Multiple companies have tried to become the de facto games store and every last one of them has failed not because Steam uses its dominant position to crush them, but because not a single one of them has been willing to invest in the features, capabilities, and pro consumer policies that Steam has. Every single one of them thought that doing the bare minimum and then throwing cash at ads and publishers would be the path to victory. It wasn’t. Yeah, Steam may be effectively a monopoly, but it’s because nobody else really wants to compete with them at their level. The closest anyone has ever come is GOG.
No other company has invested more in trying to free our PC games from Microsoft either. On top of that, Valve’s investment still benefits the entire FOSS ecosystem.
I worry about what the company will look like when Gabe isn’t there anymore, but for now, I keep buying on Steam because I want to vote with my wallet, and I vote for Linux and FOSS.
That said,
Asked about this rule, Newell repeatedly denied it exists, even when shown internal communications seemingly showing Valve employees enforcing it: “Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms.” When asked how Valve would react if it ever happened, Newell initially said he was confused by the question and then added, “Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we’re providing.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve read this, and if Valve is using their position to keep prices higher, then that is bad behavior that needs correction.
But if it’s could have been on sale for even more through a different store that would have allowed the developer to get a bigger share of the sale, Valve won’t allow that.
It’s not about there being sales. It’s about abusing market power for illegal gain.
No other company has invested more in trying to free our PC games from Microsoft either. On top of that, Valve’s investment still benefits the entire FOSS ecosystem.
valve main product is a proprietary third party software launcher, there’s nothing foss about it. They started seriously investing in linux only the moment microsoft become their direct competitor in the videogames industry.
Pretty late… there was a linux request on the gog forum almost 10 years ago. I gave up on gog shortly after their negative response to the idea of a linux client
Yeah, Steam may be effectively a monopoly, but it’s because nobody else really wants to compete with them at their level.
Steam has two types of customers. Us the gamers where we can decide which platform to use. They have an effective monopoly on us because they provide a good service. But with a large game library we are locked into steam as well and cannot just switch to a different platform. If valve ever did decide to be evil then we are screwed.
But developers are also customers of valve. And this is arguably where valve makes their money. They take a cut from the developers sales. Devs cannot just use a different platform without cutting out a huge userbase. This gives valve a real monopolistic control over developers.
But developers are also customers of valve. And this is arguably where valve makes their money. They take a cut from the developers sales. Devs cannot just use a different platform without cutting out a huge userbase. This gives valve a real monopolistic control over developers.
Can they not? I was under the understanding that developers aren’t limited to steam. They can use any other platform in addition to it, the main restriction being that they can’t sell the game for cheaper on platforms other than Steam.
Sorry badly worded on my part. They can use other platforms alongside steam. I really meant they cannot use them instead of steam without losing a massive audience. And likely making their game unprofitable. At least if they are not a very large game studio already.
And then if steam is pushing restrictions on what they can do on other stores then that is edging into the relms of abusing their monopoly.
But looking at it from Steam’s side: why should they list a game, promote it through their recommendation algorithms, forums, friend lists, reviews, workshop, etc. when the developers can use it just as free advertisement and sell it in their store for half the price? What is in it for me? Servers and traffic are not free after all, quite the opposite thanks to today’s AI craziness.
You can choose to buy new things on other platforms. But you lose access to everything you bought on steam if you choose not to use them anymore. That is a form of locking to their platform. You cannot just move you library to another platform.
But is there an alternative where I can take my games where I want? Sure, there is GOG, but if they decided to shut down their servers right now I’d be screwed the same. I don’t have storage space to regularly back up installers just for sure… So technically it’s possible but in reality it mostly isn’t.
Devs cannot just use a different platform without cutting out a huge userbase.
Most gamers I know, don’t care that much about where they get their games from. Heck, they would buy it from a dubious guy with USB sticks who is travelling on a donkey, if they had to.
Make a good game and people will follow.
I suppose the issue is rather about discoverability and getting people to learn about a game they might like. But steam is not necessarily easier in that regard. You’d still need to do some marketing to get the word around. If you’re lucky by scratching the itch of a lot of people, steam can boost sales by its trending and discovery lists, sales highlights, etc. But that’s not easy to achieve just by choosing steam as a distribution platform.
Most people I know don’t look outside of steam for games. Might be a regional thing. But there are a lot of people that just don’t care about the other stores. At least not while steam offer a good experience.
What pro-consumer policies does Steam have? They still have a lot of games with DRM, although I guess that’s the publisher’s choice, not theirs.
Their refund policies aren’t great. Not being able to get a refund if you encounter a game-breaking bug just because you’ve played the game for more than 2 hours isn’t a good policy. Thankfully it’s been ruled illegal in some countries like Australia - in those regions, you can get a refund for major issues regardless of how much you’ve played or how long you’ve had the game for.
I agree that they’re better than some of the competition, but at the end of the day they’re still giving you a license that they can revoke at any time. GOG gives you actual ownership.
The refund policy is that it is an automatic “no questions asked” refund if it qualifies by being under 2 hours played or 2 weeks owned. If it doesn’t qualify, you can still get a refund, there just are questions asked then. Their refund policy is pretty much the gold standard.
Valve lets them add DRM after launch, you buy a game and play it for months or even years and then BAM! you have online DRM or anti-tamper killing mods or a flippin rootkit for crappy cross platform multiplayer that never works, or adding a damn third party launcher along with the Ubislop levels of derp and Bamco/ATLUS inability to eveer patch anything that’s actually wrong but “fix” cracked DRM instantly…
Until I can count on Steam to let me keep what I flippin’ paid for they are beyond sus, and my (Crap, 1337, what a game count.) “Game Industry Guardian” becomes a “Meh, nah, I’ll use your forums to ask the dev if they plan a GOG release and maybe redeem some Humble keys if they’re cheap enough to consider it a demo for a GOG purchase later.”
Primarily their review system which is hands down the best in the industry, as well as the laundry list of shady practices they’ve banned companies from employing. They’re not perfect by any means but they’re still head and shoulders above the competition. They’re also at least somewhat responsive to the community with them either implementing new policies to protect consumers when major scandals happen and even occasionally being proactive and banning bad practices when companies start talking about implementing them.
As for GOG they’re a bit of a mixed bag recently. They started carrying games with DRM at some point so they’re no longer the DRM free zone they once were, although the majority of their catalog is still DRM free. I believe they do warn you when a game has DRM though. On the plus side though they recently committed to improving their support for Linux which many people will be happy to see.
Multiple companies have tried to become the de facto games store and every last one of them has failed not because Steam uses its dominant position to crush them, but because not a single one of them has been willing to invest in the features, capabilities, and pro consumer policies that Steam has. Every single one of them thought that doing the bare minimum and then throwing cash at ads and publishers would be the path to victory. It wasn’t. Yeah, Steam may be effectively a monopoly, but it’s because nobody else really wants to compete with them at their level. The closest anyone has ever come is GOG.
No other company has invested more in trying to free our PC games from Microsoft either. On top of that, Valve’s investment still benefits the entire FOSS ecosystem.
I worry about what the company will look like when Gabe isn’t there anymore, but for now, I keep buying on Steam because I want to vote with my wallet, and I vote for Linux and FOSS.
That said,
This isn’t the first time I’ve read this, and if Valve is using their position to keep prices higher, then that is bad behavior that needs correction.
I can literally go and buy games on sale at 50-90% off during any of the multitude of sale events that are constantly happening.
But if it’s could have been on sale for even more through a different store that would have allowed the developer to get a bigger share of the sale, Valve won’t allow that.
It’s not about there being sales. It’s about abusing market power for illegal gain.
Isn’t that only if it activates on Steam? So an Epic, GOG, or old-fashioned game wouldn’t be affected
Maybe, but I’ve not read that.
It’s also worth noting that nothing has been proven in a courtroom yet.
valve main product is a proprietary third party software launcher, there’s nothing foss about it. They started seriously investing in linux only the moment microsoft become their direct competitor in the videogames industry.
Okay. So what? If Valve disappeared tomorrow, those FOSS contributions are still there.
Ideologically, gog is the winner for me… EXCEPT they refuse to have a native linux client, so i stick with steam
I find heroic games launcher works great as a gog launcher.
Wasn’t there some ado about them getting a native Linux client soonish? https://www.xda-developers.com/gog-has-already-started-working-on-linux-gaming-as-it-says-theyre-a-big-fan-of-the-os/
My issue is of course that I hate having two launchers but yeah gog does seem ideologically superior… for now.
Pretty late… there was a linux request on the gog forum almost 10 years ago. I gave up on gog shortly after their negative response to the idea of a linux client
I just download and install games.
and the problem is, that, as a developer, you can’t just go and release your stuff on gog
Steam has two types of customers. Us the gamers where we can decide which platform to use. They have an effective monopoly on us because they provide a good service. But with a large game library we are locked into steam as well and cannot just switch to a different platform. If valve ever did decide to be evil then we are screwed.
But developers are also customers of valve. And this is arguably where valve makes their money. They take a cut from the developers sales. Devs cannot just use a different platform without cutting out a huge userbase. This gives valve a real monopolistic control over developers.
Can they not? I was under the understanding that developers aren’t limited to steam. They can use any other platform in addition to it, the main restriction being that they can’t sell the game for cheaper on platforms other than Steam.
Sorry badly worded on my part. They can use other platforms alongside steam. I really meant they cannot use them instead of steam without losing a massive audience. And likely making their game unprofitable. At least if they are not a very large game studio already.
And then if steam is pushing restrictions on what they can do on other stores then that is edging into the relms of abusing their monopoly.
But looking at it from Steam’s side: why should they list a game, promote it through their recommendation algorithms, forums, friend lists, reviews, workshop, etc. when the developers can use it just as free advertisement and sell it in their store for half the price? What is in it for me? Servers and traffic are not free after all, quite the opposite thanks to today’s AI craziness.
“Locked in”? “Can’t”?
Huh?
Can’t people just use all of the stores if they want? Steam doesn’t lock you out of the xbox app, or the ubisoft store or whatever as far as I know.
You can choose to buy new things on other platforms. But you lose access to everything you bought on steam if you choose not to use them anymore. That is a form of locking to their platform. You cannot just move you library to another platform.
But is there an alternative where I can take my games where I want? Sure, there is GOG, but if they decided to shut down their servers right now I’d be screwed the same. I don’t have storage space to regularly back up installers just for sure… So technically it’s possible but in reality it mostly isn’t.
Most gamers I know, don’t care that much about where they get their games from. Heck, they would buy it from a dubious guy with USB sticks who is travelling on a donkey, if they had to.
Make a good game and people will follow.
I suppose the issue is rather about discoverability and getting people to learn about a game they might like. But steam is not necessarily easier in that regard. You’d still need to do some marketing to get the word around. If you’re lucky by scratching the itch of a lot of people, steam can boost sales by its trending and discovery lists, sales highlights, etc. But that’s not easy to achieve just by choosing steam as a distribution platform.
Most people I know don’t look outside of steam for games. Might be a regional thing. But there are a lot of people that just don’t care about the other stores. At least not while steam offer a good experience.
I would argue a proprietary third party launcher to play your games and DRMs are the opposite of pro consumer.
What pro-consumer policies does Steam have? They still have a lot of games with DRM, although I guess that’s the publisher’s choice, not theirs.
Their refund policies aren’t great. Not being able to get a refund if you encounter a game-breaking bug just because you’ve played the game for more than 2 hours isn’t a good policy. Thankfully it’s been ruled illegal in some countries like Australia - in those regions, you can get a refund for major issues regardless of how much you’ve played or how long you’ve had the game for.
I agree that they’re better than some of the competition, but at the end of the day they’re still giving you a license that they can revoke at any time. GOG gives you actual ownership.
The refund policy is that it is an automatic “no questions asked” refund if it qualifies by being under 2 hours played or 2 weeks owned. If it doesn’t qualify, you can still get a refund, there just are questions asked then. Their refund policy is pretty much the gold standard.
Valve lets them add DRM after launch, you buy a game and play it for months or even years and then BAM! you have online DRM or anti-tamper killing mods or a flippin rootkit for crappy cross platform multiplayer that never works, or adding a damn third party launcher along with the Ubislop levels of derp and Bamco/ATLUS inability to eveer patch anything that’s actually wrong but “fix” cracked DRM instantly…
Until I can count on Steam to let me keep what I flippin’ paid for they are beyond sus, and my (Crap, 1337, what a game count.) “Game Industry Guardian” becomes a “Meh, nah, I’ll use your forums to ask the dev if they plan a GOG release and maybe redeem some Humble keys if they’re cheap enough to consider it a demo for a GOG purchase later.”
Primarily their review system which is hands down the best in the industry, as well as the laundry list of shady practices they’ve banned companies from employing. They’re not perfect by any means but they’re still head and shoulders above the competition. They’re also at least somewhat responsive to the community with them either implementing new policies to protect consumers when major scandals happen and even occasionally being proactive and banning bad practices when companies start talking about implementing them.
As for GOG they’re a bit of a mixed bag recently. They started carrying games with DRM at some point so they’re no longer the DRM free zone they once were, although the majority of their catalog is still DRM free. I believe they do warn you when a game has DRM though. On the plus side though they recently committed to improving their support for Linux which many people will be happy to see.
Why do I feel like we could trace the IP of the comment back to Gabe’s yacht?
Probably because of unwarranted cynicism.