[jsheard]

> Its also a hedge to prevent every large game seller from setting up their own store.

That ship has already sailed - EA has Origin, Ubisoft has Uplay, Activision/Blizzard has Battle.net, Microsoft has the Windows store, and Bethesda and Epic have their own launchers.

Nearly every major publisher has already made the investment to develop their own store and digital distribution infrastructure, so they have little reason to pay the Steam tax now.

[skinnyarms]

Most stores keep their numbers private, but I'd wager that Steam has most (if not all of them) beat by a large margin.

Presumably these companies believe that the higher margins and control they get from running their own stores are worth the customers they lose by not being in Steam.

As the Steam Tax lightens however, the results of that equation could change.

[diminoten]

The major publishers aren't trying to "beat" Steam, they're just trying to release their games without paying the Steam Tax.

The point is, it's too late to do the math on the Steam Tax now, those R&D dollars are spent. Steam was too slow.

[chupasaurus]

> they're just trying to release their games without paying the Steam Tax.

By not paying the Steam Tax, publishers are paying Engineering Tax and risks for fails in their distribution platforms.

I have Vietnam flashbacks from Origin and Uplay. EA fixed their's in 2015, but latter is still a bughole and the reason I don't even look at Ubi's games. Latest Bethesda release is a clear example of that problem.

[nimish]

RDR2 sold ~800MM. 25% of that is 200MM, which is far more than it takes to set up a basic digital storefront. I doubt Valve bothers with a fraction of that for ongoing operations given how terrible the steam UX really is.

[user5994461]

Damn. That's not enough to cover Amazon network fees for transferring 100M copies of 100GB.

[chupasaurus]

And we don't know about the cut Sony and MS have from that.

[diminoten]

I don't think the vast majority of gamers give a shit about Uplay's terribleness.

[MattRix]

Fortnite alone has more concurrent players than every game on Steam combined at around 8 million. Steam has between 10-20 million concurrent people with the client open, but not actually nearly that many playing games.

[TheForumTroll]

I don't know about them all but the games I have bought that use other platforms than Steam I bought on Steam and they got installed with the game (like uplay). I'd say the ship is full of water and being pulled along by Valve's tug.

[ksec]

Are any of those you mentioned popular with Gamers though? I only ever hear Steam in gaming.

What do you mean by own launchers? Surely not a Store right?

Is Battle.Net a "Store"?

[maxsilver]

> Is Battle.Net a "Store"?

Yes? I don't see how anyone could claim otherwise.

Battle.net is a store, because it sells games you can purchase, including expansion pack sales, microtransaction sales, etc.

[chii]

At best you can classify it as a specialty "store" where you can get only 1 brand of item.

Steam is a store in the true sense - it stocks stuff from multiple devs. And anyone can post their own game to the shelves.

[lbotos]

Launchers are 1 step away from a "store".

I was playing fortnite, and via that launcher they can easily upsell/cross-sell me to their other titles.

I might consider it a "distribution channel" which could serve as a store for sure.

[notSupplied]

The main between a launcher and a store is how many people have transacted on your platform once and have a credit card saved on file. Epic has secured "1st time payment" from a huge swath of players. This is such a huge and rare opportunity, I'd be surprised if they're not making moves towards becoming a Steam competitor, especially given Tim Sweeny's historically bitter conflict with gatekeepers such as the Windows Store.

[richardknop]

Battle.net is very popular. There are tens of millions of players that play Hearthstone, Overwatch, WoW, SC2, Diablo 2. All of them launch the games by opening the Battle.net launcher. You can buy and pre order games and game content through the launcher also. Plus it also acts as a social network, you can add friends via their Battle.net tags and chat with them, spectate their games, challenge them to a duel etc. I agree Steam is probably number one but Battle.net and Origin are not small either. They each have millions of not 10s of millions of users I would imagine.

[fromthestart]

At least some of these games are only available through non steam launchers. E.g. Overwatch only launches from battle.net.

[jsheard]

It's pretty common for AAA games to not be available on Steam now. Blizzard never used it, and EA, Activision, Microsoft and Epic have pivoted to releasing exclusively on their own platforms.

Ubisoft still releases on Steam but requires Steam buyers to install and log into Uplay regardless, which feels like preparation for abandoning Steam once enough users have Uplay installed.

[simias]

Which makes the experience frankly painful in my experience. You have launchers launching launchers etc... I bought some Ubisoft games on steam but now I can't play them because when I launch them they ask for my uplay login and for some reason it doesn't work anymore (I could reset it but I couldn't be bothered).

It also generally doesn't play well with Steam "family sharing" that lets you share your games with family members without having to share the same steam session.

I don't like DRM very much but I do use Steam and Spotify because they mostly just work and don't usually get in the way. Cloud saves are pretty convenient too. I haven't bought a Ubisoft or EA game in a long time, mostly because I know it's going to be a pain to deal with their launchers.

If only I could buy a boxed game and not have to deal with any of that nonsense like back in the days... Some days I long for CD keys.