Let me ask you this. What are steam doing to try to be a monopoly?
Because the way I see it, Nintendo at one time took distinctive actions to ENSURE they remained a monopoly. Then Sega threatened that.
Then Sega a few years later shot themselves in the foot with confusing console stratagy. 32X, and the SegaCD were absolute failures because everyone knew the Saturn was around the corner. Then they shot themselves in the foot AGAIN by just dumping the Saturn on retailers doorsteps, in some cases at 3AM when nobody was even at the stores, with no prior warning. Just dump it at their door and hope for the best. Well, CONSUMERS didn’t even know they were in stores. And even people with preorders didn’t know. This was just in the early days of the internet, and long before social media. So it’s not like if this happened today, everyone would know when they check their social media. Nope. It was said that some customers just didn’t know for months, simply because if you weren’t physically in the store, you didn’t know. Some stores took phone numbers for the preorders, the majority did not. A lot of pre-orders were cancelled over this.
Nintendo shot themselves in the foot by partering up with Sony to create the Nintendo Play Station. (Two words). It was to use Sonys CD technology, and be a massive upgrade in storage. Well after reading the contract, Nintendo lawyers discovered that Sony could not only create their own games, but they could liscense the technology to other 3rd parties with zero control over who gets to release software for it. Worst of all, Sony, not Nintendo, would recieve all money from software sold on the Nintendo Play Station. So they backstabbed Sony, and tried again with Phillips.
Phillips was to create a Super Nintendo addon. Sega had the SegaCD, and Nintendo felt left out. So they tried creating the Super Nintendo version of the SegaCD. It went very poorly. The end result of this ended up being the Phillips CD-i, which was less of a Nintendo console, and more of a Phillips console liscensing Nintendo characters. To this day, Nintendo has never reclaimed their monopoly, due to trying to kill Sega, they created Sony’s Playstation.
Sony created a monopoly by including a dvd player in the PS2 during a time nobody had a dvd player. It worked. But that was the only thing they did to create the monopoly. It’s not like Nintendo in the 80s, when they told 3rd parties they could either put a game on Atari, or they could put one on the NES. Sony lost their dominance with the PS3 by charging $700, at a time the Xbox360 was charging $400.
And Microsoft lost their dominance by just not having anything exclusive worth playing. Then they had the “everything is an xbox” campaign, which totally backfired.
But Steam? I don’t see them as doing anything to create a monopoly. I see them as a simple software store that sells all PC games. They’ve entered the console space in recent years with the steamdeck. But it’s nothing that creates a monopoly. Personally I find the steamdeck to be overpriced. The thing that gives them a monopoly is that they offer crazy deep sales, but publishers have to agree to those sales. Steam can’t mark Factorio down to $2.00 without the publishers consent (which in that case they do NOT consent to sales).
All I see Steam doing is offering quality products, at reasonable prices, without bullshit.
Epic games is FULL of bullshit in their customer service.
And GOG isn’t full of bullshit, but their library is limited, and always will be limited to publishers who consent to them selling drm-free games. For this reason alone, gog can never compete with steam.
So, yes, Steam HAS a monopoly, but I see it as a result of two things.
Everybody else keeps shooting themselves in the foot.
On consoles you keep the game for that console. When a new console comes out, MAYBE you get backwards compatibility for 1-2 generations. Usually 1 more. With Steam, you could have bought a game 20 years ago, and bought 20 new PC’s since then. Your purchases will still work.
In either event, I don’t see this as Valve being malicious at any point to create a monopoly. It can easily be taken away from them by someone else doing the same things they did. Offer a generous library, complete with modern releases, regular sales, and supurb customer service. It just so happens that everybody else is too greedy and/or stupid to attempt this.
So in your words, what is Valve doing wrong that makes you think they’re creating an unfair monopoly?
There have been reports of Valve telling developers they can’t sell their game cheaper elsewhere (such as on a platform with a smaller cut than Steam’s 30%). But I think that was refuted.
It’s steam keys you aren’t allowed to sell cheaper elsewhere. Which makes some amount of sense: sell your game 30% cheaper elsewhere? None of their business. Sell a steam key 30% cheaper elsewhere? You’re using their download servers, infrastructure, social features, etc without giving them their cut.
From what I’ve heard, steam does not charge for the generation of steam keys. So every steam key sold off platform is a loss of sales for them. Restricting the price of keys sounds perfectly reasonable in this case.
Supposedly it was actually about someone wanting to sell Steam keys off Steam for cheaper, but I cba to find the proof right now so it could also be fake news.
In practice having a game on Steam is even superior to having a DRM free copy. My DRM free copies of games are on some old hard drive in a drawer. My steam library is right there. Removing and installing games is super straightforward.
I like and use Steam. I agree that their dominance is mostly due to the lack of quality competition. They haven’t done anything super shady or anti-consumer.
But don’t expect that to last. It’s a story that’s been repeated countless times now. We know how this goes. One day something will change - probably ownership - and the enshittification will begin.
That’s what DRM free is about. You are in control of your DRM free games even after the developer, publisher, and the store you bought it from have all gone to hell. They also run better years from now when old DRM schemes no longer play nice with OS changes. DRM free is extra insurance that you’ll always have that game and be able to play it.
Too bad I don’t have the hard drive space to store my entire library. One day I’m going to be very sad right alongside everybody else.
I just fucking pirate in that case. That’s a simple fix. I’m not buying games from dev sites directly and I’m not putting up with bs. I’d rather never play a game again if it got that bad. It’s like YouTube, barely anything is worth the hassle. Make it worse and I’m done entirely.
Maybe the difference is effort versus objective reality.
You and OP are concerned with whether or not they became a monopoly maliciously when I think the previous commenter is concerned with whether or not they simply are a monopoly.
In my view they are a monopoly and they have abused that. I’m thinking of their loot boxes and silent support of skin gambling.
We should be mistrustful of institutions with this much power, regardless of if they’re actively abusing it.
How are their lootboxes a Monopoly? They suck and should be banned in any game/platform because gambling is Bad… But is Fifa or overwatch a Monopoly because they have lootboxes? The silent Support of skin gambling? Didnt they make it harder to trade skins to combat These sites? What could they even rly do to stop the gambling sites? Because as long as you can trade skins the sites will remain.
Let me ask you this. What are steam doing to try to be a monopoly?
Because the way I see it, Nintendo at one time took distinctive actions to ENSURE they remained a monopoly. Then Sega threatened that.
Then Sega a few years later shot themselves in the foot with confusing console stratagy. 32X, and the SegaCD were absolute failures because everyone knew the Saturn was around the corner. Then they shot themselves in the foot AGAIN by just dumping the Saturn on retailers doorsteps, in some cases at 3AM when nobody was even at the stores, with no prior warning. Just dump it at their door and hope for the best. Well, CONSUMERS didn’t even know they were in stores. And even people with preorders didn’t know. This was just in the early days of the internet, and long before social media. So it’s not like if this happened today, everyone would know when they check their social media. Nope. It was said that some customers just didn’t know for months, simply because if you weren’t physically in the store, you didn’t know. Some stores took phone numbers for the preorders, the majority did not. A lot of pre-orders were cancelled over this.
Nintendo shot themselves in the foot by partering up with Sony to create the Nintendo Play Station. (Two words). It was to use Sonys CD technology, and be a massive upgrade in storage. Well after reading the contract, Nintendo lawyers discovered that Sony could not only create their own games, but they could liscense the technology to other 3rd parties with zero control over who gets to release software for it. Worst of all, Sony, not Nintendo, would recieve all money from software sold on the Nintendo Play Station. So they backstabbed Sony, and tried again with Phillips. Phillips was to create a Super Nintendo addon. Sega had the SegaCD, and Nintendo felt left out. So they tried creating the Super Nintendo version of the SegaCD. It went very poorly. The end result of this ended up being the Phillips CD-i, which was less of a Nintendo console, and more of a Phillips console liscensing Nintendo characters. To this day, Nintendo has never reclaimed their monopoly, due to trying to kill Sega, they created Sony’s Playstation.
Sony created a monopoly by including a dvd player in the PS2 during a time nobody had a dvd player. It worked. But that was the only thing they did to create the monopoly. It’s not like Nintendo in the 80s, when they told 3rd parties they could either put a game on Atari, or they could put one on the NES. Sony lost their dominance with the PS3 by charging $700, at a time the Xbox360 was charging $400.
And Microsoft lost their dominance by just not having anything exclusive worth playing. Then they had the “everything is an xbox” campaign, which totally backfired.
But Steam? I don’t see them as doing anything to create a monopoly. I see them as a simple software store that sells all PC games. They’ve entered the console space in recent years with the steamdeck. But it’s nothing that creates a monopoly. Personally I find the steamdeck to be overpriced. The thing that gives them a monopoly is that they offer crazy deep sales, but publishers have to agree to those sales. Steam can’t mark Factorio down to $2.00 without the publishers consent (which in that case they do NOT consent to sales).
All I see Steam doing is offering quality products, at reasonable prices, without bullshit.
Epic games is FULL of bullshit in their customer service.
And GOG isn’t full of bullshit, but their library is limited, and always will be limited to publishers who consent to them selling drm-free games. For this reason alone, gog can never compete with steam.
So, yes, Steam HAS a monopoly, but I see it as a result of two things.
Everybody else keeps shooting themselves in the foot.
On consoles you keep the game for that console. When a new console comes out, MAYBE you get backwards compatibility for 1-2 generations. Usually 1 more. With Steam, you could have bought a game 20 years ago, and bought 20 new PC’s since then. Your purchases will still work.
In either event, I don’t see this as Valve being malicious at any point to create a monopoly. It can easily be taken away from them by someone else doing the same things they did. Offer a generous library, complete with modern releases, regular sales, and supurb customer service. It just so happens that everybody else is too greedy and/or stupid to attempt this.
So in your words, what is Valve doing wrong that makes you think they’re creating an unfair monopoly?
There have been reports of Valve telling developers they can’t sell their game cheaper elsewhere (such as on a platform with a smaller cut than Steam’s 30%). But I think that was refuted.
It’s steam keys you aren’t allowed to sell cheaper elsewhere. Which makes some amount of sense: sell your game 30% cheaper elsewhere? None of their business. Sell a steam key 30% cheaper elsewhere? You’re using their download servers, infrastructure, social features, etc without giving them their cut.
From what I’ve heard, steam does not charge for the generation of steam keys. So every steam key sold off platform is a loss of sales for them. Restricting the price of keys sounds perfectly reasonable in this case.
It’s a nice thing for us that they don’t really enforce it at all
Didn’t see it being refuted. I heard emails were leaked
Supposedly it was actually about someone wanting to sell Steam keys off Steam for cheaper, but I cba to find the proof right now so it could also be fake news.
In practice having a game on Steam is even superior to having a DRM free copy. My DRM free copies of games are on some old hard drive in a drawer. My steam library is right there. Removing and installing games is super straightforward.
I like and use Steam. I agree that their dominance is mostly due to the lack of quality competition. They haven’t done anything super shady or anti-consumer.
But don’t expect that to last. It’s a story that’s been repeated countless times now. We know how this goes. One day something will change - probably ownership - and the enshittification will begin.
That’s what DRM free is about. You are in control of your DRM free games even after the developer, publisher, and the store you bought it from have all gone to hell. They also run better years from now when old DRM schemes no longer play nice with OS changes. DRM free is extra insurance that you’ll always have that game and be able to play it.
Too bad I don’t have the hard drive space to store my entire library. One day I’m going to be very sad right alongside everybody else.
I just fucking pirate in that case. That’s a simple fix. I’m not buying games from dev sites directly and I’m not putting up with bs. I’d rather never play a game again if it got that bad. It’s like YouTube, barely anything is worth the hassle. Make it worse and I’m done entirely.
Let me ask you this: does it matter? Whether my neighbor buys or just happens upon a bazooka, he has a bazooka, and I don’t feel safe.
If that’s a bazooka the damn electric and Internet companies have nukes.
Maybe the difference is effort versus objective reality.
You and OP are concerned with whether or not they became a monopoly maliciously when I think the previous commenter is concerned with whether or not they simply are a monopoly.
In my view they are a monopoly and they have abused that. I’m thinking of their loot boxes and silent support of skin gambling.
We should be mistrustful of institutions with this much power, regardless of if they’re actively abusing it.
How are their lootboxes a Monopoly? They suck and should be banned in any game/platform because gambling is Bad… But is Fifa or overwatch a Monopoly because they have lootboxes? The silent Support of skin gambling? Didnt they make it harder to trade skins to combat These sites? What could they even rly do to stop the gambling sites? Because as long as you can trade skins the sites will remain.
Loot boxes are not a monopoly.
Its a bad thing they did to abuse their monopoly stance
??? This doesnt make sense… How did they abuse their Monopoly stance with lootboxes?!
I have a near complete control of a market segment.
I want to monetize that control further.
I release slot machine mini games into my most popular games.
I have contributed to the gambling epidemic that plagues modern society.
I am not a trust worthy entity.
I am Steam
Does that make sense?