[jsheard]

For anyone who seeks to emulate Valves internal structure you have to ask yourself one question - do you already have a core product with a near-unimpeachable monopoly which consistently brings in enough money to keep the entire company afloat, with enough left over to bankroll moonshot R&D projects on top? If not, you can't afford to operate like Valve. They cancel 10 projects for every one they ship, if not for Steam bringing in endless billions of dollars they would have gone out of business a decade ago.

[ric2b]

Steam isn't an unimpeachable monopoly, their competition is just so much worse.

[nerdjon]

I disagree, many of the competitors do what is necessary just fine.

There is a strong sentiment with many gamers of just not wanting to use an alternative and it is basically a non starter for many other stores. Many complain about the very idea of not all of their games being in the same place.

This isn't necessarily anything monopolistic done on Valve's side. But it would be very hard for another store to make any meaningful impact regardless of how they are.

[wongarsu]

> the competitors do what is necessary just fine

But that's the issue. The competitors are fine. They aren't significantly better though. The only one with a compelling USP is GOG with their "no drm, download the installer, own the game even after we go under" pitch. Everyone else is just a steam clone with some exclusives and freebies. Without a compelling advantage network effect makes Steam the clear winner. It's where your other games are and it's where your friends are.

But that only holds true while Valve doesn't screw up. Their competitors can't be much better than Steam, but Steam could absolutely make horrible decisions that cause people to leave. But they don't. Their organizational inability to make decisive action without wider support has lead to an incredibly stable, predictable platform.

[Zambyte]

FWIW, there are tons of DRM free games on Steam as well, it's just not a given like it is on GOG.

[daemoens]

Many of these alternatives failed because they were forced onto users who had already paid over $60 for a game, and they were incredibly slow and clunky. They might have improved over time, but people still remember how bad these stores were at launch.

[throwup238]

Isn’t that exactly what Steam did with the Orange Box? They just did it in the 2000s, years before anyone else.

[daemoens]

They could get away with it because there was no competitor like Steam.

[j_maffe]

Yes, that's the effect a monopoly has on the market.

[the8thbit]

> Many of these alternatives failed because they were forced onto users who had already paid over $60 for a game

I really doubt that hurt their adoption. Yes, it pissed people off, but that doesn't mean it suppressed adoption. Being slow and clunky, sure, but you're probably not going to get anywhere without some high value exclusives.

[nerdjon]

That only explains a couple of the stores but not all of them.

Xbox and Epic don't fall in that category. I don't believe EA does either, but not 100% sure.

To be clear here. I am referring to the being forced after buying a game. None of these, to my knowledge, you were forced to use after buying the game on Steam. Unlike Ubisoft.

[ZeroCool2u]

XBox and Epic absolutely do fall in that category. People, myself included, detest using either of those stores, because of their poor implementations. They're slow and unwieldy. The Xbox store on PC is actually so bad. I bought Forza as a chill on the couch and relax kind of game and it is one of the most regrettable purchasing experiences I've ever had. The Epic store is just outright unpleasant software.

[addaon]

The Epic store will only show me prices in Rubles. Never tried to debug it -- who needs it, anyway? -- but always thought that was somewhere between bizarre and hilarious. (US computer, US IP address, no VPN, en-us locale.)

[daemoens]

The Epic store might not've been slow, but it was missing so much. It was launched with almost no features, not even reviews. They also didn't have any communities/forums/groups.

[Scramblejams]

About Epic, they're 35% owned by Tencent (with its inevitable unseen CCP entanglements) and 8% by Disney. That's plenty to put people off.

GOG's great but they're not big enough to move any needles.

Steam puts some of that 30% to work making wonderful things like the SteamDeck, and as a game dev I get a big audience and amazing things like free access to the Steam Datagram Network. So when I want to buy or sell a game, they're overwhelmingly my first choice.

[Systemmanic]

I agree.

I’ve met countless gamers who will simply not buy or play a game if it isn’t available on Steam.

Myself included, and all of my gamer friends.

[nerdjon]

I never really understood this mentality, especially when on the console side people seem just fine with the idea of buying multiple consoles for exclusives. (not that I am agreeing with that either).

There isn't a cost to having multiple stores, you don't even need to keep them running at all time. I get the concerns over the Epic app, but Heroic exists.

Personally I have games on Steam, Xbox (cross buy between xbox and PC), Epic, and EA. Plus Game Pass.

The only annoying part is when I go to install or buy a game, finding where I have it or making sure I don't already own it somewhere. But there are launchers like Playnite to address that.

But it does feel like I am in the minority with this opinion.

[prepend]

For me, I don’t like launchers constantly updating and running at startup. Inevitably, they end up breaking something or popping up a modal when I’m trying to do something else.

I tolerate steam on my laptop because they were the first. I hate Epic and other launchers when I just want a game.

I will wait until it gets to steam. And have even skipped free games because I don’t want the mental load.

[philipov]

When you say "people do this" and "people also do that contradictory thing" you're making the mistake assuming that the word refers to the same people.

[nerdjon]

I didn’t mean to imply they were the same people.

But it is interesting that we have 2 groups of gamers.

One that is so used to and accepting of a practice to not only sometimes buy 2 nearly identical boxes to play exclusive games but also complain when one of them does the right thing and is ending the practice (see drama about Xbox).

One that complains about installing another piece of software with no cost.

Why do these 2 groups of gamers have very different opinions on this.

[Systemmanic]

One reason I’ve heard is the stats and Achievements consolidation.

Cross play solves this somewhat but it’s not consistent.

PC is my main platform but I also have an Xbox (NHL games not available on PC), everything else is on Steam.

I wouldn’t buy a PS5 for an exclusive. TBH exclusivity is annoying and I don’t want to reward it.

[nerdjon]

> One reason I’ve heard is the stats and Achievements consolidation.

I have not seen that referenced much so I am curious how many people that is the reason vs just some weird loyalty to Steam.

But, as someone who is mostly a couch gamer so my console of choice is Xbox. I can see that, I have a PS5 but all of my cross platform games is Xbox.

I have my PC for a lot of games that I would prefer that setup (for me its a game by game decision), but with game pass and cross buy it already didn't make sense for me to go all in on steam, but some games are only on steam.

So what was the harm in adding other stores when it made sense.

> I wouldn’t buy a PS5 for an exclusive. TBH exclusivity is annoying and I don’t want to reward it.

I don't want to reward it. But I also view myself as a gamer first before any platform loyalties. If I want to play something, that takes priority. So annoyingly I have both under my TV.

rant I am so annoyed at the people complaining about Xbox going Multiplatform as if it isn't a good thing for consumers to not have to buy nearly identical hardware. I don't care that it is how the industry has ran for so long, it's still anti-consumer. end rant

[conor-]

At this point, sunken cost into a Steam library aside, I won't buy a game if it isn't on Steam and at least SteamDeck supported.

Valve alone has made it possible to game full-time on Linux as a first class citizen and has greatly improved a lot of the Linux desktop experience which is more than enough for me to be willing to continue to only buy games from them.

[andrewmcwatters]

In my opinion, GOG is phenomenal and hands down the best digital game storefront now, but it's not what consumers care most about. Many people already have extensive libraries on Steam, too.

[lostmsu]

Yeah, these days I check GOG first, and sometimes wait until the game is available there.

[lovethevoid]

Both of these can be true, and it’s far more likely to be self reinforcing. Because it’s such an unimpeachable monopoly, the competition that doesn’t put forth billions are doomed to fail.

People talk about feature parity, but that’s irrelevant when slashing Valves cut by 1% is enough to get the vast majority of publishers and developers to stay on board.

They are such an unimpeachable monopoly that Microsoft, makers of the OS that Steam predominantly relies on for consumer spend, also bows to them. After all they’re large enough to get a new cut from the normal distribution terms.

[Banditoz]

This is what's crazy to me. It feels like other PC game stores haven't caught up in feature parity to Steam from over 10 years ago.

[mmanfrin]

> near-unimpeachable monopoly

The failures of other companies trying to emulate or capture that market do not a monopoly make. There is no real moat for Steam beyond customer loyalty and the fact that nearly every competitor sought to gain market through anti-consumer moves (exclusivity) rather than value-adds, and almost universally with shittier software to boot. There are a few notable counterexamples (GoG is a good store, value add, respectful of customers; but just didn't have the juice to establish itself beyond indie/abandonware games; Itch.io is doing fine in its niche).

Just because customers prefer a product does not mean it's got an unimpeachable moat.

[Cyph0n]

How is Steam a monopoly?

The platform it runs on (Windows) is open, unlike the App Store. Competitors exist on said platform, including a store & game pass run by the platform owner.

The fact that Steam still runs the show is a testament to their ability to just do things better than anyone else. Sure, there is a sort of network effect at play, but there is no other “moat” here - let alone a monopolistic one.

[ARandumGuy]

I'd describe Steam as a monolith, not a monopoly. There are several competing storefronts, and many games have been successful without releasing on Steam.

That said, the PC gaming landscape has completely warped around Steam. Epic had to offer huge incentives to get EGS exclusivity deals. Smaller games struggle without a Steam release, and even big companies with their own storefronts have decided the sales boost from Steam overrides the 30% cut Valve takes. And Steam is so entrenched at this point that it's difficult to see how a competitor could make a meaningful dent in Steam's market share.

Despite this, if we're going to have one dominant PC gaming storefront, Steam is probably the best we could hope for. Despite my many misgivings with Valve and Steam, it's difficult to imaging the situation improving if the dominant platform was run by a company like Microsoft or Epic. And it's fair to say that PC gaming wouldn't be nearly as big as it is today without the success of Steam.

[jorvi]

Steam could “easily” be dethroned by a competitor that cares about the customers.

- Duplicate all the Steam shop features

- Integrate your social framework with Discord

- Add a proper overlay browser

- Make game ownership ephemeral until first play (meaning you can give away games in your library, or duplicate games in a bundle)

- Shim with Steam Input

- Better looking “Big Picture”-style mode

- Built-in game streaming, paid either with subscription or per-minute via wallet

There’s probably tonnes other that I’m forgetting. The above would take a ridiculous amount of dev hours though.

The big mistake Epic made (is making) is that their store is more beneficial for developers, mostly by taking a lower percentage. But those savings are barely passed on to the consumer, and even then, consumers don’t care about that. They’ll happily pay 10-20% more to have their game on the superior platform.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

They are saying "Steam is a monopoly because they're so big", you are saying "Steam is not a monopoly because they're not anti-competitive", you're not disagreeing

[Cyph0n]

I am saying it’s not a monopoly at all because it’s a) not the only player in the PC games store market and b) has no mechanism in place to be able to enforce such a position even if it was.

[Shekelphile]

You can go back in history and apply that logic to any company and claim they weren't monopolies as a result. Standard oil and AT&T had plenty of competitors, none were able to grow beyond extremely small scale.

[AlexCoventry]

The key question is whether an antitrust target is engaging in uncompetitive practices. I haven't noticed any claims of Steam/Valve using uncompetitive practices (but I could have simply missed them.)

[j_maffe]

Whether something is a monopoly and whether they've abused it in such a way that they should be struck with an antitrust suit are two different things. I don't think many would argue that Steam abused its monopoly.

[Cyph0n]

Making comparisons across industries & time periods is not going to work well, especially at a superficial level.

[FrustratedMonky]

So did they have a different structure before Steam existed? And then post-Steam, now there is total freedom to organize however they want?

You're saying that this organization doesn't lead to success, but because they accidentally have a successful money maker, now they can run like this?

I think there is disconnect here. There are successful companies that can operate like this, because this is a good way to get to success.

[jsheard]

Early Valve coasted on the money Gabe Newell personally made as a senior Microsoft executive, so if you want to emulate that Valve then you'll need to find 8 or 9 figures in your bank account without taking any outside investments, in order to keep the company completely untainted by shareholder influence. That's not a template most founders can follow either.

There's a timeline where startup Valve went through the standard publisher funding model instead and got pressured into releasing the "finished but not very fun" 1997 cut of Half Life, rather than taking an entire extra year (an eternity in game development cycles of that era) to overhaul the whole game at their leisure. Things could have gone very differently right from the start.

[kibibu]

They had this structure before Steam

[quohort]

Steam isn't a monopoly. I, and everyone I know who uses steam is familiar with GOG or Epic games or Battle.net or some other service. You can even distribute your game independently (e.g. in the case of minecraft and some of the most successful PC games of all time) or just distribute it as a web game (increasingly feasible as WebGL, WebGPU, WASM etc. continue to advance).

Steam is successful because it has good user experience compared to alternatives, and has a lot of major titles.