Not OC, duh.
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I mean, yes.
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Steam is a scary monopoly, getting scarier.
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It’s not their fault the industry (minus GOG) comitted mass seppuku.
Both can be true. One can worry about Valve, and use them hesitantly, while laughing at everything else like it’s a cartoon.
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Is it a “good” monopoly though?
No shit. It kills me when people play on console. I mean I get the simplicity and all, but they try to use the “it’s cheaper” angle and yeah, bullshit. It’s initially cheaper, then you’re paying what $20 a month to just play online, then games are $10 off at most on their respective stores and then you get to rebuy them when a new console comes out.
Steam games are like 50%-90% off constantly, and Epic has free games like every week. I’ve had games for over 15 years through steam. So yeah I paid $1,000 for my PC but after 3 years console owners have spent $1,500+ after monthly fees and buying games.
I call it accepting a negative, voicing opinions against it, while also not interfacing with it.
The pricing behind PS+, when considering all the Netflix-style games available, is decently generous. Less so for Game Pass, but it used to be better. I think most people are upset that it’s a gatekeeper for online play, but begrudgingly accept it as part of that wide game service.
I’m generally with you that pricing is better, but I have had occasions where a deal price on PlayStation beat out the lowest historical price of a Steam key.
If you were to claim you should never accept a platform with negative behaviors, I would point at Steam’s Counterstrike skins market, which can even encroach on you should scammers wish to sell to you, or steal your account to get a high “user reliability score”. I’d rather it didn’t exist. I still support Steam even with it there.
this is the reason why i dont like Consoles, If you ignore Video Game choices.
(if you want to know Video Game choice: TF2 Is not on Console for example, ik it used to be but not anymore,but its one of my favorite multiplayer game, no multiplayer video game i found is like it.)
Competition actually exists, GOG, Epic, itch.io. More used to exist but they were shitty, inferior products and died out because of that. Steam grew up to being the standard it is now and we come to expect it. It’d take same or better to unseat them.
yeah i know,but i feel like Steam’s competitors are inferior.
(personal opinion though)Save for Epic the other two set out with what they intend. GOG wants you to buy games without DRM that you can download installers for whenever you want to install them. Generally more consumer choice.
ItchIo wants to be a place for small, indie developers to get a spot in the market without having to rely on Steam. Smaller games and media for consumption that I don’t think takes a big of a bite out as Steam does.
Steam has some legitimate criticisms to it certainly, and Gabe is part of the class of people I don’t like. But certainly not a monopoly.
After hearing his connection to Musk I am starting to wonder. All is not what it seems.
Steam is a shitty business. They run a gamblibg scheme fo children, they take a huge cut from devs (blabla industry standard blablabla), they make billions and basically employ less people than an indie. The fact that so many gamers would take a bullet to protect this billionaire dude is beyond me. Of course the guy is super right wing, you don’t run that type without being.
Yeah, I am definitely guilty of giving Steam a free pass because I used their service a lot.
There’s no such thing as a good billionaire. Some are less bad than others, but none are good.
I can get wanting to have enough money to live comfortably. But that line is crossed way before the “billionaire” mark.
They have more money than they could ever hope to spend in 10 lifetimes. So it is a conscious decision they make, to say “Instead of putting everything I don’t need to a good cause, I’m going to hoard it and buy a few more yachts instead.”
who, David Baszucki?
Musk v. Altman lawsuit exposed that not only are Musk and Gabe on speaking terms, but they also share a lot of opinions about AI and brain to computer interfaces.
It is the first crack in Steam I have seen, and if life has taught me anything, where there is smoke there is fire.
Gabe is a billionaire. He collects yachts.
The cracks have been there for years, we just wanted to believe that they weren’t because when we do acknowledge them we acknowledge that all of our money has gone to the parasite class.
Edits: words are hard, can’t decide how I want to say this — you get the picture.
You are right, of course. I think modern day media and it’s propaganda has been unbelievabley effective into duping everyone into believing a divided society of haves and have nots is acceptable.
Me playing steam games on an arm handheld right now cause you can just install an arm build of the steamos frontend on any arm linux device and with a little tweaking my games just work. Its actually amazing, modded terraria, trackmania, schedule 1, etc just work.
an arm handheld
Yes, that’s usually what the hand is at the end of.
Did you see the leg football match last night?
The only ARM Linux device i have is the Raspberry Pi 5.
would be cool to try it out on the PI.The RP5 isnt the strongest device ever but im sure some indie games will run well on it. Also with steam pushing native linux and possibly native arm builds soon of games performance will only improve.
good comment, and yeah most 2D indie games work fine.3D is where it starts to struggle.
(with BOX86/BOX64/FEX-EMU ofc)
native,3D works fine.
Oh, reminds me. Gotta bust out my RP with retropie os on it, is retropie still a thing? My RP is a little older it’s the 1gb cpu with wifi
pretty sure, dont have retropie on mine though.
Fun fact for those of you who stream from a gaming pc to laptop/steamdeck/whatever: you can add 3rd party games (like those off GOG) to steam and stream them without buying them on steam.
There’s also Sunshine/Moonlight and you don’t have to buy your games at all.
i know that,pretty useful though.
You can also install the playnite launcher and launch all your games from one place without having to add them to steam
Can someone please explain this guy to me?
David Baszucki, the CEO of Roblox.
It’s still a monopoly though. The misconception is that calling Valve a monopoly, is somehow an attack on Valve or blames Valve. It’s just a description of Valve’s position in the market.
Also, shame on whoever thinks Valve won’t ever abuse this position at some point in the future.
Funny meme tho, just being pedantic
Has valve ever done anything to stifle the competition?
The meme I hate is “Valve wins by doing nothing”. You cannot be any further from the truth. Valve has won so far by doing many things right, they keep doing many things right. It’s like IT or maintenance work, or being God, your work is invisible until everyone dies.
Don’t be a bastard, and do the right thing. That’s hard to do apparently.
It’s still a monopoly though.
No, it is not. You and the other commentators need to stop repeating that propaganda lie by the true monopolists of PC gaming (Epic, Microsoft,…).
All of Steam combined makes up a fifth of the PC gaming revenue. A fifth! That’s a very good percentage but a fifth of anything is not a monopoly and that’s not even including mobile and consoles where Valve isn’t even competing at the moment.
Fortnite, Rocket League, Valorant, League of Legends, Minecraft, still World of Warcraft, Roblox,… are where all that PC gaming revenue is concentrated but a few mid-tier games sell best on Steam (because the same priced copy on EGS offers worse value) and suddenly everybody keeps repeating the lie of the true monopolists that the company that isn’t classified in the EU as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act is a monopoly (but Microsoft is).
Damn, handheld virtually nonexistent since 2020
People call Valve a monopoly, and they are right but… is it a monopoly because they wanted to become one? Or because the competitors are completely clueless about what do the customers want? Can we blame Valve on becoming a monopoly when they simply are listening to the customers while the competitors (like Epic) keep ignoring users demands?
EA, Ubisoft, Microslop… they all tried to make their own launchers to move away from Steam and they all failed. Why? Because they wanted to make those launchers their way, while actively telling the users to shut up about their demands on what would make the launchers great.
Epic… Epic keeps throwing fortnite money to EGS launcher but keeps ignoring the most basic user demands.
Like, dude? I’m telling you that, for buying your product, it must have A, B and C. But, instead of offering me that, you make a product that lacks specifically A, B and C. And you expect me to buy it?
It is a monopoly, but because nobody else is even trying. And that pisses me off.
Microslop… they all tried to make their own launchers to move away from Steam and they all failed.
Microsoft didn’t fail. They bought Minecraft and Blizzard / Battle.net, two things that are money printers outside of Steam.
Microsoft ACTS like they fail because they demand higher profit margins from their gaming division to fund their AI investments.
Epic… Epic keeps throwing fortnite money to EGS launcher but keeps ignoring the most basic user demands.
EGS has an insane installed base because of Fortnite and Rocket League alone. League of Legends and Valorant are also available there but not Steam. Same with Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact.
It’s just that these games drone out the other games on EGS and that’s why they sell better on Steam. And what is that droning out usually called? A monopoly.
I agree that Valve has, in some instances, succeeded primarily because they’re not aggressively anti-consumer in a market of aggressively anti-consumer alternatives. However, they are not innocent by any means.
Last I checked, they are still automated when it comes to the majority of their “customer services”. Getting an actual human to consider things is expensive and they don’t want to spend money on that.
They are very conscious the numbers behind their success and the money that their platform and marketplace rakes in. They have worked with literal economists when it comes to their marketplace. Yet they turn a blind eye to the skin gambling issue.
They do sometimes behave like bullies when negotiating with those who want to sell their games on Steam. The proportion of money paid out to devs/publishers is a factor of success and benefit to valve rather than anything else - if your game makes a lot of money (for Valve), you get a discount on the percentage taken. Some of that bullying behavior is also anticompetitive - as has been brought up in lawsuits. Their policies use “most favored nation” clauses.
- Basically if you want to benefit from Steam, the dominant marketplace, you have to offer Steam customers nothing less than you offer customers anywhere else. No discounts on another store or your website. No bonus content or service that might make a non-steam purchase feel better than a purchase on Steam.
Finally, they may not be anti-consumer but they have exactly been spending a lot of effort on improving the functionality of services that their platform has. Issues with their friends-related services like voice chat have plagued the platform for a long time, though some have recently been improved. They know they are dominant and don’t spend money when they don’t need to in order to keep customers.
All said and done, I use them as my default though I’ve made efforts to be more dev and indie dev conscious. Unfortunately, greed fuels most of the world and makes it hard to do anything that favors anyone besides those with power.
Doesn’t matter. Monopolies are bad and should be dismantled.
No, not automatically.
You only go around punishing people that do bad things, not everybody that finds themselves in a random situation.
Doesn’t matter. Monopolies are bad and should be dismantled.
Then start with actual monopolists:
Yes, we should dismantle all actual monopolies.
Valve is also an actual monopoly.
Monopoly means it’s the only seller in the market. This isn’t true for PC gaming. You have GoG, Epic, Itch.io, Battle.net, Origin, Uplay, Rockstar smaller websites that host different kinds of games. Steam is the biggest player on PCright now, but there’s nothing about Steam that prevents any other type of competitor from getting into the market and possibly de-throning it.
Valve is also an actual monopoly.
No, a fifth of the PC gaming market is not a monopoly.
Market share is not the only determinant, and also yes holding 20% of the market can empower an actor to exert monopolistic power. Maybe learn a little bit before you open your mouth; you sound as stupid as the FTC.
Maybe learn a little bit before you open your mouth; you sound as stupid as the FTC.
No arguments, only insults. Pathetic.
The term monopoly does not apply here. Not only do we lack any evidence of anti-competitive practices, there literally are competitors, they just suck and they are very unpopular.
A monopoly […] is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service[1]. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller’s marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
A monopoly is just an observation of the market landscape. Doesnt require ill intent or anti-competitive practices. Steam is just a benevolent monopoly. Until its not…
A monopoly […] is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service
So like Epic in case of Unreal Engine and Microsoft in case of Windows. Steam makes up a fifth of all PC gaming revenue and EGS has a wide installed based because of Fortnite, Rocket League etc. People just choose not to spend their money there for games that are available elsewhere. That’s different from EGS not being able from supplying goods and services because they were pushed out.
There is competition. And the term “monopolize” is used as a way of saying someone took action to stomp out the competition so I would say that 99% of people would assume intent whether or not it’s technically a part of the definition, because 99% of the time a monopoly exists it’s not by accident. But again, importantly, there IS competition.
Valve just shipped a controller that only works in steam 🤣
No it can already work with anything that accepts SDL input (which is a bunch of software and most modern games steam or not). They upstreamed support for it before the controller even launched.
Shhh, you will crush their whole world
is steam really over 95% of the market? i think that’s where the limit is
is steam really over 95% of the market? i think that’s where the limit is
No, 8.6 billion out of 45 billion dollars. That’s a fifth.
well… that’s it then. case closed.
agreed, i will just hope they dont abuse the monopoly like Google or Microsoft. (this will be wishful thinking)
30% of your gross income for advertising and hosting is a scam. It’s a scam when Apple does it, when Google does it, and yes, when Steam does it.
There’s a reason Gabe can afford that yacht without breaking a sweat.
Just because Steam is the best of the software monopolies doesn’t exclude it from the group.
*Six yachts, apparently.
You really think you can independently afford high speed localized 24/7 file hosting all over the world for potentially millions of downloads for less than 30% of your sell price?
Steam games can be cheap because steam offers all the expensive things cheaply. No one is going to download your game off of a shady MEGA link. No one is going to go to fucknuts.biz.co.uk.nz to your shady site straight from squarespace templates to then crash your filehost by trying to download your game at the same time as 500 other people. No one is going to trust you with their bank details and crypto is a scam and paypal also takes a high cut.
If your goal is to do gaming more than a thankless, pay free hobby you need:
Marketing
Trust
Payment Provider
Accounting (tax is different in every country, and you have to account for that in every country you sell your game to)
Global CDN
And ease of use.
Unless your game is so incredibly niche AND so incredibly good that you can get away with shunning all of those things, you will need those to make enough money to even make a minimum wage salary after a year. Starsector and dwarf fortress are the only ones that come to mind, and the latter went to steam after Tarn decided to actually go full time and needed a real income to cover hosting and salary that couldn’t be found in donations.
Data centers are expensive. And yes profit is built in to steam’s cut because they know most players aren’t going to repeatedly download any given game over the lifetime of their steam account. But doing it yourself means either you do not offer repeat download to players, or you run out of money in two years because people stop buying the game but people will still download it again and again.
You really think you can independently afford high speed localized 24/7 file hosting all over the world for potentially millions of downloads for less than 30% of your sell price?
Absolutely, yes, 1000%. And why does your download need to be local? Have you heard of The Internet?
You’re not really making an argument against a monopoly when you say it can’t be done without Steam.
It can’t be done without MONEY.
Download speed is highly relative to latency (bandwidth/delay product). If you have global users and you actually want them to download dozens (if not more) of gigs of data, then yea…they should be distributed.
Fuck for as much hate as cloudflare and akamai (and Amazon and Google and all the others too, but CDN is their bread and butter) get, the internet could not be nearly as fast and efficient if not for CDNs and their massively scalable infrastructure.
Unless you think we should all go back to hosting websites off of an old Pentium in the garage. Which…okay yeah we should do that too, but it’s not at all functional for game distribution.
Download speed is highly relative to latency
Tell that to my USB stick.
…So to educate you, locally hosted servers, which all CDNs use, allow for greater download speeds and less overall network strain and complexity, which reduces the chance for failed downloads via lost packets.
Every single download and major content service you have used in the last 15 years has used this, and this is why your downloads rarely if ever say ‘download failed’ like they did pre-2005.
This is also very expensive, hosting a server in every major country/download area and then replicating files across those disparate servers is expensive.
Let’s say you want to host your 2GB game, and only that, in the US and Europe. Well the US is a giant place but the core infrastructure is good enough that you can get away with a single location, so that’s two servers. Each will probably be $50/month or so per 500GB traffic (since it’s just file hosting we don’t care about stats, but you’re not getting above 10Mbps for less than that at that traffic limit).
That’s 250 times that can download your game. In America. And 250 in Europe. Let’s say you get the ideal sales numbers and 500 people buy your game.
If you’re selling your game for $5, that is one download per person for their lifetime that you can afford(assuming 30% or less goes to hosting) If you increase your price to $7.20 you hit that 30% cap but those 500 people can download it any time for a year. Or, if we assume we get 6,000 people (the theoretical maximum number of people that can download your game at that price) you can have a salary of $25,920.
But lets be honest, most indie games off steam never make it to 6,000 sales. And the ones that do take years of basically hosting for free as a passion project.
So make your game cost… $21? Well you’ve cut off any chance of anyone outside of the US and Europe of ever buying your game, but you can now host for 3 years for those 6,000 sales and you’d even have a decent enough salary to pay tax… which for a small business in the US will take another 3rd of your costs, and you still haven’t paid for marketing or your payment provider fees or their taxes or sales tax or VAT for Europe…
Or. You pay steam that 30%. They handle hosting, which already cost you 30%, and everything else, and the admin overhead of selling to 190 countries like calculating (and already paying out of your cut) tax.
Do you stack your dishwasher like this?
Saying its 30% of gross income for advertising is pretty disingenuous. They also handle the distribution and payment systems which is very much not insignificant along with other more insignificant things.
I have serious issues with some aspects of Steam,and if its creating billionaires theres obviously a problem. But taking a cut of game sales isnt those issues. We can argue about the exact % that would be reasonable, bc some amount definitely is. But thats not the actual issues with the platform.
I don’t think the handling of the payment systems is a very big part of their business, or else they wouldn’t just shrug their shoulders when Visa starts policing game content.
Lol gog with the propeller hat in the corner
hahaha yeah.
Shoulda had him playing with Itch.io
good idea.
Once steam goes to shit we will all sail the seven seas but multiplayer will suffer
GOG just sitting in the corner waiting for people to notice them.
GOG just sitting in the corner waiting for people to notice them.
And they can keep sitting there while they’re not actively supporting Linux, despite all that Cyberpunk/Witcher money (and according to their statements the funding got even better after their sale). To play their games on Linux, I have to go through all the steps to get Heroic and its terrible GUI, go through its WINE settings,…
Meanwhile 90% of the Steam games: Hit “Play” and it just works.
don’t forget the GenAI for marketing.
How’s multiplayer on gog ?
multiplayer will suffer
Good. It’s a cesspool.
Just playing with friends might get harder
am probably gonna rebuy all my video games on alternative platforms, or imma play open source games instead.
i can also take the games outside of Steam.I mostly play mmos tbf but I want to download and safely store a copy of wow classic servers and clients and mods in case we have an apocalypse event lol
kinda like me, i mostly play TF2. (but i have to wait hours for my servers to start.)
Is that a stickman vomiting at roblox’s collapsing share price in the top right?
pretty sure
![Steam competitors be like. [Extended?]](https://thelemmy.club/pictrs/image/8d2d46eb-234c-41bd-b7c1-fb9c4c9f2508.webp){kind=link}