There may be issues with Steam's hold of market share (or not), I won’t debate that. But I don’t think it’s comparable at all to the topic at hand. If you want to sell a video game to PC (personal computer, not necessarily Windows) users, there are many options besides Steam and Steam has no special position of privilege on any platform it's available on (Windows, Mac OS, Linux). You could still distribute your game by CD if you wanted to and it would work as well as any game bought on Steam. There are also many other digital games distribution platforms. They may not be as popular as Steam, but Steam has no inherent advantage over them. On a Windows PC, for example, Steam has no advantage over Origin, or GOG Galaxy, or any other.
Its popularity is due to other factors, not some privileged position it occupies. Unlike Google’s or Apple’s app stores which absolutely have a privileged position on their respective platforms.
Steam doesn't own the underlying platforms that they are selling on. This is the biggest issue for me regarding Apple. Even with Android, at least you have some escape hatches, although they are not very user friendly.
Sounds like an unrelated topic designed to get people to not focus on the main Google and apple topic. There are dozens of industries that could be broken up but aren’t. Take D*sney’s near monopoly on comic book/fictional characters/plotlines ect. No one bats an eye about that, why would anyone care about steam? It’s all just entertainment. Google and Apple aren’t just about entertainment as they touch almost every part of life in modern society.
That article doesn't make sense to me, even (or especially) in 2017. It sounds like it's conflating IAP (which doesn't have to go through the Steam store, unlike other platforms) with game purchases, but even that doesn't fully account for it to me.
Where's all the rest of the money supposedly going through?
Trying to dig into the sources of that article a little bit, what makes the most sense to me is that the $4.3 billion number is Steam's cut of the sales. If you go for a 3-4× multiplier, then you're looking at somewhere around half the total PC gaming market going to Steam.
Which kind of feels about right: there are other game stores; Ubisoft and Origin are the ones that cater to AAA publishers as well. Not to mention that things like the Microsoft Store could well cater to the surprisingly large casual game market (one of the sources quotes $5.2 billion for "Browser PC Games", which I think is reflective of how big casual games are). And you can find people who publish and distribute games outside of Steam.
So saying that Steam has a dominant but not overwhelming market feels correct. The numbers I see most bandied about are 50-75%, which look to be estimated from very old data from what I see. I'm sure if any competitor to Steam had reason to believe they were larger than Steam, they'd be trumpeting it as loudly as they could.
How is he defining market share? I find that number hard to believe simply because Steam doesn't have some of the most popular PC games like Warcraft, Fortnite, and League of Legends.
> bans app store operators with dominant market positions from forcing payment systems on content providers and "inappropriately" delaying the review of, or deleting, mobile contents from app markets.
Does steam block or make it hard for people to download the same programs via other means? looks more like a premium platform rather than a gatekeeper.
Steam has competition - Epic Game Store, Windows, or direct distribution. It is a lot more feasible for a consumer to switch between these stores, so there can be an effective market that choses which service to use.
This does not exist for iOS because there's no other stores on the platform, and you cannot "just" switch to another the Play Store.
May be because gaming industry is not as important as yet as a the device that is used by almost majority of the world population?
Also no one is forcing anyone to install steam. And steam is not the only way to get games to work as intended on your PC.
Steam is not really big enough in Korea to be on the radar. Single player pc games aren't really that popular, and the dominant ones like LoL or other MMO RPGs have their separate installer/launchers
What about Amazon? Or any other dominant player in any market?
Steam does not come pre-installed on nearly every device unlike Apple's and Googles offering. Future Steam Deck not withstanding, but that will be miniscule player.
They don't prevent any other store from operating. So I don't see how they are comparable to anything Google or Apple does. Windows Store might qualify if they forced themselves on Windows in same way. But certainly Steam is entirely different.
This seems like a disingenuous whataboutism. You are free to not use Steam as a publisher. You can use Epic/GOG or choose to self-host. The biggest advantage of Steam is the convenience of payments, marketing and infrastructure. If that is not an attractive option for you, you can skip it.
This option is not available for iOS at all and is quite limited on Android.
Its popularity is due to other factors, not some privileged position it occupies. Unlike Google’s or Apple’s app stores which absolutely have a privileged position on their respective platforms.