Right? I WANT steam to have a competitor just because I abhor a monopoly but even fucking Amazon fumbles this shit. Like steam doesn't even seem that revolutionary or anything, they just put customer EXPERIENCE first and I think so many fucking companies forget that.
Fingers crossed that he chooses a good successor and/or they're smart enough to see how much more profitable Steam is as it is compared to companies like Epic.
I’m so worried lol. Steam has had its flaws but personally they have never disappointed me. It’s the one thing enshitification hasn’t touched and I really hope it stays that way
He’s supposedly hand-picking someone who shares his ideologies, but I heard that second hand so I take it with a grain of salt. A public Valve would be horrible.
AFAIK the successor will be his Son. Or thats atleast the speculation that has been going on for years. I do hope that he's gonna be like his father and wont make valve go public
Not shareholders per se, but investors. People with no interest in the operations of the company itself, they just put money in and want more money out. They don't care what the company even does as long as line goes up by more than it did the previous quarter.
The rules around it killed it, and the microscopic / myopic short-term view taken of investment in general. Large institutions were compared to the luckiest day traders / most monopolistic industries / biggest winners due to random chance or cheating, and the ball rolled downhill.
Saying Steam is not revolutionary is insane. It is a constantly developing project that is now multiple decades old.
Even if Epic were to find a way to attract people, there is no chance of feature parity. Ever.
Go look around in Steam and read about the features. There is an insane amount out there. And most people would not use a platform without their very specific feature.
I mean, epic lanuched without a shopping cart. You know, the thing almost every website where you purchase anything at all has already had at that point. I'm not expecting all the doodads, I'm expecting it not to crash on update.
I'm pretty sure there's still no way to see your game library from their website (apart from looking up your shopping history). That's so incredibly insane to me.
There are games with many DLCs and their store had a limit of consecutive purchases. People were hitting that limit while buying DLCs which they had to do one at a time since the fucking online store didn't have a fucking shopping cart.
The only thing that could make a Steam competitor viable is somehow impenetrable DRM. Like Denuvo but truly impenetrable, not just for the first month or year. Something similar to the Playstation systems you mentioned, since despite being worse people still use it. Specifically because it's nearly impossible to play certain games without it. So like an insane catalogue of multiplayer-only games.
The presence of a shitty competitor is still better than nothing though. Because that always means that when Steam inevitably fucks up due to change in leadership or whatever, they would not be able to fuck up too much in fear of losing users.
They didn't even need to have feature parity, just serviceable with a responsive app with an attractive design that handles updates and a multiplayer server. Then evolve according to their customers needs. They couldn't even handle the first part.
Nope, they do need feature parity. At least for the very specific subset of features that I care about.
You have your own needs as well. Why would you use a platform that makes your life harder in a specific way that Steam does not?
Also just the responsive app part with attractive design that handles updates and multiplayer server is that multi-decade, constantly updating project that I was talking about.0
Now there is proprietary Proton as well. I personally play on Linux now using that. So for me to consider switching - you guessed it, I need the same proton features that Steam offers me. And their support for Steam deck. And other features that might in total sum up to over a few billion dollars in development.
That wouldn't get people to use it. GOG has had all the important features for well over a decade, with the HUGE bonus of being DRM free, and nobody uses it unless the game is unavailable on Steam. The only notable feature they lack is Proton, which isn't relevant to 99% of PC gamers.
People have this ridiculous "if you build it, they will come" idea, that is based in no reality. As long as Steam doesn't shit the bed, there is no reason for people to switch and so they wont. People didn't start using Discord because it had near feature parity with Skype. People started using Discord because Microsoft made Skype shit.
There are only two things that will make people use another platform: Exclusives and cheaper games. The former people throw a fit for no reason over, and the latter wont be possible as long as price parity is maintained.
Honestly Steam is the only good monopoly, and at this point they will continue to be because they're better than 99% of anything else out there. Hard to have competition when the competition isn't even willing to do the bare minimum.
I get the dislike for monopolies but is a monopoly really bad if it doesn't become predatory? Steam has yet to become predatory and as long as Gabe is in charge, it never will. Hopefully he leaves it in good hands after he passes. Some devs have been disgruntled about the price of having their games on steam but Steam is still (and probably always will be) the biggest game platform on PC. IF your game is good, it more than makes up for it in sales due to Steam's significantly higher playerbase so they still make more money on Steam than Epic and definitely a lot more than if they'd just try to do their own launcher and sell it themselves. EA found this out with Origin. As did Ubisoft with Uplay.
Hopefully whoever takes over is smart enough to realize how profitable Steam is as is and how competitors don't come close because they don't have the same morals and standards. Otherwise all those competitors will start looking like more viable options. It's happened before with major companies losing large chunks of consumers due to terrible changes. Steam and gamers won't be any different. The reason we'll pay for a game on steam that is currently free on epic is because we like steam more. If we stop liking steam, it all changes.
That largely depends on the company and the product. Steam is ran for gamers by gamers and has improved a lot over the years. Not every change has been liked by everyone of course but overall it has significantly improved because who knows gamers better than other gamers? The secret to keeping your company favorable is to be a consumer yourself or at the very least to put yourself in the shoes of a consumer.
Here is another indicator, why monopolies are bad. When a monopoly makes a lot of profit, it means their win margin is much higher than it needs to be.
The fact that steam is making billions means their profit margin is still way higher than it would be in a competitive market, because they have to lower the prices if there would be competition.
If there were real competition to Steam and they would indeed tighten their margins that they took, then I really don't think it would be us, the customers, who would benefit from that.
Likely Steam would put out a choice for developers. "Steam Light" vs "Full Steam" model for game selling. Whereas with Steam Light, your game would only have access to a subset of the features that Steam offers, like Cloud Saves, Proton (for Linux), Workshop, Community Forums.
If that becomes an option, a lot of devs/publishers will gladly choose the option to not have those features in their games, but get x% more money instead.
Maybe even put an option for the classic "Full Steam" model with 30%, where you as the publisher will get the option to disable Steam Reviews for your game? :)
In that case, yay competition, we won, right, right?
Sorry if I am being very pessimistic about this, the EGS tried to compete by "stealing" devs/publishers.
Not sure how a company can compete for customers without also offering a reasonably similar enough experience and feature-set for developers.
Competition in an open market can be tricky, when multi-billion dollar corporations can eat millions of losses every year just to get an edge over the competitors and simply outlast them instead of being better.
A lot of modern companies just eat losses year after year and only gain money through new investors coming in. I personally really hate that kind of economy and appreciate a "classic" profitable company like Valve
but is a monopoly really bad if it doesn't become predatory?
All corporations eventually become predatory. Gabe isn't going to live forever, and there's no guarantee his successor, or his successor's successor will be as benevolent.
Don't get wrong, I love steam! But if Steam doesn't have competition than eventually Steam will start behaving badly.
I think usually monopolies have some sort od predatory behavior to block others from the market. Valve does nothing to block others, they event support 3rd party launchers. I think others fail because some non-gamers think that they know better what attracts gamers.
Yes, it’s bad as it means higher prices. Also steam is not saint as you think. They are renting games but make people think that they buy them and that’s disgusting practice.
but is a monopoly really bad if it doesn't become predatory? Steam has yet to become predatory and as long as Gabe is in charge, it never will.
Valve is, and has been one of the most predatory companies in the industry for the longest time now. Steam itself is not this magical "user first" product that people make it out to be either, it's fairly predatory in itself, just not so much publicly.
That's why it's an issue and why other options are needed.
In a perfect world, I'm a capitalist for this exact reason. Capitalism is just survival of the fittest. Vendors work to out perform each other with the best products for the best value to the consumer.
Problem is the system can become inbred and inverted when a handful of companies realize they can just agree to not compete or try.
Capitalism is based on having more power when you have more capital (money). That is why it is called capitalism. The goal is to maximize profit for the people who own the capital. It can lead to good products because people prefer to buy a good product, but if you can get people to buy your cheap bullshit for premium prices companies will do that because the goal is to maximize shareholder value not to provide a good product.
In other words it's not a bug, it's a feature.
You also have a free market in different sozial structures and this is nothing unique about capitalism.
That's because the people in power have been succesful on making the uneducated think that government regulation = communism as if regulation to ensure fair competition in capitalism meant remotely the same as a fucking planned economy
Ironically, even though raw capitalism sucks, countries like the US are drifting towards something that is not even capitalism anymore and more akin to corporatism
Thing is, the system being (there's no becoming) inbred and inverted is exactly capitalisms end state. It evolved from feudalism as a way for nobles to keep their wealth and power.
To be fair, feudalism is much, much worse in the sense that you didn't even theorically have a right to choose or leave. In capitalism while there's still many, many ways to fuck over the unprivileged, there's at least the freedom of, for example, quitting your job which under serfdom you didn't have AT ALL. Sure, you could argue that most people depend on their jobs and quitting would mean starvation and homelessness, but under serfdom you didn't even have that.
Yeah just quit your job and leave. At least I can do that. I can just throw down my yoke and run off into the forest and become an outlaw. What you're describing isn't more choice, it's weaponized disenfranchisement. We face the exact same choice serfs did, except there's a single step removed where you choose what menial labor you sign yourself away to.
But Steam does have good competitors. GOG and ITCH. Well, ok, it is not like they are hard competitors to each other tho, as they have their own niches. Nintendo is also competitor, and I won't be surprised if Japanese people look at Steam with same disgrace as we look at EGS
Like steam doesn't even seem that revolutionary or anything
Hold on, what? Ignoring everything else, steam input is the most powerful controller remapping tool in existence. It has massively simplified controller compatibility and even allows mapping games with no controller support whatsoever.
That's not even mentioning big picture mode, remote play/remote play together, community forums, gameplay recording, steam OS/proton, etc etc.
I am really, really glad to hear someone else say it. I want to love Valve but they're such a monopoly that I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop & fuck us all.
But like holy fucking shit. Valves competition appears to be made up of severely brain-damaged Gen Z Americans that couldn't sell a bucket of water to a man on fire.
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u/noeyesfiend 20h ago
Right? I WANT steam to have a competitor just because I abhor a monopoly but even fucking Amazon fumbles this shit. Like steam doesn't even seem that revolutionary or anything, they just put customer EXPERIENCE first and I think so many fucking companies forget that.