[dvt]

I'd like to have an honest conversation about this, but imo Valve is no better than the iOS app store: it aggressively rent seeks and has essentially destroyed the shareware model (which was the best way to discover software in the 80s-90s). It has also willingly been complicit in underage gambling via loot boxes for more than a decade now.

I think Gabe Newell is a visionary for building Steam in 2003, way before Jobs had the same idea, but absolutely everyone and their mother hated Steam back then. I remember the memes on IRC and various forums (and I've been on Steam for a very[1] long time, the first or second day it came out I think). Two decades later, props to them and their useful acolytes for gaslighting the entire gaming community. No idea how Gaben is regarded as some sort of Christlike figure these days, but here we are.

Maybe it's just a "lesser of two evils" thing, as companies/platforms like EA and Ubisoft are the absolute scum of the earth.

[1] https://steamcommunity.com/id/dvxirl/

[throw10920]

> it aggressively rent seeks

I don't know about the rest of your claims ("shareware was the best way to discover software" is really a personal opinion), but this is just factually false.

Unlike iOS, where you cannot publish an app unless you pay the 30% cut, there is nothing that prevents you from developing and a Windows/MacOS/Linux game yourself. You can simply choose to not use Steam - but the benefits of developing and publishing with it (myriad SDKs, game servers, networking, social features, trading cards, anti-cheat, achievements, payment methods, reviews, discovery, forums, launchers, updates, CDN, and on and on and on...) are so overwhelming that it is simply worth it for the vast majority of gamedevs.

Fact: Steam is not rent-seeking - the value that they provide is tremendous, and you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.

[fc417fc802]

> you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.

That's not how it works. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Plenty of businesses engage in rent seeking without having a captive (by most definitions) audience. All that's required is a very modest barrier (ex network effect, non-zero switching cost, etc) and a sufficiently large audience.

Rent seeking isn't even mutually exclusive with adding value. A business can do both simultaneously by virtue of being able to multitask. Most businesses offer more than a single product or service after all.

[throw10920]

So first off, you start out by lying about my words, so we immediately know you're not operating in good faith.

What I said:

> Steam is not rent-seeking - the value that they provide is tremendous, and you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.

That's a compound statement that you cut off to change the substance of. What you quoted:

> you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.

And now that we've called out your lie, we can move on to the substance, which is also incorrect.

The definition of rent-seeking disagrees with everything that you've said:

"The attempt to profit by manipulating the economic or political environment, especially by the use of subsidies."

https://www.wordnik.com/words/rent%20seeking

Steam is doing none of that.

> Rent seeking isn't even mutually exclusive with adding value.

This is factually incorrect - both according to the dictionary definition of the phrase, and according to the way that it's used casually, which is extraction of value without creation of it.

I'm glad that this is happening in the open - when people have to actively lie to try to push a narrative about Steam, it really shows that they have no legitimate points - every thread where these lies are exposed just (justly) boosts Valve's reputation.

[fc417fc802]

You are not assuming good faith, nor are you interpreting what I wrote in the most plausible manner.

I did not misrepresent you. You made two claims and I objected to the second. My objection stands regardless of the presence or absence of the claim about Steam providing value.

Notice that I took no position on whether or not Steam is rent seeking, instead merely disputing the reasoning that you expressed.

However even if I had taken a position to the contrary, I don't see how the definition you quoted would be at odds with that. I think it is fairly reasonably to see a dominant player with network effects as possessing sufficient economic power to meet the criteria you laid out. For that matter it's quite presumptuous on your part to assume that everyone else is on board with the particular definition that you selected there.

And it goes without saying that I disagree with your latter assertion of factual incorrectness. No dictionary disputes the ability of a business to multitask.

Actually interestingly enough if we use your definition then you can rent seek while simultaneously adding value to the same product just so long as you're also engaging in unreasonable market manipulation to increase your profit in the process. Amusingly my working definition had been somewhat more restrictive.

[throw10920]

> I did not misrepresent you. You made two claims and I objected to the second.

I made a single claim with two parts:

1. the value that they provide is tremendous

2. you are not forced to use them

And then my conclusion was: these make them non-rent-seeking by definition.

You intentionally rewrote my argument to change its meaning, you know that you are, and you're continuing to lie about it.

I don't need to argue with you further - I've pointed out that you're fundamentally dishonest to other readers, and that's all I need to do from here on.

[account42]

The real value Steam "provides" are the network effects. That's rent seeking.

[throw10920]

> The real value Steam "provides" are the network effects.

Actual people who play video games disagree with you. Don't speak about things you're ignorant of.

> That's rent seeking.

Factually incorrect. Steam provides services and convenience that developers and players find incredibly useful.

[taneq]

As someone who worked in game dev in 2008, we loved Steam, for the same reason we loved the iOS App Store. We take it for granted these days but the ability to self-publish on a first class platform and receive 70% of the sales revenue literally redefined the indie game dev industry.

Use of the term ‘rent seeking’ is, in my experience, often correlated with a sense of entitlement and a lack of appreciation for what is actually provided. It’s only rent seeking if no additional value is added which is clearly not the case here.

[dylan604]

I'm surprised you haven't been flagged or just a dead comment. Any signals that Apple is not pure evil for taking 30% is not part of the echo chamber group think around here. People never want to admit that it costs money to retail your product no matter where it is. In the physical world, there's manufacturing and delivery costs. Getting shelf space at a retailer takes a lot of negotiating where you have very very little room to bargain. Retailers will even force you to buy back unsold product. Yes, software doesn't have all of that but have their own nuances. A lot of indie game devs don't have time/skill/want to do a lot of what an app store can do. Expecting to get all of that for free because it is software is just not sane. If you are self-hosting all of it, it will not be free as you will be paying for payment processors and a hell of lot more in attracting eyeballs.

[wtetzner]

The problem with Apple is not the 30% cut, it's that you're not allowed to use other app stores or install apps without their store.

[jasonfarnon]

"has essentially destroyed the shareware model (which was the best way to discover software in the 80s-90s)"

funny, I was thinking the same thing with "shareware model" replaced by "warez model".

[Rohansi]

> imo Valve is no better than the iOS app store

You can't buy the top search result position on Steam. That alone sets them far apart for me.

[Pay08]

You can buy the rotating banner at the top.

[Rohansi]

You can't. Check the very bottom of this page: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/visibility

[scubadude]

You can sponsor a promotion; sales on a bunch of games - but it's not "Brought to you by the cool refreshing taste of Pepsi" it's like "Berlin Game Developers".

[Pay08]

I meant the carousel.

[drewwwwww]

you can’t, actually

[a96]

Steam is also cross-platform.

But sadly still essentially all-DRM.

[Rohansi]

Steam as DRM is basically the best case scenario. It is opt-in for developers, meaning there is no DRM at all for some games on Steam. You can download it, back it up, run it without Steam. The games that do use Steam's DRM are trivial to "crack" by replacing a DLL in game folder with a stub (you can find open source ones on GitHub). If Steam had no DRM I think publishers would lean more on other options which are worse for customers.

[chocochunks]

Shareware died before Steam. Steam launched in 2003 and didn't sell any 3rd party games until 2005. Nobody gave a shit about shareware in 2003. Nobody gave a shit about shareware in 2010 when Steam seriously became useful as a place to play more than the Orange Box and Counter-Strike.

I hated Steam when I first encountered it, but it's not a requirement to publish a game on PC/Mac/Linux. Nor is the process to install non-Steam games full of scary warnings like Google Play even on their own platform SteamOS. And they do let publishers give keys to 3rd party stores to sell unlike virtually every other platform. They aren't perfect but they are nowhere near what Apple does with iOS.

[vitaflo]

If you think they aggressively rent seek then you do not know the history of game publishing.

[invalidSyntax]

"destroyed the shareware model". You know that they only sell games, and just have the games that they made in the list too(them just being amazing and popular). It's not some easy task as recovering old systems when there are every type of games imaginable. Even if valve made a option to do that, no one will since other companies don't do anything like that.

[Iron_Ninja5]

> has essentially destroyed the shareware model

Wouldn't the Steam digital demo system be the modern evolution of the shareware model? For free you can access a limited portion of the game to try it and consider eventually buying it.

[eudamoniac]

Steam is just a storefront. They hold no monopoly position or power. It's not comparable to iOS app store. Devs are free to list their game on any other storefront concurrently.

[dvt]

This is the same argument Microsoft used ("we're just an OS, totally not a monopoly"). I think to anyone that spends any time doing any PC gaming, it's obvious that Steam is the only relevant storefront by a country mile.

[fatal94]

Relevance isnt anti competitive. Comparing them to Microsoft who not only monopolized but enforced it via product bundling is not the same at all.

They simply have the best product and won the market.

[fwipsy]

Or did they just get there first, and stayed first due to network effects? Initially, nobody wanted steam. People definitely don't want a second steam - which in practice means sticking to the first one.

[kombine]

They are headed Apple/Microsoft way though with SteamOS and Steam Deck/Machine.

[fc417fc802]

I can see why you might think that but I believe that's actually insurance against Microsoft going the Apple route and hamstringing Steam in the process. They needed a near first class platform that would never be used against them to exist and they needed the switching cost for end users to be near zero. By leveraging pre-existing FOSS projects they managed to avoid the vast majority of the development costs which would otherwise have been prohibitive.

[account42]

The best insurance against monopolistic behavior is to get there first.

[dvt]

Could say the same thing about AT&T, Bell Labs, etc. There’s a lot of precedent here, but most saliently, how you become a monopoly is not really relevant. They absolutely are one. But I’m being already aggressively downvoted with no counter arguments so the Gaben fanboys are here. (Defending a deca-billionaire is hard work, after all.)

[crysin]

What’s your solution then to them being a monopoly? How would you meaningfully break them up? While they outperform the sales of Epic and Gog I’m not sure how they’re abusing their position or how they’re keeping others from entering?

[account42]

> How would you meaningfully break them up?

You could separate the storefront from the distribution platform / client. Valve's ~30% cut is often justified by the visibility being on the Store gives you but you can't opt out of that while still reaching the captured audience that definitely don't want yet another client software bloating up their system.

[throw10920]

> Could say the same thing about AT&T, Bell Labs, etc.

No, you cannot. AT&T/Bell Labs was a monopoly - they physically controlled distribution networks that made it so you had to use them.

Valve does not. There is nothing that prevents you from simply selling your game without Steam.

And even if there wasn't, claims that Valve is a monopoly are factually false - there are many other storefronts that exist, and many games are published on more than one storefront at once. And, Steam does not gate an OS or platform like Microsoft and iOS do.

> But I’m being already aggressively downvoted with no counter arguments

Every one of your arguments is being countered (such as the claim that "relevance is anticompetitive" which isn't even false, it's nonsensical). Including this one.

> Defending a deca-billionaire is hard work, after all.

...and there's the emotional manipulation. It's pretty clear you're just a propagandist who has a grudge against Steam (maybe you work for Epic?), given that you're going up and down the thread with emotional non-arguments that try to redefine words, pull at peoples' emotions (like the billionaire comment), or just flat-out lie.

[account42]

> Valve does not.

Except they do. They control the Steam distribution network. It may not be physical but you still have to use it to reach a large portion of PC Gamers due to network effects and no one wanting to run multiple clients.

Currently you have to also make use of their other services like the Store, and pay for them with a large sales cut, in order to use the distribution network, no matter if you want those services or not.

[testdelacc1]

I think you’re confusing

1. Being a monopoly

2. Abusing monopoly status.

Steam does control the vast share of desktop gaming. But has no influence on console (Xbox, playstation, switch) or mobile (android, ios). They are a monopoly.

But they don’t abuse their monopoly so they haven’t broken any laws.

[fatal94]

You're being downvoted because you're pushing punishing a company for having a better product. They do not engage in anticompetitive practices, there is no enforced barrier to entry in the market nor do they gate entry like the companies you have listed. They are only a monopoly because they have the best product.

[eudamoniac]

That a really silly comparison. An OS is a big deal, you can't just switch off. Steam is a video game store. You can install shit from anywhere. People stick to steam because it's good. It's not morally wrong to have the best product on the market.

[dvt]

If you want the audience as an indie developer, it would behoove you to launch on Steam (because they're a monopoly). Again, MS used all these cute arguments, and they don't really work. There's a reason Valve is always playing very nicely with regulators (especially w.r.t. the gambling stuff). They don't really want to rock the boat, but a benevolent monopoly is still a monopoly and I do think that a 30% cut for running a distribution platform is pretty predatory, especially as bandwidth has been commoditized.

[eudamoniac]

Again, it is not wrong to make the best product. It behooves any manufacturer to sell to distributors with largest reach, especially if it is a non-exclusive agreement, and this is perfectly normal market activity. You seem unaware of the legal definition of monopoly; Valve is nowhere near it. The made up internet definition, having a majority of sales in a market, is just what happens when the product is good. Actually it would be a bit of a market failure for the best product to not have the most sales.

Also please don't point to the failure of Epic or other stores; they're just bad products. Epic store didn't even have a shopping cart for years. No one competent is competing, and that's not Valve's problem.

[throw10920]

> If you want the audience as an indie developer, it would behoove you to launch on Steam

Correct, because they're a huge distribution channel, and literally anyone who has ever tangentially touched business knows this and accepts that it is fair to pay for this.

> (because they're a monopoly)

Factually incorrect. Nobody forces you to use Steam. You can create and launch and sell a Windows or Mac or Linux game without ever touching steam. You can self-publish and run your own game servers and CDN, or you can use the Epic Games Store, or you can use GOG, Humble Bundle, Xbox, Origin, Itch, or any of a dozen others.

> Again, MS used all these cute arguments

This is extremely dishonest. Microsoft controlled an operating system, only one of which can run at a time. If you are running Windows, you're not running Linux. And Microsoft entered into distribution deals with OEMs to pre-install Windows, leading to massive default-choice effects. Neither of these are true for Steam - you can install and run every single platform I listed above at the same time, and I've never seen a computer come pre-installed with Steam ever.

> I do think that a 30% cut for running a distribution platform is pretty predatory, especially as bandwidth has been commoditized

So, you have no idea what Steam actually does.

Steam is, in addition to being one of the largest digital distribution platforms in the US (if not the world) - which is by itself worth paying a 30% cut for, a SDK and networking provider that gives you a social network, input (gamepad/keyboard/mouse) library, achievements, digital trading cards, update system and CDN, real-time voice comms, product key redemption, license tracking, DRM, anti-cheat, user forums, and many other things.

If you only criticize things that you actually understand, you'll end up looking a lot less foolish, and undercutting your own points as a result.

[mriet]

And yet, Escape from Tarkov is not on Steam, which would seem 5o contradict what you're saying.

[esseph]

> And yet, Escape from Tarkov is not on Steam, which would seem 5o contradict what you're saying.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3932890/Escape_from_Tarko...

[gnabgib]

Hey - your bot is failing (presumably you read replies)

[atomicnumber3]

What? You can literally just download an exe from any website and run it.

If you're complaining that Valve owns a big list of games and a ton of eyeballs, and not being on that list means those eyeballs don't see you when they look at that list, idk what to tell you because they seem to have earned that part of their business pretty fairly.