While its undeniable the control steam has on the market. I think people forget you can self publish your games with some decent success (at least for those who rise to the top). Hell some of the largest games in the indie scene these days started that way (Minecraft, Factorio, Rimworld, Tarkov, etc). It just Steam has one of the largest userbases and to get into that garden you have the 30% price to pay. I will say people sort of ignore many of the benefits that Valve/steam provide. Hell steam input, steamvr, remote play, proton, steamdrm, etc. Many of these are so powerful that many people just piggyback off of these things indirectly. Like there is nothing physically stopping users from switching to GOG, Origins, Uplay, Epic store besides most of them are just shittier versions of steam (except GOG, where there is something novel reason why it exists)
But you aren’t forced to participate in that garden. PC is an open platform, its just the competition is just so awful that noone wants to waste the time dealing with them. Hell imagine EA or Ubisoft selling their games for 15% off on uplay/Origin, maybe even 30% when they were starting out since you need to build a userbase. They may have gotten a foothold in the PC market but no they just charged their standard PC prices so they just get an extra 30% of profit for minimal effort by cutting out Valve from the process. They botched it and are now suckling off the teat that is called Steam again because they couldn’t hack into that market. Hell Valve has scaled back most of its super big sales, which is what made it a staple store in the PC marketplace. I don’t think we will ever see a return of flash sales or more exciting sales events because they don’t need to try anymore, they have a devoted userbase.
We shall see how the wolffire antitrust lawsuit against valve goes but it was dismissed last year but now they have enough stuff apparently but there hasn’t been any new documents filed since April of this year. Hell if anything I’m sadden that GOG doesn’t get as many users but its not like Valve has a gun to its users’ heads saying they have to stay to Steam. Its just gamers choose not to venture outside of it because people like a big list instead of having to have 4-5 gaming apps trying to figure out where the hell.
Hell I stick with steam since I at least can find reliable sales for steam keys on 3rd party shops far more than I can for GOG games. I’ve been burnt on that before where I buy a game on GOG but the dlc for said games are rarely discounted compared to the steam version where sales can be quite frequent. One of the coolest initiatives for GOG was shut down as well. The whole GOG connect feature was awesome but it really shows where the problem truly is. Developers/Publishers want that DRM and if we lived in a world where even though it hurts to say blockchain could have fixed a problem with digital games and storefronts but the simple fact is such a system will never happen because the publishers/devs want nothing to do with it.
Edit: Also I find your argument silly since you are acting as the arbiter of how much Valve can change for their service. What do you think is a “fair price”? 1%, 2%, 10%, 20%, etc. 30% is a number that was used because that was how much brick and mortar stores charged. Game devs/publishers no longer have to print disks, handle any of the logistics of moving said disks, advertising fees are probably the cheapest they have ever been (Seriously streamers/youtubers are probably some of the cheapest marketing in the industry), etc.
Edit 2: It seems Epic’s 12% is also not cutting them any slack and at the moment Epic is just relying on their fortnite sales to keep them afloat.
I am so tired of ‘you aren’t forced’ being a response to crystal clear systemic advantages.
No shit you aren’t forced.
You don’t have to be.
They win anyway.
The competition’s qualities do not matter, because the network effect makes Steam the default. Their super-duper-majority userbase is self-sustaining. Twitter’s recent deliberately awful turns show how much abuse it takes to create a merely gradual decline. Epic’s alternative could be flawless - and they’d still be trapped in a vicious circle of not being where the games are, because no users shop there, and no users shopping there, because that’s not where the games are.
Epic has a game that makes four billion dollars a year. Epic produces middleware used by like half of all big-name games. And even Epic “couldn’t hack it” when fighting valve, despite offering free games to users and more money to game devs. As you point out, Valve doesn’t need to try. They win anyway. That is the complaint.
Same lapel-shaking attitude toward listing why 30% was ever tolerated, like that justifies a digital
environment taking as much money to not do it. Taking an entire third of revenue just to be the shelf is obscene. I don’t have to pull an exact decimal figure out of my ass to condemn that. It’s the deepest cut they can get away with.
It’s the same thing console manufacturers excuse, when they built the entire platform from scratch, and subsidize hardware prices through that cut. It’s the same thing Apple charges when they have such an iron grip that you can’t even install a different web browser. How the hell do you justify Valve taking that cut, on your computer hardware, in someone else’s operating system? And despite that - they feel zero pressure from big-name, well-funded competitors. That effortless confidence underlines the entire problem.
No middleman should make half as much on every sale as the people who made the fucking game.
Okay firstly we are literally talking on a platform where most of its population came from the reddit api shit. I think you are acting like users have no free will on this matter.
While I said steam/valve isn’t “trying anymore” I meant in attracting mainstream audience since it doesn’t but I don’t think they have been lacking on working for niche products for niche audiences. Steam remote play a feature that is practically useless for 90% of the games on steam but it does help couch coop games or small indie devs who don’t have the experience to implement full multiplayer into their games. Linux gaming has been fueled quite a bit by Valve’s contributions to Proton.
No middleman should make half as much on every sale as the people who made the fucking game.
Sorry but if that platform is providing you 2-10x the audience you would have not had access to prior it may just be worth it.
Satisfactory is a perfect example
Steam 367,601 (1 month) vs Epic 958,917 (16 months)
In a span of a single month, Steam made nearly 40% of the sales it took Epic to get in 16 months. To be fair to Epic typically most sales of a new game come in the first 5 to 6 months but you can’t deny the benefit you are getting for being on that “shelf”
Also can you show me any competitor that are as feature rich as Steam? Like I get why people are annoyed with steam but I find no reason to stan for fucking Epic of all people. Seriously it took them 3 fucking years to implement a god damn CART into their digital store. Like at the start of Epic it had the advantage of Devs get a big bag of money, due to its walled garden nature you as a part of the exclusive gang could be seen far more easily than prior but those days are long gone. Hell Microsoft is finally taking a chunk of the PC market now with their game-pass initiative. For the longest time Microsoft failed with their Microsoft store nonsense but once they started to offer consumers things that they want. People using it, what a fucking surprise.
It’s still attractive to publish games on Steam. Even Playstation titles are on Steam now. It’s not very obvious to run a platform that needs to be available all the time and to offer all kinds of content in huge volumes. The true value is the amount of gamers they have gathered.
I don’t know if Steam really locks vendors’ games from being published elsewhere. That would be bad. In my opinion it does quite the opposite. It supports Linux and tries to unlock your PC from further dependecies.
Epic is quite the opposite in their policies. I’d never join there, for ideological reasons. They can offer as much free games as they want.
I don’t know if Steam really locks vendors’ games from being published elsewhere.
They don’t. Who are you talking to?
Being a monopoly doesn’t mean no competition exists. It means saying “it’s attractive to publish games on Steam” when what you mean is, it’s attractive to publish games on PC. Steam is not the only store for that platform. But it’s the only one that matters.
And again - that’d be perfectly alright, if they didn’t charge as much to publish on PC as Sony charges to publish on Playstation.
Epic is evil. They justify locking games to their platform because Steam charges 30%. It’s anticompetitive and plain bullshit. It should matter you as a gamer.
If you sell 10x the amount of licenses on Steam in comparison to Epic it’s still a win. No one really cares about charges when you earn more in total.
I don’t recall throwing Epic one mote of credit, here. Again: who are you talking to? I am lately short on patience for getting slotted into conversations the other party would rather be having.
No shit people sell through the monopoly store based on how much money they get. That’s not a counterpoint - that’s the fucking problem. It does not matter how awful Steam is or isn’t, because people will go there anyway.
Steam has a de-facto monopoly, no matter how soft or ethical you think their control is. They are simply the outlet for buying PC games.
Which would be fine, if they didn’t take an entire fucking third of revenue, up-front, like locked-down consoles and greedy smartphone platforms.
While its undeniable the control steam has on the market. I think people forget you can self publish your games with some decent success (at least for those who rise to the top). Hell some of the largest games in the indie scene these days started that way (Minecraft, Factorio, Rimworld, Tarkov, etc). It just Steam has one of the largest userbases and to get into that garden you have the 30% price to pay. I will say people sort of ignore many of the benefits that Valve/steam provide. Hell steam input, steamvr, remote play, proton, steamdrm, etc. Many of these are so powerful that many people just piggyback off of these things indirectly. Like there is nothing physically stopping users from switching to GOG, Origins, Uplay, Epic store besides most of them are just shittier versions of steam (except GOG, where there is something novel reason why it exists)
That’s not a counterargument.
That is the complaint.
But you aren’t forced to participate in that garden. PC is an open platform, its just the competition is just so awful that noone wants to waste the time dealing with them. Hell imagine EA or Ubisoft selling their games for 15% off on uplay/Origin, maybe even 30% when they were starting out since you need to build a userbase. They may have gotten a foothold in the PC market but no they just charged their standard PC prices so they just get an extra 30% of profit for minimal effort by cutting out Valve from the process. They botched it and are now suckling off the teat that is called Steam again because they couldn’t hack into that market. Hell Valve has scaled back most of its super big sales, which is what made it a staple store in the PC marketplace. I don’t think we will ever see a return of flash sales or more exciting sales events because they don’t need to try anymore, they have a devoted userbase.
We shall see how the wolffire antitrust lawsuit against valve goes but it was dismissed last year but now they have enough stuff apparently but there hasn’t been any new documents filed since April of this year. Hell if anything I’m sadden that GOG doesn’t get as many users but its not like Valve has a gun to its users’ heads saying they have to stay to Steam. Its just gamers choose not to venture outside of it because people like a big list instead of having to have 4-5 gaming apps trying to figure out where the hell.
Hell I stick with steam since I at least can find reliable sales for steam keys on 3rd party shops far more than I can for GOG games. I’ve been burnt on that before where I buy a game on GOG but the dlc for said games are rarely discounted compared to the steam version where sales can be quite frequent. One of the coolest initiatives for GOG was shut down as well. The whole GOG connect feature was awesome but it really shows where the problem truly is. Developers/Publishers want that DRM and if we lived in a world where even though it hurts to say blockchain could have fixed a problem with digital games and storefronts but the simple fact is such a system will never happen because the publishers/devs want nothing to do with it.
Edit: Also I find your argument silly since you are acting as the arbiter of how much Valve can change for their service. What do you think is a “fair price”? 1%, 2%, 10%, 20%, etc. 30% is a number that was used because that was how much brick and mortar stores charged. Game devs/publishers no longer have to print disks, handle any of the logistics of moving said disks, advertising fees are probably the cheapest they have ever been (Seriously streamers/youtubers are probably some of the cheapest marketing in the industry), etc.
Edit 2: It seems Epic’s 12% is also not cutting them any slack and at the moment Epic is just relying on their fortnite sales to keep them afloat.
I am so tired of ‘you aren’t forced’ being a response to crystal clear systemic advantages.
No shit you aren’t forced.
You don’t have to be.
They win anyway.
The competition’s qualities do not matter, because the network effect makes Steam the default. Their super-duper-majority userbase is self-sustaining. Twitter’s recent deliberately awful turns show how much abuse it takes to create a merely gradual decline. Epic’s alternative could be flawless - and they’d still be trapped in a vicious circle of not being where the games are, because no users shop there, and no users shopping there, because that’s not where the games are.
Epic has a game that makes four billion dollars a year. Epic produces middleware used by like half of all big-name games. And even Epic “couldn’t hack it” when fighting valve, despite offering free games to users and more money to game devs. As you point out, Valve doesn’t need to try. They win anyway. That is the complaint.
Same lapel-shaking attitude toward listing why 30% was ever tolerated, like that justifies a digital environment taking as much money to not do it. Taking an entire third of revenue just to be the shelf is obscene. I don’t have to pull an exact decimal figure out of my ass to condemn that. It’s the deepest cut they can get away with.
It’s the same thing console manufacturers excuse, when they built the entire platform from scratch, and subsidize hardware prices through that cut. It’s the same thing Apple charges when they have such an iron grip that you can’t even install a different web browser. How the hell do you justify Valve taking that cut, on your computer hardware, in someone else’s operating system? And despite that - they feel zero pressure from big-name, well-funded competitors. That effortless confidence underlines the entire problem.
No middleman should make half as much on every sale as the people who made the fucking game.
Okay firstly we are literally talking on a platform where most of its population came from the reddit api shit. I think you are acting like users have no free will on this matter.
While I said steam/valve isn’t “trying anymore” I meant in attracting mainstream audience since it doesn’t but I don’t think they have been lacking on working for niche products for niche audiences. Steam remote play a feature that is practically useless for 90% of the games on steam but it does help couch coop games or small indie devs who don’t have the experience to implement full multiplayer into their games. Linux gaming has been fueled quite a bit by Valve’s contributions to Proton.
Sorry but if that platform is providing you 2-10x the audience you would have not had access to prior it may just be worth it.
Satisfactory is a perfect example
Steam 367,601 (1 month) vs Epic 958,917 (16 months)
In a span of a single month, Steam made nearly 40% of the sales it took Epic to get in 16 months. To be fair to Epic typically most sales of a new game come in the first 5 to 6 months but you can’t deny the benefit you are getting for being on that “shelf”
Also can you show me any competitor that are as feature rich as Steam? Like I get why people are annoyed with steam but I find no reason to stan for fucking Epic of all people. Seriously it took them 3 fucking years to implement a god damn CART into their digital store. Like at the start of Epic it had the advantage of Devs get a big bag of money, due to its walled garden nature you as a part of the exclusive gang could be seen far more easily than prior but those days are long gone. Hell Microsoft is finally taking a chunk of the PC market now with their game-pass initiative. For the longest time Microsoft failed with their Microsoft store nonsense but once they started to offer consumers things that they want. People using it, what a fucking surprise.
I’d be great if you could stop presenting my argument as a counter to my argument.
Steam has become the PC market.
That’s bad, actually.
edit: And most of us being from reddit is wildly different from most of reddit leaving.
It’s still attractive to publish games on Steam. Even Playstation titles are on Steam now. It’s not very obvious to run a platform that needs to be available all the time and to offer all kinds of content in huge volumes. The true value is the amount of gamers they have gathered.
I don’t know if Steam really locks vendors’ games from being published elsewhere. That would be bad. In my opinion it does quite the opposite. It supports Linux and tries to unlock your PC from further dependecies.
Epic is quite the opposite in their policies. I’d never join there, for ideological reasons. They can offer as much free games as they want.
They don’t. Who are you talking to?
Being a monopoly doesn’t mean no competition exists. It means saying “it’s attractive to publish games on Steam” when what you mean is, it’s attractive to publish games on PC. Steam is not the only store for that platform. But it’s the only one that matters.
And again - that’d be perfectly alright, if they didn’t charge as much to publish on PC as Sony charges to publish on Playstation.
Epic is evil. They justify locking games to their platform because Steam charges 30%. It’s anticompetitive and plain bullshit. It should matter you as a gamer.
If you sell 10x the amount of licenses on Steam in comparison to Epic it’s still a win. No one really cares about charges when you earn more in total.
I don’t recall throwing Epic one mote of credit, here. Again: who are you talking to? I am lately short on patience for getting slotted into conversations the other party would rather be having.
No shit people sell through the monopoly store based on how much money they get. That’s not a counterpoint - that’s the fucking problem. It does not matter how awful Steam is or isn’t, because people will go there anyway.