Steam is a platform that happens to also have a storefront. Other companies are building storefronts and hoping that’s enough.
If you can’t provide fast downloads, cloud saves synced across devices, achievements, mod support, friends lists, and multiplayer support, it’s not a real option. Being cheaper or having some exclusives aren’t attractive. Gog already has the drm free angle to be a legitimate competitor.
There are plenty of successfully competing stores. The only real thing Steam has going for it is network effect that every gamer has an account therefore it’s decent for socialising, but even that is being challenged by Discord and a multitude of others.
GamePass is probably the closest we’re seeing to a potential monopoly. The purchase of activation should never have been permitted.
Being consistently cheaper would actually be attractive to many people. The thing is, none of these competitors can even muster that. Steam consistently has better sales, more often. And it’s pretty funny seeing Amazon of all things not able to match or beat that. They are known for undercutting the competition, even at their own expense, just to get customers; It’s literally how they got to be as big as they are.
Epic kinda tried that by giving away tons of free games in the Epic Games Store. It didn’t work.
If I want Steam games cheaper, I go buy a Steam key for that game from a separate retailer and activate it on Steam. Save like 50-70% irrespective of Steam sales. It’s remarkable that Steam allows us to even do that in the first place.
Epic also generated a lot of bad blood by scooping up Kickstarter projects and ordering the devs to cancel the Steam releases, releases that had already been paid for by backers. A bunch of potential customers refused to buy from Epic on principle after that.
The Epic bros think that businesses shouldn’t have to compete on the market to sell their product, they should just get a big grant from Epic Games for making their game exclusive.
That’s some pretty communist rhetoric coming from a group worshipping a corporation. Epic Games are not your communist revolutionaries.
No, I believe that devs should have the choice to take a chance and just hope their game sells OR sign and exclusivity contract in exchange for money that guarantees then they won’t have worked for nothing if the game is a flop.
Releasing a game these days is a gamble because there’s so many being released every day, you can make an awesome game and it just won’t sell while an average game gets picked up by a couple of Twitch streamers and the dev becomes a multi millionaire.
I’m one of them. For all their trash talk about Steam being a monopoly, Epic Games sure pulled some hypocritical, anticompetitive shit in their attempt to replace one monopoly with an objectively worse, consumer-hostile one.
Look at market shares, Steam is in a monopolistic position, they can turn around and fuck up the whole market whenever they want, and people like you are encouraging it.
You realize that they’re anti DEI over there? I don’t think drag would ever be hired by Valve!
They wouldn’t even release a statement about George Floyd because it was too divisive for them, they instead gave 10k to each employee to spend on whatever they wanted, which might just as well have been BLM or a white supremacist group, they didn’t check!
Steam is a platform that happens to also have a storefront. Other companies are building storefronts and hoping that’s enough.
If you can’t provide fast downloads, cloud saves synced across devices, achievements, mod support, friends lists, and multiplayer support, it’s not a real option. Being cheaper or having some exclusives aren’t attractive. Gog already has the drm free angle to be a legitimate competitor.
I would like to see government intervention to break up Steam to remedy this
Though arguably Epic is way bigger of a platform since it goes from developer to end user
Steam is hardly a monopoly.
There are plenty of successfully competing stores. The only real thing Steam has going for it is network effect that every gamer has an account therefore it’s decent for socialising, but even that is being challenged by Discord and a multitude of others.
GamePass is probably the closest we’re seeing to a potential monopoly. The purchase of activation should never have been permitted.
As I noted in the comment you’re replying to “Epic is arguably bigger”
So not sure why you felt like arguing about Steam being a monopoly
Then why do you want to see it broken up? Monopoly seemed a pretty reasonable assumption.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
Steam seems to value Unix a lot more than Epic does
Steam’s best feature is Proton.
Being consistently cheaper would actually be attractive to many people. The thing is, none of these competitors can even muster that. Steam consistently has better sales, more often. And it’s pretty funny seeing Amazon of all things not able to match or beat that. They are known for undercutting the competition, even at their own expense, just to get customers; It’s literally how they got to be as big as they are.
Epic kinda tried that by giving away tons of free games in the Epic Games Store. It didn’t work.
If I want Steam games cheaper, I go buy a Steam key for that game from a separate retailer and activate it on Steam. Save like 50-70% irrespective of Steam sales. It’s remarkable that Steam allows us to even do that in the first place.
Epic also generated a lot of bad blood by scooping up Kickstarter projects and ordering the devs to cancel the Steam releases, releases that had already been paid for by backers. A bunch of potential customers refused to buy from Epic on principle after that.
Yup, that and pushing “exclusive” bs in general made sure I will never use Epic.
So you want all devs to just play the lottery and hope that some Twitch star picks up their game to make it popular?
He wants games to release on all platforms. Where is the ‘lottery’ rhetoric coming from?
The Epic bros think that businesses shouldn’t have to compete on the market to sell their product, they should just get a big grant from Epic Games for making their game exclusive.
That’s some pretty communist rhetoric coming from a group worshipping a corporation. Epic Games are not your communist revolutionaries.
No, I believe that devs should have the choice to take a chance and just hope their game sells OR sign and exclusivity contract in exchange for money that guarantees then they won’t have worked for nothing if the game is a flop.
Releasing a game these days is a gamble because there’s so many being released every day, you can make an awesome game and it just won’t sell while an average game gets picked up by a couple of Twitch streamers and the dev becomes a multi millionaire.
I’m one of them. For all their trash talk about Steam being a monopoly, Epic Games sure pulled some hypocritical, anticompetitive shit in their attempt to replace one monopoly with an objectively worse, consumer-hostile one.
Epic Games is creating a monopoly in PC gaming - they keep making bad decisions and leaving Steam as the only good option
Look at market shares, Steam is in a monopolistic position, they can turn around and fuck up the whole market whenever they want, and people like you are encouraging it.
You realize that they’re anti DEI over there? I don’t think drag would ever be hired by Valve!
Source?
Removed by mod
https://youtu.be/s9aCwCKgkLo
They wouldn’t even release a statement about George Floyd because it was too divisive for them, they instead gave 10k to each employee to spend on whatever they wanted, which might just as well have been BLM or a white supremacist group, they didn’t check!