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Key distinctions between Steam and similar contenders in other spaces (google play store, the apple app store) are that: 1. Steam isn't bundled with the OS, it

by svpk 11mo ago

Key distinctions between Steam and similar contenders in other spaces (google play store, the apple app store) are that: 1. Steam isn't bundled with the OS, it must be installed. 2. Steam isn't a gatekeeper to installing software (as the app store is and in a somewhat different way as google has proposed doing with their plans to require app signing). At least the US, and I assume most legal schemes, require an attempt to monopolize, simply being the best player in town isn't enough. Perhaps if the steam deck, etc. achieved a high level of market dominance you could argue that bundling steam was anticompetitive, but I don't see it yet.

teroshan 11mo ago
I'm still finishing my first read, but I really recommend Cory Doctorow's latest book [1] "Enshittification:Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It" which covers the subject of tech monopolies and much more. Reading it I learned about the term "monopsony" which is "a market in which goods or services are offered by several sellers but there is only one buyer" which is usually conflated with monopoly. [1] https://www.versobooks.com/products/3341-enshittification https://www.versobooks.com/products/3341-enshittification
- plumthreads 11mo ago
  This is really the key here. Many people are commenting their experience as a games buyers, but this article is about the developers. Monopsonies are usually linked to lower wages in labor markets. In this case lower profits for developers from selling their games.
yxhuvud 11mo ago
A third difference is that I've seen no signs of steam actually abusing their standing in the market. If anything they seem to be nicer than they have to be.
- mzhaase 11mo ago
  They absolutely keep a larger cut than others. With Epic the first million you make is free. After much deliberation, steam changed it so that their 30% cut is reduced if you make more than 10M. For a lot of indie devs, its pretty much a death sentence.
  - galagawinkle489 11mo ago
    Indie game development largely owes its existence to Steam. I know I would spend a lot less on indie games if I had to buy them from their own websites or, god forbid, through an awful laggy "app store" run by Ubisoft or Microsoft.
    - plumthreads 11mo ago
      If competitors offer passable services for selling indie game developers, then indie game developers would be able to earn more money (due to competition). This is why developers are hopeful for alternative services.
      - milch 11mo ago
        There are competitors like itch.io, which are specifically targeted towards indies
        UtopiaPunk 11mo ago
        Itch.io is great
  - yxhuvud 11mo ago
    High prices are a sign of their competitors failing to compete. Are they using their standing to make competing with them harder, somehow? For example, they dont do Amazon style prohibitions of selling the product cheaper elsewhere.
  - masklinn 11mo ago
    > With Epic the first million you make is free. That's Epic using its money from other markets for loss leader schemes in order to grab market share. It's a very classic move (same as free games), and it's always detrimental to the market and customers in the long run. It's not a good thing, epic games is a garbage company. That they're actively losing money to prop up their store should tell you how bad of a thing it is if it ever succeeds.
lawn 11mo ago
Valve even allows you to install whatever you want on the Steam Deck. Even Windows!
- rererereferred 11mo ago
  Yes, thanks to Heroic Launcher I can even play my games from Gog and Epic on it.
jorvi 11mo ago
Valve has market power though, which is a key part of a monopoly. If tomorrow Steam decided to charge 30% extra to developers with the stipulation that sticker price must equal that of outside Steam, developers wouldn't have much of a choice but to eat the cost, because PC gamers are extremely reluctant to leave their Steam library and features. A good example of market power is Apple vs Spotify. When Apple launched Apple Music, they changed Music.app into Apple Music on every iDevice in the world, with a handy subscription pop-up the first time you launched it. This was massively anti-competitive overreach despite Apple not technically being a monopolist. You can easily install Spotify, and Spotify was much bigger. Without making this move, Apple Music would have crashed and burned, but Apple basically forced themselves into the market, using their marketshare and user migration reluctance as a crowbar. The fair competition thing to would have been to show a pop-up on first Apple Music app launch, asking "hey, would you like to try one of these streaming services?", and show Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and Deezer in a random order. Just like Microsoft and their browser pop-up. Then again, aside from a decade of stagnation (2010-2020 Steam saw very few updates, until Valve started working on the Deck), Valve hasn't really abused their position. Gabe Newell famously said that piracy isn't a pricing problem, it's a service problem, and Valve is a private company, so as long as he is at the helm I assume Valve is going to continue delivering good service. After that.. who knows.
- galagawinkle489 11mo ago
  "Monopoly" is a distraction. The issue is abuse of market power. Having market power is fine. You can't punish people for being successful. Steam doesn't abuse being successful to lock out competitors. You can sell products sold through Steam via other platforms too. You can sell outside of Steam and give your customers Steam keys for the game. You can install Steam on different platforms alongside other stores and programs. Nothing Steam does makes it harder for consumers to buy games from Valve's competitors. That's what matters, not whether Steam is very successful.
  - jorvi 11mo ago
    To be clear, I don't think Valve has abused their position at all. I was merely musing on how they could. Which would operate on a similar concept as Apple did: "my users will stay in my ecosystem almost regardless of what I do."
Retric 11mo ago
Your misunderstanding what monopoly means and represents. Monopoly just comes down to marketshare, but it’s perfectly legal in the US to be a monopoly instead it limits what you’re allowed to do. For example a regular company can give a discount if you agree to only sell their goods, obviously that becomes problematic if the company has monopoly power so they are no longer allowed to have such agreements. The boundaries around what is a market trip people up, but it’s around what customers view as substitutes goods. If you don’t have a car then an EV can be a viable substitute, however if you have a gas car then you have some wiggle room on octane ratings etc but an electric car chargers isn’t viable substitute. “In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.[2] Although monopolies may be big businesses, size is not a characteristic of a monopoly. A small business may still have the power to raise prices in a small industry (or market).[2]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

by svpk 11mo ago

teroshan 11mo ago

I'm still finishing my first read, but I really recommend Cory Doctorow's latest book [1] "Enshittification:Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It" which covers the subject of tech monopolies and much more. Reading it I learned about the term "monopsony" which is "a market in which goods or services are offered by several sellers but there is only one buyer" which is usually conflated with monopoly. [1] https://www.versobooks.com/products/3341-enshittification https://www.versobooks.com/products/3341-enshittification

plumthreads 11mo ago
This is really the key here. Many people are commenting their experience as a games buyers, but this article is about the developers. Monopsonies are usually linked to lower wages in labor markets. In this case lower profits for developers from selling their games.

yxhuvud 11mo ago

A third difference is that I've seen no signs of steam actually abusing their standing in the market. If anything they seem to be nicer than they have to be.

mzhaase 11mo ago
They absolutely keep a larger cut than others. With Epic the first million you make is free. After much deliberation, steam changed it so that their 30% cut is reduced if you make more than 10M. For a lot of indie devs, its pretty much a death sentence.
- galagawinkle489 11mo ago
  Indie game development largely owes its existence to Steam. I know I would spend a lot less on indie games if I had to buy them from their own websites or, god forbid, through an awful laggy "app store" run by Ubisoft or Microsoft.
  - plumthreads 11mo ago
    If competitors offer passable services for selling indie game developers, then indie game developers would be able to earn more money (due to competition). This is why developers are hopeful for alternative services.
    - milch 11mo ago
      There are competitors like itch.io, which are specifically targeted towards indies
      - UtopiaPunk 11mo ago
        Itch.io is great
- yxhuvud 11mo ago
  High prices are a sign of their competitors failing to compete. Are they using their standing to make competing with them harder, somehow? For example, they dont do Amazon style prohibitions of selling the product cheaper elsewhere.
- masklinn 11mo ago
  > With Epic the first million you make is free. That's Epic using its money from other markets for loss leader schemes in order to grab market share. It's a very classic move (same as free games), and it's always detrimental to the market and customers in the long run. It's not a good thing, epic games is a garbage company. That they're actively losing money to prop up their store should tell you how bad of a thing it is if it ever succeeds.

lawn 11mo ago

Valve even allows you to install whatever you want on the Steam Deck. Even Windows!

rererereferred 11mo ago
Yes, thanks to Heroic Launcher I can even play my games from Gog and Epic on it.

jorvi 11mo ago

Valve has market power though, which is a key part of a monopoly. If tomorrow Steam decided to charge 30% extra to developers with the stipulation that sticker price must equal that of outside Steam, developers wouldn't have much of a choice but to eat the cost, because PC gamers are extremely reluctant to leave their Steam library and features. A good example of market power is Apple vs Spotify. When Apple launched Apple Music, they changed Music.app into Apple Music on every iDevice in the world, with a handy subscription pop-up the first time you launched it. This was massively anti-competitive overreach despite Apple not technically being a monopolist. You can easily install Spotify, and Spotify was much bigger. Without making this move, Apple Music would have crashed and burned, but Apple basically forced themselves into the market, using their marketshare and user migration reluctance as a crowbar. The fair competition thing to would have been to show a pop-up on first Apple Music app launch, asking "hey, would you like to try one of these streaming services?", and show Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and Deezer in a random order. Just like Microsoft and their browser pop-up. Then again, aside from a decade of stagnation (2010-2020 Steam saw very few updates, until Valve started working on the Deck), Valve hasn't really abused their position. Gabe Newell famously said that piracy isn't a pricing problem, it's a service problem, and Valve is a private company, so as long as he is at the helm I assume Valve is going to continue delivering good service. After that.. who knows.

galagawinkle489 11mo ago
"Monopoly" is a distraction. The issue is abuse of market power. Having market power is fine. You can't punish people for being successful. Steam doesn't abuse being successful to lock out competitors. You can sell products sold through Steam via other platforms too. You can sell outside of Steam and give your customers Steam keys for the game. You can install Steam on different platforms alongside other stores and programs. Nothing Steam does makes it harder for consumers to buy games from Valve's competitors. That's what matters, not whether Steam is very successful.
- jorvi 11mo ago
  To be clear, I don't think Valve has abused their position at all. I was merely musing on how they could. Which would operate on a similar concept as Apple did: "my users will stay in my ecosystem almost regardless of what I do."

Retric 11mo ago

Your misunderstanding what monopoly means and represents. Monopoly just comes down to marketshare, but it’s perfectly legal in the US to be a monopoly instead it limits what you’re allowed to do. For example a regular company can give a discount if you agree to only sell their goods, obviously that becomes problematic if the company has monopoly power so they are no longer allowed to have such agreements. The boundaries around what is a market trip people up, but it’s around what customers view as substitutes goods. If you don’t have a car then an EV can be a viable substitute, however if you have a gas car then you have some wiggle room on octane ratings etc but an electric car chargers isn’t viable substitute. “In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.[2] Although monopolies may be big businesses, size is not a characteristic of a monopoly. A small business may still have the power to raise prices in a small industry (or market).[2]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly