i think we’re missing the forest for the trees here by arguing wether valve should’ve allowed the game or not.
the fact that valve is in such a dominant position that them refusing to sell a game can mean not only the game’s failure, but the shutdown of the studio making it, is a big problem. and it’s not just this game, after the payment processor affair, VILE: Exhumed (a game about sexual assault, among other things) was banned from steam (for being about sexual assault), before it could even release
game devs shouldn’t have to rely on just one vendor’s approval to sell their stuff, it’s an unhealthy ecosystem.
But then the issue is not because Valve is vicious company that kill competitor, it’s because the competitor keep shooting themselves. It’s like Luigi keep wining by doing nothing. What do you expect Valve to do?
the fact that valve is in such a dominant position that them refusing to sell a game can mean not only the game’s failure, but the shutdown of the studio making it,
There are games exclusive to Epic that do just fine. There are games on itch and GoG that are doing just fine.
If Steam not hosting your game causes your studio to shut down, it’s not because Steam is being some unreasonable gatekeeper. It’s because you’re making something that there isn’t any market for, or so little of a market that your only hope is to get it visible to as many people as possible so the tiny fraction of them that are interested can keep you afloat.
when you’re arguing that it’s impossible for a game to make a profit without Steam, yes
my post was in reply to you listing a single game that wasn’t profitable for a year and blaming that on it not being on Steam. If my example is not a valid argument then you shouldn’t have argued that way in the first place.
Strawman. It is demonstrably much harder for games to profit, when they’re not on Steam. Exceptions are rare viral hits. Alan Wake 2 was a popular and acclaimed game, and it did terribly on PC specifically, because it wasn’t on the one storefront that handles an overwhelming majority of PC sales. The difference between PC games not on Steam and iOS games not on the App Store is slim.
So yes, there are games exclusive to Epic that do just fine, but not many. Odds say, fucked. Being unavailable on Steam means most PC gamers will not consider buying it, and may never even be aware of it. We have a word for that.
Yeah, it’s a monopoly. That’s not a value judgement. It’s not calling them evil or criminal or anything. It is a necessary recognition of their market position. I.e. - they have competitors, but those competitors do not matter.
Standard Oil only ever controlled 85% of America’s oil.
Monopoly is when your competition does not matter - not when it does not exist. There will always be someone competing with you. But if I open Mindbleach’s Video Emporium and move six units per quarter, the impact on Steam is approximately dick.
Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a “monopolist” is a firm with significant and durable market power.
Absolute monopolies do not exist. If there’s one asshole selling PC games out of a car boot, Steam does not have a literal absolute monopoly. And yet: not even Epic Games, a bajillion dollar company, has any meaningful impact on Steam’s superdupermajority control of the PC gaming market. Steam competitors existing does not mean they matter.
But this game is getting distribution through GoG and about a half dozen other platforms listed in the article.
Do most people game through steam? Yes. But centralization of the marketplace isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s a reason why people complain when they have to use other game stores an launchers. It’s the “I have 50 different streaming services” problem.
If Steam starts abusing that market position, then yes, we should care about that and they should suffer backlash. Which makes the question of “did they do the right thing here,” very much relevant.
there is another way, games shouldn’t be tied to the store you bought them in
like, for physical objects, you can buy a thing from one store and another thing from another store, and they’ll be in your house no problem, you won’t even have to think about which store you bought which thing from (unless you need to return it or for customer service). it’s fundamentally decentralized. why shouldn’t digital distribution work that way too? it’s entirely possible, but obviously vendors benefit from locking you to their platform (that goes for steam, but also to epic games and, to a lesser extent GOG as well)
there should be no company with power to abuse in the first place. steam refused to sell your game? alright, you can sell it in other places and it’ll be fine. but that’s not how it works right now, most people buy on steam, and ONLY on steam, because it has a dominant position. so, if you can’t sell on steam, you’re done for!
and we can analyse each ban on a case-by-case basis (there’s many steam game bans I am glad happened), but there’s also cases like VILE: Exhumed, where steam caved to pressure from payment processors (which are also very centralized, that’s another honestly bigger problem) to ban a game with progressive politics simply because it talked about stuff that makes reactionary prudes uncomfortable.
we can’t just rely on Good Guy Valve to stay good forever
But they aren’t tied to a store? When you download a game from Steam, it’s just an executable on your box. You could put it on a hard drive and move it wherever you wanted. You don’t have to launch games you bought with Steam through Steam. They aren’t streamed. They are saved locally to your computer.
You can only download it from that store, sure, but that’s not apples to apples. If I buy a game from GameStop, they won’t give me another copy for free, just cause I threw away the copy they gave me. Once you download the game, that’s what they sold you, and it’s notionally your responsibility to keep track of it. Them allowing you to keep downloading new copies forever isn’t strictly necessary, and costs them money every time you do it.
And if you can run the games you downloaded without Steam, all you’re saying is “there should be other places to buy your games.” But there are. Those exist. Less people use them, sure, but what do you propose? Kill Steam because too many people use it to buy their games? Legislate that people are required to shop at other stores?
well, many games are tied to the steam client (through the steam runtimes, steam DRM, steam input, needing a steam account for online play…). for most games, no, you can’t just take the executable and do whatever you want with it. you’ll need the steam client, and this creates a lock-in effect. because you need steam open to play all your steam games, you won’t look elsewhere for games, and you won’t see games not on steam, unless they’re big enough.
imo, the solution to this is to break the lock-in, have interoperability between clients. there’s no good reason why cross-play between steam and GOG, for example, is an exception and not the norm. there’s no good reason why the steam client is required for so many games, there should be offline installers. there’s no good reason why steam input only works with the steam client. part of the reason why proton is so amazing is that it’s open-source, other steam technologies should be the same!
Sure, many games are tied to various Steam services, but that’s by the choice of the games developer. Steam offers various built in services that game devs can choose to use if they want. It’s not like it’s some kind of requirement.
You might as well complain that game devs use Windows binaries, locking their games to only run on Windows. Sure, I prefer it when they target other platforms, but that’s 1000% not Microsoft’s fault that the dev chose to dev for their platform. I’m not mad at Microsoft for so many games being Windows only. I’m mad at the devs.
And games that build themselves around Steam services are of course going to be tied to Steam. That’s a choice the devs made. If they wanted their game to run without needing the Steam client, they trivially could have built it that way. They just would have had to either reimplement all those Steam features themselves, or done without.
And if people want those Steam features, every store client who wants to run those games would have to implement those features in an interoperable way. It’s easy to say “have interoperability between clients,” but that’s glossing over the potentially thousands of dev hours required to implement all of the features needed. And that’s assuming they could all agree on a spec.
And to your final point about being open source. First, it gives very “any musician who gets paid is a sellout” energy. But more than that, it doesn’t actually solve the problem you have. Even if Steam open sourced their tooling, that doesn’t mean other players in the space could integrate it. Steam has grown organically for the past 30yrs, and trying to extricate the deep inner bits and then graft them on to your own solution isn’t as easy as it sounds.
i think we’re missing the forest for the trees here by arguing wether valve should’ve allowed the game or not.
the fact that valve is in such a dominant position that them refusing to sell a game can mean not only the game’s failure, but the shutdown of the studio making it, is a big problem. and it’s not just this game, after the payment processor affair, VILE: Exhumed (a game about sexual assault, among other things) was banned from steam (for being about sexual assault), before it could even release
game devs shouldn’t have to rely on just one vendor’s approval to sell their stuff, it’s an unhealthy ecosystem.
But then the issue is not because Valve is vicious company that kill competitor, it’s because the competitor keep shooting themselves. It’s like Luigi keep wining by doing nothing. What do you expect Valve to do?
There are games exclusive to Epic that do just fine. There are games on itch and GoG that are doing just fine.
If Steam not hosting your game causes your studio to shut down, it’s not because Steam is being some unreasonable gatekeeper. It’s because you’re making something that there isn’t any market for, or so little of a market that your only hope is to get it visible to as many people as possible so the tiny fraction of them that are interested can keep you afloat.
Alan Wake 2 took an entire year to become profitable.
It’s because the one store everyone uses didn’t carry it.
Satisfactory made $11 million in the first year when it was exclusive to Epic (and not available on “the one store everybody uses”).
Exceptions mean there’s no rule, yeah? Minecraft, therefore, 90% marketshare cannot matter.
when you’re arguing that it’s impossible for a game to make a profit without Steam, yes
my post was in reply to you listing a single game that wasn’t profitable for a year and blaming that on it not being on Steam. If my example is not a valid argument then you shouldn’t have argued that way in the first place.
Strawman. It is demonstrably much harder for games to profit, when they’re not on Steam. Exceptions are rare viral hits. Alan Wake 2 was a popular and acclaimed game, and it did terribly on PC specifically, because it wasn’t on the one storefront that handles an overwhelming majority of PC sales. The difference between PC games not on Steam and iOS games not on the App Store is slim.
So yes, there are games exclusive to Epic that do just fine, but not many. Odds say, fucked. Being unavailable on Steam means most PC gamers will not consider buying it, and may never even be aware of it. We have a word for that.
Exceptions mean there’s no rule, yeah?
Struggling is the rule, not the exception. Most games do much worse when they’re not on Steam. Most means more. Do you understand that?
Yeah, it’s a monopoly. That’s not a value judgement. It’s not calling them evil or criminal or anything. It is a necessary recognition of their market position. I.e. - they have competitors, but those competitors do not matter.
So not a monopoly.
Absolute monopolies are fiction.
Standard Oil only ever controlled 85% of America’s oil.
Monopoly is when your competition does not matter - not when it does not exist. There will always be someone competing with you. But if I open Mindbleach’s Video Emporium and move six units per quarter, the impact on Steam is approximately dick.
So is Epic’s.
Monopoly:
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined
Absolute monopolies do not exist. If there’s one asshole selling PC games out of a car boot, Steam does not have a literal absolute monopoly. And yet: not even Epic Games, a bajillion dollar company, has any meaningful impact on Steam’s superdupermajority control of the PC gaming market. Steam competitors existing does not mean they matter.
But this game is getting distribution through GoG and about a half dozen other platforms listed in the article.
Do most people game through steam? Yes. But centralization of the marketplace isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s a reason why people complain when they have to use other game stores an launchers. It’s the “I have 50 different streaming services” problem.
If Steam starts abusing that market position, then yes, we should care about that and they should suffer backlash. Which makes the question of “did they do the right thing here,” very much relevant.
there is another way, games shouldn’t be tied to the store you bought them in
like, for physical objects, you can buy a thing from one store and another thing from another store, and they’ll be in your house no problem, you won’t even have to think about which store you bought which thing from (unless you need to return it or for customer service). it’s fundamentally decentralized. why shouldn’t digital distribution work that way too? it’s entirely possible, but obviously vendors benefit from locking you to their platform (that goes for steam, but also to epic games and, to a lesser extent GOG as well)
there should be no company with power to abuse in the first place. steam refused to sell your game? alright, you can sell it in other places and it’ll be fine. but that’s not how it works right now, most people buy on steam, and ONLY on steam, because it has a dominant position. so, if you can’t sell on steam, you’re done for!
and we can analyse each ban on a case-by-case basis (there’s many steam game bans I am glad happened), but there’s also cases like VILE: Exhumed, where steam caved to pressure from payment processors (which are also very centralized, that’s another honestly bigger problem) to ban a game with progressive politics simply because it talked about stuff that makes reactionary prudes uncomfortable.
we can’t just rely on Good Guy Valve to stay good forever
But they aren’t tied to a store? When you download a game from Steam, it’s just an executable on your box. You could put it on a hard drive and move it wherever you wanted. You don’t have to launch games you bought with Steam through Steam. They aren’t streamed. They are saved locally to your computer.
You can only download it from that store, sure, but that’s not apples to apples. If I buy a game from GameStop, they won’t give me another copy for free, just cause I threw away the copy they gave me. Once you download the game, that’s what they sold you, and it’s notionally your responsibility to keep track of it. Them allowing you to keep downloading new copies forever isn’t strictly necessary, and costs them money every time you do it.
And if you can run the games you downloaded without Steam, all you’re saying is “there should be other places to buy your games.” But there are. Those exist. Less people use them, sure, but what do you propose? Kill Steam because too many people use it to buy their games? Legislate that people are required to shop at other stores?
well, many games are tied to the steam client (through the steam runtimes, steam DRM, steam input, needing a steam account for online play…). for most games, no, you can’t just take the executable and do whatever you want with it. you’ll need the steam client, and this creates a lock-in effect. because you need steam open to play all your steam games, you won’t look elsewhere for games, and you won’t see games not on steam, unless they’re big enough.
imo, the solution to this is to break the lock-in, have interoperability between clients. there’s no good reason why cross-play between steam and GOG, for example, is an exception and not the norm. there’s no good reason why the steam client is required for so many games, there should be offline installers. there’s no good reason why steam input only works with the steam client. part of the reason why proton is so amazing is that it’s open-source, other steam technologies should be the same!
Sure, many games are tied to various Steam services, but that’s by the choice of the games developer. Steam offers various built in services that game devs can choose to use if they want. It’s not like it’s some kind of requirement.
You might as well complain that game devs use Windows binaries, locking their games to only run on Windows. Sure, I prefer it when they target other platforms, but that’s 1000% not Microsoft’s fault that the dev chose to dev for their platform. I’m not mad at Microsoft for so many games being Windows only. I’m mad at the devs.
And games that build themselves around Steam services are of course going to be tied to Steam. That’s a choice the devs made. If they wanted their game to run without needing the Steam client, they trivially could have built it that way. They just would have had to either reimplement all those Steam features themselves, or done without.
And if people want those Steam features, every store client who wants to run those games would have to implement those features in an interoperable way. It’s easy to say “have interoperability between clients,” but that’s glossing over the potentially thousands of dev hours required to implement all of the features needed. And that’s assuming they could all agree on a spec.
And to your final point about being open source. First, it gives very “any musician who gets paid is a sellout” energy. But more than that, it doesn’t actually solve the problem you have. Even if Steam open sourced their tooling, that doesn’t mean other players in the space could integrate it. Steam has grown organically for the past 30yrs, and trying to extricate the deep inner bits and then graft them on to your own solution isn’t as easy as it sounds.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is though, since I refuse to buy a game anywhere else. If it’s not on steam I’m not buying it.
That’s shortsighted as hell. I cma understand not wanting to have multiple clients installed but there’s GoG at the very least.
Gog gives drm free installers, no laucher needed. Install it somewhere, go into steam, add non-steam game. Boom. Done.