• UntouchedWagons@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    129
    arrow-down
    16
    ·
    1 year ago

    Is Steam really a monopoly when Valve doesn’t try to stifle competition and no other company could be bothered (besides maybe GOG) to make a half decent store?

    • hh93@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      104
      arrow-down
      22
      ·
      1 year ago

      It is a monopoly - they just don’t abuse it as much against their audience.

      For developers it’s either take their 30% deal or just don’t sell your game because a lot of people only use steam.

      Not even Cyberpunk or the Witcher could sell more on gog than on steam even though you knew that there the developers got 100% of the money spent. Gwent standalone flopped so hard on GOG that it had to be rereleased with limited features on steam and sold more there

      People are just fundamentally lazy so it totally is a problem that you have one store with such a massive market share even if it’s very convenient for the end-user they can completely exploit their position against publishers.

      Sure EPICs way of making games exclusive to their store is not elegant but without that no-one would choose that store over steam

      • Molecular0079@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        58
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        I am not sure if it’s just people being lazy. Steam legitimately is a good gaming platform. It just has so many features that really bring the PC platform to the level of consoles in terms of UX. Social features, discussion boards, reviews, matchmaking, chat, broadcasting, remote streaming, all this alongside a kickass store. That’s why Valve could roll out something like Steam OS and not have it feel woefully inadequate compared to what consoles offer.

        • Bread@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Don’t forget notes for games, steam workshop, and for those of us open source enthusiasts, making easy/reliable gaming on Linux. It has never been so good being a Linux gamer.

      • jikel@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        21
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Tell me a game store that supports Linux out of the box (not messing with wine stuff or lutris)

      • HollowNotion@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        This is partially on these companies for failing to provide an equal experience to Steam on their platform. I bought Witcher III in GoG to support the devs, and my reward was a lost save by the time the DLCs came out, because their client didn’t have cloud saves. So guess where I bought their stuff from there on? Sure, they added these features later but for some people the damage is already done.

      • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s a monopoly, but it’s one that a big company like EA or Epic Games can defeat. But, they have to actually put in the work and effort to present an experience that isn’t an enshittified version of Steam.

        So far, none of them are willing to put in the time, so they don’t get the prize.

      • teolan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Not even Cyberpunk or the Witcher could sell more on gog than on steam even though you knew that there the developers got 100% of the money spent.

        Most gamers don’t know and/or don’t care, so they will take the least resistance path, which is Steam.

        Steam has a “most favoured nation clause” which prevents companies from actually selling for cheaper on other platform. This is how steam maintains its monopoly. If it were possible for CD Projekt Red to sell it cheaper outside of steam it would force steam to actually charge developers less.

        Edit: see below, it’s actually not that clear.

        • Chailles@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          1 year ago

          They could sell for cheaper, they just can’t sell Steam Keys specifically for cheaper than what’s on Steam itself. Which makes sense honestly, you’re literally using their service for both presence and distribution.

          • teolan@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            Looking at steam’s own policies, this is true for steam keys, but there is an an going lawsuit that claims steam also makes this apply to non steam-enabled games: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/valve-issues-scathing-reply-over-the-facts-behind-a-steam-antitrust-case/

            But looking mosre closely than I did previously this is based on:

            1. An contract that is apparently not public
            2. A 1 time example that Valve denies

            So I don’t really know, but if what valve says is true (which looks like it is), then I don’t see any monopoly abuse indeed.

            They do have a monopoly, but it’s in large part for providing a better service. As a Linux user, I prefer Valve 100% over Epic that buys Rocket league and discontinues linux support. I do prefer Itch and GOG for the possibility of no-DRM games, but I’ve got to say it’s overall a worse experience (no auto updates, no social features etc…)

            I made my initial comment after watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEG5qmMQas which suggested that Steam applied the MFN for non steam - enabled games too, but was done prior to Valve’s response.

            • Chailles@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              For the price parity thing, there’s the game Tales of Maj’Eyal that is $6.99 USD on Steam but is free on their website te4.org. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is an open source project, but is on Steam for $19.99 USD. Caves of Qud is actually on sale now on GOG, but the Itch.io and Steam version aren’t. Sure, these may just be because traditional roguelikes don’t garner that much attention, but they are cases nonetheless that show otherwise.

              The lack of auto-updates can sometimes be good. StarSector updated relatively recently and if they actually updated automatically (even if they offered an option to disable it, they update so infrequently, I’d probably have neglected it), my save and all my mods for it would just break, or worse break silentl until it was too late.

              • teolan@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                Thinking about it there are also multiple FLOSS games that are free on GitHub/Linux repos but paid on Steam. For example Mindustry and Pixel dungeon.

            • pkpenguin@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              This is still easily verifiably untrue in practice. Go to isthereanydeal and you’ll see verified, approved Steam key retailers running sales for under the Steam price on hundreds of games literally every day. Humble offers a global discount on all keys in their store if you’re s subscriber, undercutting virtually every Steam page. That’s not to mention the bundles they sell which regularly cut hundreds of dollars of keys down to a few bucks.

              • teolan@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                The steam documentation mentions for keys that while it is OK to run sales on different platforms at different times, the steam store must have similar sales within a reasonable time period, and he base price must not be higher on steam.

      • aard@kyu.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Many years ago I bought some old DOS game where Linux runtimes using the original files exists on GOG. What I expected was a disk image or a zip containing the files - what I got was some exe containing the files. Why would I ever try to buy something from someone fucking up something that simple again?

        I might buy some indie games from a developer directly - but with a middleman steam is the only option.

        • criticalimpact@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          That’s not a steam issue, that’s a developer/publisher issue Plenty of old Scumm based games work by just pointing scummvm at the game directory

      • asexualchangeling@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Sure EPICs way of making games exclusive to their store is not elegant but without that no-one would choose that store over steam

        Personally Epic doing this is one of the reasons I still refuse to give epic my card details

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          They account for about 75% of game sales on PC from what I’m finding, it’s a “virtual monopoly”, i.e. they have enough reach to control the market even if they have competitors.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            75% of the units sold or 75% of the overall revemue. Given that the most successful PC games aren’t even on Steam, the latter seems unlikely to me. Roblox alone is a sustained revenue stream in insanely high numbers.

            Do they block the competition in any way? They aren’t the stewards of Windows. Epic buys exclusive rights to games. Does Valve do the same? On Steam Deck, there’s even an entire independent app store (Discover with Flathub) enabled right out of the box. That’s how the community made Minecraft and Heroic Game Launcher available. Official EGS, GamePass, and GOG launchers could be made available via Flathub but MS etc. choose not to.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              7
              ·
              1 year ago

              They have their own unethical business practice they’re getting sued for (preventing sales at a lower price on competing platforms) and just because you agree with what they do now doesn’t mean it’s not a risk to have such a behemoth in the market, Gaben is nice now, it just needs him changing his mind or retiring/dying and shit could hit the fan real quick.

              • woelkchen@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                It’s not about Valve or Newell being nice or not, it’s about whether Valve has a monopoly and the EU just recently looked at digital markets closely and determined that Valve is not a gatekeeper.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  5
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Because of the way they act at the moment, it doesn’t mean that they’re not in a monopoly position.

                  Turns out it’s simply because the EU didn’t even study their case because the PC gaming market is too small to bother 🤡

                  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Well, the EU made a list of monopolists in digital markets and decided that Valve is not one of them and that has nothing to do with current behavior.

              • stillwater@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                They have their own unethical business practice they’re getting sued for (preventing sales at a lower price on competing platforms)

                Who’s suing them for something so boilerplate? This isn’t that stupid frivolous lawsuit from Wolfire you’re referring to, is it?

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Frivolous? The judge has accepted new evidence and the lawsuit has been allowed to proceed.

          • DLSchichtl@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Nintendo accounts for 100% of games on the Switch. Microsoft with the Xbox. Heck, even Sony. And people making games for PC don’t have to ask Valve’s permission.

            Shit. Bestselling PC game of all time. Minecraft. Not available on Steam.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Nintendo is compared to other console manufacturers.

              Microsoft is considered to be in a position of monopoly in the OS market, yet they’re not the ones building the PC itself.

              Holy fuck did I just enter a freaking asylum or something?

        • Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          arrow-down
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, to say a successful business is a monopoly because it is far reaching is absurd.

          Call me when Good-Old-Epic-Steam launches.

          • rambaroo@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            1 year ago

            The fact that there are tons of games only available on steam should tell you it’s a monopoly.

            It’s fucking shocking to me that so many people here actually believe that Valve isn’t a monopoly. You must have your head way up your ass.

            • skulkingaround@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              How many games are actually steam exclusive on PC though, not counting 50 cent shovelware crap? A good chunk of the best selling PC games ever (minecraft for example) are not even available on steam.

              I just went through the top 10 on steam and other than counter strike, which is literally made by valve, all of them are available elsewhere.

            • stillwater@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Because that’s not at all how a monopoly is defined and you ignored the concept of retail exclusivity deals to make this statement lol.

        • Zorque@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          One can have a monopoly without directly trying for it. Especially when it comes to services with a lot infrastructure involved. Once you make those investments, it’s hard for anyone to compete against them.

          A monopoly just means you control a significant amount of the market. I think, technically, they would fall under oligopoly. Where a few businesses have control of the market instead of just a single business. But the point is they have a far larger share of the market than most others. This is mostly because they create a product that people want to use, instead of making a service that unfairly captures the market through things like game exclusivity or hostile takeovers.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            But when the EU recently announced service gatekeepers, Valve was not among them. Microsoft is.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              *Because they don’t meat the minimum financial and monthly user criterias to be taken into consideration when analyzing the monopoly status of their platform

              You forgot to add that part 👍

              • woelkchen@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                Because they don’t meat the minimum financial and monthly user criterias to be taken into consideration when analyzing the monopoly status of their platform

                So Steam does not meet / meat🥩 the financial and monthly user numbers to count as a monopoly? So Steam is not a monopoly then. Great.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  No, the PC videogame market is too small for the European Union to analyse it.

                  If the local hardware store is the only one selling screws for 100km around and it doesn’t show up on their list, does it means they don’t have a monopoly or it simply means that they don’t bother checking that because the hardware store doesn’t:

                  Make 6.5B a year/doesn’t have a market capitalization of 65B

                  Doesn’t have 45m monthly users in the union AND 10k business users in the union

                  Meets those criterias three years in a row

                  Because these are the criterias required for the EU to take the time to analyze a companies’ position in their market.

                  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    3
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    No, the PC videogame market is too small for the European Union to analyse it.

                    Then please provide ANY form of facts-based analysis that Steam is a monopoly and no “Trust me, bro” isn’t that.

    • nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      42
      arrow-down
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      They are a monopoly because they…provide the best most fair platform. Also why would linux users support ubisoft or epic.

        • Zorque@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          19
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          And yet they charge the same amount…

          Seems they use that as a way to get developers to join them, then guilt consumers into using their less useful platform.

          • Paradoxvoid@aussie.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            11
            arrow-down
            8
            ·
            1 year ago

            Ironically this is actually an example of Valve using its dominant marketshare to suppress rivals - Steam’s ToS require devs to have equivalent pricing across all storefronts if they want to sell on Steam at all, so making it harder for cheaper storefront cuts to translate to lower prices to consumers, who might otherwise move to a different storefront.

            Devs aren’t going to drop Steam as a store, so they’re stuck.

            • Aosih@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              12
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              It’s not ideal, but I’d say the reason they require equivalent pricing is, so that people don’t just use Steam as a marketing platform, while diverting all sales to their personal website where they sell the game for $X cheaper.

              • Paradoxvoid@aussie.zone
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                6
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Yeah I do understand the reasoning and honestly can’t fault them for it - they are a for-profit company after all.

                Doesn’t mean that it’s not a good example of them throwing their weight around (which is admittedly rare).

              • rambaroo@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                It’s a perfect example of them abusing their position in the market. But since you’re a valve cultist, you make up a bunch of weak excuses for it. If epic or ms did the same thing you’d blow a gasket.

              • DrQuint@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Plus, it only applies to base price, not sale price. If a platform states “you can have your game on sale 100% of the time”, and a game undercuts Steam that way, Steam wouldn’t do anything about it. Well, they wouldn’t have to anyways, it’s illegal to have goods on sale 100% of the time, but the point is there.

            • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              Do you have a source for that claim that doesn’t reference the sale of Steam keys specifically?

              • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.

                Ars Technica tries to spin it in favour of Steam, but if you read between the lines it is there:

                https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/

                • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Thanks for sharing that!

                  Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.

                  IMO, it’s reasonable to say “If you want to sell Steam keys off Steam, you need to follow our pricing rules,” but it is not reasonable to say “If you want to sell your game, sans keys, off Steam, you have to follow our pricing rules to keep selling on Steam.” You’re talking about the former here, right? Or does that mean that the following situation is prohibited:

                  • Your game is listed at $50 on Steam
                  • You sell keys from your own site for $50
                  • You sell your game directly from your site for $40

                  and if so, that the mitigation is to either stop selling Steam keys entirely or to raise the price on your own site to $50?

                  That’s somewhere in between the two but I dislike it. I suspect it’s more legally murky, too, like tied selling.

                  The article briefly talks about the latter (emphasis mine):

                  Wolfire’s David Rosen expanded on that accusation in a recent blog post, saying that Valve threatened to “remove [Wolfire’s game] Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website, without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.

                  However, it also says “Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this ‘parity’ rule only applies to the ‘free’ Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn’t responded to a request for comment on this story.” I wonder if the lack of comment was because of Wolfire’s lawsuit?

                  I’m also now curious if the reason for Steam saying that was related to the in-between situation I talked about above.

                  @Kecessa@sh.itjust.works shared this ArsTechnica article from 2022 that covers an update on that lawsuit - I haven’t seen anything more recent. In it, Wolfire makes the same claim, in court, that they’d already made in their blog post, which was sufficient to convince the judge to re-open their case.

                  The ruling [to re-open the case] makes particular note of “a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].’” The amended suit also alleges that “this experience is not unique to Wolfire,” which could factor into the developer’s proposed class-action complaint.

                  Hopefully we’ll hear more about that soon.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            arrow-down
            10
            ·
            1 year ago

            The reason it’s the same price on Steam and Epic is that Steam prevents the sale on their platform if the game is sold for cheaper on other platforms…

            I would also gladly increase the developer’s profit instead of the platform’s profit if the price is the same on both as I don’t use all the extra crap that Steam comes with…

          • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            What does your preference have to do with whether or not Valve is fair?

            Developers are people too, do their opinion not count or something?

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            11
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Which of these features do you actually use and why wouldn’t you want the devs to make more money so they can produce more games that you, as a user, can play?

            • DualPad@lemmy.one
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              1 year ago

              Steam Input for use with my steam controller and playstation controller for gyro controls. Particularly love the dual touchpads for movement and camera controls and extra click inputs over a single joystick click. I can’t deal with default control schemes anymore when it comes to controllers after becoming reliant on the amount of customization Steam Input provides, since it goes beyond a simple remapping with layers, modeshifts, chords, touch menus, action sets, etc.

              Linux support that reduces need to fiddle around with settings and mess with lutris type tools and more devs putting in the time to try to be Steam Deck certified. Even when it doesn’t run well on the Deck for more demanding titles there is still benefit for more powerful systems and future Steam Deck follow up.

              Existence of Steam forums and guides has come in useful for help and has popped up on search results that I wasn’t able to find on pcgamingwiki, so reddit isn’t the main place I need to rely on. Been a way to also try to reach devs without having to use reddit or twitter.

              Steam workshop. I do use nexusmods, moddb, etc. But, sometimes just having it integrated into Steam makes it convenient.

              Other launchers are more like comparing a dumbphone versus a smartphone where if all someone wants to do is make calls and text that is fine, but for those that have become accustomed to Steam launcher features beyond launching games there needs to be more done by competitors. Having to use stuff like GLOSSI to try and utilize Steam Input when using third party launchers, or have to fall back to syncthing to try and sync saves from other launchers when using Steam Deck just makes the lack of Linux and custom controller support apparent.

            • woelkchen@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Which of these features do you actually use and why wouldn’t you want the devs to make more money so they can produce more games that you, as a user, can play?

              In case the question wasn’t targeted at them specifically: Play games on Linux and making sure the actual monopoly of Windows gets broken. Parts of Valve’s revenue goes into open source development, meaning that in the end more developers get paid: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Upstream-Everything-OSS

              If game developers think the cut is too high, I’d be thrilled to see them distribute their games directly through Flathub: https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/submission/

        • nfntordr@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          Only because EGS is trying to take market share, not because of the goodness of their own hearts.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      No, it’s not a monopoly. They aren’t even a gatekeeper as defined recently by the EU.

      The most successful PC games (Minecraft, Fortnite, Roblox) aren’t even on Steam.

      • rambaroo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        That doesn’t mean anything. Jesus Christ these arguments that valve isn’t a monopoly are just so incredibly weak. They’ve created a fucking cult.

        • criticalimpact@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          Wrong, the US has antritrust laws and you can bet your bottom dollar that epic would have sued them already if they had any ground to do so.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Except it means everything. The EU, not really friendly towards US companies, declared that Valve is not a gatekeeper of digital markets. That means they don’t have a monopoly on PC gaming.

        • stillwater@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          If this is an example of an argument why they are one, I can see why more people would come down on the other side.

    • golli@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      One aspect through which one could argue that they might stifle competition is their price parity rule, for which it seems they are being sued. See here (not sure if there is any new development.

      Hard to compete with steam if you cant at least do it through lower pricing. Although this article suggests that at least for epic exclusives publisher seem to prefer to just pocket the difference, rather than pass on those savings.

      • Zorque@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        30
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Isn’t that just saying you can’t sell access to a game on steam (through a steam key) for a lower price than what’s on Steam? It’s not like they can’t just offer a lower price… just that they can’t offer it for a lower price bundled with Steam access.

        So they can offer a lower price, just not as a third party through Steam itself.

        • golli@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think you are right, the first article I linked was a bit ambiguous about it, but rereading the second one it seems that I misunderstood it and you are right.

        • Lojcs@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          If that’s the case, why do people use sites like humble bundle when they could individually buy the games from steam?

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        No it means that if the game is for sale on Steam then it can be sold elsewhere (GOG, EPIC…) but it’s in the contract with Steam that it can’t be sold for a lower price elsewhere, it’s not about Steam keys sold by third party vendors.

    • nfntordr@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Even if they are considered a ‘monolopy’ it seems like people haven’t thought that we are the ones that have thrown our money at Valve and it is the ONLY reason why they are in the position they’re in now. They offer a fantastic service to the gaming community and Valve is supposed to apologise for that? I’m not aware of any abuses within their own company that has contributed to their success or any anti-competitive behaviour?

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s definitely not merely a matter of not bothering to make a decent store though. I mean, do you think Epic is held back by not being bothered? The way they pour money into their store, I’d it were easy, they’d have it. And having a decent store isn’t enough. It’s kinda like social media in that you need the crowd effect. People want all their games in one place with integrations like friends, mods, achievements, etc. AFAIK, there’s no open standard for most of these things, so you need a big market share to convince devs to make the change.

    • Gamey@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      Well, what makes a monopoly is the position in the market, without the obligation to infinite growth that doesn’t have to involve anti-competitive prectices.

    • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yes. Nothing you said doesn’t change the fact it’s a monopoly. Sure, it might not be a Microsoft-level-evil monopoly, and as far as monopolies go, this is probably the best one, but it’s still a monopoly.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Monopsony - a monopoly but instead of controlling production, you control the marketplace, like Amazon

        Steam is almost at that level, but they at least do it by tempting people with features and don’t try to lock you in… Trouble with exchanges is that fragmentation really sucks for everyone

        • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          As I said, I agree that Steam is great. But a monopoly (or monopsony - never heard the word before) is always bad. Yes, Steam is great, but the ownership will change one day. And as it seems everyone wants to take every company public, I’m pretty sure that Steam will be taken public eventually. And the whole wheel of shit will start rolling.

          • theneverfox@pawb.social
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            True, but steam is about as good as it gets. They aren’t actually a monoposody, they’re just the biggest marketplace.

            They don’t do exclusives, don’t restrict you from selling elsewhere, they’ll integrate with any piece of software (including things you’ve installed externally or will install other launchers for you - even if they contain competing storefronts)

            They do have competition, except they did the one thing companies hate to do most at this stage - they compete. They’re the only real option because they limit nothing from their customers and offer better features. Epic offers free games, Microsoft comes pre-installed on most gaming computers, Amazon has everyone’s payment details already, and despite it all these alternatives steam is still the best option in every regard

            Yes, it’s almost guaranteed to go to shit eventually, but what better system is there? There’s no one more trustworthy to run the primary gaming marketplace… They’ve even built their company structure and policies to resist the pull of enshittification.

            A new company isn’t a good answer, a distributed system wouldn’t work well for this application, and even nonprofits struggle to resist enshittification as well as valve has done

            What can we do except keep watch and push back if valve goes out of bounds?

    • bogdugg@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      15
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think it’s better to reframe the question as “Are there downsides to Valve’s PC market dominance?” or “How is Steam’s 30% cut different from Xbox or Playstation?”

      For the latter: it’s worth noting that Microsoft and Sony sell their hardware at a loss, and make up the difference through software, so there are obvious developer benefits to the 70-30 split. For Steam, the equivalent value-add for developers is only the platform itself, and I would wager for many of those developers the biggest reason for selling on Steam is not the feature set - though obviously useful - but because that’s where the users are.

      So, users get a feature-rich distribution platform, and developers (and by extension users) pay a tax to access those users. So the question is, how fair is that tax, and what effect does that tax have on the games that get made? Your view on that is going to depend on what you want from Steam, but more relevant I think is how much Steam costs to operate. How much of that 30% cut feeds back into Steam? My guess is not much; though I could be wrong.

      But anyway, let’s imagine you took away half the 30% cut. Where does that money go? Well, one of two places: either your pocket, or the developers (or publishers) pocket (depending on how the change affects pricing). The benefits to your pocket are obvious, but what if developers just charge the same price? Well, as far as I’m aware, a lot of games are just not profitable - I read somewhere that for every 10 games, 7 fail, 2 break even, and 1 is a huge success - so my personal view is that this is an industry where developers need all the help they can get. If that extra 15% helps them stay afloat long enough to put out the next thing without selling their soul to Microsoft or Sony or whoever is buying up companies these days, and Steam isn’t severely negatively impacted, I’d call that a win.

      But of course, that won’t happen, because Steam has no reason to change. That’s where the users are, and they are fine with the status quo.

      • Magiccupcake@startrek.website
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think you undersell how feature rich steam is for both users and developers.

        They offer community forums, reviews, mods through workshop, cloud saves, automatic controller support, openish vr ecosystem (epic cant even do vr, if you buy a vr game you likely need to use steamvr anyway), broad payment and currency options, regional pricing and guidelines, remote play, and more I’m sure.

        This is much more feature rich than even console platforms, so I think the 30% fee is justified.

        And they do this all without really locking down their ecosystem.

        • rambaroo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          Why would developers care about steams “features”? That’s Valve’s problem, not theirs. 30% is fucking highway robbery for a distributor. The only reason they get away with it is because they’re a monopoly and devs have no choice but to publish games there. It’s crazy that you can’t see that.

          • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Developers care about steamworks, making cloud saves, multi-player, matchmaking, voice chat, anti cheat, drm, microtransactions, user authentication, and more significantly easier than doing it yourself, it’s also basically free to use where many alternatives only support some features for significant fees.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            30% is fucking highway robbery for a distributor. The only reason they get away with it is because they’re a monopoly and devs have no choice but to publish games there.

            *googles “epic games exclusives”*

            “no choice”… huh…

        • bogdugg@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          8
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t dispute they provide value, but why 30%? Why not 35? Or 25? or 80? or 3? or 29? I don’t know.

          I’m curious, how much of that 30% do you think feeds back into making Steam better and keeping it running?

          • Zorque@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Probably more than a public company, that has to pay dividends and prove worth every quarter.

          • DrQuint@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            but why 30%, why not

            To which the response is: I don’t care. I would have paid the same amount of money for games no matter which of the stupid funny numbers you picked out.

            The beginning and end of how much one should care is “are the devs happy with it? Is that the standard for digital stores as well?”. And the answer to both is Yes, so the concerns are abated.

            If it opens them to driven out of the market by a more generous competitor: Cool. But that alone doesn’t impact me, the costumer. The generous competitor needs to do more. And you know, they know that. That’s why Tim gave me so many free games.

            No you wouldn’t.

            Immortals of Aveum cost 70 monetary-whatevers and killed its studio and no one commented on it. It would have cost 60 whatevers two years ago and still would have killed its studio. But if they did 70, they would have torpedoed that price point in the news circles as a death sentence. They only had the gall because literally no one dared release a game for 70 till Activision did it and others like Sony and Nintendo followed along.

            Steams share has zero impact on my wallet. The market is dictated by things way more arbitrary. Everyone with brain knows this.

            • bogdugg@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              “are the devs happy with it? Is that the standard for digital stores as well?”. And the answer to both is Yes

              I fully disagree. On the first point, do developers accept it? Sure. That does not at all mean they are happy about it. Money is tight for games, and I guarantee you every developer would much prefer to take a bigger piece of the pie.

              To your second point, it is the standard but it is not universal. Epic Games Store takes 12%. Itch.io defaults to 10%. Google Play Store takes 15% on the first $1 million in revenue.

              But that alone doesn’t impact me, the consumer.

              I don’t believe this is entirely true. The more cash flow developers have, the more stable they are as companies, and the more able they are to put out good games. You are indirectly impacted because a larger tax on developers means fewer, or lower quality, games that get released.

              Steams share has zero impact on my wallet.

              Disagree, unless you exclusively play AAA.

              Edit: Actually I’ve changed my mind on this. I mostly agree the percentage cut doesn’t affect the optimal price point.

      • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        So, users get a feature-rich distribution platform, and developers (and by extension users) pay a tax to access those users. So the question is, how fair is that tax, and what effect does that tax have on the games that get made? Your view on that is going to depend on what you want from Steam, but more relevant I think is how much Steam costs to operate. How much of that 30% cut feeds back into Steam? My guess is not much; though I could be wrong.

        But anyway, let’s imagine you took away half the 30% cut. Where does that money go? Well, one of two places: either your pocket, or the developers (or publishers) pocket (depending on how the change affects pricing). The benefits to your pocket are obvious, but what if developers just charge the same price? Well, as far as I’m aware, a lot of games are just not profitable - I read somewhere that for every 10 games, 7 fail, 2 break even, and 1 is a huge success - so my personal view is that this is an industry where developers need all the help they can get. If that extra 15% helps them stay afloat long enough to put out the next thing without selling their soul to Microsoft or Sony or whoever is buying up companies these days, and Steam isn’t severely negatively impacted, I’d call that a win.

        Would you claim that devs who also port their game to console are guilty as the consoles also take 30% cut? The entire console scene is basically what Valve is doing, except valve decides to compete on an open platform instead of a walled garden.

        • bogdugg@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          The consoles justify the amount they take more because they are selling hardware at a loss to bring in users, so as a developer, you are seeing direct, tangible, and ongoing benefits to giving the manufacturers a cut. Every console cycle, there is renewed investment in the ecosystem to keep users interested.

          For digital platforms, the continued investment in the platform itself is both less tangible, and I would wager less overall (though we can’t know this for Steam because we don’t have access to numbers like that). The longer Steam continues as a platform, the more true this is, unless you believe that Steam will continue to improve at the same rate. I don’t see my interaction with Steam being much different 5 years from now as it is today, so it is less obvious to me that such at steep rate is justified.

          Like, imagine they “perfected” Steam. They made all the features users could ever want, and there becomes no reason to make any more changes. Should they keep charging the same rate? Or, maybe a better way to frame it, would be that rather than investing some of that 30% rate into improving the platform, they invest in developers themselves to make better products, because it’s the only place left to make the platform better than it was before. This would be equivalent to just lowering the rate across the board, in my opinion.

          • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Not all consoles sell at a loss. Nintendo outright sells for profit, and the ones that didnt are the WiiU and thr Virtual Boy, and I don’t have to remind you how those sold.

            And we are also at an age where even Valve is in the console space. They sell the steamdeck at a severely lower price point compared to its competion.

            Look at the ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, Aya Neos entire catelog, GPD Win 4, Ayn Loki and a bunch more.

            The argument about consoles selling it at subsidized price is justifyable means your saying Valve is in the right to given they are now in that market.

            • bogdugg@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              This is an interesting perspective, and gave me something to think about!

              I don’t think the Steam Deck is quite there in terms of adoption to justify an across the board tax. The order of operations is kind of reversed, where Steam is reinvesting money made from previous sales towards R&D and Hardware ambitions, rather than using the Steam Deck to bring in users. But if you’re developer that benefits from the Steam Deck’s existence, or saw a sales bump from Steam Deck sales, or some other benefit like that, I agree it’s a pretty good trade-off in that case.

              Nintendo is a bit different because they sort of focus on their own thing and everyone else is secondary. Something like 80% of software sales for Nintendo platforms are first party, so it’s mostly a Nintendo machine. Frankly, I think they should take less of a cut. Indies do really well on Nintendo though. They have a kind of pseudo-monopoly of a younger casual gamer demographic, and they maintain that user base by putting out great software. It is an interesting counterpoint though.

      • stillwater@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Retail stores get a 30% cut from a game sale. Console manufacturers get a further $10 in licensing fees from that sale price, on top of the retail fee. That license cost is what goes to closing that loss leading pricing of the consoles. The retail fee they can charge through their digital storefronts is new to them but only helps them pay down their gap quicker, but they are also still taking that further $10 of licensing on top of the 30%.

        That’s why some PC games are $10 cheaper than their console versions.

        • bogdugg@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Is there a source for the $10 fee for digital releases? I’d love to read more about it, had trouble finding it.