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The discussion around Vive vs Rift and Valve vs Oculus is getting more and more emotionally clouded and "good guys vs bad guys" with each passing week. People a

The discussion around Vive vs Rift and Valve vs Oculus is getting more and more emotionally clouded and "good guys vs bad guys" with each passing week. People are letting their own frustration around Oculus' poorly managed launch and non-existent PR affect their perspective on the situation. The fact is that although Oculus is adopting somewhat of a walled garden approach, people entirely overlook that Valve maintains a virtual monopoly on PC games distribution. Sure they aren't as powerful as iOS app store or the Google Play store, but Valve wants the same thing as any other player - to be in a position where you can't avoid selling your content through their channel and to take a big cut of all the sales. Those who attack Oculus for trying to be the one who gets the cut are deluding themselves. Apple, Google, Valve, they all already do this. Further, Oculus doesn't make any money on hardware right now, what can a person expect them to do? Just operate without any intention of ever making a profit? The PC gaming community online can be extremely toxic and idealistic, entirely ignoring business realities.

NKCSS 10y ago
But Valve does so by providing a good platform. You have Origin, which is used mostly because of exclusive titles; most people I know would love to ditch origin for Steam. Value also doesn't have the same approach as Occulus; where Occulus tries to be the iOS Appstore (others not allowed), Valve never had that approach.
- AlexandrB 10y ago
  I would love to ditch both Origin and Valve for GoG which feels like everything I want out of digital distribution for games. GoG also has a more usable desktop app than Steam which suffers from a very overstuffed UI (not unlike iTunes). Although Steam unquestionably dominates AAA game distribution, GoG's selection is great for the kinds of games I'm most interested in these days.
- zanny 10y ago
  Its not like you can get Half Life or DOTA2 outside Steam either (well, Half Life 2 is on the Play store. I guess everyone at some point bows to Ma Google). Every Valve game since HL2 has been Steam exclusive, and uses it for DRM. Since Valve self publishes their own games, can you really blame EA for wanting to do the same with their own DRM system?
kybernetikos 10y ago
> Oculus doesn't make any money on hardware right now, what can a person expect them to do? Just operate without any intention of ever making a profit? This is confusing. If it's true that they make no money on hardware, then you'd expect them to be ecstatic that people want to buy their games (giving them money) without taking their hmd (which supposedly doesn't).
- istorical 10y ago
  They aren't producing the content themselves. They have a few titles that they are funding, but mostly they are working as a distributor through Oculus Home. Most titles are 3rd party. They are trying to start the same business that Valve already has in Steam.
nilkn 10y ago
Maybe I'm not as aware of all the details as others, but it seems to me that Valve has maintained their position by creating an incredible platform and collection of products (Steam itself, Steam Link, the Steam Controller, etc.), not by engaging in anti-consumer practices. For instance, SteamVR has full support for the Rift. The Chaperone features will even work with the Rift. More than that, though, I see very few examples of people being upset about the existence of the Oculus Store. People are upset about hardware exclusivity. Hence... > Further, Oculus doesn't make any money on hardware right now, what can a person expect them to do? I'd expect them to act in such a way as to maximize software sales, which means avoiding hardware exclusivity at all costs. Again, I and most others don't really have a problem with Oculus creating their own store. Sure, it's a bit annoying, but we understand they can't really survive by letting Valve profit off software sales of games they've funded. None of this justifies hardware exclusivity though. This leaves open the question of why they are in fact pursuing hardware exclusivity. I don't have a good answer to that and I'm not sure anyone outside of Oculus does. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that they must have thought that their content was just flat-out better than anything available for the Vive so that it was strong enough to drive both software and hardware sales. Unfortunately, I suspect they were wrong. Their approach backfired and developer support is centering around the Vive now.
- cwyers 10y ago
  I think it's far more likely that they've maintained their position through first-mover advantage than anything else. Steam is a website wrapped in an application that was built before building applications out of websites was cool, and it shows -- what you get is an outdated version of WebKit and a video player that somehow manages to be worse than the one Polygon uses, and Steam doesn't even have "monetization" as an excuse there. They've largely abandoned curation, Early Access and Greenlight are a steady stream of horror stories... there's a large list of things wrong with Steam that nobody at Valve seems to even care about fixing.
  - nilkn 10y ago
    I don't agree. I think the first-mover advantage gave them a big leg up, but people wouldn't have kept using the platform for 12 years if they were relying entirely on that. Competitors like Origin might have had a fighting chance if Valve hadn't constantly been creating a superior suite of products. You mention issues with Early Access and Greenlight, but these seem like trivial problems when compared to how solid the platform is overall. Steam as a platform is just far and away superior to any other choice in the gaming space. I can play any PC game at my desk or in my living room. The interface scales great to a TV screen. The Steam Controller is innovative and incredibly customizable, and it's supported by virtually any game in Steam. SteamVR is very fully developed itself and supports both the Rift and the Vive; it even goes so far as to support Chaperone with the Rift despite the Rift not having any room-scale-tracked controllers yet. It has honestly grown into one of the best software ecosystems I've ever seen by offering functionality that competitors can't even dream of.
pekk 10y ago
It is grossly deceptive to say that Steam has a monopoly on games distribution when a vast number of the games on Steam are also distributed by other channels. I can't name any "Steam exclusives," which is more than I can say for Origin etc. Frankly it's absurd to psychoanalyze Steam, saying that it wants to do what other companies are doing, and not to recognize that if it wanted to do those things it could easily do so.
- errantspark 10y ago
  I have to strongly agree here. Valve is really very nice about this. From the Steamworks FAQ >8. Do you require exclusivity for titles you sell on Steam? >We think you should get your game in front of as many people as you can, therefore we do not require exclusivity on titles.
- istorical 10y ago
  It's not a de jure monopoly, it's a de facto monopoly. When a gamer thinks "I wanna buy this game", 90% of them go immediately to Steam. It's a monopoly in the sense that it's practically financial suicide for a games developer to NOT sell their game through Steam. Whether or not they really "have to" is besides the point if the reality is they'll not make a positive return on their game if they skip out on selling on Steam. A few big publishers like EA avoid this by creating their own alternative stores and just hoping gamers will deal with it and install Origin, but most games studios have no choice but to accept that they're going to lose 30% because the reality is gamers expect to be able to buy any game on Steam.
  - rpgmaker 10y ago
    It's pretty much the same situation that book publishers find themselves in with Amazon. Valve just hasn't shown its scumbag side yet.
- seanwilson 10y ago
  > It is grossly deceptive to say that Steam has a monopoly on games distribution when a vast number of the games on Steam are also distributed by other channels. This is just from observation without statistics, but I feel once people have a decent number of games on Steam (e.g. from lots of cheap purchases from sales) and no other store, they'd rather stick with Steam instead of installing another store app. Even if another store was a little better, the idea of having to install another app and have games split between two interfaces is a big deterrent.

NKCSS 10y ago

But Valve does so by providing a good platform. You have Origin, which is used mostly because of exclusive titles; most people I know would love to ditch origin for Steam. Value also doesn't have the same approach as Occulus; where Occulus tries to be the iOS Appstore (others not allowed), Valve never had that approach.

AlexandrB 10y ago
I would love to ditch both Origin and Valve for GoG which feels like everything I want out of digital distribution for games. GoG also has a more usable desktop app than Steam which suffers from a very overstuffed UI (not unlike iTunes). Although Steam unquestionably dominates AAA game distribution, GoG's selection is great for the kinds of games I'm most interested in these days.
zanny 10y ago
Its not like you can get Half Life or DOTA2 outside Steam either (well, Half Life 2 is on the Play store. I guess everyone at some point bows to Ma Google). Every Valve game since HL2 has been Steam exclusive, and uses it for DRM. Since Valve self publishes their own games, can you really blame EA for wanting to do the same with their own DRM system?

kybernetikos 10y ago

> Oculus doesn't make any money on hardware right now, what can a person expect them to do? Just operate without any intention of ever making a profit? This is confusing. If it's true that they make no money on hardware, then you'd expect them to be ecstatic that people want to buy their games (giving them money) without taking their hmd (which supposedly doesn't).

istorical 10y ago
They aren't producing the content themselves. They have a few titles that they are funding, but mostly they are working as a distributor through Oculus Home. Most titles are 3rd party. They are trying to start the same business that Valve already has in Steam.

nilkn 10y ago

Maybe I'm not as aware of all the details as others, but it seems to me that Valve has maintained their position by creating an incredible platform and collection of products (Steam itself, Steam Link, the Steam Controller, etc.), not by engaging in anti-consumer practices. For instance, SteamVR has full support for the Rift. The Chaperone features will even work with the Rift. More than that, though, I see very few examples of people being upset about the existence of the Oculus Store. People are upset about hardware exclusivity. Hence... > Further, Oculus doesn't make any money on hardware right now, what can a person expect them to do? I'd expect them to act in such a way as to maximize software sales, which means avoiding hardware exclusivity at all costs. Again, I and most others don't really have a problem with Oculus creating their own store. Sure, it's a bit annoying, but we understand they can't really survive by letting Valve profit off software sales of games they've funded. None of this justifies hardware exclusivity though. This leaves open the question of why they are in fact pursuing hardware exclusivity. I don't have a good answer to that and I'm not sure anyone outside of Oculus does. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that they must have thought that their content was just flat-out better than anything available for the Vive so that it was strong enough to drive both software and hardware sales. Unfortunately, I suspect they were wrong. Their approach backfired and developer support is centering around the Vive now.

cwyers 10y ago
I think it's far more likely that they've maintained their position through first-mover advantage than anything else. Steam is a website wrapped in an application that was built before building applications out of websites was cool, and it shows -- what you get is an outdated version of WebKit and a video player that somehow manages to be worse than the one Polygon uses, and Steam doesn't even have "monetization" as an excuse there. They've largely abandoned curation, Early Access and Greenlight are a steady stream of horror stories... there's a large list of things wrong with Steam that nobody at Valve seems to even care about fixing.
- nilkn 10y ago
  I don't agree. I think the first-mover advantage gave them a big leg up, but people wouldn't have kept using the platform for 12 years if they were relying entirely on that. Competitors like Origin might have had a fighting chance if Valve hadn't constantly been creating a superior suite of products. You mention issues with Early Access and Greenlight, but these seem like trivial problems when compared to how solid the platform is overall. Steam as a platform is just far and away superior to any other choice in the gaming space. I can play any PC game at my desk or in my living room. The interface scales great to a TV screen. The Steam Controller is innovative and incredibly customizable, and it's supported by virtually any game in Steam. SteamVR is very fully developed itself and supports both the Rift and the Vive; it even goes so far as to support Chaperone with the Rift despite the Rift not having any room-scale-tracked controllers yet. It has honestly grown into one of the best software ecosystems I've ever seen by offering functionality that competitors can't even dream of.

pekk 10y ago

It is grossly deceptive to say that Steam has a monopoly on games distribution when a vast number of the games on Steam are also distributed by other channels. I can't name any "Steam exclusives," which is more than I can say for Origin etc. Frankly it's absurd to psychoanalyze Steam, saying that it wants to do what other companies are doing, and not to recognize that if it wanted to do those things it could easily do so.

errantspark 10y ago
I have to strongly agree here. Valve is really very nice about this. From the Steamworks FAQ >8. Do you require exclusivity for titles you sell on Steam? >We think you should get your game in front of as many people as you can, therefore we do not require exclusivity on titles.
istorical 10y ago
It's not a de jure monopoly, it's a de facto monopoly. When a gamer thinks "I wanna buy this game", 90% of them go immediately to Steam. It's a monopoly in the sense that it's practically financial suicide for a games developer to NOT sell their game through Steam. Whether or not they really "have to" is besides the point if the reality is they'll not make a positive return on their game if they skip out on selling on Steam. A few big publishers like EA avoid this by creating their own alternative stores and just hoping gamers will deal with it and install Origin, but most games studios have no choice but to accept that they're going to lose 30% because the reality is gamers expect to be able to buy any game on Steam.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  It's pretty much the same situation that book publishers find themselves in with Amazon. Valve just hasn't shown its scumbag side yet.
seanwilson 10y ago
> It is grossly deceptive to say that Steam has a monopoly on games distribution when a vast number of the games on Steam are also distributed by other channels. This is just from observation without statistics, but I feel once people have a decent number of games on Steam (e.g. from lots of cheap purchases from sales) and no other store, they'd rather stick with Steam instead of installing another store app. Even if another store was a little better, the idea of having to install another app and have games split between two interfaces is a big deterrent.