And PC gaming would be much, much worse without Steam. It would go to some publicly traded company. They would gain a monopoly anyhow, and then slowly start making every single part of the service worse and worse to increase shareholder profits.
72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
41–50 of 84 posts
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#42Key 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 attem…
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…
"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.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#43Dominant and successful, yes. Monopoly, no. It take more than simply being the best or most successful business in a sector to be a monopoly. Being a monopoly is an active choice you make as a business by intentionally engaging in anticompetitive behaviors. Valve isn't putting any pressure on anyone in this sector. There is still competition, but Valve has simply been more successful than everyone else. Mainly becaus…
>It take more than simply being the best or most successful business in a sector to be a monopoly. Being a monopoly is an active choice you make as a business by intentionally engaging in anticompetitive behaviors. By that logic are Amazon and Whatsapp also not "monopolies"? Are they simply just the best e-commerce company and chat app respectively? What competitive behaviors are they employing against their competit…
Amazon sold products at a loss for years in order to capture market share, then raised prices. That is blatant abuse of market power
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#44Dominant and successful, yes. Monopoly, no. It take more than simply being the best or most successful business in a sector to be a monopoly. Being a monopoly is an active choice you make as a business by intentionally engaging in anticompetitive behaviors. Valve isn't putting any pressure on anyone in this sector. There is still competition, but Valve has simply been more successful than everyone else. Mainly becaus…
I think what you’re saying is that they are a natural monopoly , which isn’t nefarious or illegal. But is still a monopoly.
Steam is not a natural monopoly.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#45Dominant and successful, yes. Monopoly, no. It take more than simply being the best or most successful business in a sector to be a monopoly. Being a monopoly is an active choice you make as a business by intentionally engaging in anticompetitive behaviors. Valve isn't putting any pressure on anyone in this sector. There is still competition, but Valve has simply been more successful than everyone else. Mainly becaus…
>It take more than simply being the best or most successful business in a sector to be a monopoly. Being a monopoly is an active choice you make as a business by intentionally engaging in anticompetitive behaviors. By that logic are Amazon and Whatsapp also not "monopolies"? Are they simply just the best e-commerce company and chat app respectively? What competitive behaviors are they employing against their competit…
Amazon may be dominant in a couple markets but it is far from a monopoly in them. For online retail you have Walmart, Target, eBay, Newegg, and 100s of other well known retailers with third-party sellers trying to compete. On the data center side you have large players such as Microsoft Azure and Google GCP, and small ones like Digital Ocean, Hertzner, OVH, Vultr, and many others.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#47Key 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 attem…
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…
The even more anti-competitive thing Apple does vs Spotify and all competitors is avoiding app store fees, while forcing all competitors to pay them.
To have the same profit, Spotify has to charge $13/mo when apple music charges $10/mo with all else being the same.
That's very obviously the App Store monopoly being used to give Apple Music a massive unfair advantage that is practically impossible to break through.
Steam does not have anything like that, if someone else decides to make "Epic Game Launcher" tomorrow for PC, that new company doesn't need to distribute it on the "Steam App Store" and pay valve 30% of all sales.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#48I've never understood this point. Other developers can just make their own platform or distribute games themselves individually. Nobody wants to do that for obvious reasons. There's clearly a network effect similar to Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and the likes. But apart from regulating for service interoperability, there's nothing you can do. It's like claiming that Skype had a monopoly between 2008 and 2014. Just.…
You're even allowed to sell your game cheaper on other platforms (not Steam keys, separate keys for those platforms) so by all means charge the 30% more on Steam if you need to.
>You're even allowed to sell your game cheaper on other platforms (not Steam keys, separate keys for those platforms) so by all means charge the 30% more on Steam if you need to.
How many people would even bite, given the huge premium?
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
> 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.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. The Steam platform has so much value for developers and yet they still complain about the 30%. To put into perspective, when Epic only takes 15%. They themselves admitted that is not a sustainable thing. EGS is constantly losing money. So now I invite everyone to gauge just how "big" the EGS is. How many "features" they offer etc. This platform in so much smaller than Steam and even they state that a 15% cut…
30% on mobile platforms if generally frowned upon as source of massive overcharging compared to actual costs (since its a massive revenue & income stream for their owners), but somehow for Steam its fine because... they also generate keys? Or what should be the magical justfication. No its not fine, its a cash cow milking customers. Valve may be better than their competition but they are not saints (same company basi…
It isn't overcharging on Mobile either IMO but the difference is pretty obvious: there is only one way to get your app onto an iPhone or an Android and that's through those stores.
PCs are an open platform. It is very different.
>its a for-profit company that has tons of profit. I am not saying 15% is OK or X% is OK, but 30% is too much in 2025.
And you base this on what? Nothing. It is a privately held company and you don't have access to its books.