Blåhaj PieFed72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
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www.gamesindustry.biz/72-of-devs-believe-steam-…
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.
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.
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:
Oh, and they aren’t biased at all, I’m sure.
From the referenced paper:
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:
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.
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.
I would say that while it is a monopoly, it monopolizes something which doesn’t make much sense to be decentralized. Having multiple launchers for games, and making some games exclusive to some launchers but not others etc. is annoying as hell and is only a good thing for the executives and investors behind these companies at the expense of everyone consuming the product.
Having one corporation be in control of the distribution platform for most if not all games is also very troubling, but until it’s possible to have a democratically owned open source distribution platform, there’s no other good way.