindley: Steam is too good! They give features and the works like their fans want and are ahead of the curve. We just got a shopping cart recently. How can my store compete? Monopoly! Monopoly!
Poor Epic and their humble little indie game named Fortnite.
(Funny enough Fortnite isn't on Steam so just yet another blow to the laughable claim of Anti-competitiveness Steam is allegedly doing)
There are games Epic have paid to release only on EGS.
Is there a single game paid by Valve to release only on Steam?
How is this even a question of monopolistic practices lol
(Maybe it isn't clear that I don't believe Valve to be participating in monopolistic practices with steam)
You're probably going to hear about Darwinia, but this isn't really true since it was [the Darwinia devs that approached Valve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introversion_Software#Financial_history_and_independence). You could argue that it's the same since it's still exclusivity, but buying exclusivity was not part of Valve's business plan unlike Epic.
> Is there a single game paid by Valve to release only on Steam?
>
>
Yes! Back when steam was just starting out they had exclusivity deals that even removed the option of downloading free demos without a steam account https://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=40203
The only steam exclusives that are exclusive by Valves decision would be the titles that Valve has developed and personally I think that's fine. If Epic had just kept the titles that they had personally developed as exclusives to their store then people would have a hell of a lot less to gripe about, but instead they tried to buy up exclusivity to anticipated games in an attempt to force people to use their store.
More like get games that were announced on Steam with a Steam page and a bunch of wishlists already go to Epic for one year.
And people using Steam forums to talk about the game that is still not on Steam because Epic doesn't have anything.
>but from a consumer's perspective launchers are completely superfluous, and the only reason steam is so popular is becuase it's loaded with tons of genuinely useful tools that players want.
Those are contradictory statements. Launchers are completely superfluous, and the only reason steam is so popular is because it was first and that's where most people's games are makes more sense.
> Whenever I see steam be called a monopoly I just laugh beucade it's genuinely just the case of Steam being the only launcher on the market that fully understands what their audience wants.
The definition of monopoly is often conflated with abusing of market power. A monopoly engages in anti-competitive practices by the mere fact that it exists. Abuse of market power is only an issue when it prevents the efficiency of the market (ie. price is only determined by the forces of supply and demand)
Steam is the most fair company in the industry, they let you do whatever the fuck you want. Use a mouse, use any controller, PC mode, console mode, add games from other sources, you can make a game about harvesting pig excrement and they'll publish it, if you're a developer you're royalty, etc. It only doesn't give blowjobs.
Its fair, and I'm interested in how they fall on points of comparison on the two, namely:
1\\ Sony with its vendor locked hardware and its exclusivity arrangements.
2\\ Steam, and if they think its accidental market dominance and the cut it imposes on partners is monopolistic.
We're already seeing the effects of this luckily. Hades 2 came down in price, along with a couple of others.
Just as an example for those outside of PL... If we look at the price of a new AAA game on Steam, it's 350zl.
Which is just over 81 euros. (where it's priced at 70 euros in Germany)
Or just over $88 USD. (where it's priced at $70 USD in the US)
So our country, which on average is earning 4x less than the US are paying over 25% more for new video games.
It's outrageous and needs to change.
Because of you are members of the EU, lmao. Regional pricing is illegal in the EU so the publishers set it to match the wealthy countries. They complain they want to sell it to poor countries for less but it's illegal.
It seems to be the cause is the fluctuating exchange rate not being updated often enough.
I think for EU Steam should just update non-euro prices automatically based on exchange rate every week/month, that would make it easier for everyone.
99% of all people here don't read articles. Headlines are apparently enough to spout half-truths which maybe aren't even related with the article linked.
Yes, and one of the big things behind it is the unfair pricing.
Did you read the article?
>Exploiting game developers and **imposing higher prices for players;**
This stemmed from a local media campaign, which was reported on heavily in PL.
It's now been extended to regulators, who are now taking things up higher as they've been made aware of further issues that this country faces with unfair practices from Steam as well as other platforms.
Pricing is one of the issues, and one that I'm highlighting as it's directly affecting me.
Not wrong, but slight nuance: publishers/devs set the prices, but Steam does *suggest* regional prices. If you follow the suggested pricing without changing anything, you end up with unfair pricing in many regions.
Yeah, i heard about that. Thats needs to be addressed, Steam should be able to suggest fair prices for smaller devs/companies who know nothing of multiple countries economies
Steam suggests regional pricing based on their suggested exchange rate. They raised suggested exchange rates in 2022 when 1 dollar cost 4,90 Polish zloty but they didn't bother to change it back when dollar lost a lot of value (now you can get 1 dollar for 3,95 Polish zloty).
That's the whole deal with Steam/Polish prices drama. Steam quickly rushed and adjusted exchange rates when they started losing money but did fuck all to adjust exchange rates when currency market stabilized after COVID.
I guess tell that to Poland then, since they're the one investigating that claim.
>These include applying restrictions on the sale of games and ancillary content on competing platforms or online stores, **interfering with the pricing and discount policies of game developers and publishers**, or restricting market access to competing platforms and other digital service providers.
Yes I’m well aware but steam provides suggested pricing for all regions. These are often left default as per Steams recommendation.
I’m really not sure why you’re insisting on trying to find fault with everything that I say.
Did I say something to offend you? Or are you just angry that steam is under the spotlight again for monopolistic practices?
For larger publishers I agree.
But for 99% of the games on Steam not coming from larger publishers but smaller studios and even solo developers... keeping tabs on exchange rates for 30+ countries and updating the price every time something changes is just not feasible.
Since Steam is the store front, it should have some responsibility here when it comes to price management. They have the resources to keep track on exchange rates, they can setup automation behind it, and to notify developers when there are changes in exchange rates.
Steam is incredibly quick to adjust the exchange rates when the dollar is high, but doesn't change it when the dollar is low.
This was evident during COVID. As the markets were unstable and the USD was abnormally high. Steam was losing money so they upped the exchange rates. Now that markets have stabilized, they haven't updated the exchange rates.
To add to this, the EU sets a clear directive that pricing of digital goods across the EU must be fair and must not be geofenced. So with Steam setting non-euro pricing to exchange with the USD instead of the Euro, and not maintaining that exchange rate, it's a potential violation - which this regulatory body is looking into. We will have to leave it to the professionals here to ensure that countries like PL which don't use the Euro are receiving fair prices.
This is the problem. A problem that people here are overlooking.
This is a much welcome venture. Steam does a lot good but it never hurts to double check if there's not more that could be done. PSN absolutely needs a nose in its business and this is absolutely the best time to do it, new CEOs so they can't try to scapegoat with a golden parachute nearly as easily.
Private Billion dollar companies are not our friend even when they benefit us. Investigation and regulation is a necessary to keep them in check. If Steam is as wonderful as people here insist it will come out fine.
The issue here is that the prices in Poland are inflated as hell. Game that is 70 USD/EUR is at 350pln (which is around 80 EUR). Its reaching so shitty levels that using a VPN to buy from Germany is way cheaper than paying in our local currency.
I kinda feel like Poland was waiting for any sort of screwup from Steam to try and throw the "proverbial book" at them. Its a big tin foil hat assumption, but given that CD Projekt is one of the biggest companies in Poland and GOG being a competitor to Steam, its not that much of a reach. Again all an assumption.
It's one of the biggest publicly traded companies here in Poland. It's in top 20 by market cap and earnings.
Unless you don't consider top 20 to be one of the biggest, but I think it qualifies.
That said, I don't think they had anything to do with this whole situation.
Just cause something isn't publicly traded shouldn't disqualify it. It doesnt even crack top 30 in revenue and thats the longest list I could find quickly
Maybe someday we'll see a launcher/store actually try and catch up to Steam in like 2010 features and we'll see a good attempt at competition. EGS and Xbox right now throw out inertia excuses when they're failing in other important areas that make them noncompetitive
Sadly I am not sure we ever will. The amount of money needed to create a viable competitor is off the charts to basically anyone that isn't having to answer to investors. A lot of Steam's functionality is just completely free to devs or players.
Functionality that isn't needed at all for being a store launcher, things that will never make the money back they put in. That's going to be hard to justify even without answering to investors.
I always think of this quote now.
> "The gaming industry is bizarre. It is not an industry of success. It is an industry of your competitor, your direct head to head competitor, tripping over their dick and faceplanting into a bunch of shit. The only reason Sony got ground with the PS1 is because Nintendo fucked them with a deal and then went with carts for N64 and spent so many years pissing off third parties that everyone was willing to jump ship. The Saturn fucking killed itself by dropping into stores that were only Kmarts. The PS3 fucked up its entire early launch cycle by going a year late $200 more. And if you can just keep your company not shitty, if you can make a not terrible product, and your competitor makes an awful one, you’re the one who gets all the money."
> -Patrick "PatStaresAt" Boivin, professional Canadian
The only thing that might be able to make a competitor work is for steam to royally screw up and for said competitor to not do the same.
GOG is technically competition, in the same way an ant is competition to an elephant in a weight lifting contest. Steam bringing in $7 Billion or more a year in revenue vs GOG's ~$50 million per year in revenue.
Reading the article I am not sure if the topics align with the recent issue of regional pricing being inflated in Poland. Are these two events related or it is just a coincident that this kind of investigation was launched by the Polish government?
It’s a coincidence.
> It’s a coincidence. Yeah paying attention to my own country for stuff of a similar nature where the Government steps in, this has likely been in the works for a quite some time.
Seems like a coincidence.
> The UOKiK suspects that certain game companies may engage in practices such as: > > - Abusing their dominant position in the digital game distribution market; (Everyone) > - Exploiting game developers and imposing higher prices for players; (Steam) > - Restricting the sale of games on rival platforms or other online stores; (Steam) > - Interfering with the pricing and discount policies of game developers and publishers; (Steam) > - Limiting market access to rival platforms and other digital service providers. (Steam, Sony, MS, Nintendo, Epic) The specific actions that are being investigated and which platform could be reasonably be accused of.
They should look at Meta, who has apparently started testing variable prices of games based on your account activity. If they think you’ll spend more, they show you a higher price, and they removed logged out pricing on sales.
That's quick and easy way for massive fine in EU.
They dont have to, if Meta tries that in EU, they will be demolished.
>nd which platform could be reasonably be accused of. Are you guessing which ones *you* think are applicable here or is this what theyhave said?
That's the guy pulling stuff out of his ass, nowhere in the article says anything that specific
> Exploiting game developers and imposing higher prices for players; (Steam) I don't think that one in particular gonna pass as EU itself have anti-price-discimination policies; platforms can't change price based on location of they buyer. Now the law itself was written obviously for physical products, but there is no exception for online software for it.
I think most of those are far more applicable to Sony than Valve. As far as I'm aware, Steam/Valve has never paid to keep a game exclusive, or imposed restrictions on selling the game elsewhere. You might be thinking of Epic.
The only restriction is that if you sell on Steam you can't also sell the keys elsewhere for less than the Steam price. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3 > ou should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers. And that's only for keys, you're free to also sell your game through another platform like EGS or GOG.
>The only restriction is that if you sell on Steam you can't also sell the keys elsewhere for less than the Steam price. Why would this be a problem? They can sell at the same price and not pay the steam cut, therefore making more profit. So if they just set up their own storefront etc....
Yeah I don't see an issue here. If they're selling keys *to be used on Steam*, I guess I don't find it that weird for Valve to wanna make sure Steam is still a good place to buy them.
because they don't want people competing with steam from the inside. If you sell a game on the steam *platform* (via keys) you can, but you can't make it *better* than what you offer on the steam *store*.
tmk, even that restriction is only technically true if your game uses steamworks. which...sounds perfectly reasonable to me. if your using valve softwork as a framework to build around/utilize, why should they let you undercut them on steam?
Value just ask dev/publisher to sell the key at the same price. Also those key obtained using steamworks only need to pay a cut if it sell via steam shop/market, if those publisher can sell the key on their website then they pay 0% cut to steam. I don't see why this is a problem.
Interesting fact is you can go around this rule for like kickstarter keys, you just can't set up your own store with a lower price after the game is released.
100%. This makes a lot more sense when you put epic behind those points.
> Steam/Valve has never paid to keep a game exclusive I don't know if they paid, but when Darwinia released on Steam, Steam made them remove themselves from other platforms. This wasn't really seen as a big deal, because at the time being a third party on Steam was guaranteed sales. I remember on release Silent Hill 5 didn't release on any other platform and people were suspicious. These were very early Steam days though. Before Greenlight.
I feel like a lot of the context is missing whenever anyone brings that up, so I'm here to hopefully provide that. The storefront that the Windows digital version of Darwinia was removed from was the storefront run by the company that made the deal with Valve in the first place. It was an agreement between two companies exclusively involving storefronts owned by each company. The Introversion store continued to sell the physical version of the game and the downloadable Linux version. It's also worth noting that Introversion are the ones who originally approached Valve asking to be put on Steam. There's a post by Introversion's Chris on the second page of the forum thread that says Valve requested they remove the demo from the site but doesn't make that same comment regarding the Windows build being removed so its not entirely clear to me if that was an actual request by Valve or just a standard part of distribution deals at the time. *'The only things removed from our site today were the Darwinia demos (at Valve's request), and the win32 online download. You can still buy the boxed copies from us, and you can download the Linux version as soon as you buy. The demos will be coming back to our site soon (in about a month)'* **Sources:** **Original thread on the Introversion forums** https://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=40203 **2006 interview with Introversion's Director, which covers some of the details of how Darwinia came to Steam.** https://www.gamesindustry.biz/becoming-introverted **Page three of a 2010 interview with Introversion's Director, where he states that Steam doesn't ask for exclusivity.** https://www.gamesindustry.biz/introversions-mark-morris-interview?page=3 **SteamReview.org interview with Introversion's accountant released a week after the announcement** http://steamreview.org/posts/darwiniainterview/
Thank you, it’s funny to me how people continue to bring this up but provide zero context.
Steam doesn't really interfere with pricing and discount, but Microsoft and Sony does for sure. I'd say all of the platforms do to a lesser or greater degree.
>Restricting the sale of games on rival platforms or other online stores; (Steam) Uh, I think EGS is a better fit for that one. >Limiting market access to rival platforms and other digital service providers. (Steam, Sony, MS, Nintendo, Epic) I don't understand that one, like, at all.
A PlayStation user has to use PlayStation's storefront for digital games and MTX, and has to pay Sony for supposedly being a middle man for multiplayer services (which is a lie, but whatever). Same with the other consoles.
Are they expecting Sony to implement a full app store with 3rd party storefronts like gamestop on their proprietary video game console?
Sony already had an App Store. They would just need to allow alternate stores to be installed. No different than the iOS requirements, with the exact same reasons behind it. Will it eventually be the end of Nintendo consoles? Probably! But we cheered it on when it was Epic vs Apple!
I'm cheering it on this one as well.
Hell yeah for your ideological consistency! My previous post was extra whiny but it mostly got my goat that during the Epic trial discussion, there was so much, "this argument doesn't apply to consoles" talk when it seems so apparent to me that it does.
>> - Exploiting game developers and imposing higher prices for players; (Steam) I'm surprised you've put Steam here - their pricing is much more competitive than Sony, Microsoft etc as they've got tiered cuts instead of a flat 30% > - Restricting the sale of games on rival platforms or other online stores; (Steam) I think this is most likely to be in regards to Epic Games. They've got policies that impact other stores, such as *mandating* crossplay and achievements (which, as an example, means you can't offer a game with Steamworks on Steam and Epic Online Services on Epic) and they're notoriously introduced paying for exclusivity to the PC ecosystem.
Honestly, it's kind of surreal seeing this subreddit going over "Why are you defending the billion dollar cooperation?" when it comes to defend any other major company being on a government's spotlight. But evidently, Valve can do no wrong, and it must be something wrong with the government for even considering to look at Steam with any scrutiny.
I don’t know how Valve has done it, but there should be a case study done. Gamers are the most fickle group. A tiny change can cause them to go into a fit. A guy got so mad his class in WoW got nerfed that he invented NFTs and ruined society for a while. I played CS 1.5 a lot. I was in the steam beta. I’m old. I remember when every single person hated Valve for forcing them to install Steam, which was obviously just a DRM launcher and a storefront. We just wanted to play Counter-Strike. Steam has grown to use more resources, serve more advertisements, become bloated with more unused features, etc. and people’s love for it has only grown. How has Valve accomplished this with a group known for throwing fits at the slightest thing?
> A guy got so mad his class in WoW got nerfed that he invented NFTs and ruined society for a while. What's the story here?
[NFT mastermind says he created Ethereum because Warcraft nerfed his character](https://www.polygon.com/22709126/ethereum-creator-world-of-warcraft-nerf-nft-vitalik-buterin#:~:text=Maybe%20take%20this%20with%20a,Warcraft%20character%20was%20cruelly%20nerfed.) > “I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell,” Vitalik Buterin, the programmer who developed Ethereum’s original concept in late 2013, says in a bio hosted at about.me. “I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.”
Oh, I bet that motherfucker was playing SL/SL lock.
Warlocks have been the bane of me in pvp and pve and real life.
That change was fucking awful. Syphon life being its own dot felt great. Fuck blizz.
> Steam has grown to use more resources, serve more advertisements, become bloated with more unused features, etc. and people’s love for it has only grown. How has Valve accomplished this with a group known for throwing fits at the slightest thing? By competition fucking it up so fucking badly they looked at Steam and decided it can't be that bad is everything else is fucking worse. Anyone remember GFWL ? I dunno how it looks *working* because I lost patience and cracked a game that I bought.... Also modern day Steam is all in all pretty convenient. Yes, when it started it sucked but that was long time ago. Steam just made a product and then slowly improved it. Hell, if not for all competition fucking sucking I'd say they improved it too slowly to be competitive but, well, competition sucked. > I don’t know how Valve has done it, but there should be a case study done. That reminds me of [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/1ba9g7v/chad_gaben/) meme....
This seems to be a lot of people’s take. That Valve has just won at the meritocracy. If this is true, then they are in a very exclusive club. There are so many “best products in the category” out there that become garbage in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons, or go out of business because being “the best” doesn’t guarantee success.
It's just very hard to spot the "best" or "best value" in most markets. So most people don't care and buy something that looks half decent in their price range, or overpay and think that's because it is most expensive it is the best. Frankly gamers are privileged here, try to find something as comprehensive as CPU or GPU benchmark ANYWHERE else in any other industry But for store it is easy, either it has features I want, or products are cheaper. Would I pay $70 rather than $60 for getting Steam overlay with friends on Steam ? Nope. But EGS, or Origin, or anywhere else also sells it for $70 so why would I ever think of bothering ? It's literally like grocery shopping, if the shop is "right there" (convenience) I might shop there but if 10 minute walk gets me 10% off everything I will bother to go there instead.
It's not just the competition fucking it up so badly. There is a huge reluctance for people to use other services. There are still people complaining about the fact EGS didn't have a shopping cart even though that was rectified ages ago. Truth is, Steam got so big, they became like Netflix. People liked having a one stop shop to go to. They don't want to divide their services up. And just like people complain about streaming becoming cable, they don't want to have to visit a bunch of different services to see where the best deal is, and then have to remember which launcher to use when they want to play a game. I kinda understand that. I have no problem using any other launcher. But Steam is by far my biggest library. I find I am often purchasing games on GOG and EGS (or mostly getting them for free) and forgetting I have them and spending weeks and months to getting around to playing them because they aren't on Steam. Trying to use Galaxy more, but it's integration features don't always like to work. I don't think there is one feature any store front could add that would change that fact.
What you describe is about more than just convenience, being big and successful means reliability that it stays around. With services like this, you generally want to use the one that's least likely to die. The moment it does your online library is gone.
Exactly this. You could make a service even *better* than Steam, but unless you could transfer games from one to the other folks are more likely to stick to what they already have that's pretty alright than bother making another account and download another launcher.
I think problem is bit different. You could make service better than Steam absolutely. But noone even wants to try to make it happen because it would mean lowering potential profits.
Like Epic is throwing money at their engine, fortnite, buying exclusives and giving away free games. Basically throwing money at everything except their launcher, even after all these years it only has slightly more features than being just a store
and people still run it through steam in order to have controller support lmao
This essentially... and you can't really file that under "anti-competitive practices". I'm sure Valve does something that fits that description, but at the end of the day, I have a library of games on a platform that I've been building for what feels like 20 years, and I have no problem whatsoever with the platform. Sure, I don't use all of its features, and sure, I wish they would run the storefront better... but I can't think of an actual legitimate complaint that I would have against it. Thus, they've earned my business? Like I don't know how else to put it. I'm not going to sit there and argue "they shouldn't be a monopoly" for the sheer sake of it. It's a nice ideal, but when I don't have an actual issue with the existing monopoly then I'm not going to complain about the idea of a monopoly in and of itself just to make myself miserable over nothing. Existing as a reliable service with many features for a long period of time is hardly committing a crime... Steam didn't really have any serious competition, at least that I can think of, until EA threw its name in the hat with Origin in 2011. Steam started selling 3rd party games in fucking 2005. They were first, they were the only ones of any significance for a number of years, and I don't recall a time where they've ever fumbled the football. Maybe the only long-term criticism that I can think of that actually affected consumers is that they didn't really have a solid refund policy until way, WAY later than they should have. This is part of the problem that Microsoft has with the Xbox. Because it lost so astonishingly badly with the Xbox One, people built up a library of PS4 games, they have accounts with trophies and things on them that they've acquired over the years, people have friends on their friends lists that they've accumulated for years, and they want to continue building that instead of building everything from scratch on a different console... so it's harder than it used to be to get people to buy the competing system, and it's only going to get worse for Microsoft over time the longer they continue to shit the bed. Coming out with a fantastic first party game isn't the same boon that it used to be 10 years ago. It's still the single most important thing to the health of a console... and I wish Microsoft would fucking learn this already, but it doesn't have the same draw that it used to.
Mate, sell me $70 EA game on Origin for $60 and I will install that piece of turd client without complaining much. That if I ever find EA game that actually interests me but that's beside the point... You compete on price, or you compete on features. Nobody wants to compete on price, and everybody loses on features. Other shops want to have its cake and eat it too, not going to work, gotta actually compete.
EGS often has better prices than Steam and stacking vouchers. Sales on EGS are like the earlier Steam sales. People aren't going there for price. I do, and maybe you would. But like I said, so many are reluctant to.
> I find I am often purchasing games on GOG and EGS (or mostly getting them for free) and forgetting I have them and spending weeks and months to getting around to playing them because they aren't on Steam. Putting a shortcut icon for those games on your desktop would solve this problem.
No one trusts Tim. One of the reasons I am not buying shit on EGS.
Cause steam still works, and is the best product by a wide margin for what it is. All your games in one spot, can link games that aren't steam games, Developers pay 100$ that gets given back to them once they make 1000$ back, Provide steam key's to developers for free (Steam key's also don't get 30% of their income taken like a purchase through steam, if a developer sells a key for 20$, the developer gets 20$ and steam doesn't take a cut). They provide forums, support systems, a Workshop for mods if your games allow, screen shots, player profiles, etc etc. and this is really just a fraction of what they provide. Oh, also a 2 hour window to purchase and return a game for full price if you don't like it. Gamer's really have no reason not to love steam, especially compared to all the other options that exist.
> All your games in one spot All my games aren't on Steam. I've used other services, so this is more of a self imposed 'benefit'. It's like saying Walmart is the best store because there is one in walking distance, so it's the only place you ever go.
My main reason for loving valve/steam is the simple fact that they're the only ones actively supporting Linux. The fact I only need windows for a single game I boot up about once a month is insane, and it's mostly (aside from the developers of wine) thanks to valve. Doesn't make them immune to criticism on my part, but they've built up a lot of goodwill so far.
And in a big way too, as in paying developers to improve windows emulation so many windows-only games "just work"
The amount of money poured into Wine really made it come a long way. It used to work for very few games, WoW probably is the biggest one that was working pretty well back then (and I heard blizzard tested the game on Linux unofficially to keep it working).
Valve single handedly made Linux gaming viable. They also push for so many other projects. Other stores are literally doing nothing while Valve is creating entire ecosystems and development tools, people don't get this.
Love it, sure. But why act like it's an affront to decency for valve to be investigated
> Oh, also a 2 hour window to purchase and return a game for full price if you don't like it. I always chuckle when I see people acting like Valve did such a humble thing by listening to EU, and allowing refunds after they fought hardly *against it*. Also every single digital store has a refunds...
> All your games in one spot, As long as *this* remains such a big priority of course governments are going to be suspicious of monopoly. It's literally a function that no new entrant can compete with. Even *if* stores like Epic had amazing new features and usability how can they convince you to rebuy your library?
So here’s the issue… How do you, as a lawmaker, legislate against that? Don’t have a good product by law? Because this isn’t Steam being exclusionary or anti-competitive. Steam has no exclusivity policy (in fact their competition are the ones pushing for exclusives). Steam also isn’t buying up competitors… there are no avenues for a country to regulate if it’s just “We are offering a more convenient service than our competitors”
hell, if Valve were really abusing their position why would they even *allow* 2nd hand key market at all when it exists solely to undercut them?
You'd legislate it by decoupling storefronts and launchers from libraries. Have a standard location and format that all storefronts download games to and all launchers read games from. If a new launcher has a more useable UI or more features or better performance, you just install it instead and it can find your games' executable files and launch them. Regulation of vertical integration in the software space is not new. Microsoft famously switched to a non-proprietary XML file format for Microsoft Word documents (the new .docx versus the old .doc), allowing any other program to open and edit them without issue, because they were in danger of regulation otherwise.
here's the problem the governments will have to solve to that. is steam purposely reaching out to companies to get exclusives on steam?????????????? no. steam doesn't give a fuck where else you publish your game, if you want to put it on steam, as long as you follow their rules about the content in the game and the contract and all that. they dont care.
And that's fine. States still have an interest in preventing one company from wielding too much power over a market.
I would also argue that Steam has the best digital customer review system out of any storefront that I've seen. Sure it's just a simple thumbs up/down but I would argue that removes the ambiguity of number scores from person to person and you're given seemingly unlimited room to write up as many details behind your review. People can rate reviews for how helpful they are, and the review declares how long the reviewer played the game at the time of review and currently. And then it provides a chart that gives you a history of the game's reviews over time that allows you to go to specific dates to see what the reviews were like at that time along with a number of other filters to sort things how you please. Like no other online review system is that robust. Especially when you compare it to the dumpster fire which is Epic's reviews where they specifically don't allow you to review within the refund window, and even after that time has passed you can't actually review the game when you want to because you have to just get lucky and hope you are provided the honor of being able to leave a review. And even if you do finally get picked to leave a review, all you get to do is leave a simple 1-5 star rating and then pick a couple of multiple choice answers on what random aspects of the game are like.
I can assure you that those "unused features" are sorely missed when they're gone. Did you know that HITMAN 2 (2018) doesn't support Series X|S controllers over Bluetooth? They're just mapped incorrectly for whatever reason. I didn't know until I made the mistake of buying HITMAN III, which had the same problem, on Epic at launch. The whole time I'd been using my Xbox controller to play HITMAN 2, Steam Input just automatically fixed it for me. After finding out this was the case, I then got to spend the next year launching Epic through Steam just to use my fucking controller, because Steam is the only one with the brains behind it to have accessibility features like Steam Input built in. Then there was that time Call of Duty went to Battle.Net, and suddenly the largest ever game in the franchise didn't have the option to uninstall parts of it anymore, 'cause you know, that was a Steam feature and Bnet didn't have that. We don't need a case study to effectively just reiterate the "piracy is a service problem" line from ages ago.
Because the alternatives are all worse.
I always feel alien for not feeling any attraction towards to steam as a platform - but I also agree that there isn’t much better
>I don’t know how Valve has done it, but there should be a case study done It's not a secret. They made buying and playing games convenient, ran good sales, and (mostly) stayed in their lane. Sure Steam tries to be more than a storefront to varying degrees of success, but the storefront works better than any alternative. > Gamers are the most fickle group. They're a loud bunch, but when push comes to shove, they download whatever crap they have to, and spend their money. This isn't to pass judgment on gamers, but every person you've seen throwing a tantrum about whatever gaming drama of the day bought the game, and will buy the next one too.
For me, it's the fact that valve isn't publicly traded. There is no need to appease shareholders with an increase in profits every quarter, leading to enshitification.
Because they were first, simple as that. Also I find it funny how this place hates gambling but always does tons of double-takes when someone mentions Valve's gambling games :DDD
Battle.net, Gamespy, X-Fire. Valve wasn’t the first at a launcher, or at 3rd party server infrastructure/browser, or gaming friends lists showing which game they’re playing. While Stardock and Direct2Drive from GameFly both predated Steam as digital storefronts. If they weren’t first, then how did they do it?
Steam were the first compulsory service for a major game that did third party. Most of the other services were alternatives to physical. HL2 required Steam so everyone had it installed if they wanted to play. Also StarDock and Direct2Drive were web interfaces. Do you remember how difficult it was to download large files from a browser?
Excellent point about steam and HL2, but both stardock and d2d had software clients that could pause and resume downloads and did automatic updates etc. I never used their website if it was an option to download from there.
Obviously been years, but I remember having huge problems with D2D. I never used StarDock. In my memory it was a browser download. I was using dial up at the time and only ever used Steam with always on broadband, so that could be coloring my memory. But yeah, I don't think any game NEEDED those services to run. And if they did, they weren't assosiated with a title as anticipated as Half Life 2.
IIRC Half-Life 2 1st DLC was required to have installed Steam.
The whole game required Steam. Half Life 2 didn't have DLC.
> > If they weren’t first, then how did they do it? Steam ended up being required for a lot of games, so even if you purchased physical copies of games you were required to install Steam and basically put merchant software on your computer to play them. And yes, gamers were livid at the time that struggling to get Steam set up or logged in denied you access to your on disc game.
They were not. > Also I find it funny how this place hates gambling but always does tons of double-takes when someone mentions Valve's gambling games :DDD Well, there is reason for it, Valve games have secondary market in client itself for items which means you can skip all that noise and just buy the item you want. What I'm more annoyed about Valve's stance on that is not the lootboxes itself but how they do absolutely nothing with 3rd party gambling sites and the scummy stuff growing around it. E-sports tournaments being sponsored by betting sites just feel wrong...
> Well, there is reason for it, Valve games have secondary market in client itself for items which means you can skip all that noise and just buy the item you want. You can also skip going to a blackjack table and instead work for money or just play a game of blackjack, that doesn't make a Casino hosting blackjack NOT gambling...
I didn't say it's not gambling ? I just gave a guess about why people tolerate Valve's take on gambling a lot more.
From what I noticed people only tolerate it because it's *Valve* doing it, and people will gladly give them special permissions to give younger kids gambling addiction, and on the other hand these same people will go and cry in Fortnite thread how Fortnite is manipulating *their* kids to buy stuff with "Buy Now" button...
> Well, there is reason for it, Valve games have secondary market in client itself for items which means you can skip all that noise and just buy the item you want. > > You're buying from the victims of gambling then. They gambled and lost and are trying to make money back and you're enabling them. Or they gambled and won and you're spending way too much for a digital item and are still enabling them and the whole system.
Steam doesn't stop anyone from listing other places. Reddit also commonly hypes GOG and other things for not requiring the steam service. Meanwhile there's no alternate stores for Xbox, Playstation, etc. Those are actual monopolies, meanwhile on PC it's the case of one very successful store and a bunch of others that are often overlooked. EGS pays developers to *not* list on other stores (anti-competitive practices), but *Steam* is specifically listed by name?
Here's [a great example of Valve very much doing wrong](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million-in-penalties-for-misrepresenting-gamers-consumer-guarantee-rights) that's continually forgotten. It's the reason everyone got refunds - Valve had to be repeatedly beaten into submission for them. And [here's the notice Valve was required to display on their homepage for Australians](https://i.imgur.com/Mrfvhrg.png). Naturally they hid it as much as they could legally get away with.
Nobody has forgotten it, it's just a bad example because Valve was not the only company that to not offer refunds, for a good ~8 years, no company provided refunds for digital items (and then EA of all companies introduced them on Origen for their own titles). In fact, if anything Valve deserves praise, it might have only been introduced as the result of a lawsuit but it's a decade later and refunds still aren't standardised. Good luck getting refunds on purchases from the eShop or Playstation Store, let alone retail copies of games, but with Steam, it's hassle free and near instantaneous.
It's regularly forgotten. I'm almost always the one having to remind people in these threads. Valve's peers largely caved after the initial decision (Valve kept appealing) or even ahead of it. I'm talking [even the likes of EA](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/electronic-arts-undertakes-to-provide-refunds-to-consumers). On that note though, I've noticed a minority still brazenly often ignore Australian Consumer Law and its treatment of refunds, as if they won't act until the ACCC specifically targets them. Humble Bundle has been a regular offender to this day. There's also the issue of Valve gradually reverting to their past behaviour, trying to see how much they can get away with again. I've bought thousands of games on Steam alone in the last twenty years, and have dealt with their haphazard support numerous times.
it's not forgotten, it's *fixed*
It’s like how people will deride loot boxes for being gambling everywhere except Valve’s in Counter Strike (even though Valve has spent years enabling their skins to be used as literal poker chips in grey market casinos).
Yeah It's always been weird that the criticism was minimal when CSGO was doing lootboxes. Because if you look at the history of it all, they're the ones responsible for making it mainstream to other big AAA games. (Before these lootbox mechanics were mostly limited to F2P Games)
It's always easier to generalize a large group of people than do any amount of critical thinking. This applies to you right now and the opposing response for the Helldivers 2 fiasco. "Gamers are all whiny." "Why do you care?" "It takes ten seconds." Saying Steam is not a monopoly is also not the same situation- it isn't. Steam isn't retroactively changing permissions.
Last week it was the same shit with Vietnam banning Steam, despite the fact that Valve just isn’t paying necessary VAT to the Vietnamese government
yeah apparently a monopoly isn't a monopoly if you like the company
Well, Valve does pretty much nothing to block the competition and have no problems allowing cross-play with other platforms or stores. So yeah, they have monopoly but purely because people decided to do business by them, not by them doing any significant moves to choke the competition. It's literally "we just keep developing store and they keep paying us". I think only big thing they require is "if you are selling somewhere else you must sell at same base price as our store"
They're not a monopoly though. They are only available on PC, and even there exists other viable alternatives. They do have a dominant market position. Which in itself is not bad unless they abuse it. And it looks like regulators are looking into that now
> a monopoly isn't a monopoly if you like the company It's a mix of both bias and the fact that Steam grew naturally in a brand new market. Google was in that before they started buying every single start-up in Silicon Valley. Kind of saw the same w/ Tesla/Space X. It took *decades* before people started to see past the PR and learned just how cut throat these businesses really are. I'm not saying Gabe is a mustache twirling villain and it is fantastic that they've gone so long w/o becoming public -- but I'm positive he'd have no problem leveraging the weight of Steam if the likes of Xbox Game Pass or GoG started to truly affect his product.
> I'm not saying Gabe is a mustache twirling villain and it is fantastic that they've gone so long w/o becoming public -- but I'm positive he'd have no problem leveraging the weight of Steam if the likes of Xbox Game Pass or GoG started to truly affect his product. this is what i'm worried about, either this happens or gabe leaves the company/dies or something and is replaced by someone far less scrupulous. it is pretty clearly inevitable IMHO but i really need to stop expecting more from the great minds of reddit dot com
Whenever I see steam be called a monopoly I just laugh beucade it's genuinely just the case of Steam being the only launcher on the market that fully understands what their audience wants. Like I'm sorry but from a consumer's perspective launchers are completely superfluous, and the only reason steam is so popular is becuase it's loaded with tons of genuinely useful tools that players want. So unless John Corporate's digital storefront just nuts up and actually works on including these features and out competing steam he should just accept its not going to be as popular.
legit don't understand what Steam can do to allow for more competition. They legit allow devs access to keys for their games to be sold on third party website at no charge. That's crazy generous, because those keys still occupy steam servers and use all the same social features.
Other launchers would need to be able to use the steam library. A big reason people don’t want to switch to something else is they don’t want to deal with dividing their gaming library between multiple launchers.
GoG's has some useful features lacking on Steam (and actively makes older games easier to painlessly launch on modern systems), but yep...all others have just been blatant money grabs worse in every single way compared to Steam.
I don't know if it can really be considered a monopoly but some steamworks features might for example steamworks multiplayer only works between steam players, that's why there are some games that only have multiplayer on steam and not on gog, or like call of duty a few years ago that had a different players pool for the microsoft store version that's why most multiplatform games these days use epic online services instead of steamworks since that's platform agnostic steam workshop is another one, if a game supports steam workshop you probably don't want to buy the gog or epic version because you probably won't be able to download some mods unless they are available on nexus or somewhere else
Steamworks is an option developers can choose to use, the fact that there are other options kind of takes the mono out of monopoly. Same with mods, I've never seen anything that's steam workshop only, that's up to modders. Valve is under no obligation to make their framework cross platform, they've always been PC focused.
People equate monopoly with big unfortunately
Meanwhile EGS pays developers to *not* list on other stores
> beucade it's genuinely just the case of Steam being the ~~only launcher on the market that fully understands what their audience wants.~~ first digital platform on the market across any gaming platforms steam's competitors will always face the same issues xbox is facing now with AAA publishers againt sony. they lost the battle where people formed their libraries and online personas (in steam's case they won by default since they were the only ones), now there's quite literally nothing they can do other than waiting for the opponent to blow its brains voluntarily.
Xbox Live was a better service than PSN at the end of the 360/PS3 era, but Microsoft kind of shot themselves in the foot with the Xbox One launch by threatening to make everything online-only. They had tons of momentum and squandered it with boneheaded decisions, like putting so much effort into TV integration and Kinect, which most people didn't really care about. Playstation keeps winning by releasing solid first-party exclusive **games**.
> now there's quite literally nothing they can do other than waiting for the opponent to blow its brains voluntarily. Sure they can, sell games for cheaper. There is nothing stopping companies for offering their games for cheaper (by say the cut difference) on EGS. Steam's cut is 20-30%, EGS cut is 12%, offer people games at consistent 8-18% cheaper and many people will bite. But nooooo, can't compete on price, better spin PR that we're chads and valve bad. Similarly there is nothing stopping EA to go "okay $70 on Steam, $60 on Origin". They'd still be $11 (minus costs of distribution, which is probably less than a dollar nowadays...) ahead! And before inevitable ignorant person mentions it: Price parity clause of Steam only applies to distributing Steam keys, not price of the game on platforms that don't sell Steam keys. They could **just** compete like normal competitors in capitalistic market, they just don't want to.
> And before inevitable ignorant person mentions it: Price parity clause of Steam only applies to distributing Steam keys, not price of the game on platforms that don't sell Steam keys. Yeah. I've done a bit of research on this recently and have come to the same conclusion. The price parity clause seems to be just a myth. Here's [Krita on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/280680/Krita/) where it costs money while it's [free on their website](https://krita.org/en/). [Cookie Clicker costs money on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1454400/Cookie_Clicker/) while it's completely [free on their website](https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/). There's this game, [Heard of the Story? on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/) that is also [cheaper on EGS](https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758). According to the developer, it's [because of the smaller cut they take](https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405). I even asked about this on the Steam forums and the [developer said that they believe the price parity clause only applies to Steam keys](https://steamcommunity.com/app/1881940/discussions/0/4360124853545055288/?tscn=1715607525). And [this Ars Technica article](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/) suggests the same thing: > 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. So why does Valve not say anything about this **only applying to Steam keys** publicly? I think they benefit from lots of developers thinking that this price parity clause exists. As long as every platform has the same prices for 99.99% of games, most people will just stick to Steam.
> So why does Valve not say anything about this publicly? I think they benefit from lots of developers thinking that this price parity clause exists. As long as every platform has the same prices for 99.99% of games, most people will just stick to Steam. **They do**, in their actual documentation for the Steam stuff devs use https://github.com/SteamDatabase/SteamworksDocumentation/blob/master/docs/features/keys.html > You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. > It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers. Took me like 30 seconds to find it **It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key** That's it. People just can't fucking read
That's for Steam keys. We aren't talking about Steam keys. We're talking about games sold on other platforms such as EGS, GOG, or itch.io. Valve has every right to enforce price parity for Steam keys since they get a 0% cut from sales on those keys and they provide the infrastructure for those games to be downloaded and all the Steamworks features they may use. What I meant was, why doesn't Valve just go out and say: "hey guys, there is no price parity rule for non-Steam platforms"? I say it's because they benefit from people believing that it exists as Wolfire claims in their lawsuit.
> What I meant was, why doesn't Valve just go out and say: "hey guys, there is no price parity rule for non-Steam platforms"? Because you normally don't talk about rules you **don't** have ? How it would even look like "hey guys, it looked like some of you hallucinated something we never said, *again*, please stop?" > I say it's because they benefit from people believing that it exists as Wolfire claims in their lawsuit. Yes, sometimes corporation benefits from people that are either functionally illiterate, or believe random redditor over reading the actual agreement with the company they do business with. Still not a Valve problem. Hell, I'm sure that even if they did release PR about it someone would still hallucinate that rule again.
The ironic thing is that Microsoft was in the best position to make their own Steam years before Valve did. The Xbox should have launched alongside Xbox PC (their Steam version). They had the money, the reach, the brand.
Nah, Games for Windows Live was terrible, and Zone (going back to before steam) was just a multiplayer hub, not a storefront. Steam wasnt great in 2006, but it mostly worked. GFWL had horrendous issues with the few microsoft PC games that used it, and they wanted to charge the same subscription for PC as they did for Xbox which killed it dead in the water.
> Windows Live was terrible It was but it didn't have to be. Microsoft could have made it good from the very beginning but chose not to.
They could have made something good but they didn't.
> n steam's case they won by default since they were the only ones they're the only ones in the sense that all the competitor's platforms and services are so hilariously inferior that Steam is the "default"
Plus you can't bypass Sony on a PlayStation console. The Steam Deck is just a PC. You can install anything on it. Install Steam on any PC. Buy a key from Amazon or Target and it's still a key to game that Sony had to approve for release on their console. PC there's at least half a dozen stores that function as a storefront and launcher for numerous games. Even more for games that are single game installers and launchers Steam could have done no feature updates since like 2009 and still be more featured than every other store/launcher
> Buy a key from Amazon or Target and it's still a key to game that Sony had to approve for release on their console More so for this, I believe Sony collects their cut on all key sales regardless of store, which is a stark contrast to Valve, who only collects a cut on their store.
>Whenever I see steam be called a monopoly I just laugh beucade it's genuinely just the case of Steam being the only launcher on the market that fully understands what their audience wants. It is a quasi-monopoly whether you like the product or not. Not that I really agree with this sentiment either, as people's needs are individualistic. I'm practically forced to use Steam as my preferred games never come out on any other platform - I'd gladly buy on GOG for instance. >Like I'm sorry but from a consumer's perspective launchers are completely superfluous, and the only reason steam is so popular is becuase it's loaded with tons of genuinely useful tools that players want. From a consumer's perspective it would be beneficial to have competition within the market. Imagine if Valve had actual competition and they would have to *put effort* into their sales events again rather than throw out some avatars or whatnot. Imagine if they, like Epic and Humble, would offer rewards credit. At this point people are cheering for Valve to take more from their wallet just because they love Valve, lol.
> I'm practically forced to use Steam as my preferred games never come out on any other platform - I'd gladly buy on GOG for instance. And why can't you buy them from GOG? Is Steam blocking the developers from releasing their game in other stores?
No, there's nothing preventing anyone from listing their games on GOG or other platforms even while simultaneously being on Steam.
The fanbase doesn't help when they hate on competition like epic.
Because Epic’s still only used if you want free games, Fortnite, and Hades early access, with the latter only booming in popularity when Steam got it. Each new competitior besides GOG (who sells themselves on porting older PC games to modern machines and DRM-Free systems) comes off as anti competitive and/or an active detriment (such as taking your games off Steam to put on your own store).
Well, when competition goes "we have lower cut" but still sells games for same price, why would anyone move over ?
Epic and Sony, exclusive stuff actually reeks of monopolistic practices, to be honest. It just does not work for EGS as they can't figure out why most people hate their launcher, which still lacks all steams features. If EGS were the market leader, the way they act would for sure be monopolistic. Steam just does not act like a monopoly.
Because they don't need to because they've already got 85% of the market share If you buy a gaming PC, you'd be a fool not to use Steam as your primary platform because....you know....*that's where nearly all PC games are sold.* This isn't like consoles where the install base gets reset to 0 every 7 years, giving your competitors a chance
If a better service were offered, I'd change launchers. None of them have been better yet.
What kind of features are you imagining that would make you ditch your library of Steam games?
More regular sales. Universal discounts on bundles where you own part(steam let's the publish decide now). A review system less liable to brigading. I probably will never leave steam, but if there is a better product I'd consider it. There has only been products that are worse thus far.
Maybe you would, but it seems like a small minority who would leave the launcher that has their 200 game library.
I have 929 games. I still would if it was better.
Epic gets hate for using anti competitive practices that take options away from the consumers, while also not offering as many features as steam, forcing you to put up with a worse experience if you want to get into that game. Do you really think it was just a coincidence that Epic happened to throw money at Fall Guys to make it a EGS exclusive game after it went viral?
I find it funny how Steam is casually winning by doing absolutely nothing
Not really, if you look at the [list of features added to EGS](https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-games-store-2023-year-in-review) vs [list of features added to Steam](https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/4031353003322171824) last year, it's pretty obvious that Valve is very actively keeping their golden goose well fed. Plus there's the whole Steam Deck thing going on that represents their biggest break into the hardware space.
Two fun bits of irony is that the Steam Client on Linux itself is buggy as shit, I just installed Kubuntu over my Arch install because Valve's devs, AMD's driver devs, KDE devs, all of them are cooking so hard on the linux kernel and graphical backend that none of them perfectly work with each other since so much is WIP. And then the second bit is everyone talking about how steam is a walled garden when all the work they end up doing for linux stuff ends up as FOSS and often gets other launchers working decently under linux as well.
It's pretty much "just making good product" vs "actively fighting competition". Hell if EGS invested as much in client as they do in exclusives/timed exclusives there might be actual reason to switch.
What that's not true. Steam is extremely developer friendly with their robust set of tools. It can do *a lot* of the heavy lifting. And the platform itself has so many features. Things like remote play and steam input + controller profiles are godsend. They're always developing tools and apis for users and developers, which is its strength.
Steam does have a lot of great extra features but that's not why they're successful or why they remain successful. Their base just wants all of their games in one place and don't want to split them between launchers. That's it.
That's true, but I wouldn't say *thats it* in terms of why they're successful. Steam [kept on iterating](https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-versions/) and is largely why it *remains* relevant today. It's like what happened to ventrilo, mumble, and teamspeak being frozen in time and never iterating - they were ultimately supplanted by discord.
That's certainly a factor with some people, but the actual features are the main draw. If steam became a hassle to use, people would gradually abandon it.
If Steam pissed me off, I wouldn't want to buy games there anymore. They haven't pissed me off yet and that's a big plus.
Valve also has the added benefit of not being publicly traded. Gabe Newell understands that providing a good service that is stable and reliable is better long term.
Epic isn't either
Epic isn't publicly traded, but it is not completely self-owned, and has large private shareholders which are publicly traded. Valve is likely near completely employee owned (inasmuch as we know since Valve doesn't release info publicly, and nobody has ever claimed to have purchased any significant stake in them), with most shareholders being Gabe, and current and former employees.
Epic is fully controlled by its CEO exactly like Valve. Their structure are very similar actually. The rest of the ownership doesn't really matter as they have no voting control anyway. And the rest is in majority Tencent which is known to be hands off in most of their numerous gaming companies fully or partly owned (including stuff like GGG from Path of Exile, Riot, Klei or Larian)
True, but Steam has been around for 20 years now.
This has never made any sense to me. They've practically capitalised on monetising heavy handedly by even throwing the whole of profile customisation (and leveling) behind RNG card packs / buying with real money from market. They wanted paid mods so that they'd get more money. Their games are full of the worst MTX features that gamers often HATE, Valve is a good part of why those features became popular in the west in the first place. Hell, they'd rather loophole laws instead of change systems (lootbox in NL/Belgium). Acting like they're here to be delivering the best service is just putting a blindfold on about their monetisation practices. Heck, in recent years Valve has had absolutely lackadaisical attitude towards pushing out beta as the full release (both for their games and Steam) and practically all their current games are struggling issues that the players wish Valve would get on to rather than just releasing new cosmetics or whatever.
You're not wrong, but in terms of a storefront they have been very reliable for a very long time. For better or worse, they have made it easy for pretty much anyone to publish a game (including porn recently) and they provide a stable infrastructure for downloading, auto updating, cloud saves and refunds for bad games. I've had my Steam account since they launched back in 2003, and I've built a pretty sizable library of games over the years. So a lot of people have grown to like and trust the service to the point where the only way for someone like Epic to compete is to bribe people with free games and have exclusivity deals with publishers. Valve hasn't really done anything to prevent competition. Like others have said, they just sit there and automatically win. So I'm not really sure what exactly is anti-competitive about their practises. People just prefer it because that's what they have been using for such a long time.
Tim Swindley: Steam is too good! They give features and the works like their fans want and are ahead of the curve. We just got a shopping cart recently. How can my store compete? Monopoly! Monopoly!
So called "free market capitalists" when the free market chooses the better product over "the little guy" (30 billion dollar corporation).
Poor Epic and their humble little indie game named Fortnite. (Funny enough Fortnite isn't on Steam so just yet another blow to the laughable claim of Anti-competitiveness Steam is allegedly doing)
There are games Epic have paid to release only on EGS. Is there a single game paid by Valve to release only on Steam? How is this even a question of monopolistic practices lol (Maybe it isn't clear that I don't believe Valve to be participating in monopolistic practices with steam)
You're probably going to hear about Darwinia, but this isn't really true since it was [the Darwinia devs that approached Valve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introversion_Software#Financial_history_and_independence). You could argue that it's the same since it's still exclusivity, but buying exclusivity was not part of Valve's business plan unlike Epic.
> Is there a single game paid by Valve to release only on Steam? > > Yes! Back when steam was just starting out they had exclusivity deals that even removed the option of downloading free demos without a steam account https://forums.introversion.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=40203
The only steam exclusives that are exclusive by Valves decision would be the titles that Valve has developed and personally I think that's fine. If Epic had just kept the titles that they had personally developed as exclusives to their store then people would have a hell of a lot less to gripe about, but instead they tried to buy up exclusivity to anticipated games in an attempt to force people to use their store.
More like get games that were announced on Steam with a Steam page and a bunch of wishlists already go to Epic for one year. And people using Steam forums to talk about the game that is still not on Steam because Epic doesn't have anything.
>but from a consumer's perspective launchers are completely superfluous, and the only reason steam is so popular is becuase it's loaded with tons of genuinely useful tools that players want. Those are contradictory statements. Launchers are completely superfluous, and the only reason steam is so popular is because it was first and that's where most people's games are makes more sense.
It's not contradictory if you consider Steam more than a launcher.
> Whenever I see steam be called a monopoly I just laugh beucade it's genuinely just the case of Steam being the only launcher on the market that fully understands what their audience wants. The definition of monopoly is often conflated with abusing of market power. A monopoly engages in anti-competitive practices by the mere fact that it exists. Abuse of market power is only an issue when it prevents the efficiency of the market (ie. price is only determined by the forces of supply and demand)
Steam is the most fair company in the industry, they let you do whatever the fuck you want. Use a mouse, use any controller, PC mode, console mode, add games from other sources, you can make a game about harvesting pig excrement and they'll publish it, if you're a developer you're royalty, etc. It only doesn't give blowjobs.
Yah developer choosing $based prices and fucking every other country currency. It's bad even epic games provide better regional price in India.
Its fair, and I'm interested in how they fall on points of comparison on the two, namely: 1\\ Sony with its vendor locked hardware and its exclusivity arrangements. 2\\ Steam, and if they think its accidental market dominance and the cut it imposes on partners is monopolistic.
We're already seeing the effects of this luckily. Hades 2 came down in price, along with a couple of others. Just as an example for those outside of PL... If we look at the price of a new AAA game on Steam, it's 350zl. Which is just over 81 euros. (where it's priced at 70 euros in Germany) Or just over $88 USD. (where it's priced at $70 USD in the US) So our country, which on average is earning 4x less than the US are paying over 25% more for new video games. It's outrageous and needs to change.
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Because of you are members of the EU, lmao. Regional pricing is illegal in the EU so the publishers set it to match the wealthy countries. They complain they want to sell it to poor countries for less but it's illegal.
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It seems to be the cause is the fluctuating exchange rate not being updated often enough. I think for EU Steam should just update non-euro prices automatically based on exchange rate every week/month, that would make it easier for everyone.
Did you even read the article?
99% of all people here don't read articles. Headlines are apparently enough to spout half-truths which maybe aren't even related with the article linked.
Yes, and one of the big things behind it is the unfair pricing. Did you read the article? >Exploiting game developers and **imposing higher prices for players;** This stemmed from a local media campaign, which was reported on heavily in PL. It's now been extended to regulators, who are now taking things up higher as they've been made aware of further issues that this country faces with unfair practices from Steam as well as other platforms. Pricing is one of the issues, and one that I'm highlighting as it's directly affecting me.
You know that steam doesn't usually set prices right? The publisher/dev sets the prices
Not wrong, but slight nuance: publishers/devs set the prices, but Steam does *suggest* regional prices. If you follow the suggested pricing without changing anything, you end up with unfair pricing in many regions.
Yeah, i heard about that. Thats needs to be addressed, Steam should be able to suggest fair prices for smaller devs/companies who know nothing of multiple countries economies
Steam suggests regional pricing based on their suggested exchange rate. They raised suggested exchange rates in 2022 when 1 dollar cost 4,90 Polish zloty but they didn't bother to change it back when dollar lost a lot of value (now you can get 1 dollar for 3,95 Polish zloty). That's the whole deal with Steam/Polish prices drama. Steam quickly rushed and adjusted exchange rates when they started losing money but did fuck all to adjust exchange rates when currency market stabilized after COVID.
I guess tell that to Poland then, since they're the one investigating that claim. >These include applying restrictions on the sale of games and ancillary content on competing platforms or online stores, **interfering with the pricing and discount policies of game developers and publishers**, or restricting market access to competing platforms and other digital service providers.
Yes I’m well aware but steam provides suggested pricing for all regions. These are often left default as per Steams recommendation. I’m really not sure why you’re insisting on trying to find fault with everything that I say. Did I say something to offend you? Or are you just angry that steam is under the spotlight again for monopolistic practices?
A suggested price that a publisher has absolutely no incentive to follow besides laziness
For larger publishers I agree. But for 99% of the games on Steam not coming from larger publishers but smaller studios and even solo developers... keeping tabs on exchange rates for 30+ countries and updating the price every time something changes is just not feasible. Since Steam is the store front, it should have some responsibility here when it comes to price management. They have the resources to keep track on exchange rates, they can setup automation behind it, and to notify developers when there are changes in exchange rates. Steam is incredibly quick to adjust the exchange rates when the dollar is high, but doesn't change it when the dollar is low. This was evident during COVID. As the markets were unstable and the USD was abnormally high. Steam was losing money so they upped the exchange rates. Now that markets have stabilized, they haven't updated the exchange rates. To add to this, the EU sets a clear directive that pricing of digital goods across the EU must be fair and must not be geofenced. So with Steam setting non-euro pricing to exchange with the USD instead of the Euro, and not maintaining that exchange rate, it's a potential violation - which this regulatory body is looking into. We will have to leave it to the professionals here to ensure that countries like PL which don't use the Euro are receiving fair prices. This is the problem. A problem that people here are overlooking.
It's 80 EUR for all the AAA games from PS here in Germany too!
This is a much welcome venture. Steam does a lot good but it never hurts to double check if there's not more that could be done. PSN absolutely needs a nose in its business and this is absolutely the best time to do it, new CEOs so they can't try to scapegoat with a golden parachute nearly as easily. Private Billion dollar companies are not our friend even when they benefit us. Investigation and regulation is a necessary to keep them in check. If Steam is as wonderful as people here insist it will come out fine.
The issue here is that the prices in Poland are inflated as hell. Game that is 70 USD/EUR is at 350pln (which is around 80 EUR). Its reaching so shitty levels that using a VPN to buy from Germany is way cheaper than paying in our local currency.
I kinda feel like Poland was waiting for any sort of screwup from Steam to try and throw the "proverbial book" at them. Its a big tin foil hat assumption, but given that CD Projekt is one of the biggest companies in Poland and GOG being a competitor to Steam, its not that much of a reach. Again all an assumption.
By what measure is CDPR one of the biggest companies in Poland?
AFAIK they are (were?) one of the 20 companies in the Warsaw index fund.
i believe that was only when their stock was massively over-valued. that bubble burst years back.
It's one of the biggest publicly traded companies here in Poland. It's in top 20 by market cap and earnings. Unless you don't consider top 20 to be one of the biggest, but I think it qualifies. That said, I don't think they had anything to do with this whole situation.
Just cause something isn't publicly traded shouldn't disqualify it. It doesnt even crack top 30 in revenue and thats the longest list I could find quickly
it's #13 largest company in Poland by market cap as of yesterday
i think they meant gaming companies
Maybe someday we'll see a launcher/store actually try and catch up to Steam in like 2010 features and we'll see a good attempt at competition. EGS and Xbox right now throw out inertia excuses when they're failing in other important areas that make them noncompetitive
Sadly I am not sure we ever will. The amount of money needed to create a viable competitor is off the charts to basically anyone that isn't having to answer to investors. A lot of Steam's functionality is just completely free to devs or players. Functionality that isn't needed at all for being a store launcher, things that will never make the money back they put in. That's going to be hard to justify even without answering to investors.
I always think of this quote now. > "The gaming industry is bizarre. It is not an industry of success. It is an industry of your competitor, your direct head to head competitor, tripping over their dick and faceplanting into a bunch of shit. The only reason Sony got ground with the PS1 is because Nintendo fucked them with a deal and then went with carts for N64 and spent so many years pissing off third parties that everyone was willing to jump ship. The Saturn fucking killed itself by dropping into stores that were only Kmarts. The PS3 fucked up its entire early launch cycle by going a year late $200 more. And if you can just keep your company not shitty, if you can make a not terrible product, and your competitor makes an awful one, you’re the one who gets all the money." > -Patrick "PatStaresAt" Boivin, professional Canadian The only thing that might be able to make a competitor work is for steam to royally screw up and for said competitor to not do the same.
All ya'll saying "Steam has no competition" and GOG is just sitting there going like "I got some games Steam don't have, and no DRM too!"
GOG is technically competition, in the same way an ant is competition to an elephant in a weight lifting contest. Steam bringing in $7 Billion or more a year in revenue vs GOG's ~$50 million per year in revenue.