It’s so clear that so many people here DIDN’T read the article, which is further compounded by the author not understanding the meaning of monopoly vs anti-competitive practices. Just so we are all on the same page:
This isn’t about steam being a better service, (even though it IS a better service,) or being a monopoly, (it isn’t.) The lawsuit is about anti-competitive practices.
The lawsuit pertains to steam allegedly disallowing devs to price games lower on other platforms. If this is true, it’s a move that prevents competition. Maybe other digital storefronts are shittier, but they might make up for it by taking a smaller cut from game devs, which allows them to sell at a lower price on GOG, or EPIC. If Steam is forcing devs to charge the same price on all platforms, or preventing them from offering discounts on those other platforms when they aren’t offered on Steam, then it doesn’t matter where I buy the game. This is a form of price fixing, except it isn’t an agreement being done between digital storefronts behind closed doors, the price fixing is allegedly happening by steam leveraging the developers
Imagine you are going to buy Tide laundry detergent. You can go to Walmart, Target, or your local grocery store. They all carry the same exact same 125 fl oz bottle. Walmart has it for the lowest price, Target is the next highest, and the local grocer has the highest price for the item. Does my local grocery store get to force Walmart to raise their prices to match their own?
My local grocery store might charge a little bit more, but I prefer to shop there because it’s closer to me, and the stores are better organized making it easier for me to find what I want. Personally I LOATHE shopping at Walmart. I happen to be willing to pay more for a better experience when buying the same product. Other people might not give a shit about the shopping experience and just want the lowest price, so they go to Walmart.
I refuse to touch EPIC game store. I think it’s a subpar product. But if my buddy is telling me about a game he got for free through their storefront and raves about what a good game it is, I’m gonna buy it off of steam, instead of getting it for free, because steam is a digital storefront I trust, and provides a good customer experience.
I realize laundry detergent isn’t the same as video game software, but I think my example demonstrates how competition can work and how fucked up it would be if the allegations against steam are true.
To be clear, the only time Valve requires prices match what’s on Steam is if you’re selling Steam keys. Games are sometimes cheaper on GOG and EA and Ubisoft regularly price their games a dollar or two cheaper on their own stores.
Around the 2010’s, both MS and Google were seen as “noble monopolies”. Even if Steam is the better video game distributors, always stand on more than one leg when it comes to buying games.
MS was anything but lol, they had a swarm of lawsuit dramas over by then. Only Apple glazed MS because they quite literally saved them from bankruptcy which they only did as insurance against a proper antitrust case.
Google was newer but they also weren’t a private company, they were riding silicon valley money to the moon.
Regardless, Steam is a monopoly but their immediate competitors are the only ones chucking anti competitve measures around like crappy DRM and price lockins.
Other gaming platforms are fully capable of competing with Steam. It’s only real edge is that it treats game developers better than any other platform.
I get it but its not like they are buying up competition or doing bad practices to win unless doing what your customers want is being unfare. In this case I blame the competition.
An earned monopoly is still a monopoly. Anyone who feels that the power that Steam wields in the gaming market is not an issue, I urge you to think or learn about why monopolies are harmful – not in relation to steam. Think about a manufacturer of gizmos completely cornering the gizmo market and what that would mean for the people wanting to buy gizmos, as time passes. Don’t think in terms of the laws or definitions of some specific country, just think about the effect it would have on society. Worst case scenario you lose some time and gain some insight on monopolies
Think about a manufacturer of gizmos completely cornering the gizmo market
If your monopoly in the Gizmo market is because you’ve actively fought other companies, lobbied governments, filed frivilous patent suits, etc… in order to KEEP people from competing with you, than you’re a piece of shit.
If your monopoly in the Gizmo market is because despite there being no hinderance to them doing so, no competitor has been able to match your quality, than kudos.
In your example, you’re effectively saying that governments should force people to use shittier services just to avoid a monopoly, even if that monopoly is earned.
If people want to buy Gizmos, and that first company is losing their trust, another company will come in and compete successfully because that first company isn’t preventing them from doing so. If that second company does it better, great.
An earned monopoly and a forced monopoly are not nearly the same thing, precisely because an earned monopoly is on the whim of the consumers. If your product turns to shit, a replacement will make itself known. Whereas a forced monopoly is on the whim of the government and lobbyists.
This gizmo maker is making the best gizmo that everyone loves, best delivery and best support for people that buys the gizmo. Why would you fault that company for delivering what majority of people wanted. They didn’t corner the gizmo market by buying out smaller gizmo makers, they didn’t block smaller gizmo maker by undercutting them, they didn’t even advertise to cut into other’s profit share. They win the capitalist market by making the best gizmo plus the best experience of buying and owning the gizmo.
Of course it’s bad. For decades Valve has shown others why gamers value their game store yet most game stores still do stupid shit that drives gamers away.
The only one making an honest attempt is GOG. And their only issue is low purchasing volume which means they are slow to develop and improve their platform.
But other stores exist, they just don’t offer what steam does (which includes Play on Linux).
It like if you bought an amazing vacuum that does everything (hardwood, carpet, car attachments, air filtration), and the competitor offers a vacuum that only does carpeted floors…its not a true monopoly, its the competitor not understanding what sells
Oh no. They’ve made gaming accessible on Linux, games still run you purchased 20 years ago on the latest hardware and they’re not a bloated pile of garbage
If anything, they’ve actually made things better for everyone
In contrast, if you purchased wii u games, you need to re buy for switch. Ps5, wii u and Xbox all basically are limited to what publishers can sell
I’d even argue they’re not a real monopoly because they Don’t control the hardware, and there are other platforms
Yup, it’s why I am willing to argue for them, at least until Gabe dies. He’s proven to be far more fair and I know you wouldn’t get that deal anywhere else. These days it really does seem like there a coordinated push to attack valve for not being scum like the rest of the industry these last couple of months.
It’s because they actively fight for the consumer rather than the publishers.
It’s funny though because valve has so much fucking money because they are not chasing next quarters arbitrary gains…
Valve is proof that if you don’t try to screw over your customers somehow you end up with profits. Weird how that works, and instead of companies learning something from that we’ll… they do what capitalism does…
It does make me nervous though that one player has so much power.
But certainly in the here and now as a consumer, I use steam because it makes life easier. It makes it super easy to join and host multiplayer games, gives me access to convenient game recording stuff without having to have separate software, lets me share games with my found family, and most games have achievements, which my silly achievement-whore brain loves. I’m also grateful because if not for Steam’s work developing proton, I doubt my switch to Linux would have been as straightforward as it has been.
I agree that it does seem like a targeted attack on Steam by industry hacks who I trust infinitely less than Steam. Corporations are never our friends, merely our temporary allies. However, the hacks attacking Steam are definitely my enemies, and the enemy of my enemy is my temporary ally
Here’s the thing. There are other places. Epic, Amazon Gaming, Origin/Battlenet/Ubi, itch, Microsoft store, gog…
Most suck at discoverability or they don’t have the variety of Steam. Some are shitty by design (Origin, Ubi, Battlenet) - intended to only get you to play their games. Others like itch aren’t built for scaling out to deliver thousands of big games.
This isn’t a thing like Apple’s walled garden, I feel like this is Steam out performing the competition.
Steam quite literally provides almost everything you could ever need too, it’s so much more than a storefront. It’s genuinely mind blowing just how many services steam offers, I don’t think anybody, including valve employees knows about every function and service it offers tbh.
I would have killed for Steam Input alone back in the day when I was using xpadder to sloppily translate controller inputs to keyboard keys so the game would recognize it
Does steam provide a good service? Sure. Is it worth the 30% cut they take? Absolutely not. Gamers don’t realize the amount of money valve is making off them. What we need is a good old fashioned bill at every purchase detailing how much money these rent seeking stores are extracting from you.
I don’t want the 90 services and bloated platform steam offers, I want to play my game and pay the developers.
30% is industry standard, everybody but Epic charges that and also Steam is not just a flat 30% many devs and pubs pay less.
I agree 30% is high for every storefront besides Steam and and arguably GoG. The sheer range of services and support for both players and devs is exponentially above literally everything else, you are not just paying for a storefront with steam like you are literally everywhere else.
As for GoG, I’ll let them slide on 30% because of how much effort and resources they put into preservation as well as their “customer is the administrator of their purchases” attitude.
Is it worth the 30% cut they take? Absolutely not. Gamers don’t realize the amount of money valve is making off them.
The same cut that is industry standard and they could ABSOLUTELY jack up by abusing their market position and choose not to? Especially given how much extra infrastructure they supply for that 30% vs literally anyone else?
When the competition (excluding any stores operating at a loss to build marketshare) is charging both developers and gamers more, they’re less bothered about Steam taking 20-30%. Consoles charge 30%, have extra fees, take a cut of third party keys (or restrict them altogether) and require a mandatory subscription for online play/cloud saves, while disallowing third party stores on their hardware.
Nothing is stopping a dev from putting a game on Steam for the exposure, then putting it for sale DRM free somewhere else so they don’t have to pay the 30% cut on those sales (I assume they’d have to at least charge the same as the Steam one, though). I bet the Steam version would make them far more money even with the cut.
Epic does somewhere around 12% and the end user still pays the same so if you think that extra 18% would come back your way rather then going to a devs pockets? Hoo boy.
Also, Steam charges the industry standard rate iirc, same as google, apple, etc. While we can complain about that rate (last paragraph in mind: To what end?) its not as though Valve is doing anything extra greedy.
Epic does somewhere around 12% and the end user still pays the same so if you think that extra 18% would come back your way rather then going to a devs pockets? Hoo boy.
And most of the time that extra doesn’t even go to the devs, the publishers keep it. So you’re not even helping the devs for the most part.
Besides, Steam won’t even take a single cent from Steam keys sold outside of their storefront. Devs are free to sell their games on stores like Humble or Fanatical at whatever price they deem fit.
If any of those games on Epic are also sold in steam, then the (nonsale) price cannot be lower than the steam price because of steam’s TOS.
Also the “industry standard” was arbitrarily chosen to match the cut that brick and mortar stores usually operate at… Despite there being very different costs related.
But yes, steam is being just as greedy as all the other big walled gardens. People complain about that rate across the board, not just about steam.
That’s simply not true. They aren’t supposed to generate steam keys and then sell them at a lower price at other stores. Which is completely fair, as you can generate keys for free, but the game would still be using steams servers and services. But you can absolutely sell a game for cheaper on other store fronts if it isn’t using steams backend.
After looking into that more I’ve yet to see any hard evidence of valve threatening to delist devs for selling cheaper elsewhere. And presumably, so have the courts, because otherwise that seems like it would be a slam dunk case. I’ll believe it when I see it, but just going on word of mouth doesn’t convince me.
Steam initally launched in 2003 as a updater/server browser for Valve games like counterstrike, half life, and team fortress classic. Apple music came out earlier that year, which isn’t a 1:1 relation but likely influenced things wrt download pricing.
Steam didn’t have its first third party game til late 2005 which puts the chance for it to standardize a rate for game downloads right around the timeframe of xbox live and psn launching (late 2005, mid 2006 respectively), so I wouldn’t be shocked if word got around the industry about that stuff, though that’s just me making reasonable logical deductions (People love opening their big fat mouths, lot of folks in the same circles, etc.) rather then anything solid.
95% of the players on pc are on steam, if you don’t publish your game there you’re just shooting yourself in the foot - this has very little to do with the quality of the service valve provides and everything to do about their monopoly on the market. Would devs like to pay a smaller cut to valve? Sure, but it’s just the cost of doing business, you go where your customers are.
Customers flock to valve because it’s more than a storefront. It eliminates the needs for everything else, no need for discord, forums, lfg pages, recording software, controller mapping software, 3rd party mod hosting, mod managers, etc etc etc. look at how much further Valve has pushed Linux and Linux support in gaming than anyone imagined possible. Look at their return policy, absolutely no other storefront is that consumer friendly.
30% is industry standard, get mad at the storefronts that are just storefronts as well as steam or you’re just sounding like Tim Sweeney on another unhinged nepo baby rant.
It’s not like GoG or EGS are better stores that can’t get traffic.
In fact, if anyone actually put enough money and created a store with better moderation, people would be more than happy to use it. It’s just that there is none. Not because they lack users, but features.
Might be unpopular, but I think it’s a fair cut. They provide a Plattform to anyone, and indiegames regularly outperform AAA. You don’t need huge publishers to succeed if your game is fun. I don’t think that would be possible with epic at the top.
Then you have the option to buy from epic who take a lower cut. I prefer Steam because of the convenience and features it offers.
Until another storefront can supersede steams features then I don’t see a reason to switch
Epic you get flash banged even when grabbing free games… Their UI is over a decade old. GOG’s UI is frustrating to navigate. I love the deals and free promotions on steam, and the UI.
As the other user said, you may be surprised! I swapped to CachyOS in January and it’s been rock solid. I play games like Hitman, Last Epoch, and a bunch of indie games without any issues.
I agree. That’s not what this is about though. This is about Valve using their market dominance to force price parity, supposedly to “protect consumers” (which is bullshit and doesn’t make sense). Yes, they’re the better storefront. I’d be willing to pay a little more to use it.
That’s one way the competition can compete though. They can’t make as good of a product, but they can make a cheaper one. They should be able to charge less, and make less profit per sale. Valve has ensured no developer can do this though by threatening removal if it’s cheaper anywhere else, and you can’t afford to not be on Steam. This would be good for consumers as it’d drive Valve to compete, either with an even better product or by lowering prices. There’s no way consumers lose, and I don’t get why people rush to fight for Valve on this.
MSRP is manufacturer suggested retail price. It is not an enforced price. For example, stores have started selling physical Nintendo games below MSRP as Nintendo has started selling digital copies at a lower price than physical MSRP. (This is also what would likely happen if games are sold cheaper. They’d compete the price down.)
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a case of MSRP being enforced. I don’t think it’s reasonably possible. It means no sales, for example. A retailer buys a product, and then they stock it at whatever price they decide. The manufacturer doesn’t control it at this point.
Edit: Also, MSRP is very different. It’s from the manufacturer, not another store. The equivalent is Walmart telling a product creator to enforce an MSRP or they won’t carry their product, not a manufacturer enforcing one on their own, assuming that happens.
I don’t know why people come here, act like other people are wrong, and haven’t done the bare minimum to look into the case. It’s literally what this case is about. It’s even in the article for this post.
Edit: Why am I being downvoted. Click the link! I’m sorry that it’s against the mega-corporation that you like. They make a great product, but stop defending them for literally anything they do. I can’t believe people on Lemmy, of all places, still do this shit. Maybe it’s astroturfing? That’s the only thing that makes sense.
Given that Proton is open source, provides plenty of instructions and permits reproduction and distribution (BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI), any other store could likewise include it or a fork of it. They may have a factual monopoly, but it’s not enforced legally in any way.
It’s just that nobody seems to compete meaningfully. Steam has a vested interest in being independent from Microsoft, maintaining their own SteamOS and making games run on it. Other companies just might not have the same commercial drive. And if there are easy to use 3rd party tools that people are content with, why would they bother investing in their own solution? They’re accessible to the Linux market through no work of their own.
Of course, there are some companies actively not wanting to work with Linux. Some just don’t trust the platform. Some require particular technology that might not work on Linux. For example, things like kernel-level-anticheat being confined to the wine environment defeats the point of spying on the whole OS. And some would require additional work to make it run smoothly, which obviously is an investment into a market they may feel doesn’t promise enough profit.
I use Lutris myself to run GOG games and have the same experience.
Mind you, sometimes I do have problems and have to tweak things to get them to run (usually switching the runner to wine-ge instead of wine-staging).
It’s very rare to be totally unable to run a GOG game in Linux with Lutris.
I would say that my rate of success with Steam is roughly the same.
That said, in Lutris I can run my games sandboxed with networking disabled, which I cannot in Steam (even if I started Steam itself sandboxed with networking disabled, Steam itself needs Internet access).
Maybe Steam is a little more seamless for non-technically adept users (of which there are more and more running Linux nowadays), but at least Lutris (and, I expect, Heroic) are way much more configurable and hence give a lot more possibilities for power users to do things like sandboxing or even to solve problems with running some more obscure or AAA games from a certain DRM-heavy era (for example, there’s a game which no matter what I couldn’t get to run in Steam, but with a bit of tweaking I could get a pirate copy to run in Wine under Lutris - still now that game is listed in ProtonDB as not running in Linux)
I was just curious whether technically Steam is a monopol for Linux, as in being the only store where you can run games without using 3rd party tools.
Not that I mind, running games on Linux is super easy nowadays (My favorite is Faugus launcher), but technically it can be another hurdle for some people.
But when I need to play some Epic free game, Heroic is awesome.
I mean, they develop and maintain Proton yet they don’t even prohibit you from using it on other things. If literally any company did that, their shareholders would riot…
…so I don’t think it technically qualifies as a monopoly, but they probably could have had a legal monopoly using an exclusivity patent on the tech (although they technically can’t patent the whole thing because it’s based on Wine, but they could have done this in a way that they could have).
That is a fair point. I’m also not trying to discredit Steam, I don’t really think there’s any kind of a problem as of now (well, apart from the fact that it could go downhill very fast once Steam changes hands), and the services they provide are reasonable and for me worth the 30% cut, especially their Proton work.
Well, things like Lutris do the same automated configuring of the underlying tools to run Windows games under Linux and putting it all under a “press button to play” interface as Steam as well as letting you manage your collection.
Lutris (and I believe Heroic too) even integrated with game stores and will list your games there and download them directly from there to install them.
What they don’t have is the store part - you can’t actually BUY games from those tools.
People using for example Lutris to play GOG games in Linux, have pretty much the same experience as using Steam from a browser to buy the games and then Steam app to manage your games collection and launch the games.
Having both Steam and Lutris, I personally prefer the latter because it seamlessly integrates with multiple stores and even works fine with games from other sources (such as games I bought in physical format way back in the day or games I bought directly from the developer).
Sure, the open source apps doesn’t include a store, but as I see it that’s actually a good thing since I’m not interested in getting the sales push to buy more games everytime I want to play a game, same as I’m not interested in seeing ads when I’m browsing the web.
Holy failed updates batman. After I update some games, I have to fully restart heroic or it is an endless loop of “installing update” -> “Update available, click to install”
There are plenty of frontend alternatives out there that work fairly seamlessly and, at this point, I don’t think work on compatibility tools like Proton would be too affected even if Valve decided to stop working on it tomorrow.
No. You can use Lutris although it appears to be unmaintained. Native GOG games work fine. Even better than the Windows versions do on windows because you don’t need Admim privileges to install for whatever fucking reason
Oh, I know how to run my games, my point was more that in that case, Steam does have a literal monopol on being the only store that can run most games on Linux without using any 3rd party tools.
Not that I mind at all, and it’s not a real problem, but I was just wondering if that’s technically the case.
I hate to agree with a billionaire, but he’s right. Currently steam is not a monopoly at all, and hasn’t yet gotten so dominant that it amounts to one.
But they are the single most dominant outlet, and are in the first stages of having an ability to control the entire market in unfair ways to the point of crushing competition. It won’t be long before they do have that ability completely. And we can’t just trust the billionaire because he’s shown an unusual degree of user focused choices overall. Even if he’s perfect, he ain’t immortal, and as soon as he’s not in control, there will be fuckery
as soon as he’s not in control, there will be fuckery
This is what I don’t think a lot of people will be prepared for …
I dread if there’s gonna some useless MBA coming around afterwards and saying some shit like: “why don’t we charge steam users $9.99 to play their games per month?” and start cutting projects that benefit gamers to “save money” – who needs Proton? who needs to invest in things like couch co-op? Then give themselves a shitload of money in exchange for all the goodwill that Valve have built up over the years.
Yeah, since Valve is not public the odds of the next head being an outside hire or some loud tech exec are extremely low.
GabeN is most likely to pick someone who’s been around with the company since the early days, like Erik Johnson or Scott Lynch.
If he wants it to stay in the family, his own son Gray could take over, he’s also a game dev.
Gabe has often expressed distrust of publicly traded markets, a plausible outcome is that his ownership gets converted into an employee-owned trust or a collective buyback, this would effectively permanently lock Valve into its current profile, distributing profils back into salaries and bonuses for the staff.
I’m ready for it, I “backed up” my steam library because of it. The whole movement these last few months against steam make me think the industry is coordinating against it because steam won’t play ball.
Some business analyst will make a pretty chart showing a massive revenue increase Vs some minor player attrition caused by the monthly subscription model, and the board will salivate at all those billions they’re gonna get.
Is that revenue necessary? Not at all. But capitalism says you must maximise profits regardless for the sake of it, and without an all powerful overlord to say otherwise, it will be a tragic downfall.
I really hope Linux will get a bigger market share, thanks to Steam devices, before Steam has to change CEOs and starts the inevitable enshitification.
Because for Linux gaming, Steam’s support for Proton is pretty much a monopol.
Most of 3rd party launchers for other stores also rely on Proton under the hood, IIRC.
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This is your weekly reminder at this point that Valve is a corporation and that corporations are not your friends nor your allies.
He’s not wrong. But the price fixing has to go. I shouldn’t have to pay physical prices for a digital product.
I’m a bit surprised that someone hadn’t already posted this
GOG sails past the bottom of the screen on a skateboard sipping a juicebox with a straw
There was a funnier one with GOG enjoying itself in the corner and the complaining party being Epic lol
Close, but also include the accusation coming from the ones on the left!
Damn that’s a good point. I don’t hear a single consumer talk about it being a monopoly. Isn’t that who would decide such a thing?
Accurate
Start with SpaceX
It’s so clear that so many people here DIDN’T read the article, which is further compounded by the author not understanding the meaning of monopoly vs anti-competitive practices. Just so we are all on the same page:
A monopoly is a market structure where a single company or entity is the sole supplier of a specific product or service, with no viable substitutes. Because it lacks competition, a monopolist can dictate prices, prevent new competitors from entering the market, and influence quality.
Anti-competitive behavior refers to actions taken by a business or organization to limit, restrict or eliminate competition in a market, usually in order to gain an unfair advantage or dominate the market. These practices are often considered illegal or unethical and can harm consumers, other businesses and the broader economy. Anti-competitive behavior is used by business and governments to lessen competition within the markets so that monopolies and dominant firms can generate supernormal profit margins and deter competitors from the market. Therefore, it is heavily regulated and punishable by law in cases where it substantially affects the market.
This isn’t about steam being a better service, (even though it IS a better service,) or being a monopoly, (it isn’t.) The lawsuit is about anti-competitive practices.
The lawsuit pertains to steam allegedly disallowing devs to price games lower on other platforms. If this is true, it’s a move that prevents competition. Maybe other digital storefronts are shittier, but they might make up for it by taking a smaller cut from game devs, which allows them to sell at a lower price on GOG, or EPIC. If Steam is forcing devs to charge the same price on all platforms, or preventing them from offering discounts on those other platforms when they aren’t offered on Steam, then it doesn’t matter where I buy the game. This is a form of price fixing, except it isn’t an agreement being done between digital storefronts behind closed doors, the price fixing is allegedly happening by steam leveraging the developers
Imagine you are going to buy Tide laundry detergent. You can go to Walmart, Target, or your local grocery store. They all carry the same exact same 125 fl oz bottle. Walmart has it for the lowest price, Target is the next highest, and the local grocer has the highest price for the item. Does my local grocery store get to force Walmart to raise their prices to match their own?
My local grocery store might charge a little bit more, but I prefer to shop there because it’s closer to me, and the stores are better organized making it easier for me to find what I want. Personally I LOATHE shopping at Walmart. I happen to be willing to pay more for a better experience when buying the same product. Other people might not give a shit about the shopping experience and just want the lowest price, so they go to Walmart.
I refuse to touch EPIC game store. I think it’s a subpar product. But if my buddy is telling me about a game he got for free through their storefront and raves about what a good game it is, I’m gonna buy it off of steam, instead of getting it for free, because steam is a digital storefront I trust, and provides a good customer experience.
I realize laundry detergent isn’t the same as video game software, but I think my example demonstrates how competition can work and how fucked up it would be if the allegations against steam are true.
To be clear, the only time Valve requires prices match what’s on Steam is if you’re selling Steam keys. Games are sometimes cheaper on GOG and EA and Ubisoft regularly price their games a dollar or two cheaper on their own stores.
This makes perfect sense.
“Buy” games on Steam? Sure wish they let you own them.
Some are DRM free and can be backed up at your leisure. I’m pretty sure that’s up to the developer to implement or not.
It would be neat if steam let you sell a game back, but I’m not sure how to square that with “you have a drm free copy that’s trivial to copy”
Obligatory GOG shill?
Around the 2010’s, both MS and Google were seen as “noble monopolies”. Even if Steam is the better video game distributors, always stand on more than one leg when it comes to buying games.
MS was anything but lol, they had a swarm of lawsuit dramas over by then. Only Apple glazed MS because they quite literally saved them from bankruptcy which they only did as insurance against a proper antitrust case.
Google was newer but they also weren’t a private company, they were riding silicon valley money to the moon.
Regardless, Steam is a monopoly but their immediate competitors are the only ones chucking anti competitve measures around like crappy DRM and price lockins.
Other gaming platforms are fully capable of competing with Steam. It’s only real edge is that it treats game developers better than any other platform.
And at least both gog and itchdotio are the better ones. If only Epic got its shit together…
I get it but its not like they are buying up competition or doing bad practices to win unless doing what your customers want is being unfare. In this case I blame the competition.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
An earned monopoly is still a monopoly. Anyone who feels that the power that Steam wields in the gaming market is not an issue, I urge you to think or learn about why monopolies are harmful – not in relation to steam. Think about a manufacturer of gizmos completely cornering the gizmo market and what that would mean for the people wanting to buy gizmos, as time passes. Don’t think in terms of the laws or definitions of some specific country, just think about the effect it would have on society. Worst case scenario you lose some time and gain some insight on monopolies
If your monopoly in the Gizmo market is because you’ve actively fought other companies, lobbied governments, filed frivilous patent suits, etc… in order to KEEP people from competing with you, than you’re a piece of shit.
If your monopoly in the Gizmo market is because despite there being no hinderance to them doing so, no competitor has been able to match your quality, than kudos.
In your example, you’re effectively saying that governments should force people to use shittier services just to avoid a monopoly, even if that monopoly is earned.
If people want to buy Gizmos, and that first company is losing their trust, another company will come in and compete successfully because that first company isn’t preventing them from doing so. If that second company does it better, great.
An earned monopoly and a forced monopoly are not nearly the same thing, precisely because an earned monopoly is on the whim of the consumers. If your product turns to shit, a replacement will make itself known. Whereas a forced monopoly is on the whim of the government and lobbyists.
This gizmo maker is making the best gizmo that everyone loves, best delivery and best support for people that buys the gizmo. Why would you fault that company for delivering what majority of people wanted. They didn’t corner the gizmo market by buying out smaller gizmo makers, they didn’t block smaller gizmo maker by undercutting them, they didn’t even advertise to cut into other’s profit share. They win the capitalist market by making the best gizmo plus the best experience of buying and owning the gizmo.
Of course it’s bad. For decades Valve has shown others why gamers value their game store yet most game stores still do stupid shit that drives gamers away.
The only one making an honest attempt is GOG. And their only issue is low purchasing volume which means they are slow to develop and improve their platform.
And a launcher that makes epic look good.
But other stores exist, they just don’t offer what steam does (which includes Play on Linux).
It like if you bought an amazing vacuum that does everything (hardwood, carpet, car attachments, air filtration), and the competitor offers a vacuum that only does carpeted floors…its not a true monopoly, its the competitor not understanding what sells
Oh no. They’ve made gaming accessible on Linux, games still run you purchased 20 years ago on the latest hardware and they’re not a bloated pile of garbage
If anything, they’ve actually made things better for everyone
In contrast, if you purchased wii u games, you need to re buy for switch. Ps5, wii u and Xbox all basically are limited to what publishers can sell
I’d even argue they’re not a real monopoly because they Don’t control the hardware, and there are other platforms
Somebody needs to make a better gizmo than I guess 😉. Americans seem to love capitalism…so than, capitalize.
Valve has a monopoly at being the only online gaming storefront that doesn’t suck.
Nah I think gog is fine, they’re just not the same size (and for linux also not plug & play)
Yup, it’s why I am willing to argue for them, at least until Gabe dies. He’s proven to be far more fair and I know you wouldn’t get that deal anywhere else. These days it really does seem like there a coordinated push to attack valve for not being scum like the rest of the industry these last couple of months.
It’s because they actively fight for the consumer rather than the publishers.
It’s funny though because valve has so much fucking money because they are not chasing next quarters arbitrary gains…
Valve is proof that if you don’t try to screw over your customers somehow you end up with profits. Weird how that works, and instead of companies learning something from that we’ll… they do what capitalism does…
It does make me nervous though that one player has so much power.
But certainly in the here and now as a consumer, I use steam because it makes life easier. It makes it super easy to join and host multiplayer games, gives me access to convenient game recording stuff without having to have separate software, lets me share games with my found family, and most games have achievements, which my silly achievement-whore brain loves. I’m also grateful because if not for Steam’s work developing proton, I doubt my switch to Linux would have been as straightforward as it has been.
I agree that it does seem like a targeted attack on Steam by industry hacks who I trust infinitely less than Steam. Corporations are never our friends, merely our temporary allies. However, the hacks attacking Steam are definitely my enemies, and the enemy of my enemy is my temporary ally
Gog and itch.io are decent. They’re different types of stores, but very usable.
The only one that lets me keep in my library, download and install at any time games that were delisted 10 or 15 years ago by their publishers.
For that reason alone, they deserve my money over any other storefront.
Of course he’s not going to come out and say it, why even ask him?
Here’s the thing. There are other places. Epic, Amazon Gaming, Origin/Battlenet/Ubi, itch, Microsoft store, gog…
Most suck at discoverability or they don’t have the variety of Steam. Some are shitty by design (Origin, Ubi, Battlenet) - intended to only get you to play their games. Others like itch aren’t built for scaling out to deliver thousands of big games.
This isn’t a thing like Apple’s walled garden, I feel like this is Steam out performing the competition.
Steam quite literally provides almost everything you could ever need too, it’s so much more than a storefront. It’s genuinely mind blowing just how many services steam offers, I don’t think anybody, including valve employees knows about every function and service it offers tbh.
I would have killed for Steam Input alone back in the day when I was using xpadder to sloppily translate controller inputs to keyboard keys so the game would recognize it
Does steam provide a good service? Sure. Is it worth the 30% cut they take? Absolutely not. Gamers don’t realize the amount of money valve is making off them. What we need is a good old fashioned bill at every purchase detailing how much money these rent seeking stores are extracting from you.
I don’t want the 90 services and bloated platform steam offers, I want to play my game and pay the developers.
30% is industry standard, everybody but Epic charges that and also Steam is not just a flat 30% many devs and pubs pay less.
I agree 30% is high for every storefront besides Steam and and arguably GoG. The sheer range of services and support for both players and devs is exponentially above literally everything else, you are not just paying for a storefront with steam like you are literally everywhere else.
As for GoG, I’ll let them slide on 30% because of how much effort and resources they put into preservation as well as their “customer is the administrator of their purchases” attitude.
The same cut that is industry standard and they could ABSOLUTELY jack up by abusing their market position and choose not to? Especially given how much extra infrastructure they supply for that 30% vs literally anyone else?
When the competition (excluding any stores operating at a loss to build marketshare) is charging both developers and gamers more, they’re less bothered about Steam taking 20-30%. Consoles charge 30%, have extra fees, take a cut of third party keys (or restrict them altogether) and require a mandatory subscription for online play/cloud saves, while disallowing third party stores on their hardware.
Nothing is stopping a dev from putting a game on Steam for the exposure, then putting it for sale DRM free somewhere else so they don’t have to pay the 30% cut on those sales (I assume they’d have to at least charge the same as the Steam one, though). I bet the Steam version would make them far more money even with the cut.
Epic does somewhere around 12% and the end user still pays the same so if you think that extra 18% would come back your way rather then going to a devs pockets? Hoo boy.
Also, Steam charges the industry standard rate iirc, same as google, apple, etc. While we can complain about that rate (last paragraph in mind: To what end?) its not as though Valve is doing anything extra greedy.
And most of the time that extra doesn’t even go to the devs, the publishers keep it. So you’re not even helping the devs for the most part.
Besides, Steam won’t even take a single cent from Steam keys sold outside of their storefront. Devs are free to sell their games on stores like Humble or Fanatical at whatever price they deem fit.
If any of those games on Epic are also sold in steam, then the (nonsale) price cannot be lower than the steam price because of steam’s TOS.
Also the “industry standard” was arbitrarily chosen to match the cut that brick and mortar stores usually operate at… Despite there being very different costs related.
But yes, steam is being just as greedy as all the other big walled gardens. People complain about that rate across the board, not just about steam.
That’s simply not true. They aren’t supposed to generate steam keys and then sell them at a lower price at other stores. Which is completely fair, as you can generate keys for free, but the game would still be using steams servers and services. But you can absolutely sell a game for cheaper on other store fronts if it isn’t using steams backend.
It IS true. They’ve threatened to delist developers who wanted to sell on non-steam key sites at lower prices.
There’s a ongoing class action lawsuit (which is already 2+ years old), started by Wolfire games, for exactly this scenario.
After looking into that more I’ve yet to see any hard evidence of valve threatening to delist devs for selling cheaper elsewhere. And presumably, so have the courts, because otherwise that seems like it would be a slam dunk case. I’ll believe it when I see it, but just going on word of mouth doesn’t convince me.
How different?
How likely is it that it just so happens to exactly match brick and mortar stores?
So you don’t know?
Steam charges the industry standard rate… That Steam set originally decades ago.
Steam initally launched in 2003 as a updater/server browser for Valve games like counterstrike, half life, and team fortress classic. Apple music came out earlier that year, which isn’t a 1:1 relation but likely influenced things wrt download pricing.
Steam didn’t have its first third party game til late 2005 which puts the chance for it to standardize a rate for game downloads right around the timeframe of xbox live and psn launching (late 2005, mid 2006 respectively), so I wouldn’t be shocked if word got around the industry about that stuff, though that’s just me making reasonable logical deductions (People love opening their big fat mouths, lot of folks in the same circles, etc.) rather then anything solid.
It’s absolutely worth the cut they take. Ask every developer and publisher.
It’s hard getting recognized outside Steam.
It’s hard getting recognized on steam too.
Try going to any other platform and tell me how much better it is.
95% of the players on pc are on steam, if you don’t publish your game there you’re just shooting yourself in the foot - this has very little to do with the quality of the service valve provides and everything to do about their monopoly on the market. Would devs like to pay a smaller cut to valve? Sure, but it’s just the cost of doing business, you go where your customers are.
Customers flock to valve because it’s more than a storefront. It eliminates the needs for everything else, no need for discord, forums, lfg pages, recording software, controller mapping software, 3rd party mod hosting, mod managers, etc etc etc. look at how much further Valve has pushed Linux and Linux support in gaming than anyone imagined possible. Look at their return policy, absolutely no other storefront is that consumer friendly.
30% is industry standard, get mad at the storefronts that are just storefronts as well as steam or you’re just sounding like Tim Sweeney on another unhinged nepo baby rant.
Because they provide a lot of value.
It’s not like GoG or EGS are better stores that can’t get traffic.
In fact, if anyone actually put enough money and created a store with better moderation, people would be more than happy to use it. It’s just that there is none. Not because they lack users, but features.
Might be unpopular, but I think it’s a fair cut. They provide a Plattform to anyone, and indiegames regularly outperform AAA. You don’t need huge publishers to succeed if your game is fun. I don’t think that would be possible with epic at the top.
Then you have the option to buy from epic who take a lower cut. I prefer Steam because of the convenience and features it offers. Until another storefront can supersede steams features then I don’t see a reason to switch
Epic you get flash banged even when grabbing free games… Their UI is over a decade old. GOG’s UI is frustrating to navigate. I love the deals and free promotions on steam, and the UI.
And don’t forget GOG fucking still doesn’t have a native Linux client.
Because they pretty much said “It isn’t worth the effort for just a handful of nerds”. They’re supposedly on it now, though.
I didn’t know that, I am still on Windows 10. Most of my games won’t work on linux.
As the other user said, you may be surprised! I swapped to CachyOS in January and it’s been rock solid. I play games like Hitman, Last Epoch, and a bunch of indie games without any issues.
You might be surprised, unless you exclusively play multiplayer games with anti-cheat.
I agree. That’s not what this is about though. This is about Valve using their market dominance to force price parity, supposedly to “protect consumers” (which is bullshit and doesn’t make sense). Yes, they’re the better storefront. I’d be willing to pay a little more to use it.
That’s one way the competition can compete though. They can’t make as good of a product, but they can make a cheaper one. They should be able to charge less, and make less profit per sale. Valve has ensured no developer can do this though by threatening removal if it’s cheaper anywhere else, and you can’t afford to not be on Steam. This would be good for consumers as it’d drive Valve to compete, either with an even better product or by lowering prices. There’s no way consumers lose, and I don’t get why people rush to fight for Valve on this.
So like most stores? What do you think MSRP is? A lot of places will pull their product from stores who undercut pricing outside of occasional sales.
MSRP is manufacturer suggested retail price. It is not an enforced price. For example, stores have started selling physical Nintendo games below MSRP as Nintendo has started selling digital copies at a lower price than physical MSRP. (This is also what would likely happen if games are sold cheaper. They’d compete the price down.)
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a case of MSRP being enforced. I don’t think it’s reasonably possible. It means no sales, for example. A retailer buys a product, and then they stock it at whatever price they decide. The manufacturer doesn’t control it at this point.
Edit: Also, MSRP is very different. It’s from the manufacturer, not another store. The equivalent is Walmart telling a product creator to enforce an MSRP or they won’t carry their product, not a manufacturer enforcing one on their own, assuming that happens.
Looked into this, found a source: https://steamyouoweus.co.uk/faqs/ points made by @[email protected] are legit.
I did a quick scroll on that site, but couldn’t find any sources or evidence about Valve actually doing this
I don’t know why people come here, act like other people are wrong, and haven’t done the bare minimum to look into the case. It’s literally what this case is about. It’s even in the article for this post.
https://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2025/07/01/parity-and-power-steams-antitrust-reckoning-in-wolfire-v-valve/
Edit: Why am I being downvoted. Click the link! I’m sorry that it’s against the mega-corporation that you like. They make a great product, but stop defending them for literally anything they do. I can’t believe people on Lemmy, of all places, still do this shit. Maybe it’s astroturfing? That’s the only thing that makes sense.
Honest question, is there any other store that directly supports seamlessly running games on Linux? Even games that do not natively build for Linux?
Edit: Because in that case, Steam does have a monopol on Linux, since it’s the only store that can seamlessly/without 3rd party tools run most games.
I was going to point out how heroic launcher is fine, but that’s not a store.
That’s not really Valve’s fault that all the other storefronts don’t care to support Linux, though.
Given that Proton is open source, provides plenty of instructions and permits reproduction and distribution (BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI), any other store could likewise include it or a fork of it. They may have a factual monopoly, but it’s not enforced legally in any way.
It’s just that nobody seems to compete meaningfully. Steam has a vested interest in being independent from Microsoft, maintaining their own SteamOS and making games run on it. Other companies just might not have the same commercial drive. And if there are easy to use 3rd party tools that people are content with, why would they bother investing in their own solution? They’re accessible to the Linux market through no work of their own.
Of course, there are some companies actively not wanting to work with Linux. Some just don’t trust the platform. Some require particular technology that might not work on Linux. For example, things like kernel-level-anticheat being confined to the wine environment defeats the point of spying on the whole OS. And some would require additional work to make it run smoothly, which obviously is an investment into a market they may feel doesn’t promise enough profit.
running gog games through heroic is pretty much as seamless as steam
I use Lutris myself to run GOG games and have the same experience.
Mind you, sometimes I do have problems and have to tweak things to get them to run (usually switching the runner to wine-ge instead of wine-staging).
It’s very rare to be totally unable to run a GOG game in Linux with Lutris.
I would say that my rate of success with Steam is roughly the same.
That said, in Lutris I can run my games sandboxed with networking disabled, which I cannot in Steam (even if I started Steam itself sandboxed with networking disabled, Steam itself needs Internet access).
Maybe Steam is a little more seamless for non-technically adept users (of which there are more and more running Linux nowadays), but at least Lutris (and, I expect, Heroic) are way much more configurable and hence give a lot more possibilities for power users to do things like sandboxing or even to solve problems with running some more obscure or AAA games from a certain DRM-heavy era (for example, there’s a game which no matter what I couldn’t get to run in Steam, but with a bit of tweaking I could get a pirate copy to run in Wine under Lutris - still now that game is listed in ProtonDB as not running in Linux)
It’s good that the community stepped up when CD Projekt didn’t.
Faugus Launcher works too
I was just curious whether technically Steam is a monopol for Linux, as in being the only store where you can run games without using 3rd party tools.
Not that I mind, running games on Linux is super easy nowadays (My favorite is Faugus launcher), but technically it can be another hurdle for some people.
But when I need to play some Epic free game, Heroic is awesome.
I mean, they develop and maintain Proton yet they don’t even prohibit you from using it on other things. If literally any company did that, their shareholders would riot…
…so I don’t think it technically qualifies as a monopoly, but they probably could have had a legal monopoly using an exclusivity patent on the tech (although they technically can’t patent the whole thing because it’s based on Wine, but they could have done this in a way that they could have).
If Valve were a publicly traded company, their shareholders would have rioted over it
That is a fair point. I’m also not trying to discredit Steam, I don’t really think there’s any kind of a problem as of now (well, apart from the fact that it could go downhill very fast once Steam changes hands), and the services they provide are reasonable and for me worth the 30% cut, especially their Proton work.
Well, things like Lutris do the same automated configuring of the underlying tools to run Windows games under Linux and putting it all under a “press button to play” interface as Steam as well as letting you manage your collection.
Lutris (and I believe Heroic too) even integrated with game stores and will list your games there and download them directly from there to install them.
What they don’t have is the store part - you can’t actually BUY games from those tools.
People using for example Lutris to play GOG games in Linux, have pretty much the same experience as using Steam from a browser to buy the games and then Steam app to manage your games collection and launch the games.
Having both Steam and Lutris, I personally prefer the latter because it seamlessly integrates with multiple stores and even works fine with games from other sources (such as games I bought in physical format way back in the day or games I bought directly from the developer).
Sure, the open source apps doesn’t include a store, but as I see it that’s actually a good thing since I’m not interested in getting the sales push to buy more games everytime I want to play a game, same as I’m not interested in seeing ads when I’m browsing the web.
Heroic does let you buy games through the app, but it seems like it’s just a browser that gives heroic an affiliate link when you make the purchase.
Sorry but I have to disagree.
Holy failed updates batman. After I update some games, I have to fully restart heroic or it is an endless loop of “installing update” -> “Update available, click to install”
‘pretty much’ is doing heavy lifting
idk about that problem but some games just fuck. sometimes the instructions from others in “check compatibility” help
There are plenty of frontend alternatives out there that work fairly seamlessly and, at this point, I don’t think work on compatibility tools like Proton would be too affected even if Valve decided to stop working on it tomorrow.
No. You can use Lutris although it appears to be unmaintained. Native GOG games work fine. Even better than the Windows versions do on windows because you don’t need Admim privileges to install for whatever fucking reason
Oh, I know how to run my games, my point was more that in that case, Steam does have a literal monopol on being the only store that can run most games on Linux without using any 3rd party tools.
Not that I mind at all, and it’s not a real problem, but I was just wondering if that’s technically the case.
I hate to agree with a billionaire, but he’s right. Currently steam is not a monopoly at all, and hasn’t yet gotten so dominant that it amounts to one.
But they are the single most dominant outlet, and are in the first stages of having an ability to control the entire market in unfair ways to the point of crushing competition. It won’t be long before they do have that ability completely. And we can’t just trust the billionaire because he’s shown an unusual degree of user focused choices overall. Even if he’s perfect, he ain’t immortal, and as soon as he’s not in control, there will be fuckery
This is what I don’t think a lot of people will be prepared for …
I dread if there’s gonna some useless MBA coming around afterwards and saying some shit like: “why don’t we charge steam users $9.99 to play their games per month?” and start cutting projects that benefit gamers to “save money” – who needs Proton? who needs to invest in things like couch co-op? Then give themselves a shitload of money in exchange for all the goodwill that Valve have built up over the years.
Oh no. Most of us are pretty much expecting the apocalypse whenever Gaben is gone.
But Valve is not a public company, so you don’t get randos. Gabe is very aware of this fact himself.
Yeah, since Valve is not public the odds of the next head being an outside hire or some loud tech exec are extremely low.
GabeN is most likely to pick someone who’s been around with the company since the early days, like Erik Johnson or Scott Lynch.
If he wants it to stay in the family, his own son Gray could take over, he’s also a game dev.
Gabe has often expressed distrust of publicly traded markets, a plausible outcome is that his ownership gets converted into an employee-owned trust or a collective buyback, this would effectively permanently lock Valve into its current profile, distributing profils back into salaries and bonuses for the staff.
Yes but it’s not a certenty
How would you want it to be certain?
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I’m ready for it, I “backed up” my steam library because of it. The whole movement these last few months against steam make me think the industry is coordinating against it because steam won’t play ball.
Yep. This is how it goes downhill.
Some business analyst will make a pretty chart showing a massive revenue increase Vs some minor player attrition caused by the monthly subscription model, and the board will salivate at all those billions they’re gonna get.
Is that revenue necessary? Not at all. But capitalism says you must maximise profits regardless for the sake of it, and without an all powerful overlord to say otherwise, it will be a tragic downfall.
I really hope Linux will get a bigger market share, thanks to Steam devices, before Steam has to change CEOs and starts the inevitable enshitification.
Because for Linux gaming, Steam’s support for Proton is pretty much a monopol.
Most of 3rd party launchers for other stores also rely on Proton under the hood, IIRC.
Nobody stops EGS to implement Proton. Neither ActiBlizz, Ubisoft or EAs Origin.
The “monopoly” in this case is again just other stores not wanting to do what gamers want. Proton is FOSS and anyone can use it.