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There's a difference between being feature-rich and popular and being a monopoly.
Call me when Steam is buying competing stores to shut them down.
Now, in terms of PC gaming monopolies, let me introduce you to "Microsoft".
I think there is a distinction to be made between being a monopoly and doing anti-competitive behavior.
Steam hasn't done any anti-competitive behavior that I am aware of, but they do have enough market power to be considered a monopoly. Consider how companies like EA and Activision tried to maintain competing platforms but caved because those platforms were not viable compared to Steam. That's monopoly power.
theres basically one anti conpetitive measure they hold primarily, and its the one that states the listing price of a game must be the same on all platforms policy. stops devs from having a lower listing price on other platforms.
other than that its usually other platforms shooting their selves.
I'm pretty sure that that only applies to steam keys being sold on other sites. If it's being distributed in some other form, it can be cheaper.
Seriously. Part of the reason they're even so popular is because they aren't actively pursuing profit maxxing/enshittification business practices to corner the market and consolidate market share like every other one of these blood sucking cretins. They really are one of the extremely short list of corporations that ACTUALLY win in the marketplace because their product really is just that good. Running the steam deck with Linux, contributing to the development of Wine/Proton, and telling Microsoft to kick rocks has made me a Gaben fanboy for life. If Steam was the ONLY way you could purchase PC games, I'd honestly be fine with that, as long as Valve remains a private company under the iron fist of Mister Newell.
Remaining a privately held company is really the only protection from enshittification. Not a guarantee, mind you.
Valve: Has reasonably priced games on sale frequently
Makes the Steam Deck
Actively supports Linux, both for VR and regular gaming
Has the best customer service out of any competitor
Has the best store experience out of any competitor
I mean.....it's not surprising that they're a monopoly, but that doesn't make them a bad one.
In general, I'm not a fan of steam. I know i know, I'm saying this in THE steam community.
Steam is DRM, its terrible drm that can be bypassed with an easily downloaded crack tool, but drm nonetheless.
If a game I want is on GOG I will gladly get it there over buying it on steam.
the only reason i favor steam over gog is their stellar linux support
Not all Steam games use it as DRM. Many Steam games you can simply launch the executable without Steam installed and it will work.
Still, GOG is much better on that front.
But even games I buy on GOG, I often launch through Steam to take advantage of tools like Proton and Steam Input. Steam’s dominance stems from unwavering commitment to building a good user experience, and I’m not ashamed to reward that with my wallet vote.
I don't know if I would say they're a monopoly there are other options/store fronts out there...it's just that the vast majority outside of GOG suck. in fact they all suck OTHER than Steam and GOG.
And as a Linux user...I ain't got much of a choice. Steam, now, just works for me. I don't even have to toggle the compatibility option anymore or hell even mess around with proton if I don't want to. install steam via whatever package manager or flatpak and i'm off to the races.
Anything other than Steam is unlikely to work. EA, Epic, and Microsoft have all essentially told me they don't want my business simply because I use Linux.
I think it qualifies as a monopoly because of the network effect of having so many users and so many games on it. Especially on the developer side, it's basically mandatory to release your game on Steam because the number of users you can reach is so much higher than any other platform.
That being said, it's not a monopoly that most people have a problem with because they generally continue to serve users well even though they have enough market power that they could enshittify things. If they were a public company they almost certainly would have done that by now.
I've been seeing a fair amount of discourse lately that Gabe Newell might be the only reason why Steam is a benevolent monopoly, and it's why I only buy games on Steam when there's no other option, when they're not otherwise available on GOG and Itch.io.
Because Steam says for now that they'll have a failsafe in place to make our games playable even if the company goes under. Steam doesn't nickel and dime people, for now. Steam is doing important work for Linux, for now. Our profiles are fun and customizable like the internet used to be, for now. Steam's DRM is so light it hardly exists, for now. But what's going to happen to our huge libraries when Gabe retires or dies?
I hate that I even have to think this way, but I for one don't want to have all my eggs in one basket, especially when the competitors' policies are doing more to protect users right now.
Yeah.
I have enjoyed many happy years with steam and for now things are still okay, with Gabe keeping the enshittification at bay. They've done great things for the industry, and have my respect for that.
Yet we can't simply trust the platform will remain as benevolent as it always has been.
If history tells us anything, it's that nothing remains the same forever.
As long as Steam keeps giving me a great platform that doesn't suck, as long as they continue to push Linux gaming forward, I'll keep sending them money.
It's weird because normally having a monopoly is really bad but all the competition pales in comparison to Steam and they actually provide a good platform. Maybe after Gaben dies Steam will go to shit but for now they're not just the best but also doing way more than just being a place to buy games.
Well, since I use Linux, Steam is the only platform that cares about my money. The competition chose not to support my system.
Remind people that a monopoly isn't illegal. Abusing a monopoly to prevent competition and using a monopoly as a means to create unfair market conditions in other categories - Windows and web browsers in the past or Apple's monopoly on iOS software distribution.
Consoles are even more restrictive than an iPhone is still in the US and was in the EU. Complain about Steam all these devs and people want, unless it can be proven that Valve is using their market share to stop other companies from competing well, it's a moot point calling them a monopoly. That Wolfire lawsuit when I read the initial court filings they put out was a joke. It was citing Twitter posts and blogspam articles citing anonymous forum posts
Steam was not the first PC digital distribution store. It wasn't even great until like 2006/2007. In the early days Impulse could have been competitive but Stardock sold it to GameStop who in dumb move of the last 2 decades did nothing with it. Desura did not improve. GFWL was terrible. Windows Store used to have issues with making storage unreclaimable without a reformat of the drive. Direct2Drive never improved. GamersGate just stayed a key seller. GoG was never going to grow without regular day one games which wasn't going to be competitive as DRM free. Humble Store stayed a key seller.
Amazon and Epic's idea was to just give away games. Ubisoft and EA stores barely even had games they didn't publish. So sparse I bet they didn't have self publishing tools. Those 2 puzzlingly regularly had issues maintaining login sessions persisting over time. PC gaming is dieing was the mainstream meme until like 2015. Epic on Android doesn't even have a library of owned games view and it's been almost a year since that released.
Valve didn't make Amazon, Microsoft, Epic, EA, Ubisoft, Stardock+GameStop, Direct2Drive, ... all under invest and/or mismanage their PC game store platform efforts. It's not up to Valve to stop making the platform more appealing. EGS is 7 years old. Those other companies have been doing PC game stores for much longer. I remember buying and downloading PC games from Amazon before Prime gaming. It was just like Direct2Drive. Since 2004 Direct2Drive was always a storefront for any publishers game whereas Steam didn't start listing 3rd party games until 2005.
If any service was comparable to like end of 2013 Steam, that would easily be second best store platform. Instead every store is at best like 2010 Steam with nicer animations, bigger buttons. And today there's way more resources to make a competitor. More cloud service providers with mature onboarding tools. NPM install. A lot more open source databases. Kubernetes. Git. Etc. Should be able to do better than 7 year old Steam in 7 years from these companies that were far larger than 2002/2003 Valve when they got into PC game distribution. The big publishers were probably all wealthier than Valve up to like 2015
It's not Sony and Nintendo's fault that since the Kinect on the 360, Microsoft hasn't been able to manage their studios to be competitive with Nintendo and Sony studios
Then why aren't 72% of games on GOG.
Yeah I gotta say that I am a steam fanboy, but GOG is making me pause. After 20 years of being on steam (oh my god it's been that long) I am finding myself preferring GOG. No DRM is pretty sick.
They want to fight back against steam the winner isn't more DRM, it's using valve's own weapon against them, and using less DRM.
GOG version is superior for modding like Skyrim or Fallout series because of the forced updates if you launch the game on Steam.
I will always choose GOG over Steam if given the choice, but too many developers still think it’s okay to take your money without giving you true ownership of your purchase. Steam allows that exploitation and GOG does not.
People misunderstand the issue with monopolies. Monopolies, by themselvs, are non-issues. It's what they do in their position of monopoly that can be illegal, through anti-competitive behavior. Steam does none of that BS
Steam is naturally the only platform gamers care about because they're the only platform that acturally targers gamers, all other platforms target devs (except GOG who targets gamers that specifically want offline copies without DRM)
all other platforms target ~~devs~~ shareholders
They have the largest share and can direct the market/development, no question, but they not a monopoly. I think GOG has a good shot to complete as time carries on. At least while Gabe is still alive, they've been relatively ethical.
If the choice of largest developer platform is between Steam and companies like Epic, EA, or Microsoft, Steam still looks like a better alternative.
I buy games on GOG when they're available, but it seems like their market share is getting smaller as time goes on.
That said, the barrier to entry for a Steam competitor is non-existent, so they may never really be able to have a true monopoly. They can still have problematic levels of influence, though. I'm sincerely worried about what direction Valve will take after Gaben retires or dies.
Yeah other than gog and itch every other platform is terrible. Epic gives a bigger share to devs and gives away a lot of free games, but they're a publicly traded company trying to buy their way into the market so they can enshittify.
Basically, there isn't a moat around pc game stores, but competitors aren't even trying to be as nice as steam, and many publishers don't publish to the best alternative because they want to use DRM (gog)
72% of devs meaning 72% of developers = people or 72% of developer studios = a bunch of suits?
75% of respondents were senior managers of C-suite level.
Ah ok, so pointless people. They could ask an AI...
This isn't a scientific study, which is what most people will assume when they read that.
75% of respondents were senior managers of C-suite level
And from the "white paper":
All respondents are managers
There is no evidence that any respondents are game developers. Working as a manager in the same building where people actually develop games doesn't mean you are a "dev".
Here's the actual "white paper", btw: https://cdn.rokky.com/products-content/docs/TheStateofPCGameDistribution_rokky_com.pdf
Monopolies are just an effect of capitalism in its current form.
I'm more concerned with the games companies who aren't even monopolies, and are already seen as shit services run by shitty people (unless anyone actually likes Ubisoft, EA, and their launchers???)
Gamers have respect for Gaben, and I've heard more faith and less worry about his son taking over than practically the entire team of owners from Valve's competitors. They have a monopoly because it's a good service, and the fact that it's has a user base as big as it does shouldn't surprise anyone: they seem to be doing things right enough to not be a bother. That's what matters more than the inevitability of a business getting big - there's a lot more Nuance and that doesn't just magically happen, nor is just pointing it out helpful in sensible critique.
From the article, "Atomik Research, surveyed 306 industry executives across the UK and USA" Executives are likely removed from the opinions of the actual developers, are they not?
they do, and it's all going to shit the moment gaben dies and is replaced by investor vultures.
Steam has a monopoly: yes. Steam, like apple, takes a cut from all payments in the store, and micro transactions. Considering how Steam is a company, and could just be evil, and bad, like Google, it's:
-Contributions and implementation of the opensource software Proton-Ge, which lets me just download a windows game and play it, off steam, and is also available, free & opensource on other platforms like Lutris. -Regular deals which make it the best place to buy games, if you choose to do so. -Steamdeck
Make it a (mostly) positive force, imho. However, a billion dollar company being able to do discounts below any small game distribution companies, is bad.
Being the most attractive platform doesn't make them a monopoly. It does however irritate me anytime I have to use a different platform that often functions much worse, like EA or Blizzard.
In this one case, I'm okay with its monopoly as long as Gabe is in charge. I have bought tens of thousands of dollars in games on the platform and it's crazy I can still hit download on games over 20 years old in my library AND have my save game data imported from that time.
So far, Valve has been fair to their users. Hell, they heard concerns over gambling and just took a sledgehammer to the CS2 skin market. I don't think any other company would devalue their digital assets to a tune of -3 BILLION dollars. Valve is the GOAT.
They don't have a monopoly. They just have the best platform. It offers a lot of quality of life features along with the games and rarely causes issues. I can't even recall them ever doing anything anticompetitive. There are other platforms available to purchase from if you don't like steam. GoG for instance. Or Epic if you want to support assholes.