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Steam keeps on winning
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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This is a weird mentality. Competition in the space is good, even if the current "default" thing is really good.
The key is to use an alternative that's actually good, and most of these companies were never going to make an alternative that was good, just one that was exploitative.
Most of my purchases the last few years have been gog. The only game service where you actually own the game afterwards.
Competition is good....when the competition is actually competitive.
But what has happened is games on are steam .... which installs the launcher + game.
So it's not a win at all. It's actually a loss for us. If steam was to force "yeah you can publish the game on steam, but you cannot use your launcher"
Fanboys and monopolies, name a better combination.
Cheese and a cheese slicer.
You missed an opportunity to say "coffee and biscuits" and I've never been more disappointed ๐
I failed myself ๐
Monopoly isn't bad (or illegal) if it doesn't exploit and/or abuse it's market position, which Steam doesn't.
Monopolies are always bad. They give too much power to the people who do not deserve it. Even if the one in charge looks benevolent.
Tell me, what do you think would happen if Gabe died tomorrow?
Also it depends what's driving that attitude... if it's an ethos from Gabe then great but he won't be around forever... what happens when he dies/retires?
Many companies have started with great ethics that went out of the window when the founders moved on, and Steam is in a fantastic position to enshitify if it wanted to.
That's a lot or what-ifs. If a lot of companies enshittify, that doesn't mean all do. Especially when Valve is not publicly traded (sure, "for now"). It has a lot of credibility, especially compared to other launchers (EA, Ubi, Bethesda, Battle.net). And while there is GOG which is a great launcher aswell especially by selling games without DRM, it's one in a million.
By your logic, we shouldn't trust any company because they can all enshittify.
If you replaced "company" with "monopoly" in your last sentence, I agree.
Doesn't even have to be a monopoly, I have zero loyalty to any business beyond the product they give me. Trust is for people, not for some nebulous corporate entity who wants my money.
Monopolies are bad. Period. End of story.
You probably identify as leftist yet here you are shilling for corporate capitalism the moment you like the product.
I don't identify as neither, I do no follow politics, nor do I care about some left right bullshit.
But yeah, if a product is good, I do recommend it if there is discussion. Your regular Joe is not gonna build his own home printer, he goes to the store and either buys an HP, or a Brother. They don't know how to pirate games, they go to a launcher and buy it there.
You have to understand that not everyone has the freedom to choose, because they simply don't have time or don't give a fuck, and settle for something that someone recommends.
But it does abuse its market position. By setting very high developer/publisher fees and forcing everyone to pay them. Don't forget that from Steam perspective, developers and publisher are their consumers, not you. Their business is similar to supermarkets. Supermarkets don't sell stuff to you, they provide selling and logistics services to produce manufacturers.
But those fees are counteracted by large user base, which is large due to the fact the platform is great and provides it's users good features that aren't elsewhere. A s large user base means large buying power, which directly translates to higher sales and thus higher profits.
If a supermarket gives the customers a nice place to stay, and provides extra features others don't, the extra cost for having your store in there (in Steam terms higher commissions, although I personally think it's adequate, but I digress) is offset by having bigger profit overall.
That doesn't mean Steam doesn't abuse its power. Because they sure do.
How? By being a good company? Look at the Google Play Store lawsuit, and why were they sued, any why they lost. Steam is not abusing it's position. And if you think they do, gimme an example or two please.
Steam has several lawsuits and class actions over their head:
With a big platform, I would be surprised if there were none. Most of them were dismissed or Valve won. I haven't seen a big one that Valve lost.
The competition kind of shot itself in the foot
Competition for the sake of competition isn't intrinsically a good thing.
Seems to me, most of the people complaining about Steam are greedy devs who want to make more money off of their products.
For me, as a user, that's not my concern. For me, as a user, it's more important that I can play games without having to download different launchers just to make someone else richer.
GOG is probably the only legitimate competitor with Steam. They provide value to customers instead of just themselves or greedy devs.
A nice thing about GOG is that you can choose whether or not you use their launcher. You can use GOG Galaxy, and it will download game updates and sync saves. or you can just not use it; and just launch the games directly. Or you can put shortcuts to the gog games into steam and launch them from there. Or you can launch your steam games from galaxy if you like. ... I appreciate that kind of stuff a lot, because although I think Steam does a good job, I'm very wary of lock-in and companies becoming too powerful.
(And of course, for real indie games, itch.io is the place to go.)
FTFY
Also, the only truly bad competition is subsidized competition. As long as it's not surviving on some kind of grant or funding, instead of its actual market value, then it's always a good thing as it keeps competitors on their toes.
That is looks like it's supposed to point out something negative.
Convenience is always something to consider as a customer in literally any product. It's most often the main driver between competitors and can make or brake a product.
So, yeah. Using another launcher that has 10% of the features and not a single upside while being incredibly inconvenient has not worked out. Fuck origin, uplay, and the likes.
Listen. Some of us have our life savings in our Steam library. If competition ever drives Steam bankrupt, we go down with the ship! We take Steam's health personally and very seriously. Your mumbo jumbo about competition doesn't factor into it.
That's why you buy from GOG.
No one wants Steam bankrupt, they just want more than one videogame vendor on PC to be viable.
"Mumbo jumbo about competition" I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or are just legitimately a braindead moron.
There are exceptions to the notion that competition is good. If we attempt to map out all the exceptions, we will be left with mumbo jumbo. Economic libertarianism is the true death of the brain. Some monopolies are good and any threat to the monopoly is a threat to the consumer.
As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the only bad competition is one that gets subsidized in order to survive. If they are operating on their own profit margins then they are definitionally "good competition."
No, zero monopolies are good. If you can even name one that you personally believe to somehow be good then I can explain why you're wrong.
At no point in time has a natural diversification of product sources has been bad for the consumer. The only exceptions to this relate back to point #1, the subsidized or otherwise "assisted" business model.
Tell me, does your childhood home have a lot of lead paint on the walls? We aren't trying to take down Steam FFS, just provide alternatives that force them to stay competitive by giving better service to the consumer.
The fact that you think a second source for videogames is somehow going to threaten you personally just shows how much of a zombie you are. Gabe isn't your lord and savior, he's just another rich guy who has a monopoly on his corner of the market. Grow the fuck up.
Ya because so far it doesn't seem to impact the consumer so it works for me lol. Valve has always had great sales too. If they jacked up prices YoY, and did evil things, then I'd welcome competition. But all I see at this point is lousy extra software to install a single game or two. Annoying. Fragmented. Just just media streaming.