Steam is just a storefront. They hold no monopoly position or power. It's not comparable to iOS app store. Devs are free to list their game on any other storefront concurrently.
Steam is just a storefront. They hold no monopoly position or power. It's not comparable to iOS app store. Devs are free to list their game on any other storefront concurrently.
This is the same argument Microsoft used ("we're just an OS, totally not a monopoly"). I think to anyone that spends any time doing any PC gaming, it's obvious that Steam is the only relevant storefront by a country mile.
Relevance isnt anti competitive. Comparing them to Microsoft who not only monopolized but enforced it via product bundling is not the same at all.
They simply have the best product and won the market.
Or did they just get there first, and stayed first due to network effects? Initially, nobody wanted steam. People definitely don't want a second steam - which in practice means sticking to the first one.
They are headed Apple/Microsoft way though with SteamOS and Steam Deck/Machine.
I can see why you might think that but I believe that's actually insurance against Microsoft going the Apple route and hamstringing Steam in the process. They needed a near first class platform that would never be used against them to exist and they needed the switching cost for end users to be near zero. By leveraging pre-existing FOSS projects they managed to avoid the vast majority of the development costs which would otherwise have been prohibitive.
The best insurance against monopolistic behavior is to get there first.
Could say the same thing about AT&T, Bell Labs, etc. There’s a lot of precedent here, but most saliently, how you become a monopoly is not really relevant. They absolutely are one. But I’m being already aggressively downvoted with no counter arguments so the Gaben fanboys are here. (Defending a deca-billionaire is hard work, after all.)
What’s your solution then to them being a monopoly? How would you meaningfully break them up? While they outperform the sales of Epic and Gog I’m not sure how they’re abusing their position or how they’re keeping others from entering?
> How would you meaningfully break them up?
You could separate the storefront from the distribution platform / client. Valve's ~30% cut is often justified by the visibility being on the Store gives you but you can't opt out of that while still reaching the captured audience that definitely don't want yet another client software bloating up their system.
> Could say the same thing about AT&T, Bell Labs, etc.
No, you cannot. AT&T/Bell Labs was a monopoly - they physically controlled distribution networks that made it so you had to use them.
Valve does not. There is nothing that prevents you from simply selling your game without Steam.
And even if there wasn't, claims that Valve is a monopoly are factually false - there are many other storefronts that exist, and many games are published on more than one storefront at once. And, Steam does not gate an OS or platform like Microsoft and iOS do.
> But I’m being already aggressively downvoted with no counter arguments
Every one of your arguments is being countered (such as the claim that "relevance is anticompetitive" which isn't even false, it's nonsensical). Including this one.
> Defending a deca-billionaire is hard work, after all.
...and there's the emotional manipulation. It's pretty clear you're just a propagandist who has a grudge against Steam (maybe you work for Epic?), given that you're going up and down the thread with emotional non-arguments that try to redefine words, pull at peoples' emotions (like the billionaire comment), or just flat-out lie.
> Valve does not.
Except they do. They control the Steam distribution network. It may not be physical but you still have to use it to reach a large portion of PC Gamers due to network effects and no one wanting to run multiple clients.
Currently you have to also make use of their other services like the Store, and pay for them with a large sales cut, in order to use the distribution network, no matter if you want those services or not.
> They control the Steam distribution network.
Tautologically true and therefore irrelevant. That's exactly the same as saying "Walmart has a monopoly over Walmart's physical stores" - that's not a meaningful statement and it has nothing to do with either monopoly status or consumer harm.
> It may not be physical
...and therefore it's categorically different. Don't be dishonest.
> you still have to use it to reach a large portion of PC Gamers
It's called a "distribution channel". You only "have" to use it, in the sense that most people look for stuff in Steam before they do anywhere else, but it is factually different than a telecom monopoly, where you cannot get internet from more than one provider in your neighborhood. This comparison is irrelevant and highly dishonest.
> due to network effects
No, network effects are secondary. People do not install Steam because their friends are there, they install Steam because they want to buy a game or download the games they already have. That's not "network effects" - that's using the tool.
> no one wanting to run multiple clients
Also untrue - almost every single person that I know uses multiple clients, and I've only ever once heard someone refuse to install an additional client, and it was on principle (Epic Games).
> Currently you have to also make use of their other services like the Store, and pay for them with a large sales cut, in order to use the distribution network, no matter if you want those services or not.
...and because it's one of the largest digital distribution networks in the world, this is entirely fair.
You're very clearly trying to stretch the definition of "monopoly" and manufacture harm, without actually knowing anything about Steam or how people use it.
I think you’re confusing
1. Being a monopoly
2. Abusing monopoly status.
Steam does control the vast share of desktop gaming. But has no influence on console (Xbox, playstation, switch) or mobile (android, ios). They are a monopoly.
But they don’t abuse their monopoly so they haven’t broken any laws.
Your partitioning between those two things is good, but I still don't think that either label applies to them:
> Steam does control the vast share of desktop gaming.
Between the Epic Games Store, GOG, Humble Bundle, Xbox, Origin, Itch, and a few others, I don't believe their control is anywhere close to the fraction needed for Steam to be a "monopoly", either legally or in casual speak.
> Steam does control
...and, what's more, they don't "control" anything - what prevents you from either using multiple clients (on the player side) or selling on multiple storefronts (on the developer side)?
A monopoly has to monopolize some limited resource or market - you can't really have a monopoly if there's no limiting or exclusivity. That's like saying that Fortnite is "monopolizing" the battle royale genre because it's the most popular - it is the most popular, but there's no exclusivity because you can always play another battle royale in addition to Fortnite.
Monopolies need pie charts (limited resources that are taken by a single actor), but Steam is a bar in a bar chart.
And yet, Escape from Tarkov is not on Steam, which would seem 5o contradict what you're saying.
Hey - your bot is failing (presumably you read replies)
> And yet, Escape from Tarkov is not on Steam, which would seem 5o contradict what you're saying.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3932890/Escape_from_Tarko...
What? You can literally just download an exe from any website and run it.
If you're complaining that Valve owns a big list of games and a ton of eyeballs, and not being on that list means those eyeballs don't see you when they look at that list, idk what to tell you because they seem to have earned that part of their business pretty fairly.
That a really silly comparison. An OS is a big deal, you can't just switch off. Steam is a video game store. You can install shit from anywhere. People stick to steam because it's good. It's not morally wrong to have the best product on the market.
If you want the audience as an indie developer, it would behoove you to launch on Steam (because they're a monopoly). Again, MS used all these cute arguments, and they don't really work. There's a reason Valve is always playing very nicely with regulators (especially w.r.t. the gambling stuff). They don't really want to rock the boat, but a benevolent monopoly is still a monopoly and I do think that a 30% cut for running a distribution platform is pretty predatory, especially as bandwidth has been commoditized.
Again, it is not wrong to make the best product. It behooves any manufacturer to sell to distributors with largest reach, especially if it is a non-exclusive agreement, and this is perfectly normal market activity. You seem unaware of the legal definition of monopoly; Valve is nowhere near it. The made up internet definition, having a majority of sales in a market, is just what happens when the product is good. Actually it would be a bit of a market failure for the best product to not have the most sales.
Also please don't point to the failure of Epic or other stores; they're just bad products. Epic store didn't even have a shopping cart for years. No one competent is competing, and that's not Valve's problem.
> If you want the audience as an indie developer, it would behoove you to launch on Steam
Correct, because they're a huge distribution channel, and literally anyone who has ever tangentially touched business knows this and accepts that it is fair to pay for this.
> (because they're a monopoly)
Factually incorrect. Nobody forces you to use Steam. You can create and launch and sell a Windows or Mac or Linux game without ever touching steam. You can self-publish and run your own game servers and CDN, or you can use the Epic Games Store, or you can use GOG, Humble Bundle, Xbox, Origin, Itch, or any of a dozen others.
> Again, MS used all these cute arguments
This is extremely dishonest. Microsoft controlled an operating system, only one of which can run at a time. If you are running Windows, you're not running Linux. And Microsoft entered into distribution deals with OEMs to pre-install Windows, leading to massive default-choice effects. Neither of these are true for Steam - you can install and run every single platform I listed above at the same time, and I've never seen a computer come pre-installed with Steam ever.
> I do think that a 30% cut for running a distribution platform is pretty predatory, especially as bandwidth has been commoditized
So, you have no idea what Steam actually does.
Steam is, in addition to being one of the largest digital distribution platforms in the US (if not the world) - which is by itself worth paying a 30% cut for, a SDK and networking provider that gives you a social network, input (gamepad/keyboard/mouse) library, achievements, digital trading cards, update system and CDN, real-time voice comms, product key redemption, license tracking, DRM, anti-cheat, user forums, and many other things.
If you only criticize things that you actually understand, you'll end up looking a lot less foolish, and undercutting your own points as a result.