ITT I learn that oligarch gabe nawel is the elon musk of gamers
Other game launchers: “fuck Linux it’s so small”
Valve: “everyone deserves to play games :)”
Other game launchers: “Steam is fucking monopoly!!!”
Valve is working on linux as more of an exit strategy should MS go apeshit and go full walled garden. Their work started following MS floating ideas of a walled garden about a decade ago.
Its less “Everyone deserves to play games” and more “We gotta cover our asses”. Just that we all benefit in the end.
But Valve’s “We gotta cover our asses” move is to help an open ecosystem, not try to create their own walled garden. Yes, they are a company making a rational, capitalistic decision but it’s also the less lucrative but more moral decision.
All these concern trolling articles about Valve’s “monopoly”. We never get this shit about Youtube, Windows, local ISPs and other utilities, etc. Super subtle, guys.
All of those are run by business-school people.
The people who went to business school are mad that Valve isn’t running their platform like the rest of the cartel.
The entire AAA video game industry right now is basically freaking out, panicking and financially imploding right now, after at least a solid decade of mainly figuring out how to waste an enormous amount of money…
While all trying to be the next big live service game.
A live service game isn’t so much a game as it is a platform itself, a cash shop for in game content, a social media platform in itself.
(See Roblox for an extremely problematic but successful version of pulling this off)
These people all failed miserably at this, such that Ubisoft imploded, EA got bought out by Saudi Blood Money, Unity itself is imploding as an organization, MSFT switched its gaming division into pure wealth extraction mode before they shut it down in ~5 years and just act as IP liscensing overlords… etc.
They all tried to establish vertically integrated businesses, and despise that they can’t come close to matching Valve, the most competent horizontally built business in the entire industry.
And yes, the ‘video game industry’ includes nearly all ‘video game journalists’.
These people are with few exceptions, allergic to doing any actual investigative journalism, they’re mostly just paid to manipulate the flow of discourse around video games, as a form of marketing, hype management, sentiment management.
So how’s much did Sweeney at Epic pay for this?
Every other company could challenge Steam, but instead is enshittified within an inch of its life from the get-go. It’s as much that Steam is doing so much right as it is that competitors are doing so much wrong.
Not you, GOG.
Gog is good, itch.io is good. They have different niches, and each do beautifully.
GoG was my second digital store, I resisted Steam for so long, but over the years, Steam has become my #1 source for games. It’s just so easy, plus they are relatively consumer friendly. With the revamp of Steam Families, it’s just so so much easier to have everyone playing on Steam. Plus I have a Steam Deck.
I try and buy games on GoG, set them up with Heroic, and it works great, better than EA, Epic and other storefronts, but just not quite as slick as Steam.
One day St. Gabe will be martyred, and Steam will undergo the unavoidable descent into enshittification, as to will GoG. I do not pledge undying loyalty to any platform, but Steam and GoG have been awesome for so long.
Besides, other than Itch and Humble Bundle, who even comes close in being good to use?
GOG’s market share being around 1% compared to Steam’s 80% only proves the point that no amount of great features or love by gamers is enough to challenge the monopoly.
That’s because for the vast majority of gamers their games aren’t on GOG. From the top 50 sellers on Steam only Rimworld, Baldurs Gate 3, No Man’s Sky, Tainted Grail and Kerbal Space Program are sold on GOG. 90% of the top sellers on Steam aren’t on GOG. GOG has a lot of great features but when GOG doesn’t have the games people want to spend money on there’s very little reason for those people to use GOG.
The fact that valve has competitors means its not a monopoly. They aren’t anti competitive. They just make a good product and treat their customers better than their competitors.
If all “monopolies” acted like Valve, most people wouldn’t hate monopolies.
If all billionaires acted like GabeN, far fewer people would be calling for the guillotines.
I still think billionaires shouldn’t exist. Just saying hes probably at the bottom of the list of shitty billionaire behavior.
They’re a private company and thus have resisted many of the enshittification trends that run rampant through the industry.
And also their competitors are absolutely atrocious and are completely tone-deaf to what customers actually want.
This is exactly right. As soon as a company becomes public, it’s all over. Profits at X%, every quarter, no matter the cost. It’s the death of a company.
It doesn’t have to go public to do that. It can get sold to private equity. The original owner can pass the business to their kid who has grown up privileged and huffs their own farts. Going public is a guarantee of enshittification but it isn’t the only way.
Really simple: because they are running it like tax funded infrastructure and not like an extortion racket.
I skimmed most of this thread and didn’t see anyone mention that Steam actually supports third party stores. They let developers sell game keys on other storefronts for free (with limits, granted—the number of keys they can generate depends on sales on Steam, I think.)
Fanatical and Humble only exist because Steam handles all of the games delivery infrastructure for them. That’s, like, the opposite of monopolistic behaviour. Name another tech monopoly giving their services away for free so other directly competing businesses can profit.
Not to mention they are no monopoly by any definition. I can buy games at half a dozen other stores I know of, probably a hundred I don’t.
Tepid take: The only people calling Steam a monopoly are the loser competitors who can’t find a more extortive business model that will actually compete in their quest to syphon wealth out of the gaming ecosystem. Also ‘news’ outlets that are being paid to assert this narrative, and dumbshit reactionaries who believe those narratives. Sorry Epic CEO, you can’t cry and shit your pants into forcing a successful company to make room and give you a cut. The market will ony respond to a better product here, and Epic ain’t it. EA learned this lesson with their shit-ass Origin product years ago, brand loyalty takes a long time to build and is a powerful variable, and steam is good at not fucking with the gamers, or at least only within parameters of acceptability, it appears.
Tim Sweeney’s on record saying he doesn’t see any point in making EGS any better since it’s “good enough” lol.
Out of anyone, they had the best chance to make it, with the budget they had, and the fact that so many people have their launcher installed for Unreal Engine or Fortnite reasons. Yet they put so much money into exclusives, and none into having a compelling UX.
The fact that it launched and didn’t have a shopping cart for 3 years is all it takes to know that it was never intended to be a serious competitor. A simple shopping cart is trivial to implement with modern programming tools, and even if it wasn’t, it should be part of the minimum viable product for any digital store front.
Bad take. The competition is literally constantly shooting themselves in the foot by offering a worse service and doing nothing to make gaming better.
It’s not steams fault that companies like EA, Epic MS etc. are rotten to the core with their business practices and no one wants to use their storefronts.
GOG is the only one i might consider an alternative that isnt completely rotten.
That’s the thing, though. The people who went to business school want to make sure all businesses operate like gas stations across the street from each other.
Valve being relatively autonomous in their decision making throws a wrench in that scheme.
Steam is not a fucking monopoly. Take my downvote
Great. Any time someone has a successful business that supports Linux somehow it is just terrible. I always wonder if these are these real people or just FUD from competitors trying to max Linux support undesirable. Sure I prefer FOSS, but I’m also happy there is some commercial game support. Maybe I’ll use it some day, maybe I won’t.
What is up with Valve and internet attacking them for their supposed monopoly?
Yeah, they are monopoly. The rare breed of one that is not predatory to it’s customers, and actively improves the experience. They are also the one that wont shoot their own leg to incapacitate themselves for no particular reason. Also “also”, they do not use predatory strategies to extort players off other platforms. Also3, they are the company that wont accumulate other companies just to destroy them in the end which also destroys competition.
They are not perfect. Lootboxes, gambling, and strong polices. But just try to compare them to second best online gaming store - they are fucking angels. Saints. Divine being. Compared TO THE NEXT BEST THING. That is saying something.
A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, ‘single, alone’ and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, ‘to sell’) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. - AND STEAM IS NOT IT! They have competition and that competition, while having resources and ability to improve or match Steam, does little to nothing in order to compete.
You can’t punch the oligarchs you feel are ruining your life so you lunch what is within reach and dress it up like that which you hate so you can justify it.
Plus the bulk of these articles are written about or for the AAA producers who are upset about their declining revenue and want an easy scapegoat for the investors.
Combine the 2 groups and you have grifting liars and the willing flock of idiots, and conversations like this.
Pretty much because the others are worse, and will continue to be until Gabe dies and they start to really squeeze all the value out of it they could.
Because they are one of the few mega companies that hasn’t shrinkflated, enshittified, or otherwise crumbled the quality of their offering. Haven’t sold out the privacy of their customer base to advertising companies, and are generally good to deal with for customers and developers.
It’s not a secret formula that no other company can learn from. It’s as simple as not being dicks IMO.
For some reason, most companies seem to grow too a certain threshold at which they sell their souls to profit and will self destruct to get more of it. Steam thankfully isn’t one of them…… yet.
They’re not beholden to public investors. If they go public or sell to a public company it will change.
If Gaben leaves or dies, Valve is probably fucked.
He has a son who will supposedly take over, but we’ll have to see how that goes when it happens.
I thought his son has already taken the helm and had the same mentality as his dad?
