A community for news and discussion about the steam video game digital distribution service
This headline needs to stop being posted as if it is fact. A company that offers to push game sales through channels other than steam polled business managers at their customers to ask if Steam is a monopoly. That isn't 72% of all game devs (or even all game dev companies). It is specifically the customers of a platform aimed at selling away from Steam.
This is like polling c-suite members of car manufacturing companies to see if we should all drive more.
ITT: people who don't know the legal definition of a monopoly, and are going off the Hasbro definition.
But don't worry fellow gamers, the Trump administration would never allow the FTC to enforce antitrust law.
Guys, steam is a corporation. They aren't your friends or anything. Stop defending them without doing research. Market dominance is not a good thing, whichever way you slice it.
I agree in principle but all the world is grey and “enemy of my enemy” and all that.
The actual monopoly posing the most threat is Microsoft and Windows. Valve knows that they are the underdog. So Valve supports Linux and Open Source and supports it like a non-monopolist would (because they are fighting the Windows monopoly). We all benefit from their efforts.
Zooming in, we benefit from a strong Valve because their strength becomes our strength (for now).
Zooming out, I agree that Valve’s position as the de facto App Store for games makes them dangerous. At some point, they may become a bigger problem than Microsoft. That is not today, in my view, but we need to be mindful. Valve is not our friend. But Valve is a better friend than Microsoft.
A monopoly would imply that you have no choice, which is not only incorrect in a way where you cant have other stores, but also incorrect in a way where other stores dont already exist.
Steam is only a monopoly in a sense, where the competition repeatedly shoots itself in the feet, and then blames anyone but themselves
One could argue Steam is a case of monopoly that is mostly "caused" because the users keep choosing it even though there are plenty of options to buy from. But, as you pointed out, most of those options don't offer the quality of service Steam does, even the ones that can financially invest to bring them on par, it really feels like they don't want to. Like Ubisoft store is shit, but people have to download it because their game only works through it even when you buy from Steam
Valve is a “natural monopoly”.
Yeah, I'm still waiting for a GOG Linux client, a Uplay Linux client, a Linux client from Epic etc.
Steam being the most ethical and practical choice is not a monopoly.
These devs aren't lining up to release their games on the Epic store or itch.io, they want their games on the marketplace where most of the users shop, and the users aren't locked into steam either, they just prefer it.
Steam forced publishers to ensure that the cheapest price for their game would be on steam. No other marketplace was allowed to have a cheaper price. If that isn't anticompetitive, I dont know what is.
They are not saying you cannot list elsewhere. They are just saying they have to get your best price.
If Walmart says you can only sell pickles on their shelves if you sell them pickles at your best price, is that anti-competitive?
As a consumer that is a good thing for me.
That is a very shortsighted and egoistic view. Market dominance brought us Google (ubersurveillance), Apple (e-waste production galore), Microsoft, Oracle, Shell, a bunch of "AAA" studios that set the standards for treatment of developers and other staff, and much more.
As a consumer, I want more than just a cheap product. Looking at the price alone is literally a one dimensional view of a complex problem. For example, back in the olden days you could also say "I got cheap cotton" and completely ignore that it was picked by slaves.
Market dominance is a bad thing. No question.
That said, there is a very big difference between a company illegally creating or protecting a monopoly and a company naturally dominating an industry through consumer preference.
I do not use Chrome because I agrees with your thoughts on market dominance. And, despite recent legal opinions, Google does abuse their position somewhat with search deals and the like. But, at its heart, the issue is that the vast majority of people prefer Chrome and choose it for that reason.
If consumers create (and maintain) a monopoly through preference, it is not up to the government to fix it. There are many viable browser choices that are all able to effectively get to market. People choose Chrome. I do not like it but I do not blame Google for making a browser people like.
Steam is in much the same boat. As a consumer, I have many choices. Most consumers choose Valve. Again, I cannot really be mad at them for being better.
Sometimes, it is up to us.
I don't care about the developer experience, clearly the things Valve wants are acceptable because developers keep accepting it.
Valve is a private company dedicated to the customer. If that changes one day, my opinion will change.
If other companies want a slice of the pie they can offer a competitive service. But they don't
I like cheap games, i prefer a situation where I can pay less.
I like all my games being on one account.
Honestly, the people who whine about Steam should go be mad about a real problem.
Lol
XD
Devs want to release their game on as many platforms as possible, but your game is always somewhere in the steam ecosystem in the backend.
Uh, interesting take seeing as how they could just host a website to distribute, or go through a site like itch.io.
From the article:
That's according to a new whitepaper from PC distribution platform Rokky titled 'The State of PC Game Distribution.'
Oh, and they aren't biased at all, I'm sure.
From the referenced paper:
88% of studios say Steam accounts for over 75% of their revenue. 72% feel Steam effectively exists as a monopoly and 53% are concerned about their level of reliance on that single platform.
48% have distributed a title to the Epic Games Store, 30% to marketplaces such as G2A and Kinguin, 38% to e-stores such as Fanatical or Humble Bundle, 10% have distributed with GOG, and 8% with itch.io.
I'm not going to make an account to read their paper, but I'm dubious about the methodology, and they don't seem to understand the definition of the word 'monopoly', when they list so many alternatives in the summary.
And a cherry on top from the blurb on the Rokky site showing in search results:
Rokky has acquired ChinaPlay, unlocking access to over 1M Chinese gamers for global publishers.
Under what definition of the word?
I didn't realize that people choosing 1 option out of several is what defined a monopoly. I'm pretty sure it's when there is no other choice but to use that 1 thing.
You might be "pretty sure" but you're wrong. The people who wrote our carefully thought out antitrust laws didn't just go with the first definition that came to mind.
If you are going to invoke “antitrust laws” to whip out “you’re wrong”, you should make sure you know what you are talking about.
First, let’s assume we are taking about the USA to make this manageable.
Let’s start with a baseline: monopolies are not illegal. Let’s say that again: monopolies are not illegal. If that is your point, “you’re wrong”.
There are many legal monopolies. The government even runs or “licenses” some of them. The US postal service comes to mind.
Second, let’s define monopoly. The word literally means “single seller”. It is only accurate to use it when consumers only have a single choice or where their choices are so constrained that (as a grouo) they effectively have only one viable choice.
Legally, a monopoly is not really an expression of market share but of market power. When we are effectively forced to buy from “one seller”, there is an illegal monopoly.
So, before go further, let’s acknowledge that Valve has competition. Consumers are not “forced” to buy from Valve. They “choose” to buy from Valve as a “preference”. Very, very different.
Now to antitrust laws. Antitrust means anticompetitive practice. This is what the law actually cares about. These laws are intended to prevent “abuse of power” that protects a monopoly from completion. That is what makes a monopoly (legal by default) an “illegal monopoly”.
In fact, the law does not define “monopoly” at all but rather “monopolization”. Monopolization exists when an entity acts to ensure that there are no viable substitutes available that the consumer can choose instead.
If you want to invoke “antitrust laws”, you have to expose the anticompetitive practice and illegal “monopolization” activity. You have not done that. The fact that Valve is winning in the market is not enough for you to dismiss everybody else as wrong.
I am “pretty sure” that the “pretty sure” guy is correct. What does that make you?
What is it about reddit-style social media that brings out the obnoxious le redditeur archetypes? You're just talking out of your ass and being snarky about it. Peak redditing.
Let’s start with a baseline: monopolies are not illegal. Let’s say that again: monopolies are not illegal. If that is your point, “you’re wrong”.
Putting words in my mouth. I didn't say monopolies are illegal, you just made that up to be snarky. The rest of your comment is just you pulling stuff out of your ass with no kind of citation whatsoever.
When the government tries to pursue a case to try and break up a monopoly, they're not trying to prove that the company fits some textbook definition of the word "monopoly". That'd be stupid, and lawyers may be a lot of things, but "stupid" generally isn't one of them.
They start by defining a specific market or markets that the company participates in, showing consumer harms (aka the consumer welfare standard, which actually sucks and the Biden admin was trying to correct, but whatever) by the company's business practices/structure, and recommending remedies, like a break up. So it technically doesn't even have to do with the size of a company or their market share (although that's usually a major component).
So, before we even begin, we can see that this does not really apply to Valve. Valve has competition
Again, this conclusion is based on your incorrect understanding of how antitrust regulation works. So there's no point in me correcting the rest of your post. Instead, I'll summarize and translate it into what I think you actually wanted to say:
"I like Valve and you're a meanie for implying they're doing something bad"
What is it about reddit-style social media that brings out the obnoxious le redditeur archetypes? You're just talking out of your ass and being snarky about it. Peak redditing.
Pot calling the kettle black. 🙄
They do...
And while it doesn't need fixed while Gabe is alive, he ain't gonna live forever.
And Gabe will do a better job of breaking it up in good faith than anyone who comes after, so it should be addressed before it needs to be done.