Comment by sellyme
4 years ago
> 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...
Reviewers are a tiny minority of users and there's no reason to suspect they are typical.
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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.
Maybe not a great completion rate respective to the amount of games you've got but probably (surely?) with respect to other gamers! If someone asked you to pick your favourite three...?
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