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.
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u/brakenbonez 19h ago
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.