I’m mad about their massive gambling profits. Otherwise they’ve been pretty great for consumers. Though it’s likely they won’t always be.
Steam is basically a PC gaming monopoly, so why isn’t anyone mad?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by ooli3@sopuli.xyz to gaming@beehaw.org
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/steam-is-basically-a-pc-gaming-monopoly-so-why-isnt-anyone-mad/
Comments
noxypaws@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
pretty great for consumers.
But not anybody that wants to avoid bigots and fascism.
noxypaws@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
like moderation? yeah their community moderation is really really bad.
jcr@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
Monopoly is when you purchase other actors of the industry to extinction, and annihilatr competition this way. It has never been about having big market share due to superior service.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Thank you. Some people don’t realize part of being a monopoly is regulation capture and in some instances market collusion. That being big makes you a monopoly when that’s not all of it. Could Steam become one, possibly. Is it one currently, no.
reksas@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
its not monopoly if competition doesnt want to compete and isnt prevented from doing so. steam provides better service, which makes it de facto choice. should i be mad that only option i have is good? it just makes me worried that what if valve goes bad one day, but can’t do much about that.
BaraCoded@literature.cafe 2 weeks ago
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.
MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.world 3 weeks ago
I’m “mad”. Their business model should be illegal. If you buy a game you shouldn’t be chained to their platform.
Newsteinleo@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
That’s not an issue with Steam that is an issue with consumer protection and copy right laws.
MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
It’s definitely as issue with Steam. Once you purchase a game you can’t just launch it…you need to launch it through their platform. I don’t want to have my internet connected and Steam updated just to play a game.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Go pirate it and live your best life.
Newsteinleo@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Steam is not the problem when it comes to DRM. Steam offers a service, it’s the publishers who choose to use the always-on DRM.
MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
I pirate for demos….but once I buy on Steam it’s more than irritating, and sometimes makes my games unplayable, when Steam is required to play.
Urm…I’m not an activist…I just want there to be reasonable anti-trust so you don’t have to go through a bunch of bullshit to play a game you own.
Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Not sure what you mean. You should be able to download games on their storefront elsewhere?
RamenJunkie@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Yes. Thats how GOG wrks, for example. Everything is DRM free. I even have a script that downloads it all.
That said, a LOT of Steam is actually DRM free as well.
MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
I’m not sure what you mean…once you’ve purchased a game on Steam…you have to play it using Steam…a platform that needs to be working for you to play your game.
Allero@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
This. One reason I’m reluctant to purchase games on Steam is how impermanent it really is.
You buy a game in Steam, you can’t play it without Steam. Should Valve decide to cut you off or just stop existing, your games are gone. And switching to another platform leaves you trapped to play your previously purchased titles on Steam or buy it again.
dev_null@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
You buy a game in Steam, you can’t play it without Steam
That’s not true though. For many games, after you installed it you can even uninstall Steam or copy/backup the game to another computer without Steam and play it forever. Yes, many games have DRM that will prevent you from doing that, but that’s the game developers doing. Steam does not have any DRM by itself.
Newsteinleo@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
This is not just a Steam issue, I have games I bought and will never be able to play because of DRM. Until laws change, this won’t change.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Good leader good.
Bad leader bad.
Soapbox@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
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.
artyom@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Because they gained their monopoly by, yes, being first, but also by continuously being the best. And they don’t exploit their monopoly. They’re an intermediary between publishers and consumers, and generally speaking they are good stewards of that intermediary, generally operating in favor of the consumer, rather than the big game publishers.
Banzai51@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Not a monopoly. Only people mad at Steam are competitors. Competitors focus on shareholders, Steam focuses on gamers, you know, their customers.
MartianRecon@lemmus.org 3 weeks ago
Steam takes 30% of a developers sale. That’s a pretty heft price tag.
People don’t call Steam a monopoly (though it pretty much is) because they don’t mind steam.
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
If you google for 5 minutes, you’d find that 30% cut has been in gaming for ages. Back in the day 30% would include physical printing, transporting, store space. Today Valve’s 30% means forever-downloadable, always in your game list, cloud saves, linux support, community features. If only Valve didnt use income from that 30% to make their service better and grow their user base while at it.
SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
Yep, and that’s exactly why it’s a nazi bar.
angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
They are, but they’re good to the end user, so people don’t care to complain.
Newsteinleo@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
I don’t think they, there is nothing stoping anyone from selling their game through another means. It’s possible to build your own website, take credit card payment, and distribute a game that way. People don’t do that because it whole lot of extra work and it’s easier to pay some 30% commission to sell it for you.
belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
Because the other options pictured suck ass and having a million launchers is so god damned tiresome
the16bitgamer@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Because “gaming” is bigger than PCs. Steam has their own hardware and it sell like 1/100th of a PS5 or a Switch.
So Valve has a lot of room to compete with.
Ilixtze@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
The other options are shit
MissingGhost@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Which of the other launchers have or are compatible with proton/wine?
athatet@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
No it isn’t.
furrowsofar@beehaw.org 2 weeks ago
Great. Any time someone has a successful business that support 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.
Lemmert@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
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.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Weren’t they literally being sued over it?
FireXtol@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Wtf? You can pretty much pay any game on steam without steam….
blindbunny@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Capitalist removed about monopoly is real rich.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
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.
realcaseyrollins 2 weeks ago
Nobody complains about benevolent dictators.
_NetNomad@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
even the article itself touches on the fact that devs are mad, multiple times. the 30% cut is outrageous and discoverability is awful and easily sabotaged by review trolls. one of steam's biggest draws are it's sales, which have led to an extreme devaluation of indie games- anyone charging more than 20 bucks is considered to be overcharging while AAA games climb higher and higher in price. those same AAA games are often only available on steam
to their credit, the work they put into proton and them making that publically available was excellent of them. it's also good that they never tried to latch themselves onto the NFT and AI bandwagons. other than that, though? even if there was such a thing as a good monopoly, valve certainly ain't it
Cataphract@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I dislike that a lot of the games are tied to needing to have the steam client open, also the steam client is a non-controllable aspect on my computer that I own. I can modify (with extensions and browsers) any experience I have online…except steam. I also don’t like “leasing” games as that’s all they do.
Last note is just I dislike putting any faith into a company to “do good” or to remain with their status quo. Companies are not “good”, they are a service provider and shouldn’t be anthropomorphized as such for being “good guys” or a company that “Cares”^tm^. The very fact that people are defending it by being sticklers of true definitions of a “monopoly” but hand-wave away the affects it has on the industry makes me concerned it will only become a bigger problem later on.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Steam can be modified… There’s hella mods for things on Steam from better store filters to a completely different UI.