But Valve might go somewhere. See my post. And that’s a hell of a lot more likely than another game store coming in and driving them completely out of business.
Bluddy
2835
This. Also GOG is now doing badly and heading into a 2019 where there’s price competition on the dev side due to Epic. That’s a whole library’s worth at risk right there.
I want my game stores (who are also my game holders) to make money because I want them to survive. If you asked me which if I preferred GOG to go bankrupt or a developer, I’d choose the developer to go bankrupt every time.
If some company wants to change the dynamics, they need to treat people’s purchases on any platform as a universal license to the game. That’s the number one reason people aren’t moving from Steam. GOG got this and added the Connect program, but they don’t have the money to keep it going all the time. Epic does.
Of course that is a risk, but now Epic wants to introduce other factors that increase the risk, or reduce the value of Steam which in turn creates volatility and increases the risk of it being sold off…
And I just don’t see Epic as being truly competitive either. Exclusives aren’t competitive for me as a consumer. There is nearly no benefit to me from a platform having exclusives. Great, I’m happy for the devs, but it isn’t good for me as a consumer to have another storefront which could go under and take my games, or has my personal information, or has fragmented my games library. And I find it somewhat annoying that developers seem to think that it is ok to kneecap consumers in these ways, and that we as consumers should be happy about it because it makes the market magically better.
Great post over at resetera about the actual cut Steam gets due to the allowance of free key generation
Well I think that’s a very good point. Epic is saying they’re here to reinvigorate PC gaming, to do the right thing, to bust monopolies. If they did something similar, where they setup a third-party non-profit to maintain game licenses, each one cryptographically signed with both the publisher’s and your private key, that would be hella-cool.
This might actually be a non-bullshit use for blockchain technology.
I’ve been hearing stories of Steam’s doom since 2003.
But, let’s say the worst happens. Gabe sells to Tencent, or even worse Tim Sweeney or just decide to pack it in and shut down the service.
I still have tons of games and purchasing options spread across GOG, itch, Battle.net, Origin, UPlay, Bethesda, Direct from Devs, and other sources.
To pull out one statement:
But Steam has our libraries, over a decade of past purchases. That’s a bit worrying, and not great for the market as a whole.
The Existence of the Epic Games Store does nothing to address this problem or solve it. Epic is just adding another platform of games that we need to worry about should Epic decide to abandon it as fast as they did Paragon, Unreal, or the PC market circa Xbox 360 era 'till Fortnite.
Yes, I said they are essentially a monopoly, not literally a monopoly. You can buy games elsewhere. But if you don’t have most of your games on Steam, you are an outlier.
Yes, it might eventually happen. Thankfully, their DRM is trivial, so I’d get back whatever I wanted pretty easily. In the meantime, both my personal information and account are secure.
It’s not, like in every other case. plain old cryptography would work much more reliably and much more safely. The real issue would be figuring out who would pay for the pipes for downloading the games.
Not for the purchases, not with cryptocurrency, but to track digital licenses. That’s a natural fit for blockchain.
As for Steam’s DRM, I could just trivially pirate all the games. Still a pain in the butt.
Bluddy
2843
The thing about saying that Steam is a monopoly is that it effectively isn’t, from a customer perspective. Sure, Steam has my games going back in time – they’ve earned them. What are they going to do in the worst case? Force me to pay a subscription to access those games? You’d see the biggest exodus from Steam to it’s competitors. This isn’t like Internet service, where I have no choice going into the future. Steam has market momentum and it provides a good service to its customers, and thus its customers choose to stay with it rather than switch to its many, many competitors. If Steam becomes a**holes, I can switch to buying all my future games from Origin, Uplay, GOG, etc or even privately from the devs. The market is the best it’s ever been for gamers, so talk about Steam’s monopoly is ridiculous. It’s only a monopoly from the point of view of developers, who cannot avoid going on Steam because that’s where their audience is, and that’s where their future income is coming from. And unfortunately for developers, as much as I’m up for supporting them, they’re in a crappy business. Not because of Steam, but because it’s now easier than ever to make games, and too many people go into the business not for rational reasons but because it’s their dream, which means they’re not doing the cost-benefit calculation that keeps too many people out of other fields.
Nesrie
2844
It has more to do with market share than choice or even a specific perception. I don’t actually know what market share Steam has, and it would change, probably, based on which market we’re talking about.
There is no such thing as “not a monopoly from X perspective”, it’s a philosophical stance at best, like saying a tree isn’t a tree from the ground’s perspective, or that an apple is not an apple from the worm’s perspective.
Steam is the most popular online store for many reasons! You don’t have to convince PC gamers about the merits or advantages of Steam, but challenging the monopoly statements either lacks an understanding of the word “monopoly” or fails to look beyond your Steam-colored lenses.
Oh, yes, it wouldn’t be great, but only pedants would think it would be wrong.
No, it’s not, for the same reasons as everything else. The code would have serious bugs, a few actors would be able to obtain the majority by colluding, and we’d be wasting a shit ton of power for something that could be easily done with secure private/public keys. The developer and the third-party would sign it along with Steam, and everyone could validate all three keys to see if it’s valid. Done.
Of course it is (at least in layman’s terms), they dictate what happens to the market. It’s not as strong as, say, 90’s Microsoft, but they could do a lot of small things before things started shifting significantly, the competition just isn’t attractive. Although, to your point, it’s partially because Valve is so good at it while not abusing their power, because Epic isn’t the only one big competitor with a lot of money.
Bluddy
2847
I think that’s how it’s usually talked about economically, but from our perspective what we care about is choice. I had no choice with Microsoft Windows in the 90s if I wanted to keep access to my software. I have no choice with regard to Internet providers. I have no choice with regard to facebook or twitter: if I want to talk to the many friends, relatives and other people on there, I have to go on those platforms.
But I can avoid giving Steam a cent and acquire just about every game there is. There is no required future business relationship between myself and Steam. This isn’t the case for developers, and it’s not the case, for example, for advertisers and google.
Nesrie
2848
Sure. I think I and most people here understand that perceptive, but when Steam is described as a monopoly, I think it’s only fair to also acknowledge that they’re probably talking about market share of specific market(s), and when you have a player in the market that is such a leader in the pack that they are seen as a monopoly, then it’s not just about how much of the market they have but also how much control they have. It’s fair to assess them in that way, but the answer to a monopoly is rarely to artificially prop up another monopoly to replace them… That’s just… ridiculous.
Granath
2849
Words have meaning. Steam is not a monopoly any more than Amazon is. A market leader, even a dominant one, is not automatically a monopoly. They do not have control or near-total control over the market, they do not use their market power to keep prices high or restrict output and the barrier to entry is actually quite low given the numerous other ways of distributing a game. They meet no part of the definition of a monopoly and trying to label them as one has as much validity as calling an airplane a boat.
Call Steam the market leader. That is fine. Calling it a monopoly is a fundamental misunderstanding of the term.
So if I am reading this correct, all the 3rd party exclusive games they are getting on the store will produce no profit for EPIC in 2019.
kerzain
2851
So they’re just fucking us because it’s fun. Okay. Malicious, sure. But okay.
Nesrie
2852
They’re not a pure monopoly, and the definition of a monopoly is not as simple as you are trying to make it.
I feel we need an true expert here to resolve this Monopoly issue.
:)
