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Debunking the grey market beyond Steam
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Steam has about 90% market share. That’s a monopoly even if niche competition exists.Sure, and that's because: 1. Nobody bothered competing with them for years 2. Those that did eventually compete didn't get anywhere near feature parity I think EGS and GOG could get most of Steam's features with 2-3 years of solid development effort, but instead EGS whines about Steam having unfair market share and GOG just refuses to innovate on their client. That's not Valve's fault, what is in their control is whether they use their market position to kill off competitors, and they don't do that.
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ITT: People saying Steam is bad and a monopoly, no I won't name reasons why. Do your research.> …no I won’t name the reasons why. Do your research Oh. Oh no. I will explain the reasons why, because it’s important to understand this without sounding like the antivax equivalent of a white knight. First, forget the word monopoly. It’s a red herring. We are going to talk about *trusts*. A trust is any kind of organizational structure (one *or more* companies) that control or seek to control a market through centralized leadership. Trusts can *lead* to monopolies, but they are distinct and do not need to be (and rarely are) monopolies. The key defining feature of a trust is the use of market capture strategies that are unethical, anti-competitive, clandestine, underhanded, etc (“legal” or not). Valve is neither a monopoly nor a trust, by definition. While they control a huge portion of the PC gaming market, they operate with transparency, do not sabotage competitors, share their technology freely with potential competitors, and do not push any anti-competitive policies (like exclusives, rules preventing offering products cheaper on other outlets, etc). There is healthy competition in the PC game space, but Valve has held the lead by offering the best, most attractive platform for *consumers*. From social features and integrations, to regular discounts and sales, to a healthy and robust community review system, to automatically elevating great new content that might otherwise be missed, to enabling new platforms and technologies (VR, Steam Deck, Linux)… they provide things that customers and sellers love. Compare their competition. GOG is great but their DRM free policies (which are great) limit their use by sellers. Publishers all have their own stores now, but those are unattractive for a wide variety of reasons - splitting your library, using even more proprietary software to access your content (new stores and launchers), and for all that inconvenience you don’t even get a discount when Valve isn’t taking a cut. Finally, there’s Epic. Market share is Epic’s game to lose, and they are losing on their own merits. Their product lacks basic consumer features that Steam users expect (social features, performant storefront, trustworthy reviews, etc) and they *have* repeatedly engaged in anti-competitive behavior through the use of exclusives. At one point, Stardock’s Impulse platform was well on its way to becoming a legitimate competitor, but then came the fateful decision to sell out to GameStop, who destroyed it. Steam is no monopoly or trust. They are simply successful because they are well liked and they are well liked because they give customers and sellers what they want. Nobody else is even trying to compete with Steam right now. Epic could, but they aren’t, and only Tim Sweeny could tell you why.
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> …no I won’t name the reasons why. Do your research Oh. Oh no. I will explain the reasons why, because it’s important to understand this without sounding like the antivax equivalent of a white knight. First, forget the word monopoly. It’s a red herring. We are going to talk about *trusts*. A trust is any kind of organizational structure (one *or more* companies) that control or seek to control a market through centralized leadership. Trusts can *lead* to monopolies, but they are distinct and do not need to be (and rarely are) monopolies. The key defining feature of a trust is the use of market capture strategies that are unethical, anti-competitive, clandestine, underhanded, etc (“legal” or not). Valve is neither a monopoly nor a trust, by definition. While they control a huge portion of the PC gaming market, they operate with transparency, do not sabotage competitors, share their technology freely with potential competitors, and do not push any anti-competitive policies (like exclusives, rules preventing offering products cheaper on other outlets, etc). There is healthy competition in the PC game space, but Valve has held the lead by offering the best, most attractive platform for *consumers*. From social features and integrations, to regular discounts and sales, to a healthy and robust community review system, to automatically elevating great new content that might otherwise be missed, to enabling new platforms and technologies (VR, Steam Deck, Linux)… they provide things that customers and sellers love. Compare their competition. GOG is great but their DRM free policies (which are great) limit their use by sellers. Publishers all have their own stores now, but those are unattractive for a wide variety of reasons - splitting your library, using even more proprietary software to access your content (new stores and launchers), and for all that inconvenience you don’t even get a discount when Valve isn’t taking a cut. Finally, there’s Epic. Market share is Epic’s game to lose, and they are losing on their own merits. Their product lacks basic consumer features that Steam users expect (social features, performant storefront, trustworthy reviews, etc) and they *have* repeatedly engaged in anti-competitive behavior through the use of exclusives. At one point, Stardock’s Impulse platform was well on its way to becoming a legitimate competitor, but then came the fateful decision to sell out to GameStop, who destroyed it. Steam is no monopoly or trust. They are simply successful because they are well liked and they are well liked because they give customers and sellers what they want. Nobody else is even trying to compete with Steam right now. Epic could, but they aren’t, and only Tim Sweeny could tell you why.
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I would take a shitty store with 10% cut if it had all the games Steam does and if I could take my games with me. I don’t care for what Steam provides but I have no choice.
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Is there a monopoly though? Other store fronts exist. They are usable and often sell the same games. It's not Nestle owning half the food options in every food store, this is whole foods, vs all the other grocery stores. You can get game pass and stream your games and never own them past your subscription lasts. Or the Microsoft game store which isn't great but exists. GOG gives you installers and has big games on it. Fanatical, GMG, Humble Bundle, are all store fronts. You could even consider Nintendo and PlayStation to have their own game storefronts while needing their hardware. Is Steam a monopoly?It is not a monopoly. It’s not even a trust. A business being successful on it’s own merits, which does not engage in anti-competitive behavior, which even helps its competitors, is neither a trust nor monopolistic. Disliking something for no reason other than being popular is just being a contrarian. If Valve started behaving anti-competitively, particularly toward underdogs like GOG, the masses would turn on them like sharks in chum-filled water.
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You are not the hero here. Just another jerk.
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Wait, not trying to be a "cultist" here, but if Valve requires devs/publishers to "offer Steam Keys on other stores at the same price that you offer the game on Steam", then why do I keep finding Steam Keys much much cheaper elsewhere? Like, all the time...
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What? That wording isn't even relevant to the case. That's just Valve saying they will do a review of the price changes *on Steam*. They set out no specific requirements (other than a minimum price of $0.99, but will try to catch errors based on their pricing recommendations. It's similar to how Valve reviews new store pages and provides recommendations to devs on how to improve them. They do have rules against games set up for card farming scams, but that makes sense. Wolfire's case is about how Valve as an extremely large player is impossible to go around, so game devs have no choice but to accept their 30% fee if they want to reach most of the market out there. Valve then uses these fees to entrench this supposed monopoly position (Wolfire specifically cites the acquisition of WON back in the day, which Valve eventually shut down and merged with Steam). Wolfire argues that a fair price is much lower than 30%, and that Valve should lower the fee and therefore have less funds to fight their competitors, creating a more competitive environment.
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As far as I can tell, the lawsuit alleges that steam threatened pulling their (wolfire games) steam sales if they sold elsewhere for cheaper. Which would be bad if true. However, this does not appear to be anywhere in steam's actual seller agreement. The only clause in that agreement is about steam keys being sold for cheaper, which is why the other poster was focusing on that. That allegation seems to be that steam in practice is threatening things that are outside of the contract itself.
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Until the case is concluded, all we have to go on is what Wolfire says. And considering who the head of that developer is, I would not take their word for anything.
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G2A and the likes don't count. I've also taken advantage of the poor economy of the 3rd world to buy cheaper games. You wouldn't ask watch store why doesn't Rolex force the shady guy in an alley to offer the same prices they do.I was actually thinking places like Humble, or often times I just go straight to the publisher or Dev, since they keep 100% of their profut that way and often offer a discount. I have never used G2A, mor any site that redistributes keys in that manner. But in the month it took you to respond, I already read up on this, and honestly you exaggerated your claims to the extent that I'm not really interested in asking your opinion anymore anyway. Your hate boner kinda showed through. So I guess... uh... thanks for following up anyway and have a good one!
