Comment by simonh
4 years ago
The situation on Android shows us that consumers like consolidation and they like walled gardens and simple choices. These things benefit them. Plenty of Android phones come with 2 or 3 app stores. One for the carrier, one for the vendor and Google Play Store. There plenty are others as well, but the market has spoken. Even Epic had to fold and move to Play Store. Maybe Google played dirty, but I think it's perfectly clear users benefit from consolidation. They like the simplicity of having everything in one store and when they change devices they just set up their Play Store account and there everything is. That's a massive advantage to them. Fragmentation is a nightmare.
Developers have come to the same conclusion, it's to their benefit for the customers to all be on one store with one set of policies and features so that's where the majority of the apps go.
So what are you going to do, force Apple to become a fragmented Android copy with multiple stores and side loading that a tiny fraction of techies actually use? Those people already have that on Android if they want it. Honestly you'd just screw over Apple and a few other people over a principle hardly anybody actually cares about or benefits from. It certainly wouldn't make any significant commercial difference. We ran that experiment and the results are in.
The idea that users would all be side loading apps and developers would be making far more money having their apps spread across 5+ different stores that would compete down to lower prices is delusional. If that were the case, why has this not happened on Windows or MacOS where side loading is actually the default yet Steam, GOG, etc still charge 30%? It's crystal clear that's just the split the market has converged on through a competitive process. After all Steam has competed from day one with a default split of nothing for direct downloads from the software publisher but has thrived charging 30%. If that's not direct market validation I don't know what is.
Are people buying software through steam because they like the consolidated experience? Or because they trust it more than an exe from a random website? Or because steam already has their credit card info stored? Or because it's the only place to obtain certain games?
It's some combination of these things (and some others I haven't considered), and the value all of this added up, minus steam's downsides, is apparently worth an extra 30% if this cost is sufficiently hidden from the consumer.
Would people still pay a 30% fee if the store were forced to actually show the fee, and there were alternatives? I'm not so sure.
You're right that there's some value there, but it's probably closer to 3% than 30%.
There are alternatives, you can sell the software directly from your own website. Publishers have decided that the reach the store gives them is worth the 30%.
Fragmentation and walled gardens are a false dichotomy. Steam is actually a great example of this, there are many other stores (Humble Bundle, Fanatical, GMG, whatever) that sell you Steam keys so you can keep your game library in one comfortable place.
Yes Steam are still perfectly comfortable staying at 30% as I said it's clearly a market driven level.
Steam keys sold off steam do not give valve a cut.
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> The idea that users would all be side loading apps and developers would be making far more money having their apps spread across 5+ different stores that would compete down to lower prices is delusional. If that were the case, why has this not happened on Windows or MacOS where side loading is actually the default yet Steam, GOG, etc still charge 30%?
That has happened. The majority of my 20,000 Steam games were acquired from outside of Steam.
You are in a teeny tiny minority. I made it clear I'm talking about the mass market. These arguments are made under the false presence (or delusion) that they are in the interests of the broad base of users who would get lower prices. They would not, we can see that clearly from the Android and PC games markets.
These arguments are being made by a tiny minority for the benefit of a small community of techies who already have platforms available to them that work they way you want and take advantage of it, like you do. It's like coupon clippers insisting on a law that all products sold must some with discount coupons.
> You are in a teeny tiny minority
Minority? Probably. Tiny? Absolutely not.
Here [0] is a breakdown of 70 popular Steam games by the source of purchase for their reviewers as of a year ago. About 28% of all Steam purchases happen outside of Steam itself, with Valve getting a 0% cut. Note that for many games a majority of reviewers did not purchase it on Steam itself.
0: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ICv-UE4i651yMkpD...
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For you. You don’t speak for the rest of the market though, and Steam comfortable holds its lead for good reason.
> You don’t speak for the rest of the market though
Do you?
> Steam comfortable holds its lead for good reason
Yes. One of those good reasons is that it allows people to purchase Steam games without buying them on Steam, thus avoiding having to subsidise Valve's 30% cut.
There's an absolutely gigantic ecosystem around buying Steam games from first-party (developer) and third-party (marketplace/bundle) sellers. I don't think you realise that it's a perfect example against the point you're making. There's enough competition from the ability to "side-load" games into Steam that it's very common to get some of the greatest games ever made for under a dollar, when their MSRP is up to two orders of magnitude higher.
Side note but what does one do with 20,000 games? Do you actually play this many?
Genuine curiosity, not trying to troll or anything.
I've 100% completed about 2500 of them, so I don't have a great completion rate but it's not like they're just there for show. I've probably played around 6000 total.
A very large number of them I would not have bought individually, but they came in a bundle with other games I wanted.
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