13 ms·

I wish steam didn't have an effective monopoly on PC video game distribution. It was basically forced on us when CS 1.6 required it. But people will choose the

by z_open 3y ago

I wish steam didn't have an effective monopoly on PC video game distribution. It was basically forced on us when CS 1.6 required it. But people will choose the option even slightly more convenient for them against ethical costs. I frequently see people here justifying chrome over Firefox due to a really small feature relative to maintaining a healthier web.

snickerbockers 3y ago
Steam isn't anywhere near a monopoly lol.
FredPret 3y ago
Devil’s advocate: Is it always unethical to buy something supplied by a monopoly? Is convenience an ethical good, especially convenience delivered on a mass scale?
- akira2501 3y ago
  > Is it always unethical to buy something supplied by a monopoly? Never, it's just unethical to operate one. > Is convenience an ethical good I feel like this could only be true if your life was in actual danger when lacking that convenience. This is possibly the wrong question anyways, I'd ask if the externalized costs of that convenience are small enough to justify the imputed good of the service. Which is why we can tolerate natural monopolies where collective safety is involved, such as electrical distribution, but shouldn't where it isn't, such as video game distribution. > especially convenience delivered on a mass scale? What special ethical properties does this provide?
  - wvenable 3y ago
    > Never, it's just unethical to operate one. Is it? If you simply have no competition, you're running a monopoly. That doesn't seem like an unethical situation.
    - diffeomorphism 3y ago
      That seems like frictionless spherical cows. Having a monopoly might happen for a very short time by being first, keeping one....
      - shagie 3y ago
        The issue isn't having a monopoly (which Steam doesn't) but rather doing anti-competitive things to maintain the monopoly. Having a good product that people want and prefer to buy isn't anti-competitive. Establishing exclusive contracts with publishers and preventing something from being sold somewhere else for less is anti-competitive. I don't find it reasonable to claim that Steam is a monopoly in the PC gaming space (there might be an argument for it if one were to try to limit it to "games distribution platforms that run on Linux"). And even assuming that they did have a monopoly, they aren't using anti-competitive techniques to maintain it.
        diffeomorphism 3y ago
        Correct and nobody claimed that.
        shagie 3y ago
        There is a statement further up in the comment tree that states ".. it's just unethical to operate [a monopoly]." I'm trying to clarify that it's not unethical to have a monopoly, nor even maintain one - it is only unethical to maintain one in ways that are anticompetitive (and making the best product isn't anticompetitive).
  - FredPret 3y ago
    Convenience is an ethical good because it saves either time, energy, or thought, all of which are limited resources. If a monopoly makes something more convenient for hundreds of millions of people, think of the species-wide savings. Add up all conveniences, and you get real progress. For instance, many women in Africa are in charge of providing water and clean laundry for their households - not agreeing, just stating the facts. These two things are almost a full-time job if done by hand. If things ever progressed to the point where African countries have mass-scale running water and washing machines, think of how hundreds of millions of adults suddenly have time and energy to do something else. Now that's an extreme example, but the point stands. Making things convenient for others requires hard work upfront building systems and is to be encouraged.
ttoinou 3y ago
It was basically forced on us when CS 1.6 required it. Huh, they're the one who developed this video game in the first place
- ownagefool 3y ago
  CS was a half life mod that valve bought, so it's half-true. Reality is almost everyone abandoned PC gaming for a decade+ in favour of consoles. Valve and steam were the only real player, which is why they're in the position they're in. I took an shining to GOG, but the the Linux situation just reaffirmed how I buy my games.
pjmlp 3y ago
There is always the Windows Store and XBox games, or plain old physical boxes. I never used Steam, nor plan to. There isn't time to play everything.
- iforgotpassword 3y ago
  > or plain old physical boxes Not anymore. Or hardly anymore. Often these contain a barely working game if at all, but might even just contain a download code for steam, origin etc. And then there are a lot of games that release exclusively on steam. Oxygen not included comes to mind.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Depends on the game, additionally there are plenty of 2nd hand fun games to chose from.
- flohofwoe 3y ago
  Did they finally fix the problem on Windows Store that large game downloads simply don't work? I actually thought they just gave up when the Microsoft 1st party games started showing up on Steam.
jimbob45 3y ago
Is your history off or was I always misguided? I thought Steam effectively launched such HL2 which included the release of CSS. CSS is what required it rather than 1.6, no?
- twostorytower 3y ago
  CS 1.6 definitely required it. 1.5 was the last version of CS on WON. It was the flagship game to have Steam for until Half-Life 2. And yes, CS:S also required it.
- skhr0680 3y ago
  CS 1.6 required Steam and was released together with Steam 1.0. You could say that it was a soft launch to get Steam ready for HL2 one year later.
EtienneK 3y ago
Once the ActiBlizz Microsoft sale goes through, then there will be a huge reason to switch to the Xbox / MS store: Gamepass.
- Hamuko 3y ago
  I don't like renting my games. One of the nicest things about Steam is that I can still download and play the games I bought 17 years ago. Also, if I need to choose my monopoly, I'll take Valve over Microsoft.
  - olejorgenb 3y ago
    I kinda get it, but what is the practical difference between that and re-renting the game 17 years later? In both scenarios you depend on the game still being available. (the buy model make it easier to keep the game around on some disk for 17 years ofc.)
- poopooracoocoo 3y ago
  Why does the acquisition need to go through for Activision-Blizzard's titles to be on Xbox Game Pass?
  - EtienneK 3y ago
    Because it goes from a hope to a rule. No need to hope that Diablo IV will be free on Gamepass, day 1 (and let's be serious, if ActiBlizz stays independent there is no hope in hell for this to happen) - but if the sale goes through then this will be reality. Imagine Diablo IV or each of the Call of Duties... free... day 1. That is huge value. Something Steam can't compete with.
  - ThunderSizzle 3y ago
    Accounting and exclusivity. MS can try to make GamePass a gate for all future purchases, and the interchange cost is just moving money around inside MS at that point.
mrfinn 3y ago
GOG is the way to go. Enough with the DRM BS. Is not only about ethical costs, all that people that invested thousands creating a huge library better pray Valve doesn't get into any trouble... or they get into any trouble with Valve. Buying and in the end, not owning anything doesn't look like buying at all!. PS. I'm not angry with Valve because they use DRM in their platform, I'm angry with Valve because they don't give publishers the option to distribute their games using an offline, DRM free installer.
- Hamuko 3y ago
  I thought that it was possible to have DRM-free games on Steam? https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g...
  - pseudo0 3y ago
    It is. Allowing DRM seems to be a concession to publishers, since there is no real benefit for Valve. If anything it's a significant hindrance that is obstructing their effort to get as much Steam Deck support as possible. Windows-only DRM and anticheat are some of the worst offenders for breaking Proton compatibility.
  - SXX 3y ago
    The point is that Steam itself is DRM. Even if game itself can work standalone you can't install or update it without Steam client. This is the difference between Steam and GOG.
    - agentgumshoe 3y ago
      What is the Steam client doing that makes it a problem?
      - SXX 3y ago
        Like making me login again into Steam at random for whatever reason Valve come up with? I guess there was bug on older macOS where it asked me for password every single time I restarted Steam. Now this is fixed though. There is offline mode, but it's unreliable. I know that some games might run without Steam, but it's not comfortable at all. And yeah It's not a problem. It's just a difference between Steam and DRM-free platforms like GOG.
kzrdude 3y ago
Then steam is the most well behaved monopoly I know. They care about Linux.
- _cenw 3y ago
  They care about whatever Valve employees are interested in / is perceived as creating most value (not always the same as creating most value). Valve has a system of weighted peer feedback (impacting salary and sometimes continued employment) that encourages follow-the-leader mentality despite their supposedly open culture. People Make Games made an enlightening documentary on the Valve model and where it fails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo Though if you need an example: Steam still doesn't have M1 binaries. Steam uses about 15 variants of UI framework, and some of it simply doesn't work on some platforms. Steam also took record time shipping an x86_64 (over x86) binary back in the day. Everything that's not the shiny current thing receives life support at most.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
    When 32-bit binaries on macOS died, all the old Source games went with them, and Valve has seemingly never fixed it. :(
    - SXX 3y ago
      There a lot of Mac software that been abandoned at some point in time due to API breakage on MacOS updates, driver API changes, etc. Supporting OS that breaks compatibility all the time is expansive even for less complex software and fixing games created on custom engines likely way too expensive. After all you can install it in Parallels and play Windows versions just fine.
  - SXX 3y ago
    On M1 support. Apple been actively hostile to game developers. Apple has not maintained OpenGL support well, dropped 32-bit binaries, have no Vulkan support and break their APIs and compatibility all the time. No surprise Valve is not enthusiastic about supporting their platform.
ScoobleDoodle 3y ago
Steam doesn’t have a strict monopoly, but it is the most known and used. Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales. If a game sells over $10 million then the cut is reduced to 25% There is Epic Game Store: maker of Fortnite and Unreal Engine which also gives away 1 or 2 free games a week. It takes a 12% cut from developers selling through their store. Tencent, which has close ties to CCP, owns ~40% of Epic. GOG “good old gamestore”owned by CD Projekt Red, the developers of the Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. Takes a 30% cut from sales. Also advocates for games without DRM.
- Ralfp 3y ago
  GOG and Red are sister subsidiaries of CD Projekt company which itself does game publishing, distribution and localization.
- SXX 3y ago
  EGS also dont have any proper user reviews to begin with. Its by design since Epic Games dont want even give players option to affect game sales. For instance compare how terrible broken The Last of Us Part 1 looks on Steam and EGS: > https://store.steampowered.com/app/1888930/The_Last_of_Us_Part_I/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1888930/The_Last_of_Us_Pa... Reviews are mixed above and a lot of negative reviews from players below. > https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-last-of-us-part-1 https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-last-of-us-part-1 Some 3.8 star rating above and tons of praise from press below. PS: As game developer I think competition is good. But as gamer I personally not gonna use Tencent/CCP Game Store since it's intentionally customer-hostile. This is not Steam competitor I want to support.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  I used to care about this shit, but I don't any more. The experience with Steam is just that much more superior. Cloud saves that allow me to pick up my PC gaming session on my Steam Deck or MBP is something no other platform offers on the scale that Steam does. If I could buy a game on GOG or Steam, I will choose Steam every single time because of the platform benefits unless the GOG game allows a Steam redemption. To me this is the same argument as streaming video content. Steam offers enough content that I don't need to seek other services to supplement my gaming needs. This is very different from the video streaming services where content is so siloed into proprietary buckets.
ivanmontillam 3y ago
> But people will choose the option even slightly more convenient for them against ethical costs. Such is human nature. It actually takes mental effort/mind wrestling to justify for ourselves the healthier, less attractive choice. Same is for our bodies and healthy foods, against something like a chocolate cake or pizza. > I wish steam didn't have an effective monopoly on PC video game distribution. Back on topic, any other dominant actor in the market could have been the one affected by this moderation misjudgement. Let's suppose Origin was this dominant actor and this faux pas happened to them. This post would have been about Origin. Note: I chose to say "dominant actor" instead of "effective monopolist" because other market actors are present, even if much less powerful.
pipes 3y ago
I use gog.com, come to think of it it's the only thing I have any sort of brand loyalty for. They seem to genuinely care. I use steam if it's not on gog though.
spockz 3y ago
But why? All the other launchers I have used are worse. Especially the EA launcher. It has been rewritten multiple times. When patching games it somehow requires a huge amount of extra disk space on top of installed game + 2*patch size. So if they are the best, why shouldn’t have the largest market share?
WastingMyTime89 3y ago
Effective monopoly on PC game distribution? They are competing with Epic, CD Project, Microsoft, Apple on macOS plus all the editors store and physical media. They are dominant but very far from being a monopoly.
Ekaros 3y ago
Steam is possibly one of the least worse monopolies that have existed. It doesn't block the products from being sold on other platforms, takes care of quite a lot for those who use it. I think it is lesser evil compared to having dozens of stores and accounts to manage with some of them dying and taking the products down with them. If you were to play range of titles you could possibly end up with quite many clients running in background, just for that having single big player is positive.
- em-bee 3y ago
  Steam is possibly one of the least worse monopolies that have existed and it invests into wine development to make windows games run on linux.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    Their acceptance and willingness to distribute anti-cheat malware is really the only black mark I can think of on their otherwise very good reputation.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
      There's also the whole skins thing, but yeah generally speaking Valve has a very good record and I'm always a bit sus about people claiming it is an awful thing for gaming. Apparently they don't remember what PC gaming was like before Steam.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      What choice do they have?
      - ryandrake 3y ago
        Steam at this point has massive market power as a distributor. They must already have some sort of anti-malware policy they hold their suppliers to. If they wanted to, they could extend that policy to include intrusive anti-cheat malware, and the industry would change its ways overnight. Only the most powerful game companies could afford to forego Steam distribution. Steam 100% has the choice, and they choose to distribute this software.
Avamander 3y ago
It doesn't. There are so many launchers and ways of distribution and I loathe it. I don't want all this bloatware to get what I paid for. Plus unlike Electronic Arts, Valve doesn't delete games I've bought from my library.
flohofwoe 3y ago
> didn't have an effective monopoly on PC video game distribution And yet the PC is the only platform left where the user even has a choice in the matter.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
Monopolies and DRM is always bad but I still appreciate the fact Steam is the least bad implementation of such evil I've ever seen. Other DRM platforms are infinitely worse. Also, Steam provides a good service. There's a reason people don't remember the old days where you had to download and apply several 500 MB incremental patches on unreliable connections just to play an online game.
LegitShady 3y ago
steam doesn't have a monopoly on pc video game distribution. There are many other services - GoG, epic, microsoft, etc. Steam is just the best of those services, by a long shot, and was far earlier and is better in almost all respects.
still_grokking 3y ago
To be honest Steam was one of the best working monopolies out of the perspective of end-users. All you needed once to play games on Linux was Steam. Now we have a few more relevant competing game stores and you need a whole bunch of awful launchers. I'm not saying the monopoly was a great thing for publishers though! That's a completely different story. But for end-users it was "the one and only app store for games you ever need". This was even better than mostly everything else regarding Linux software. Steam was once like Napster. You've just got everything there. No we have the same situation like with the dozens of movie streaming providers: If you want access to everything you need accounts everywhere. That's a clear step backwards for the consumers. If only something like Steam or movie streaming could be one globally distributed open service… Than such a "monopoly" would be the greatest thing for customers since Napster.
jeroenhd 3y ago
Steam can do with some competition but all their competition is terrible. Chrome's competitors at least work similarly and well enough. Google would have a browser monopoly if all of their competition were as laggy and featureless as Steam's main competitors are. GOG comes closest to being good but I find their launcher to be quite buggy and slow. Origin, uPlay, Epic Games, those are all terrible in comparison to Steam. The Steam UI is far from amazing, but it's leagues ahead of the competition in terms of usability in my experience. If you don't like Steam, you can buy your games elsewhere. GOG and Epic exist and together they have most games that aren't Steam exclusives. Xbox Game Pass has some pretty good deals on games too (which includes some PC titles). There are thousands of games to be played without ever having to download Steam if you choose to.
Aeolun 3y ago
> But people will choose the option even slightly more convenient for them against ethical costs. I have few, if any, problems with Steam.
ChoGGi 3y ago
> It was basically forced on us when CS 1.6 required it. That'd be CSS, not 1.6.
- ThatPlayer 3y ago
  CS 1.6 required it when Valve shutdown the WON servers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Opponent_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Opponent_Network

by z_open 3y ago

snickerbockers 3y ago

Steam isn't anywhere near a monopoly lol.

FredPret 3y ago

Devil’s advocate: Is it always unethical to buy something supplied by a monopoly? Is convenience an ethical good, especially convenience delivered on a mass scale?

akira2501 3y ago
> Is it always unethical to buy something supplied by a monopoly? Never, it's just unethical to operate one. > Is convenience an ethical good I feel like this could only be true if your life was in actual danger when lacking that convenience. This is possibly the wrong question anyways, I'd ask if the externalized costs of that convenience are small enough to justify the imputed good of the service. Which is why we can tolerate natural monopolies where collective safety is involved, such as electrical distribution, but shouldn't where it isn't, such as video game distribution. > especially convenience delivered on a mass scale? What special ethical properties does this provide?
- wvenable 3y ago
  > Never, it's just unethical to operate one. Is it? If you simply have no competition, you're running a monopoly. That doesn't seem like an unethical situation.
  - diffeomorphism 3y ago
    That seems like frictionless spherical cows. Having a monopoly might happen for a very short time by being first, keeping one....
    - shagie 3y ago
      The issue isn't having a monopoly (which Steam doesn't) but rather doing anti-competitive things to maintain the monopoly. Having a good product that people want and prefer to buy isn't anti-competitive. Establishing exclusive contracts with publishers and preventing something from being sold somewhere else for less is anti-competitive. I don't find it reasonable to claim that Steam is a monopoly in the PC gaming space (there might be an argument for it if one were to try to limit it to "games distribution platforms that run on Linux"). And even assuming that they did have a monopoly, they aren't using anti-competitive techniques to maintain it.
      - diffeomorphism 3y ago
        Correct and nobody claimed that.
        shagie 3y ago
        There is a statement further up in the comment tree that states ".. it's just unethical to operate [a monopoly]." I'm trying to clarify that it's not unethical to have a monopoly, nor even maintain one - it is only unethical to maintain one in ways that are anticompetitive (and making the best product isn't anticompetitive).
- FredPret 3y ago
  Convenience is an ethical good because it saves either time, energy, or thought, all of which are limited resources. If a monopoly makes something more convenient for hundreds of millions of people, think of the species-wide savings. Add up all conveniences, and you get real progress. For instance, many women in Africa are in charge of providing water and clean laundry for their households - not agreeing, just stating the facts. These two things are almost a full-time job if done by hand. If things ever progressed to the point where African countries have mass-scale running water and washing machines, think of how hundreds of millions of adults suddenly have time and energy to do something else. Now that's an extreme example, but the point stands. Making things convenient for others requires hard work upfront building systems and is to be encouraged.

ttoinou 3y ago

It was basically forced on us when CS 1.6 required it. Huh, they're the one who developed this video game in the first place

ownagefool 3y ago
CS was a half life mod that valve bought, so it's half-true. Reality is almost everyone abandoned PC gaming for a decade+ in favour of consoles. Valve and steam were the only real player, which is why they're in the position they're in. I took an shining to GOG, but the the Linux situation just reaffirmed how I buy my games.

pjmlp 3y ago

There is always the Windows Store and XBox games, or plain old physical boxes. I never used Steam, nor plan to. There isn't time to play everything.

iforgotpassword 3y ago
> or plain old physical boxes Not anymore. Or hardly anymore. Often these contain a barely working game if at all, but might even just contain a download code for steam, origin etc. And then there are a lot of games that release exclusively on steam. Oxygen not included comes to mind.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Depends on the game, additionally there are plenty of 2nd hand fun games to chose from.
flohofwoe 3y ago
Did they finally fix the problem on Windows Store that large game downloads simply don't work? I actually thought they just gave up when the Microsoft 1st party games started showing up on Steam.

jimbob45 3y ago

Is your history off or was I always misguided? I thought Steam effectively launched such HL2 which included the release of CSS. CSS is what required it rather than 1.6, no?

twostorytower 3y ago
CS 1.6 definitely required it. 1.5 was the last version of CS on WON. It was the flagship game to have Steam for until Half-Life 2. And yes, CS:S also required it.
skhr0680 3y ago
CS 1.6 required Steam and was released together with Steam 1.0. You could say that it was a soft launch to get Steam ready for HL2 one year later.

EtienneK 3y ago

Once the ActiBlizz Microsoft sale goes through, then there will be a huge reason to switch to the Xbox / MS store: Gamepass.

Hamuko 3y ago
I don't like renting my games. One of the nicest things about Steam is that I can still download and play the games I bought 17 years ago. Also, if I need to choose my monopoly, I'll take Valve over Microsoft.
- olejorgenb 3y ago
  I kinda get it, but what is the practical difference between that and re-renting the game 17 years later? In both scenarios you depend on the game still being available. (the buy model make it easier to keep the game around on some disk for 17 years ofc.)
poopooracoocoo 3y ago
Why does the acquisition need to go through for Activision-Blizzard's titles to be on Xbox Game Pass?
- EtienneK 3y ago
  Because it goes from a hope to a rule. No need to hope that Diablo IV will be free on Gamepass, day 1 (and let's be serious, if ActiBlizz stays independent there is no hope in hell for this to happen) - but if the sale goes through then this will be reality. Imagine Diablo IV or each of the Call of Duties... free... day 1. That is huge value. Something Steam can't compete with.
- ThunderSizzle 3y ago
  Accounting and exclusivity. MS can try to make GamePass a gate for all future purchases, and the interchange cost is just moving money around inside MS at that point.

mrfinn 3y ago

GOG is the way to go. Enough with the DRM BS. Is not only about ethical costs, all that people that invested thousands creating a huge library better pray Valve doesn't get into any trouble... or they get into any trouble with Valve. Buying and in the end, not owning anything doesn't look like buying at all!. PS. I'm not angry with Valve because they use DRM in their platform, I'm angry with Valve because they don't give publishers the option to distribute their games using an offline, DRM free installer.

Hamuko 3y ago
I thought that it was possible to have DRM-free games on Steam? https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g...
- pseudo0 3y ago
  It is. Allowing DRM seems to be a concession to publishers, since there is no real benefit for Valve. If anything it's a significant hindrance that is obstructing their effort to get as much Steam Deck support as possible. Windows-only DRM and anticheat are some of the worst offenders for breaking Proton compatibility.
- SXX 3y ago
  The point is that Steam itself is DRM. Even if game itself can work standalone you can't install or update it without Steam client. This is the difference between Steam and GOG.
  - agentgumshoe 3y ago
    What is the Steam client doing that makes it a problem?
    - SXX 3y ago
      Like making me login again into Steam at random for whatever reason Valve come up with? I guess there was bug on older macOS where it asked me for password every single time I restarted Steam. Now this is fixed though. There is offline mode, but it's unreliable. I know that some games might run without Steam, but it's not comfortable at all. And yeah It's not a problem. It's just a difference between Steam and DRM-free platforms like GOG.

kzrdude 3y ago

Then steam is the most well behaved monopoly I know. They care about Linux.

_cenw 3y ago
They care about whatever Valve employees are interested in / is perceived as creating most value (not always the same as creating most value). Valve has a system of weighted peer feedback (impacting salary and sometimes continued employment) that encourages follow-the-leader mentality despite their supposedly open culture. People Make Games made an enlightening documentary on the Valve model and where it fails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo Though if you need an example: Steam still doesn't have M1 binaries. Steam uses about 15 variants of UI framework, and some of it simply doesn't work on some platforms. Steam also took record time shipping an x86_64 (over x86) binary back in the day. Everything that's not the shiny current thing receives life support at most.
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
  When 32-bit binaries on macOS died, all the old Source games went with them, and Valve has seemingly never fixed it. :(
  - SXX 3y ago
    There a lot of Mac software that been abandoned at some point in time due to API breakage on MacOS updates, driver API changes, etc. Supporting OS that breaks compatibility all the time is expansive even for less complex software and fixing games created on custom engines likely way too expensive. After all you can install it in Parallels and play Windows versions just fine.
- SXX 3y ago
  On M1 support. Apple been actively hostile to game developers. Apple has not maintained OpenGL support well, dropped 32-bit binaries, have no Vulkan support and break their APIs and compatibility all the time. No surprise Valve is not enthusiastic about supporting their platform.

ScoobleDoodle 3y ago

Steam doesn’t have a strict monopoly, but it is the most known and used. Steam takes a 30% cut of all sales. If a game sells over $10 million then the cut is reduced to 25% There is Epic Game Store: maker of Fortnite and Unreal Engine which also gives away 1 or 2 free games a week. It takes a 12% cut from developers selling through their store. Tencent, which has close ties to CCP, owns ~40% of Epic. GOG “good old gamestore”owned by CD Projekt Red, the developers of the Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077. Takes a 30% cut from sales. Also advocates for games without DRM.

Ralfp 3y ago
GOG and Red are sister subsidiaries of CD Projekt company which itself does game publishing, distribution and localization.
SXX 3y ago
EGS also dont have any proper user reviews to begin with. Its by design since Epic Games dont want even give players option to affect game sales. For instance compare how terrible broken The Last of Us Part 1 looks on Steam and EGS: > https://store.steampowered.com/app/1888930/The_Last_of_Us_Part_I/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1888930/The_Last_of_Us_Pa... Reviews are mixed above and a lot of negative reviews from players below. > https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-last-of-us-part-1 https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-last-of-us-part-1 Some 3.8 star rating above and tons of praise from press below. PS: As game developer I think competition is good. But as gamer I personally not gonna use Tencent/CCP Game Store since it's intentionally customer-hostile. This is not Steam competitor I want to support.
tstrimple 3y ago
I used to care about this shit, but I don't any more. The experience with Steam is just that much more superior. Cloud saves that allow me to pick up my PC gaming session on my Steam Deck or MBP is something no other platform offers on the scale that Steam does. If I could buy a game on GOG or Steam, I will choose Steam every single time because of the platform benefits unless the GOG game allows a Steam redemption. To me this is the same argument as streaming video content. Steam offers enough content that I don't need to seek other services to supplement my gaming needs. This is very different from the video streaming services where content is so siloed into proprietary buckets.

ivanmontillam 3y ago

> But people will choose the option even slightly more convenient for them against ethical costs. Such is human nature. It actually takes mental effort/mind wrestling to justify for ourselves the healthier, less attractive choice. Same is for our bodies and healthy foods, against something like a chocolate cake or pizza. > I wish steam didn't have an effective monopoly on PC video game distribution. Back on topic, any other dominant actor in the market could have been the one affected by this moderation misjudgement. Let's suppose Origin was this dominant actor and this faux pas happened to them. This post would have been about Origin. Note: I chose to say "dominant actor" instead of "effective monopolist" because other market actors are present, even if much less powerful.

pipes 3y ago

I use gog.com, come to think of it it's the only thing I have any sort of brand loyalty for. They seem to genuinely care. I use steam if it's not on gog though.

spockz 3y ago

But why? All the other launchers I have used are worse. Especially the EA launcher. It has been rewritten multiple times. When patching games it somehow requires a huge amount of extra disk space on top of installed game + 2*patch size. So if they are the best, why shouldn’t have the largest market share?

WastingMyTime89 3y ago

Effective monopoly on PC game distribution? They are competing with Epic, CD Project, Microsoft, Apple on macOS plus all the editors store and physical media. They are dominant but very far from being a monopoly.

Ekaros 3y ago

Steam is possibly one of the least worse monopolies that have existed. It doesn't block the products from being sold on other platforms, takes care of quite a lot for those who use it. I think it is lesser evil compared to having dozens of stores and accounts to manage with some of them dying and taking the products down with them. If you were to play range of titles you could possibly end up with quite many clients running in background, just for that having single big player is positive.

em-bee 3y ago
Steam is possibly one of the least worse monopolies that have existed and it invests into wine development to make windows games run on linux.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Their acceptance and willingness to distribute anti-cheat malware is really the only black mark I can think of on their otherwise very good reputation.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
    There's also the whole skins thing, but yeah generally speaking Valve has a very good record and I'm always a bit sus about people claiming it is an awful thing for gaming. Apparently they don't remember what PC gaming was like before Steam.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    What choice do they have?
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      Steam at this point has massive market power as a distributor. They must already have some sort of anti-malware policy they hold their suppliers to. If they wanted to, they could extend that policy to include intrusive anti-cheat malware, and the industry would change its ways overnight. Only the most powerful game companies could afford to forego Steam distribution. Steam 100% has the choice, and they choose to distribute this software.

Avamander 3y ago

It doesn't. There are so many launchers and ways of distribution and I loathe it. I don't want all this bloatware to get what I paid for. Plus unlike Electronic Arts, Valve doesn't delete games I've bought from my library.

flohofwoe 3y ago

> didn't have an effective monopoly on PC video game distribution And yet the PC is the only platform left where the user even has a choice in the matter.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

Monopolies and DRM is always bad but I still appreciate the fact Steam is the least bad implementation of such evil I've ever seen. Other DRM platforms are infinitely worse. Also, Steam provides a good service. There's a reason people don't remember the old days where you had to download and apply several 500 MB incremental patches on unreliable connections just to play an online game.

LegitShady 3y ago

steam doesn't have a monopoly on pc video game distribution. There are many other services - GoG, epic, microsoft, etc. Steam is just the best of those services, by a long shot, and was far earlier and is better in almost all respects.

still_grokking 3y ago

To be honest Steam was one of the best working monopolies out of the perspective of end-users. All you needed once to play games on Linux was Steam. Now we have a few more relevant competing game stores and you need a whole bunch of awful launchers. I'm not saying the monopoly was a great thing for publishers though! That's a completely different story. But for end-users it was "the one and only app store for games you ever need". This was even better than mostly everything else regarding Linux software. Steam was once like Napster. You've just got everything there. No we have the same situation like with the dozens of movie streaming providers: If you want access to everything you need accounts everywhere. That's a clear step backwards for the consumers. If only something like Steam or movie streaming could be one globally distributed open service… Than such a "monopoly" would be the greatest thing for customers since Napster.

jeroenhd 3y ago

Steam can do with some competition but all their competition is terrible. Chrome's competitors at least work similarly and well enough. Google would have a browser monopoly if all of their competition were as laggy and featureless as Steam's main competitors are. GOG comes closest to being good but I find their launcher to be quite buggy and slow. Origin, uPlay, Epic Games, those are all terrible in comparison to Steam. The Steam UI is far from amazing, but it's leagues ahead of the competition in terms of usability in my experience. If you don't like Steam, you can buy your games elsewhere. GOG and Epic exist and together they have most games that aren't Steam exclusives. Xbox Game Pass has some pretty good deals on games too (which includes some PC titles). There are thousands of games to be played without ever having to download Steam if you choose to.

Aeolun 3y ago

> But people will choose the option even slightly more convenient for them against ethical costs. I have few, if any, problems with Steam.

ChoGGi 3y ago

> It was basically forced on us when CS 1.6 required it. That'd be CSS, not 1.6.

ThatPlayer 3y ago
CS 1.6 required it when Valve shutdown the WON servers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Opponent_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Opponent_Network