Yeah, they’ve got a monopoly and it sucks, but they don’t seem to have a desire to push it to the point of drawing attention. I know why Epic does what it does, because they have to compete with the near complete market dominance of Valve. However, it’s not like Valve has used their position to increase prices or anything like that. They also invest in doing things that improve the experience rather than just trying to harm the competition.
I don’t like the monopoly, but I do appreciate Valve as a company.
I keep seeing “Monopoly” repeated, but I’m having a hard time understanding the logic.
They haven’t bought competitors. They don’t do anything to hinder others progress in this market, sometime to the detriment of their customers (see: Steam launches another launcher, to launch the game). They haven’t openly shown anything anti-competitive, in fact they have stuck to their guns (30% cut) when others have attempted to compete.
What they have done is cultivate the best platform that continues to evolve, add features, and maintain stability. Consumers continue to choose to use Steam overwhelmingly, but outside of Valve’s own games, there is no threat of exclusivity or punishment.
It’s the opposite of monopolistic behavior. Any company is free to compete, build their own platform, and offer software. It’s expensive, and tricky to get right, but nothing is stopping them, Valve included.
A monopoly doesn’t care about actions. There’s only one place people think about when they think to purchase a game on PC. That means it’s a monopoly. Sure, it’s not a horrible situation, and they don’t seem to be significantly exploiting their position, but that doesn’t change that they have no real competition.
If we’re going deep into the literal meaning of monopoly, the “mono” prefix means “one” but they have several legitimate competitors so that’s simply untrue.
More margin to big sellers seems sort of backwards to me, but I guess it makes it easier to convince large publishers to put games on steam? Personally I’m more interested in bigger margins for indies, but maybe I’m ignorant.
It’s just a shame the competition kinda sucks. Epic is pulling some good moves with all the free games and some really competitive prices but their launcher sucks and GoG have an abysmal launcher while rarely having newer titles because of so many companies holding tight to DRM
They mainly have a monopoly because everyone else’s attempt to compete sucks. I haven’t seen any launcher that has half the features or conveniences steam has. Most of them are slower too.
Steam offers actual value. Other launchers just feel like a lazy way to add drm.
Well, yeah. Steam has been around for a very long time and is the only real option. They have a ton of extra money to spend that a new competitor hard never expect to match. That’s what makes it bad. Yeah, it’s a great product, but what would we have if there was an actual competitor pushing them to be better? Would they take less of a cut or would they make Steam even better? Maybe they’d reduce prices of games for consumers even.
The fact of the matter is no one else really competes, so it’s a monopoly.
The hardest part is getting games on the platform, and epic and gog have already done that. Giving it features that steam has is just a matter of money and time, which other game companies definitely have.
I agree it’s a monopoly and I’d love to see a good competitor. But it’s different from something like at&t, where to even be a cell service provider you need a huge investment, time to build infrastructure, and government approval. All you need to make a good game launcher is a dev team, which is what these companies do all the time.
Ah yes, the monopoly, a business with competitors such as ea origin, Ubisoft dunno what they called it, epic store, gog. The word monopoly must break down like monopol-y as in like a monopole, a magnet with only one polarity that is separate from the other polarity.
The fact you can’t even name the Ubisoft service shows it’s isn’t really competition. It exists, but it doesn’t compete. Sure, you can choose to go somewhere else to purchase some games, but none of then threaten Steam.
The Ubisoft one is just particularly shitty. The only reason steam remains unthreatened is because the rest of them have mentally crippled shareholders at the helm. If steam ever went that way or undermined customer ownership they would surely be fucked and everyone with a functioning brain would go GOG or sail the seas.
It’s also not like they chose to or actively pursue being the only game store. The only limiting factor in using other game sources on the steam deck for example is the lack of interest from any other sale platform to support any degree of Linux. Open source devs have already replaced most if not all of their functionality with easily installable frontends. If one was really so deranged, even windows can be installed on the damn thing. I’ve at least never heard of any valve enforced steam exclusive titles, but vaguely recall some developer advertising something as only on steam.
The only way I feel one could justify calling steam a monopoly is to totally shit on the utter ineptitude of the competition so far as to dismiss their very existence, using it more as an insult to the competition than a descriptor for valve/steam, which is valid in a way but I don’t think it makes the terminology usage objectively true.
Even ignoring all that or if steam actually was a monopoly by my or anyone’s standards, I’m more concerned about the things that technically are not monopolies yet collude (even unintentionally which is unlikely) to fuck everyone over. Such as food industry globally, Canadian telecom, the current state of tv/movie streaming, etc.
Well they kind of have used their position to indirectly increase prices… If they take a 30% cut then the games need to sell for more to make the same profit (and there’s the geolock and anti price-competition thing too)
The only reason being that they loosely apply the agreement people sign with them, they still reserve the right to remove games from their store of they’re sold at a lower price elsewhere. They’re getting sued for that at the moment.
Yeah, they’ve got a monopoly and it sucks, but they don’t seem to have a desire to push it to the point of drawing attention. I know why Epic does what it does, because they have to compete with the near complete market dominance of Valve. However, it’s not like Valve has used their position to increase prices or anything like that. They also invest in doing things that improve the experience rather than just trying to harm the competition.
I don’t like the monopoly, but I do appreciate Valve as a company.
I keep seeing “Monopoly” repeated, but I’m having a hard time understanding the logic.
They haven’t bought competitors. They don’t do anything to hinder others progress in this market, sometime to the detriment of their customers (see: Steam launches another launcher, to launch the game). They haven’t openly shown anything anti-competitive, in fact they have stuck to their guns (30% cut) when others have attempted to compete.
What they have done is cultivate the best platform that continues to evolve, add features, and maintain stability. Consumers continue to choose to use Steam overwhelmingly, but outside of Valve’s own games, there is no threat of exclusivity or punishment.
It’s the opposite of monopolistic behavior. Any company is free to compete, build their own platform, and offer software. It’s expensive, and tricky to get right, but nothing is stopping them, Valve included.
A monopoly doesn’t care about actions. There’s only one place people think about when they think to purchase a game on PC. That means it’s a monopoly. Sure, it’s not a horrible situation, and they don’t seem to be significantly exploiting their position, but that doesn’t change that they have no real competition.
If we’re going deep into the literal meaning of monopoly, the “mono” prefix means “one” but they have several legitimate competitors so that’s simply untrue.
Valve doesn’t set prices on the store in the first place. They are giving more margin for big sellers now too.
More margin to big sellers seems sort of backwards to me, but I guess it makes it easier to convince large publishers to put games on steam? Personally I’m more interested in bigger margins for indies, but maybe I’m ignorant.
It’s just a shame the competition kinda sucks. Epic is pulling some good moves with all the free games and some really competitive prices but their launcher sucks and GoG have an abysmal launcher while rarely having newer titles because of so many companies holding tight to DRM
They mainly have a monopoly because everyone else’s attempt to compete sucks. I haven’t seen any launcher that has half the features or conveniences steam has. Most of them are slower too.
Steam offers actual value. Other launchers just feel like a lazy way to add drm.
Well, yeah. Steam has been around for a very long time and is the only real option. They have a ton of extra money to spend that a new competitor hard never expect to match. That’s what makes it bad. Yeah, it’s a great product, but what would we have if there was an actual competitor pushing them to be better? Would they take less of a cut or would they make Steam even better? Maybe they’d reduce prices of games for consumers even.
The fact of the matter is no one else really competes, so it’s a monopoly.
The hardest part is getting games on the platform, and epic and gog have already done that. Giving it features that steam has is just a matter of money and time, which other game companies definitely have.
I agree it’s a monopoly and I’d love to see a good competitor. But it’s different from something like at&t, where to even be a cell service provider you need a huge investment, time to build infrastructure, and government approval. All you need to make a good game launcher is a dev team, which is what these companies do all the time.
Ah yes, the monopoly, a business with competitors such as ea origin, Ubisoft dunno what they called it, epic store, gog. The word monopoly must break down like monopol-y as in like a monopole, a magnet with only one polarity that is separate from the other polarity.
The fact you can’t even name the Ubisoft service shows it’s isn’t really competition. It exists, but it doesn’t compete. Sure, you can choose to go somewhere else to purchase some games, but none of then threaten Steam.
The Ubisoft one is just particularly shitty. The only reason steam remains unthreatened is because the rest of them have mentally crippled shareholders at the helm. If steam ever went that way or undermined customer ownership they would surely be fucked and everyone with a functioning brain would go GOG or sail the seas. It’s also not like they chose to or actively pursue being the only game store. The only limiting factor in using other game sources on the steam deck for example is the lack of interest from any other sale platform to support any degree of Linux. Open source devs have already replaced most if not all of their functionality with easily installable frontends. If one was really so deranged, even windows can be installed on the damn thing. I’ve at least never heard of any valve enforced steam exclusive titles, but vaguely recall some developer advertising something as only on steam.
The only way I feel one could justify calling steam a monopoly is to totally shit on the utter ineptitude of the competition so far as to dismiss their very existence, using it more as an insult to the competition than a descriptor for valve/steam, which is valid in a way but I don’t think it makes the terminology usage objectively true.
Even ignoring all that or if steam actually was a monopoly by my or anyone’s standards, I’m more concerned about the things that technically are not monopolies yet collude (even unintentionally which is unlikely) to fuck everyone over. Such as food industry globally, Canadian telecom, the current state of tv/movie streaming, etc.
Well they kind of have used their position to indirectly increase prices… If they take a 30% cut then the games need to sell for more to make the same profit (and there’s the geolock and anti price-competition thing too)
Yet they also allow developers to sell generated keys with 0% cut either directly or to key sites if they desire.
The only reason being that they loosely apply the agreement people sign with them, they still reserve the right to remove games from their store of they’re sold at a lower price elsewhere. They’re getting sued for that at the moment.