Steam keeps on winning

I know everyone loves Valve, but it feels super weird to be celebrating a monopoly so much and so ferociously. (I know Steam isn't a technical monopoly. We don't need to have that discussion)

Gaben is old, and he's gonna retire. It'll likely be a lot sooner than anyone here is comfortable with. When Valve gets sold, or even when gaben isn't in total control anymore, things are going to start changing, and there isn't going to be a healthy, diverse marketplace to soften that.

There is a very good chance that the PC platform will be a really horrible place because of the lack of consumer choice in which they can purchase and play games.

Epic bought rocket league and promptly tanked it in favor of their stupid fortniteverse. Maybe steam keeps winning because they're not actively screwing over their customers.

I'm glad steam and gog exist. Both provide an amazing service.

This isn’t really that hot of a take. Steam does keep winning and it’s because of convenience for consumers. Valve also is probably the best of those companies when it comes to not violating rights. I really hope when Gaben passes the torch for valve ownership that it’s someone with his vision and priorities

This is pretty much what I said would happen in some other threads. EGS came and portrayed itself as a savior or developers, but the cost of solution comes from consumers. They didn't try to compete in quality of service or features, but spent hundreds of millions on exclusive deals. Who in their right mind would switch from something like Steam where sole focus is the consumer.

Yes, Steam takes a huge percentage but it's not like anyone is forcing developers to go there. Developers go there because that's where the people are. And people are there because they get many more benefits for the same or lower price. Steam offers so many conveniences and features it's hard to list them all. From cloud saves to Proton, chat, family sharing and so on.

It's funny that back in 2009 Gabe Newell was talking about the focus on the customer, and making the DRM be above all useful and do things that benefit customers instead of just benefitting the developer/publisher.....and here we are today where people really don't give a shit about the revenue split, but the fact that Steam is an extremely convenient and useful platform that does a lot of legwork for the end users that people don't even think about anymore.

Epic is trying to wave a banner of revolution, where we the end users just want our shit to work and run nicely. Obligatory mention of Linux here as well, where it seems Valve is truly trying to foster an ecosystem that benefits customers as opposed to fucking them over. That's in lieu of the Polygon hit-piece https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive where they point out the scummy things Valve has done.....but if you take Valve away you're left with a barren landscape of shitty publishers that actively treat customers awful with none of the good things Valve does.

This article didn't research the VR bits...Gabe has said multiple times, even recently, that they are working steadily on VR and it's hardware. Their next headset even has a codename, Deckard.

Also, I don't think most people realize Valve doesn't have much of an internal structure. It more resembles a community of people working together because they want to.

Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin' back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.

Why is it so hard for companies to build a game launcher that doesn't suck? Is it just a lowest bidder situation?

It's rare that I wholeheartedly back a billion dollar company, but I do with Valve. Until Gabe is no longer CEO and their business model changes to something more nefarious, I will stick with them for years to come. No battle.net, No epic, just Steam.

Maybe there's a disproportionately high amount of linux users on lemmy, cause I keep seeing it come up in the comments. But I would use Epic if they had linux support. Heck some games like satisfactory I have access to on both cause I paid for it twice lol

They won me over permanently when they instituted a refund policy.

Makes sense Santa would holiday somewhere sunny.

What I'm wondering: is this going to happen to the many streaming services as well? They're many and expensive. Are they going to consolidate in a few or are they going to lower their prices so that they don't continue to lose users?

Count this comment as irrelevant if you will, but I think one of the biggest missed opportunities of EGS is mod support. They have this world-class game engine, and they do so little with it. Maybe it is because of Unreal Tournament 4 failing to take off. Maybe they think just hamfisting a bunch of this modding stuff into Fortnite is all they need, but still I feel like the EGS version of the steam workshop is an open goal. Hell, with the money they're saving from pawning off Bandcamp you can even buy off mod.io to get support for virtually no work at all. Like why hasn't this happened yet?

We did it boiz.

Pat yourselves on the back if you never used an alternative.

GOG > itch.io > Steam > whale poo > everything else

Blizzard had a legit decent platform for a while there. Real fall from grace.

Let's start a pool to predict how many years/months until Steam enshitifies. It WILL happen. It's just a matter of when.

Now Epic games are next, hopefully.

The power of a monopoly

...another huge win is innovation and support for FOSS. Proton and Wine enhancements by Valve is allowing Linux to chip away some of the gaming armor from windows.

Some games simply run better on Linux despite the need for emulation layer.

HAHA

I'd also be winning if I could force all my competitors to match my prices despite my fees being higher than theirs.

Isn't.... This what a monopoly is?

Why are we celebrating that?