Gaming

I don't care that Steam has an effective monopoly on digital games. That's fine. Games can and are on many other services for PC, but gamers want them on Steam. Fine. Whatever. You can even buy games from other services, get Steam codes, and use them as if you got them from Steam, even though Steam get no money from that sale. That's amazing. Really.

But.

They killed the idea that you can own a PC game. I mean legally own it, be able to sell your copy of it to another person, and no longer have it yourself. You could do that with physical. You still can with physical console games. But on PC that concept is dead. It's not coming back. And Valve did that. You now just rent them. Fine, you think, Valve isn't going anywhere. But one day Valve will be gone, and this will matter. No king rules forever.

And the least said about lootboxes and hats and all that scummy crap the better.

Other game launchers: "fuck Linux it's so small"

Valve: "everyone deserves to play games :)"

Other game launchers: "Steam is fucking monopoly!!!"

I skimmed most of this thread and didn't see anyone mention that Steam actually supports third party stores. They let developers sell game keys on other storefronts for free (with limits, granted—the number of keys they can generate depends on sales on Steam, I think.)

Fanatical and Humble only exist because Steam handles all of the games delivery infrastructure for them. That's, like, the opposite of monopolistic behaviour. Name another tech monopoly giving their services away for free so other directly competing businesses can profit.

The fact that valve has competitors means its not a monopoly. They aren't anti competitive. They just make a good product and treat their customers better than their competitors.

If all "monopolies" acted like Valve, most people wouldn't hate monopolies.

If all billionaires acted like GabeN, far fewer people would be calling for the guillotines.

I still think billionaires shouldn't exist. Just saying hes probably at the bottom of the list of shitty billionaire behavior.

So how's much did Sweeney at Epic pay for this?

Great. Any time someone has a successful business that supports Linux somehow it is just terrible. I always wonder if these are these real people or just FUD from competitors trying to max Linux support undesirable. Sure I prefer FOSS, but I'm also happy there is some commercial game support. Maybe I'll use it some day, maybe I won't.

What is up with Valve and internet attacking them for their supposed monopoly?

Yeah, they are monopoly. The rare breed of one that is not predatory to it's customers, and actively improves the experience. They are also the one that wont shoot their own leg to incapacitate themselves for no particular reason. Also "also", they do not use predatory strategies to extort players off other platforms. Also^3^, they are the company that wont accumulate other companies just to destroy them in the end which also destroys competition.

They are not perfect. Lootboxes, gambling, and strong polices. But just try to compare them to second best online gaming store - they are fucking angels. Saints. Divine being. Compared TO THE NEXT BEST THING. That is saying something.

A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, 'single, alone' and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, 'to sell') is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. - AND STEAM IS NOT IT! They have competition and that competition, while having resources and ability to improve or match Steam, does little to nothing in order to compete.

Fun graph

I feel like this is something that could easily shift with one misstep by Valve. It's good now because for the most part they have made consumer friendly choices.

I am really worried about what happens when Gabe kicks the bucket.

This is why bro. Other game launchers feel predatory and rushed. There is no reason for anyone to install the EA App or Ubisoft Connect other than playing that two games from those studios. The only alternative is the Epic Games Store which has the fucking worst UI in existence and has only got a microfraction of the minimum functionality useful to build a community around a videogame. It also lacks native Linux support, forcing users to use alternatives like Heroic Games Launcher

Steam wins because it does nothing to increase "shareholder value" and it just cares to be a good platform for the users, it is respectful of consumers and actively fights corporate greed and publisher dishonesty

Really simple: because they are running it like tax funded infrastructure and not like an extortion racket.

To my knowledge, Valve isn't the only PC game distributor out there, so it's not a monopoly, for now they're just better than the competition. Maybe the competition should get better and inovative as Valve does (they even do linux and hardware, FFS), or maybe they should just stop whining.

I'm severely alarmed by the amount of people arguing whether or not Steam is a monopoly. You don't need 100% of market share to have monopoly position. Pure monopolies are extremely rare and are almost always state-run companies like for public transport. No anti-monopoly legislation is written in a way to only break up firms with literally 0 competition.

Steam is not a fucking monopoly. Take my downvote

Bad take. The competition is literally constantly shooting themselves in the foot by offering a worse service and doing nothing to make gaming better.

It's not steams fault that companies like EA, Epic MS etc. are rotten to the core with their business practices and no one wants to use their storefronts.

GOG is the only one i might consider an alternative that isnt completely rotten.

Wtf? You can pretty much play any game on steam without steam....

Tepid take: The only people calling Steam a monopoly are the loser competitors who can't find a more extortive business model that will actually compete in their quest to syphon wealth out of the gaming ecosystem. Also 'news' outlets that are being paid to assert this narrative, and dumbshit reactionaries who believe those narratives. Sorry Epic CEO, you can't cry and shit your pants into forcing a successful company to make room and give you a cut. The market will ony respond to a better product here, and Epic ain't it. EA learned this lesson with their shit-ass Origin product years ago, brand loyalty takes a long time to build and is a powerful variable, and steam is good at not fucking with the gamers, or at least only within parameters of acceptability, it appears.

They're a private company and thus have resisted many of the enshittification trends that run rampant through the industry.

And also their competitors are absolutely atrocious and are completely tone-deaf to what customers actually want.

Because they are one of the few mega companies that hasn’t shrinkflated, enshittified, or otherwise crumbled the quality of their offering. Haven’t sold out the privacy of their customer base to advertising companies, and are generally good to deal with for customers and developers.

It’s not a secret formula that no other company can learn from. It’s as simple as not being dicks IMO.

For some reason, most companies seem to grow too a certain threshold at which they sell their souls to profit and will self destruct to get more of it. Steam thankfully isn’t one of them….. yet.

All these concern trolling articles about Valve's "monopoly". We never get this shit about Youtube, Windows, local ISPs and other utilities, etc. Super subtle, guys.

Every other company could challenge Steam, but instead is enshittified within an inch of its life from the get-go. It's as much that Steam is doing so much right as it is that competitors are doing so much wrong.

Not you, GOG.

Steam is so big because the others are shit!

Other Launchers don't feel like tools. The other stores feel like a fucking nuisance.

The only other usable options are itch.io and GoG.com, who allow downloading the games directly on their websites, without the need for any launcher.

Because they aren't a true monopoly. They are only a functional monopoly because their competitors refuse to be competitive. Nothing except corporate greed is preventing other storefronts like Epic from being utterly ass.

Used to prefer GOG over Steam. GOG did nothing for Linux gamers though, they didn't even release their Galaxy client for Linux. Will prefer GOG over Steam again when this changes (they said recently they want to change this, but only after Valve has already invested a lot into making Linux gaming a real thing with almost zero friction). That's also basically the best thing that Valve has done - they really did help to make Linux gaming a reality, and Linux gaming is an important step towards toppling Windows' dominance. They deserve a lot of credit for that. But there are also plenty of other things that you can criticize about Steam.

If you're on Windows though, you should definitely always prefer GOG over Steam because it's DRM-free (you buy it, you own it). Of course, there are many more games only available on Steam, so it might not be possible all the time, but at least you should prioritize your choices.

We also have plenty of other monopoly problems, one of the biggest is YouTube.

Valve treats me like they actually want to earn ky business and they use their vast wealth to make cool shit. Valve is also the reason I no longer have to deal with Window's bullshit to keep playing my favorite video games.

Yes, I would love to see more altruism, but Valve is, at the bare minimum, the epitome of moral neutrality as a business. So there's nothing to really be mad at them about, and rather I have some gratitude for how they've used their money.

On the flipside, as others have pointed out, everyone else keeps shooting themselves in the foot. The only one thar hasn't (to my knowledge) is GoG, but they're never going to reach Steam status in a Capitalist society. And their social features are unavailable on Linux.

The next closest after that is Epic, who's shitty, buggy ass launcher and storefront is so horrendous that when they give games out for free, people buy said games on Steam instead.

So... Why would we be mad at Valve for their competition being shit?

I'm not mad because they go above and beyond to support Linux, which I prefer to use.

None of the other stores do even the bare minimum for Linux users, while Valve has helped make it easier to play almost every game.