I think it’s also worth noting that simply being very, very successful, and even having a defacto monopoly because you offer a great product that consumer want is not illegal in any way.
It’s when and if you leverage that monopoly to make gains in other businesses that you get into trouble. Which Steam is not doing.
But the existence of the Microsoft Store, EGS, GMG, Origin, and let’s not forget Blizzard’s store make it pretty clear that suggesting Steam is a monopoly is just silly.
OH! And let’s not forget that retail stores and amazon.com, etc. still exist.
This is why a lot of developers, small and large, switched to Steam exclusivity around that time. For someone that always preferred DRM-free direct-from-dev purchases, it was an infuriating trend.
Meanwhile I am oh so eager to hear the anti Steam brigade post extremely convincing arguments about why Steam is the great evil and ruining PC games /s
Not pointing a finger at you at all, but there are several specific people I do have in mind whose opinions cheerleading EGS and booing the despotic Steam that are so absurd and detached from reality that I find it actively annoying.
Like you can be all for EGS, while acknowledging certain basic facts. Such that Steam has done a lot for PC game consumers regarding expanding availability, support, modding, and making more niche games viable, while also favoring a more diverse landscape. Some peoples claims that Steam has done nothing for PC gaming are insane, as is the claim that Steams 30% cut is some abusive and obscene one never seen in the likes of retail.
Also as I was typing you posted several good points regarding Steam’s ‘monopoly’
Good point, even without Valve paying them they would still save money by using Steam instead of their own infrastructure. Which is of course why so many companies started using Steam in the first place, without being paid for exclusivity…it was useful and convenient.
Also, in the context of this discussion, I find it amusing how Steam even started - from what I remember, Valve didn’t want to build it themselves, they first approached Microsoft and then Real Media, both of whom declined them…so they went and built it, first only to have easy patch distribution, selling games only came later.
Also, the success of Steam even in the face of Microsoft’s continued efforts to get people to buy PC software direct from them by bundling a store with their OS is a great example of how companies can be super successful by working hard and offering a superior product.
In short, we want MORE products like Steam, not fewer.
And there is an opportunity there, for a more curated store with better discoverability. It isn’t as if Steam is some Platonic ideal of a digital store. There are known issues, and weaknesses. Some of them due to the nature of Steam as a (generally) open platform that takes all comers.
If a case can be made that Valve is being anti-competitive, it’s probably not that Steam store is the monopoly, but the game-launcher/community portal is the monopoly, and the storefront is integrated into that. Maybe you could argue the Steam client should let users buy games from different stores (or just completely separate the store from the launcher).
I see we are still having trouble parsing simple rhetoric. I compared justifications used by consumers to an extreme that illustrates how neither are persuasive.
We really don’t need an EGS rehash in this thread. Valve and Epic’s assorted foibles and misdeeds are well-known at this point, people can reach their own conclusions without going through this for the thousandth time.
The argument about third party resellers being able to provide games cheaper at launch to customers is perfectly valid and not amount of comparing it to sweatshops changes that.
