In general, I think being decent to customers is a business strategy, because the barrier to entry for a Steam competitor is nearly non-existent, and there’s always piracy. Still, capitalism working the way it’s “supposed to” is still capitalism.
It’s quite true, for example, they were one of the first companies to make successful inroads in selling video games in Russia back in the day. Other companies avoided it due to rampant piracy of games in Russia, but Valve successfully (at the time) provided a service and price point that made it more attractive to many Russians than piracy. Being decent to customers is indeed a viable business strategy, and up until the 1970’s was sort of the norm for business (not entirely, but far more than now). It wasn’t until then that businesses became far more extractive from their customer base than trying to build better products for customers.
However, they were also pioneers in certain aspects of gaming that have become detrimental to consumers, such as loot boxes and digital marketplaces. They have done their best to manage and regulate those within their own walled garden, but they have taken a hands-off approach to gambling on Steam marketplace items that takes place on websites outside of Steam (which to an extent is fair since many of them exist in countries where Valve would have very little success in taking them down in any way).
It’s not network effects (but slightly related), it’s opportunity cost.
Getting your app into yet another app store isn’t hard, but takes time, so you need to make sure it doesn’t cost devs more to add support for you than it earns them. The slightest fuzz and they’ll drop you if you’re small.
But stores like Gog are able to exist just fine. They’re big enough that many devs think it’s worth it to support them. If you want more devs to do so, tell them that’s what you want and show it will be worth it. And if you want to open another store, copy Gog & co
In general, I think being decent to customers is a business strategy, because the barrier to entry for a Steam competitor is nearly non-existent, and there’s always piracy. Still, capitalism working the way it’s “supposed to” is still capitalism.
It’s quite true, for example, they were one of the first companies to make successful inroads in selling video games in Russia back in the day. Other companies avoided it due to rampant piracy of games in Russia, but Valve successfully (at the time) provided a service and price point that made it more attractive to many Russians than piracy. Being decent to customers is indeed a viable business strategy, and up until the 1970’s was sort of the norm for business (not entirely, but far more than now). It wasn’t until then that businesses became far more extractive from their customer base than trying to build better products for customers.
However, they were also pioneers in certain aspects of gaming that have become detrimental to consumers, such as loot boxes and digital marketplaces. They have done their best to manage and regulate those within their own walled garden, but they have taken a hands-off approach to gambling on Steam marketplace items that takes place on websites outside of Steam (which to an extent is fair since many of them exist in countries where Valve would have very little success in taking them down in any way).
My brother in christ have you heard of network effects?
It’s not network effects (but slightly related), it’s opportunity cost.
Getting your app into yet another app store isn’t hard, but takes time, so you need to make sure it doesn’t cost devs more to add support for you than it earns them. The slightest fuzz and they’ll drop you if you’re small.
But stores like Gog are able to exist just fine. They’re big enough that many devs think it’s worth it to support them. If you want more devs to do so, tell them that’s what you want and show it will be worth it. And if you want to open another store, copy Gog & co
Network effects and chill?