this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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What’s wild is that the EU went after Apple because of “gatekeeping” yet MS has a 96% market share on Steam and Steam itself basically owns gaming on PCs and it’s just crickets.
I think it’s wild Valve has built such a crushing monopoly on top of MS’s monopoly and no one seems to care. If you’re releasing a game outside of a console, you just can’t not ship on Steam and survive. What an age we live in.
The problem is that, at least for Steam, they're not a monopoly, nor are they necessary even within their market. Devs can and do distribute and/or market successful games without going through Steam and players can play games without ever getting Steam. I mean, if we were to take what I'd estimate are the most popular games right now:
Its absolutely possible to launch and maintain a successful game off Steam, and people have and continue to do so. Even exclusively talking about 3rd party storefront/launcher combos, theres a lot of options. Steam its just popular because its not only worth using (a bar most of the competition already fails to pass) but offers a lot both to users and developers from cheap, effective marketing, to tools to support Linux, to better controller support.
I’m not talking about billion dollar studios. I’m talking about indie devs. And Steam is 100% a monopoly regardless of how the nerds on Reddit and here feel about Valve. They are not your friends; they are a business. Moreover, they take a 30% cut and no one has ever batted an eye, not even today. Everyone went after the Apple App Store.
Their success has been to convince gamers they are friends. That’s all. Apple on the other hand garners insane antipathy from the public.
It’s wild how public perception ignores facts.
Billion dollar studios like Notch, Battlestate games, and Roblox (pre-Roblox).
Because unlike Apple, you can choose to instead or also sell on dozens of other storefronts that also charge about 30%, such as Humble, GMG, Fanatical, Epic, Microsoft, GOG, IndieGala, or GamersGate, or one of a half dozen or so that charge less such as itch.io, or you can just put it on your website. A monopoly doesn't mean something costs money, it means there are no other options. Theres more competition in the games retail market than there is most other areas.
The difference is that Apple follows the same sort of business practices as much of Steams competion, and the industry in general. They invest in measures to stifle competition, often at the cost of the user, rather than using their position for R&D or development that might help users. People view Steam positively because they're one of a very small number of companies that try and make a good, or at least innovative product, even if their end goal is still to get your money. Compare that to Epic, where they immediately started limitting consumer choice by buying exclusivity and by doing things like removing the Linux versions of games they bought (even after they had already been paid for), or what you're complaining about, Apple, where they prevent installing anything they didn't approve (esspecially anything indie), and don't allow devs to use services other than their own.
Sorry how is forcing me to run their stupid app that gobbles system resources, ugly as hell and super invasive to run every game good for the user?
You can’t move purchases out of your Steam account and Steam won’t even let you transfer it after you die. Not sure how that’s good for me like I’m dead you can’t let my kid have it because you’re so nice.
They will ban you indefinitely even over a small dispute, like say a charge back or sometimes just a random violation of their TOS which says they can ban you for no reason.
Needing an internet connection even for single player local games is also great stuff.
If you own a game and then buy a bundle with that game, they don’t give you another copy (that you could gift to someone) which is wild because you literally paid twice for it.
You like Vavle as much as Apple fanboys like Apple. I get it. But they are just as shit of a company as every other company. Like I said, they aren’t there for you. They just have good marketing and a good front facing VP. Also they control so much that just wait another 5-10 years when management changes. It won’t be good for the user I can tell you that.
Valve doesn't force you to run it, game devs do. Steam's DRM isn't mandatory for developers to implement. For example, I know FTL is drm free on Steam. If I remeber right, SteamPipe can also be used for a much more lightweight experience as well, if you don't want to do anything but install games (and not use their DRM or features).
This isn't good, but its standard and unless licensing laws and/or other big publishers change, I doubt this will. Its not something that makes Valve any less of a standout in the market when every other company does much worse than this.
For developers that do chose to implement DRM, the offline mode on Steam is relatively permissive.
Again, this is set by the publisher/dev. Valve offers the option to discount the pack by the given amount. Not as good as traditional physical software, but again, its not as bad as basically all of the competition so...
Yes, because providing tools for gaming on Linux doesn't affect the customer buying/using their products. Neither does VR, or portable PC hardware as they're exactly the same offerings as a desktop PC with better marketing. Neither does improved controller support - its just flashy UI for what was already easy to do. Neither does providing tools and hosting for a modding API - any dev who doesn't launch with a home-made one is just too incompetent to be selling games anyway. None of these things are anything more than flashy marketing, so we should just be using itch.io's VR headset for the lower rates and Epic's Linux compatibility tools for those who don't want to support Microsoft's anti-consumer practices. And of course, instead of doing these things, they're secretly buying exclusivity to every game and preventing you from repairing your devices despite the repair information provided (but you don't realize because of marketing).
Given that Gabe Newell owns a majority share from what we know, and he has shown a desire to build a stable, competitve company rather than just trying to join the race to the bottom, it'll likely be longer than 5-10 years. That said, yes, this is a concern, but thats unavoidable, and "but someday they might not be good" isn't a reason to dislike them as they are now.
you don't... for non-DRM games you can just launch the executable from the installation directory
see above - therefore not true
You are just mad about things that aren't real, yet scream about fanboyism. Cute.