72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
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Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#2Better Valve/Steam than Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Epic or the rest.
Gambling / trading aside, they're doing a pretty fine so far.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#3Better Valve/Steam than Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Epic or the rest. Gambling / trading aside, they're doing a pretty fine so far.
No question about it!
Edit: that said, the 30% fee is pretty greedy (Apple-level greedy) and they could be doing better at least in that regard.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#4I'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... Install something else then?
Valve is not buying other store makers nor actively sabotaging efforts to do so.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#5Better Valve/Steam than Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Epic or the rest. Gambling / trading aside, they're doing a pretty fine so far.
No question about it! Edit: that said, the 30% fee is pretty greedy (Apple-level greedy) and they could be doing better at least in that regard.
Anytime I see the complaint about the 30% fee, I wonder what people feel would be fair for the service, because it also includes storage, distribution for new instalations and patching for older ones, along with generating keys to be sold at other stores.
Would people feel better with a lower fee, but no distribution network, for example?
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#6Better Valve/Steam than Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Epic or the rest. Gambling / trading aside, they're doing a pretty fine so far.
No question about it! Edit: that said, the 30% fee is pretty greedy (Apple-level greedy) and they could be doing better at least in that regard.
How much do you think they should take?
Steam is the most dominant because of their extremely customer friendly policies, their insane price crashes and the ease of publishing and installing games from the platform. If other platforms are able to provide all of that, with a commission below 30%, I'm sure they could easily take over.
But turns out, neither Epic nor EA are interested in serving the customer.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#7GOG proves you can still have a solid business in the space. Steam is dominant but not necessarily a monopoly. For all of its faults, Steam is still better than most competitors.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
No question about it! Edit: that said, the 30% fee is pretty greedy (Apple-level greedy) and they could be doing better at least in that regard.
Anytime I see the complaint about the 30% fee, I wonder what people feel would be fair for the service, because it also includes storage, distribution for new instalations and patching for older ones, along with generating keys to be sold at other stores. Would people feel better with a lower fee, but no distribution network, for example?
Maybe Steam and Apple deserved to obtain a partial monopoly but now they can just sit and relax and take 30% to copy/paste games/apps to each user that wants them.
So yes, 30% is high and unjust to the games creators who are doing the 2025 work.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#9Dominant 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 because the alternatives are so, so much worse like EA and co who are actively malicious and predatory.
Valve hasn't done anything to pass an antitrust sniff test.
Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
#10I'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.