I simply do not understand the sentiment that not being a total bastard is something celebrated and not expected or required.
And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?
Honestly 20 different companies would probably suck for the consumer. That’s 20 different storefronts to compare, 20 different libraries to manage, potentially 20 different sets of logins, 20 sources of data breaches. It’s unlikely they would adopt an open standard to allow a shared library. Maybe you have a 21st company that makes a product like heroic launcher. You’d likely run into regionality issues where a particular store is unavailable, so you may not be able to play purchased games. You would have all sorts of odd exclusive dlc and pre order bonuses so a cosmetic item you like could be locked to a store you haven’t used. Multiplayer likely wouldn’t be global cross play between all companies, you likely get some set of 20 companies working together for multiplayer. Some games may develop a good scene available to a single store, requiring a game to be repurchased. Exclusives or timed exclusives would be annoying to track, as each store would likely have different catalogs.
I think this amount of competition could be good if individual competitors were allowed to fail. All the parts that build vendor lock-in would need to be removed, and more things would need to be interoperable, but it could be quite good and even specialised.
Each storefront could live or die independent of each library and each game service. If one company tried to squeeze money from users, they could just take their elsewhere, without worrying about losing access to games or connections to friends.
Of course no company would create such a system voluntarily, most depend on monopolistic practices to survive. It would take monopoly busting-policy or a foss group to even begin such a thing.
That would mean exclusives everywhere. Everyone would try to force some game pass on us, until our only choice to get an OK selection would be having 4 subscriptions. Or piracy.
With Steam, I get a well integrated platform for buying, updating and launching everything with the correct compatibility layer.
No, that’s pretty wrong. There absolutely were exclusive store releases, or temporary releases where one store would get a certain game a whole month early.
It would likely result in endless corporate backstabbing, exclusive deals, contracts fights, and patent trolling
Which would likely result in horrid quality of life for the end user. Having to maintain countless accounts and subscriptions to have even fractional access to games.
It would likely also fuck over the studios and indie developers who would be shoved aside or relentlessly bought up in a ever growing attempt to grow.
More competition does not always mean things are better for the consumer. You can see the exact same thing played out with the recent rise and now slow descent to streaming services. As we went from one good one that turned into a horrible one as the sharehold is demanded it, then more rows and then things only became worse.
When you start operating at the sort of scale that the internet does, true, the whole competition thing being better for the consumer rarely works out.
You more frequently just end up with a bunch of greedy companies endlessly trying to one-up each other f****** over everyone in their attempts resulting in no one-winning, not the company, not the developers creators or middlemen nor and definitely not least the consumer.
True competition benefiting the consumer also requires there to be a connection to the consumer in a reason to actually service them. The companies need to be fighting for the consumer and not just each other. But that is all capitalism is turned into. The consumer is no longer the end goal. They’re just fighting each other to stomp them out so that all that’s left is themselves.
It’s been shown time and time again for decades now at at sufficient size competition just by itself does not help. The only thing that is repeatedly shown to be helpful is private companies with a good person at their home. Not trying to be a greedy f***.
And it’s showing time and time again. Every time that person retires the company sold their holders. Found public offerings made things just get worse.
The problem is not monopolies are bad. It’s not. The competition is good. It’s at public companies are a problem in the law forcing companies to do everything in their power to please. The shareholders is killing everything.
“Not being a total bastard” is a weird way to describe overhauling the gaming on linux experience at no additional cost to the end user, among many other incredibly pro consumer choices they’ve pushed in the last twenty odd years.
And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?
More comptetion wouldn’t just benefit consumers, it would benefit devs. A dev could shop their game around go with a store front that suits their needs better.
If I’m going to need to install several different clients/launcher on my computer just to keep up with where games get published, I’ll just resort to piracy.
Being forced to install some shitty client to run a specific game has been a deal breaker for me in the past. And there is no guarantee that other “competing” platforms will bother making Linux versions of their clients.
Steam is the very, very rare case of a major company that is both not beholden to shareholders, and has a pretty good guy at the helm.
I simply do not understand the sentiment that not being a total bastard is something celebrated and not expected or required.
And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?
Honestly 20 different companies would probably suck for the consumer. That’s 20 different storefronts to compare, 20 different libraries to manage, potentially 20 different sets of logins, 20 sources of data breaches. It’s unlikely they would adopt an open standard to allow a shared library. Maybe you have a 21st company that makes a product like heroic launcher. You’d likely run into regionality issues where a particular store is unavailable, so you may not be able to play purchased games. You would have all sorts of odd exclusive dlc and pre order bonuses so a cosmetic item you like could be locked to a store you haven’t used. Multiplayer likely wouldn’t be global cross play between all companies, you likely get some set of 20 companies working together for multiplayer. Some games may develop a good scene available to a single store, requiring a game to be repurchased. Exclusives or timed exclusives would be annoying to track, as each store would likely have different catalogs.
I think this amount of competition could be good if individual competitors were allowed to fail. All the parts that build vendor lock-in would need to be removed, and more things would need to be interoperable, but it could be quite good and even specialised.
Each storefront could live or die independent of each library and each game service. If one company tried to squeeze money from users, they could just take their elsewhere, without worrying about losing access to games or connections to friends.
Of course no company would create such a system voluntarily, most depend on monopolistic practices to survive. It would take monopoly busting-policy or a foss group to even begin such a thing.
That would require real ownership which is unlikely to ever happen. Company failures more likely just means loss of any library from them.
It’s simple really. If you don’t give positive feedback, you’ve lost the major lever that can be used to get what you want.
Using negative feedback is a useful tool but it’ll never achieve the same outcomes if used by itself.
That would mean exclusives everywhere. Everyone would try to force some game pass on us, until our only choice to get an OK selection would be having 4 subscriptions. Or piracy.
With Steam, I get a well integrated platform for buying, updating and launching everything with the correct compatibility layer.
That’s more convenient than piracy, so I use it.
Exclusives are a bastard child of oligopoly, where the distribution platform has more power than the publisher.
Before Steam physical games were NEVER sold only in ToysR, they were sold in all shops.
No, that’s pretty wrong. There absolutely were exclusive store releases, or temporary releases where one store would get a certain game a whole month early.
they’re still sold everywhere…just nobody buys em cause why the fuck would you when you can buy em online?
It would likely result in endless corporate backstabbing, exclusive deals, contracts fights, and patent trolling
Which would likely result in horrid quality of life for the end user. Having to maintain countless accounts and subscriptions to have even fractional access to games.
It would likely also fuck over the studios and indie developers who would be shoved aside or relentlessly bought up in a ever growing attempt to grow.
More competition does not always mean things are better for the consumer. You can see the exact same thing played out with the recent rise and now slow descent to streaming services. As we went from one good one that turned into a horrible one as the sharehold is demanded it, then more rows and then things only became worse.
When you start operating at the sort of scale that the internet does, true, the whole competition thing being better for the consumer rarely works out.
You more frequently just end up with a bunch of greedy companies endlessly trying to one-up each other f****** over everyone in their attempts resulting in no one-winning, not the company, not the developers creators or middlemen nor and definitely not least the consumer.
True competition benefiting the consumer also requires there to be a connection to the consumer in a reason to actually service them. The companies need to be fighting for the consumer and not just each other. But that is all capitalism is turned into. The consumer is no longer the end goal. They’re just fighting each other to stomp them out so that all that’s left is themselves.
It’s been shown time and time again for decades now at at sufficient size competition just by itself does not help. The only thing that is repeatedly shown to be helpful is private companies with a good person at their home. Not trying to be a greedy f***.
And it’s showing time and time again. Every time that person retires the company sold their holders. Found public offerings made things just get worse.
The problem is not monopolies are bad. It’s not. The competition is good. It’s at public companies are a problem in the law forcing companies to do everything in their power to please. The shareholders is killing everything.
I don’t believe this oligopoly is competing with each other?
(I’m not arguing with the rest of your post because capitalism bad :) )
“Not being a total bastard” is a weird way to describe overhauling the gaming on linux experience at no additional cost to the end user, among many other incredibly pro consumer choices they’ve pushed in the last twenty odd years.
Yeah. Steam is fucking solid.
step aside jesus, we have a new savior and his name is gaben
Benevolent dictators are great, but like pet goldfish, they eventually die, and the next fish might be an asshole you have to flush down the toilet.
This is intentionally word salad.
More comptetion wouldn’t just benefit consumers, it would benefit devs. A dev could shop their game around go with a store front that suits their needs better.
If I’m going to need to install several different clients/launcher on my computer just to keep up with where games get published, I’ll just resort to piracy.
Being forced to install some shitty client to run a specific game has been a deal breaker for me in the past. And there is no guarantee that other “competing” platforms will bother making Linux versions of their clients.