While having only one store front is convenient, but less competitive, it is not a fault of Valve. People defend Steam because it hasn’t screwed them over. Valve built good features that people like into their product, useful features for developers.
Epic Games failed because they set up a dysfunctional store, games were the same price for customers and they went aggressive with anti-consumer practices like free games and exclusives to attempt to secure a base. They offered nothing extra for the developers or customers except uncertainty, so why would anyone want to build a game library there? You can’t convince someone to inconvenience themselves for a worse product, just because “Steam takes 30%!!! We only take 12%!!”. Epic Store was so fucking shit, I would bet even if them savings were passed onto the customer, most would still pay more to stay on Steam.
Origin failed, UPlay failed, they all tried to profit as much as possible for themselves instead of building a good competitive product. The only other successful ones really (outside of key resellers) are GOG and itch.io, which have their own niche spaces.
The other stores aren’t the bar though. Epic being shit doesn’t make Steam a saint. I also don’t think giving free games is anti consumer. Exclusives yes but not the free games.
Steam is under multiple lawsuits, including one because they threaten devs with delisting if they put their game up for cheaper on other stores (this is separate from their steam key rule).
I think they have a massive ad campaign not only to make themselves look good but also to make the competition look bad tbh. I see a lot of seo work being done for instance. I’m guessing the budget is massive.
Steam also popularized DRM and not owning your games. It’s a money printing machine tbh. They have like 300 employees lol.
Steam is a functional monopoly, but… I’d argue it didn’t get there by being underhanded, ratfucking competitors secretly or brazenly.
It just is better. It offers far more things, to both consumers and developers/sellers.
Think from an indie dev perspective. If your game is actually good? Finds a niche? You don’t need marketing, basically. You don’t need to budget that, Steam will do it for you. AAA gaming is basically like fucking movies at this point, sometjing like 1/3 the budget goes toward building the hype train, not the product.
Attempts to outdo or directly compete with Steam have just actually been comically incompetent, from at least my own business analyst perspective.
Yeah, it has contract terms it enforces on sellers, but imo, they’re far less restrictive than say, platform/marketfront exclusivity, as had long been the norm in the video game industry.
Room for improvement? Absolutely. Functionally gambling on in game items, children doing this, is a legitimate problem. Afaik the court case with NY is still ongoing, will be interested to see how that pans out.
While having only one store front is convenient, but less competitive, it is not a fault of Valve. People defend Steam because it hasn’t screwed them over. Valve built good features that people like into their product, useful features for developers.
Epic Games failed because they set up a dysfunctional store, games were the same price for customers and they went aggressive with anti-consumer practices like free games and exclusives to attempt to secure a base. They offered nothing extra for the developers or customers except uncertainty, so why would anyone want to build a game library there? You can’t convince someone to inconvenience themselves for a worse product, just because “Steam takes 30%!!! We only take 12%!!”. Epic Store was so fucking shit, I would bet even if them savings were passed onto the customer, most would still pay more to stay on Steam.
Origin failed, UPlay failed, they all tried to profit as much as possible for themselves instead of building a good competitive product. The only other successful ones really (outside of key resellers) are GOG and itch.io, which have their own niche spaces.
The other stores aren’t the bar though. Epic being shit doesn’t make Steam a saint. I also don’t think giving free games is anti consumer. Exclusives yes but not the free games.
Steam is under multiple lawsuits, including one because they threaten devs with delisting if they put their game up for cheaper on other stores (this is separate from their steam key rule).
I think they have a massive ad campaign not only to make themselves look good but also to make the competition look bad tbh. I see a lot of seo work being done for instance. I’m guessing the budget is massive.
Steam also popularized DRM and not owning your games. It’s a money printing machine tbh. They have like 300 employees lol.
Yep.
Steam is a functional monopoly, but… I’d argue it didn’t get there by being underhanded, ratfucking competitors secretly or brazenly.
It just is better. It offers far more things, to both consumers and developers/sellers.
Think from an indie dev perspective. If your game is actually good? Finds a niche? You don’t need marketing, basically. You don’t need to budget that, Steam will do it for you. AAA gaming is basically like fucking movies at this point, sometjing like 1/3 the budget goes toward building the hype train, not the product.
Attempts to outdo or directly compete with Steam have just actually been comically incompetent, from at least my own business analyst perspective.
Yeah, it has contract terms it enforces on sellers, but imo, they’re far less restrictive than say, platform/marketfront exclusivity, as had long been the norm in the video game industry.
Room for improvement? Absolutely. Functionally gambling on in game items, children doing this, is a legitimate problem. Afaik the court case with NY is still ongoing, will be interested to see how that pans out.