“Steam will probably still outsell everything else combined by 100x”
Yeah, it’s a monopoly.
That’s not a complaint. It’s not a value judgement. People think the word is automatically negative or criminal, because of how often that market power gets abused - but it is just the label for having that market power. Valve is not a trust. Valve does not do any anti-competitive practices. (Their 30% cut is obscene, but it’s the same obscenity demanded by other monopoly storefronts.) Nonetheless, company after company keeps saying:
This store is the only store that really matters.
If you’re not on this store, you’re probably fucked.
We have a word for that.
Totally agree. They definitely have a monopoly in PC game distribution, but this feels different than most other situations. They are not forcing anything on anyone. This is really the consumer’s choice. The thing is, they offer a great service and consumers don’t really have much to complain about. The only time you would need to complain about something is if you lost your entire steam library. Which is a reminder that you don’t really own these games, you are renting them.
Think about other monopolies. Microsoft has a dominant force in the PC OS. You have other options like MacOS and Linux, but if you wanted to switch from windows to MacOS, you really can’t. Microsoft can force products onto people like edge browser or ads.
Comcast and Cox are monopolies as they normally service specific regional areas and stay out of each other’s way. Because of this, there is no competition when looking for an ISP and both companies generally act on bad practices and milk the consumers for everything they can.
The more you dig deeper into it, you’ll find that all these companies try and fuck over the consumer. The difference with Valve, is that they can fuck over the producer moreso than the consumer. The only other company I can think of that is similar is eBay. eBay is really a monopoly for an auction like or used goods marketplace. The consumer is more protected than the producer.
Tbh, I don’t know the ins and outs of the game development process, but at least for smaller teams and games, 30% seems very reasonable to get your game out there. I am in the process of making a game now and I am fine with that fee and not having to deal with all the headaches. I just want to make a game, publish it, and make some money.
Losing an entire third of your revenue, straight off the top, is egregious. It’s the figure console manufacturers settled on when they had game developers by the balls. Seeing it continue with a company that controls nothing about the platform they serve says a lot about how much power is inherent to simply having a supermajority market share.
Steam shoved its way onto everyone’s computer as mandatory DRM for Half-Life 2. Calling that move “forward-thinking” would not be a compliment.
Taking 1/3 of your revenue when they quadruple it absolutely is not egregious. Steam is the reason you’re capable of making a living selling PC games to begin with.
On top of that, say it is a negative thing right? The hell are we going to do about it, they’re not like Microsoft where they have a crap ton of different divisions that they specialize in.
Their dominance in the market is due to their business choices where they Supply the product of that consumers wanted that no other competitor is willing to bring to the table,
they offer:
- a review/rating system
- a storefront that regularly gives damn good deals
- a mod workshop
- insane Linux support via proton
- a friend system that integrates with the games itself up to stream share and remote play capability
- a achievement system
- a discussion board
- a cosmetic and badge system to encourage people to buy and trade
The closest I’ve seen any other company do for that is epic but they actively shoot themselves in the foot with linux, their deals are absolute shit and while they give consistent free games out their feature set is super lackluster to even EA’s launcher.