Comment on Steam is a ticking time bomb
Cethin@lemmy.zip 7 months agoI know they’re missing features. Steam didn’t always have all the features they have now either. We take that for granted now, but that wasn’t always the case. Steam has their market position because they were one of the first to market, and they invested their profits into making their product better. A newcomer is now met by consumers with the expectation that they’ll be equally as good, and when they inevitably aren’t they don’t use it. That’s how a monopoly works.
I agree it sucks, and that Steam is a nice piece of software, and the Valve has done good work supporting Linux. That doesn’t change whether or not they hold a monopolistic position in the market though. The barrier for new entries into the market is too high because Steam is good. It’s nothing against Steam, but it is a monopoly and that isn’t good for consumers —which includes game developers, not just end users.
stardust@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
That steam didn’t have features is like comparing steam from decades ago. I don’t feel like that is even a valid defense anymore when new smartphone companies are expected to come with a feature filled OS as opposed to pre smartphone expectations. Same for any other products be it televisions, monitors, etc.
Barriers can be brought up, but if someone is introducing the equivalent of a dumb phone to the market to compete against a smartphone and expecting to make money for just existing and only bothering to try to corner the market with removing products then no wonder things are playing out the way they are.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
That’s why all new smartphone companies use Android. It comes packaged feature rich. It is a good comparison.
stardust@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
And Epic is a billion dollar company making stuff like unreal engine yet can’t scrap together a launcher that doesn’t feel like it is from decades ago. Or chooses not too. Can’t even put in Linux support despite community efforts like heroic launcher.
You can’t put out a shit product and then cry about why people aren’t buying it. It doesn’t work for any market. Can try to coerce people with monopolistic practices of trying to with old product availability, but that’ll only get you so far.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
You keep making good points. Unreal Engine has been around since 1998. They’ve had a long time developing the engine and it makes it hard for other engines to compete. There are a few, but not many. They’ve invested a lot of money into making their engine the premium option and making sure consumers avoid alternatives that aren’t as feature rich.
You clearly can coerce people with monopolistic practices. You’re defending Valve over Epic, which Epic has a much smaller market share. You can call it anti-consumer if you want, but monopolistic? Yeah right. When one store is the default, devs have to sacrafice to not be a part of it. Again, I agree it sucks, but it’s a monopoly by Valve, not Epic.
There are two consumers here. There’s consumers who purchase games, and consumers who utilize the product to sell their games. Epic gives a smaller cut to entice devs, because otherwise they have no reason to participate because all the game purchases happen through Steam.
It all sucks for the consumer, which is why monopolies are bad. We shouldn’t be defending some company who’s making tons of profit just because we are simping for their product. Steam is undoubtedly superior, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t monopolistic.