Comment by whytevuhuni
3 days ago
They’re not saints, especially with the games distribution platform monopoly they’re sitting on top of, but...
I really think Valve have become the de-facto owners of the “don’t be evil” motto nowadays, even if they don’t advertise themselves as such.
> They’re not saints, especially with the games distribution platform monopoly they’re sitting on top of
They got and have maintained that monopoly (I'll let others debate the merits of that wording) by being very very good to their users, which doesn't make the existence of the monopoly evidence that they aren't saints. If they were maintaining it through anticompetitive means, sure, but I've never seen anyone claim that they are, even Epic (who would definitely be making noise if they thought they could get anyone to listen).
The desktop video gaming ecosystem is in perhaps the best shape possible: there's one clear winner at the moment who makes all customers very happy, with a few runners up hedging against that winner becoming abusive after all. If Steam became worse than Epic it wouldn't take long for Epic to overtake them, but as long as it's not worse it's nice that everyone has agreed on a standard platform.
> by being very very good to their users
For example, I still don't use Epic. And I've probably even paid on Steam for games that Epic gave away for free.
What's worrying is Steam has enough mass to preclude me from buying games on GoG to a point. Linux support, for one. Frictionless playing on a Deck if i choose to get one in the future, for two. Steam built in streaming, for three.
I bought GoG first for a couple years, but now I'm agnostic again. Esp with games that have Linux versions.
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Still, the only games you really own are those you've downloaded the crack for. Unless they're from GoG and DRM free.
And only if you have a good backup strategy :)
> [...] by being very very good to their users [...]
Helps that they don't have to be very very good to shareholders that don't give a fuck about games and just want money. I'm not really looking forward to find out what happens once Gabe passes on control of the company.
> If they were maintaining it through anticompetitive means, sure, but I've never seen anyone claim that they are
They did get sued for having "anticompetitive restraints on pricing" and "Federal Judge John C. Coughenour ruled that those claims were credible and that Steam gamers can claim compensation for Valve's illegal monopoly, but gamers, unlike developers, must file individual arbitrations to do so."
So, yes, it's been claimed and legally found that they have at least some anticompetitive practices, at least in the USA.
(Quoted text is from https://www.bucherlawfirm.com/steam-case-explained)
I did somehow miss this lawsuit, but this is an advertisement for the law firm, not actual documentation of the ruling, because the ruling hasn't been issued yet. The wording is very precise here: the judge ruled that those claims were credible and allowed the case to move forward. That is not the same thing as the judge siding with the plaintiffs.
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Yeah, when you wanna be evil, be evil to devs. They are stuck on two fronts and gamers are already pre-disposed to blame them for any problems anyway.
>If they were maintaining it through anticompetitive
Well we know they are now thanks to the lawsuits shedding light in the long known pricing parity clauses. Anyone asking "why isn't this game cheaper on Epic if take take a smaller cut" now has their answer. Without risking any dev's NDA.
Does Epic take a smaller cut for the store? I know it becomes exorbitant to lease their engine, UDK, since they take a percentage depending on the licensing contract you've signed.
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I find it funny that every time other publishers try to recreate Steam with their own catalogues, a good chunk of gamers (myself included) just refuse to buy "exclusives" on other platforms, to the point they eventually crawl back to Steam. EA held out for a LONG time. I broke my reluctance only once because I wanted to play the latest FarCry game, but otherwise, I've kept all my games on Steam. They eventually caved too.
What's also interesting is some games will unlock for you if you buy them from their own stores, like the Elder Scrolls Online MMO will unlock on Steam for you if you just link your Steam account.
My only annoyance with them is with Valve for not making new games / franchises. They clearly have a good talent pool, but they're so much slower than Nintendo it feels like in this regard. They're finally adding a new game, but its just a Team Fortress spiritual successor.
Deadlock is absolutely not a Team Fortress spiritual successor, it has much much more in common with Dota 2 than TF2, and is really full of interesting features and polish for where it's at in its development.
In some ways, it's because valve caved and did the equivalent of tax cuts for the rich. You have revenue more than like, 25 million/yr as a publisher and you reduce your infamous 30% cut to 20%.
Im sure at thst point it's more worth considering.
Steam isn't really a monopoly though, everyone is free to use whatever marketplace they choose on PC. Steam's just the best one.
And there are tons. Epic, EA, Ubi Play - they are pretty shitty.
Gog is the only one I would say is on par with Steam, but they have a different niche. Still, Valve is on top and not because they hinder the competition, but because the competition likes to shoot their feet. Often.
It's economies of scale. I strongly feel "just grab it on steam," which my friends say, is colloquially equivalent to "grab a band-aid".
Both Steam and Band-Aid are brand names.
Same with Microsoft in 90's
Microsoft used its influence over OEMs to stifle their competition in the browser market. This blog post is about how Valve are very much not doing that.
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Unlike other corporations, they actually didn't really do all that much to make it a monopoly though. It's kind of an organic monopoly simply by being better than everything else, by a wide margin.
There's not much "lock-in" apart from the games one owns on the platform; and the social aspects of steam are mostly negligible or niche - sure there's the friendlist, but no gamer I know uses steam voice-chat so the friendlist is mostly replicated in discord and similar anyway.
The library one amasses is a huge lock-in though, you’re downplaying it
I don't see it as lock-in as you don't have to keep buying games from Steam - you can just buy games from other places if you want and then have multiple libraries.
How do you qualify them as a monopoly?
I have 3 different non-Steam game stores and another 3 or 4 non-Steam game-specific launchers on my PC.
>How do you qualify them as a monopoly?
If you're a game dev, small or big it doesn't matter, and your game isn't on Steam, it might as well not exist. The sales and exposure of a game on Steam dwarf all other alternate PC storefronts. Even Ubisoft caved in and released their games on Steam.
Monopoly doesn't mean being the only game in town, you can have 100 other competitors, but if your competitors have <10% market share and you have >90% then you're basically a monopoly.
>If you're a game dev, small or big it doesn't matter, and your game isn't on Steam, it might as well not exist
That's an exaggeration.
World of Warcraft, COD, League of Legends, all exist just fine. For brand new games, The Bazaar is doing very well and they're using their own launcher.
(Slightly off-topic, but The Bazaar is really good, for anyone who likes card-based auto-battler games! Highly recommend.)
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Not only is Steam not a monopoly, TFA mentions how it’s possible to easily install alternative app stores on the Steam Deck.
It’s not just factually wrong to call them a monopoly, it’s uncharitable given that they are not engaging in anticompetitive practices despite being in a position (and arguably having the right) to do so.
I bought a Steam Deck OLED last year, and it's honestly astounding to me how well it both provides an amazing out-of-the-box experience for both the "gaming mode" Steam interface and the "desktop mode" with a regular Linux desktop without sacrificing basically any customization. It's a glorified tablet that in my baggiest pair of jeans I can just barely fit into my pocket, and somehow probably the most realistic attempt I've seen at making something suitable for the mythical "year of the Linux desktop", which wasn't even the goal!
It's also so clear to me in retrospect how long they've been building up to something like this. Investing in Wine and developing proton to make running Windows games on Linux as frictionless as possible, dipping their toes in hardware with much less ambitious projects like the Steam link and the controller for it so that they weren't going in without any experience as a company dealing with physical products...I can't imagine that this would have been able to pull for for most companies due to how much they had to be willing to invest in long-term endeavors that couldn't be guaranteed to succeed. I don't think it's that much of an exaggeration to say that they might have single-handedly lifted up Linux gaming to the point where I'll never end up using Windows on a personal machine again, and that's because they put so much time and effort into the tooling for running the games independent of their distribution network. At this point, I probably would have been willing to forgive them for releasing the Steam Deck as a locked-down device, but instead they went ahead the made it pretty much indistinguishable from my laptop and desktop in terms of how much I can change or remove things. There have been so many discussions about whether the App Store should be considered a monopoly or not on iOS, and if there's not consensus on that, I can't even fathom how someone could make the argument that Steam is.
> given that they are not engaging in anticompetitive practices
Well, not quite. They did get sued for having "anticompetitive restraints on pricing" and "Federal Judge John C. Coughenour ruled that those claims were credible and that Steam gamers can claim compensation for Valve's illegal monopoly, but gamers, unlike developers, must file individual arbitrations to do so."
(Their ToS wouldn't allow gamers to form a class action, but developers were apparently allowed to.)
So, perhaps not all good.
(From https://www.bucherlawfirm.com/steam-case-explained)
IIRC their big TOS clause they had you sign in October flipped it around. So I think now gamers can make a class action.
This was in defiance of the fact that some lawyers were arranging a mass arbitration lawsuit over this stuff. So Valve is flipping the table hoping to evade that.
They have an implicit most favored nation clause which is by definition anti-competitive.
Valve takes 30%. You can’t, in practice, sell your game on Steam and on another store at a lower price. That’s anticompetitive.
Downvote me if you want. But I recommend reading the transcripts from the Wolfire Games antitrust lawsuit against Valve before you do! They’re not a good look for Valve to say the least.
> Valve takes 30%. You can’t, in practice, sell your game on Steam and on another store at a lower price.
Note the use of ‘store’ here. You can sell your game on your own website for a lower price.
One example is Factorio, that is cheaper on factorio.com than it is on Steam, Gog, or Humble. Steam, Gog, and Humble all sell at the same price, however.
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I'm genuinely curious. If that's the case, how is it that I have bought dozens of games on the humblebundle store (for Steam) that were far cheaper than the retail price on Steam itself?
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I hope Gabe Newell outlives me, because I don't want to see Valve go down the road of other game studios...
My main long term worry with Steam is that Gaben will die and then Valve will IPO.
The spectre of a post-IPO Half Life 3 is something which fills me with dread.
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My bigger problem with Valve is their unregulated underage gambling platform that they could shutdown in a second but they don't because $ $ $
> They’re not saints, especially with the games distribution platform monopoly they’re sitting on top of
They are a monopoly, but it doesn't look to me that they are taking particular advantage of the position. I buy mostly indie games, so I may be out of the loop, but what are they doing that makes them "not saints" ? (Expecially in relation to their market share)
I believe saints would implement some sort of distributed platform that others could interoperate with, by sharing the launcher’s list of games (e.g. have Epic games automatically appear on the list), share the list of friends and achievements between platforms, and so on.
Break the network effect, and incentivise things that work against it. Implement open protocols rather than walled gardens.
Allow other platforms to truly have a chance.
Saints sadly have no place in the capitalistic world we live in though. If they exist, they are quickly outcompeted.
Saints wouldn’t have DRM, a-la GOG
Isn't it kind of a bloodsport to get into the midweek madness or seasonal sales? It's like curated playlists in the music apps but for games.
Anecdotally I've heard it really does help to get on those Steam lists.
They profit off getting kids addicted to gambling. Is that not evil?
While I don't disagree with you I also don't think Valve is particularly bad in this area. Valve's games are not made for younger kids and Steam's parental controls are excellent.
Mobile games, especially Roblox, are a lot worse because they target much younger children with less parental control.
Right. There is 1 good thing about Steam (it can be summarized to the point of openness), and the rest is evil. I don't get the article.
They have no morals with how they make money. No morals in politics. They are running a monopoly with a 30% cut.
How is that a "do no evil" company? Because you can install an app from Epic? Give me a break...
By the low standards set by other companies in similar positions I think they're doing quite well.
Gabe Newell became a Microsoft millionaire decided to have a company who did things his way. Turns out he’s quite an ethical guy.
They have done absolutely nothing to be a monopoly. The only reason they are at the top is that their competition consistently keeps shooting themselves in the foot.