ITT I learn that oligarch gabe nawel is the elon musk of gamers
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.
Great. Any time someone has a successful business that supports 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.
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.
Wtf? You can pretty much play any game on steam without steam…
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.
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.
So how’s much did Sweeney at Epic pay for this?
Other game launchers: “fuck Linux it’s so small”
Valve: “everyone deserves to play games :)”
Other game launchers: “Steam is fucking monopoly!!!”
Valve is working on linux as more of an exit strategy should MS go apeshit and go full walled garden. Their work started following MS floating ideas of a walled garden about a decade ago.
Its less “Everyone deserves to play games” and more “We gotta cover our asses”. Just that we all benefit in the end.
But Valve’s “We gotta cover our asses” move is to help an open ecosystem, not try to create their own walled garden. Yes, they are a company making a rational, capitalistic decision but it’s also the less lucrative but more moral decision.
What is up with Valve and internet attacking them for their supposed monopoly?
Yeah, they are monopoly. The rare breed of one that is not predatory to it’s customers, and actively improves the experience. They are also the one that wont shoot their own leg to incapacitate themselves for no particular reason. Also “also”, they do not use predatory strategies to extort players off other platforms. Also3, they are the company that wont accumulate other companies just to destroy them in the end which also destroys competition.
They are not perfect. Lootboxes, gambling, and strong polices. But just try to compare them to second best online gaming store - they are fucking angels. Saints. Divine being. Compared TO THE NEXT BEST THING. That is saying something.
A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, ‘single, alone’ and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, ‘to sell’) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. - AND STEAM IS NOT IT! They have competition and that competition, while having resources and ability to improve or match Steam, does little to nothing in order to compete.
You can’t punch the oligarchs you feel are ruining your life so you lunch what is within reach and dress it up like that which you hate so you can justify it.
Plus the bulk of these articles are written about or for the AAA producers who are upset about their declining revenue and want an easy scapegoat for the investors.
Combine the 2 groups and you have grifting liars and the willing flock of idiots, and conversations like this.
I’m not usually one to carry the anti-billionaire pitchfork, but the blind spot that people have towards Gabe’s vast wealth irks me. He’s arguably done less for humanity than a number of other billionaires that receive utter vitriol, but somehow he flies under the radar. The guy’s super yacht wasn’t big enough, so he bought a second, bigger yacht, and refitted the smaller one to be the support vessel.
I normally carry the anti-billionaire pitchfork, but am totally OK with people like Gabe being ultra-rich, because in his 30+ years in the industry, he has a mostly-positive history of treating his customers and employees well. If other billionaires had half the integrity that Gabe has, capitalism wouldn’t be so bad.
And all of that on the back of game devs, with his 30% store cut, when all other are at a 12% cut
I also feel a need to point out payment systems are not complicated. You can build your own payment and distribution for your game, or you could pay a 30% commission for someone to do it for you.
Bro look up median publisher and dsitrbutor fees. There’s a reason steam became the defacto publishing platform, it was the cheapest option by far.
Wait, Microsoft and Epic are the only ones who do 12% with 30% being the industry standard, why are you trying to imply that’s not the case?
I skimmed most of this thread and didn’t see anyone mention that Steam actually supports third party stores. They let developers sell game keys on other storefronts for free (with limits, granted—the number of keys they can generate depends on sales on Steam, I think.)
Fanatical and Humble only exist because Steam handles all of the games delivery infrastructure for them. That’s, like, the opposite of monopolistic behaviour. Name another tech monopoly giving their services away for free so other directly competing businesses can profit.
Not to mention they are no monopoly by any definition. I can buy games at half a dozen other stores I know of, probably a hundred I don’t.
Capitalist removed about monopoly is real rich.
I feel like this is something that could easily shift with one misstep by Valve. It’s good now because for the most part they have made consumer friendly choices.
I am really worried about what happens when Gabe kicks the bucket.
Really simple: because they are running it like tax funded infrastructure and not like an extortion racket.
interesting
Good leader good.
Bad leader bad.
