Valve "played capitalism so well they broke it" and now Steam can't be replaced
gamesradar.comThey are currently a very benevolent monopolist: they don't seriously compete with publishers that use their platform. They only occassionally produce a great Half-Life or DOTA game as a some sort of "halo effect" demo to encourage the industry to move forward (e.g. to show how VR is done right with Half-Life Alyx). Avoiding releasing Half-Life 3 might have been good for their neutral role. They are like a TSMC of game distributors, who explicitly promised not to compete with their customers.
They remain one-stop shop for games. The gamers don't have to weigh down their systems with a bunch of different bloated game stores, each "needing" several GB of memory occupied at all times and adding minutes to machine startup.
Not to mention conflicts between a bunch of different anti-cheat and anti-piracy technologies on the same machine. And stores with bad UX (e.g. that make you suffer additional wait screens or naggings; Steam is as unobstructive as it gets).
Compare that to Netflix: at the begining, it was a "one stop shop" for movies, it had a lot of classic movies and TV for reasonable price. When the concept was proven, the production houses revoked the license for content. Competition came to the sector and each movie production house set up their own subscription based streaming service. You need to keep paying a whole bunch of services if you want to be able to keep up with all popular TV production or watch classic movies.
So, the competition would in theory be great. But even if stores didn't have subscriptions, the gamers don't want to fill their personal data, check privacy settings, configure, troubleshoot, debloat, ... a different app store for each game. When people have a slice of time to play, they don't want to deal with all of these.
I'm sure that when Valve forgets what keeps them successful and start becoming a Netflix, the Steam store will get replaced.
They arent publicly traded so they can choose to not be assholes. Gabe intentionally chose this route, he only answers to customers.
Non-founding shareholders are the root of all evil
I wish more companies would choose to do this honestly.
And also hope that laws wont kill such companies
https://www.palladiummag.com/2026/09/22/wealth-taxes-could-k...
I mean, is it not possible to sell a small % of your shares to cover the tax?
Moreover, you could create a multi-tier share structure where controlling ownership belongs to the founder whereas financial interest in the business belongs to the holders of other equity flavors, which is fairly common (e.g. Meta, Snap are structured this way).
Then the founder can [choose to] sell those cash-flow-stocks while holding on to the ownership stock.
It's utterly hyperbolic to suggest that a wealth tax would kill privately-controlled corporations.
It can be a nightmare to sell a chunk of your business to outside investors. Not the selling part per se, the operating after consequences. Imagine having private equity in your house, causing chaos, trying to get people tossed out.
You might be better off taking out a loan against the value of the business to pay the tax, if it's a one-time tax. The problem is when they come for the second wealth tax, and then the bi-annual wealth tax, and then the annual wealth tax. There is no likely scenario where it's a one-time tax.
I don't see how this addresses the premise of my comment, which is that you can divide equity into voting shares and non-voting shares, and sell your non-voting shares.
For a company that's worth >$100mm in revenue there should be no shortage of investors willing to buy your non-voting shares.
"causing chaos, trying to get people tossed out" literally cannot affect you if they have non-voting shares.
You're also ignoring the ability of owners to issue dividends or buying back shares to cover taxes.
It's also a nightmare to be homeless, yet they still pay their share of taxes
they can pay cash
Why was this downvoted?
> I'm sure that when Valve forgets what keeps them successful and start becoming a Netflix
By your own reasoning, Netflix did not 'become a Netflix' by doing anything wrong.
True, there's a hole in my reasoning. Netflix became today's Netflix probably not due to its own fault, but because of inherent characteristics of its market. Its much easier to move browser-consummable media (video, music, ...) around different stores than locally installed software. It's much easier to disappear certain show or video.
Browser also severely limits the bloat, mutual compatibility and privacy issues (and also Android and iOS up to certain extent). This makes technologically much easier to have a bunch of different content stores on the same device.
EDIT: I'm keeping the sentence in original comment. Valve can mess up and become a Netflix due to its own fault, e.g. if they try to use the store to primarily finance and favor their own productions. This might come to pass if they become publically traded company, as datakan mentioned.
Movies already had a LOT of distribution outlets (and lucrative ones) - movie theaters, DVD rentals, TV.
When steam came by the distribution services were not profitable and problematic - CDs cannot be live patched, you have to print CDs to match an unknown and variable demand.
I think if Valve crashed and burned tomorrow, it'd be nigh impossible for a Steam-replacement to come and absorb the global demand in the same way Steam currently does.
Well, they may never even may be able to "become a Netflix" because the practical-slash-IP situation is so different.
Apparently, the world is "used to" the way intellectual property works (or doesn't work, depending on your view) for TV shows and Movies, in a way that probably wouldn't fly for video games; which is to say -- in both you're going to have to compete against "free" or "on the internet" or whatnot. I suspect monopolizing video games is much harder than TV and Movies (probably because we're so beholden to arguably odd copyright ideas?")
They have been successful for I think around two decades, because it's a private company. If I get the timeline correctly, they were already big when Amazon was only selling books.
They have pushed gaming to new levels, see proton. It's quite realistic they stay successful for the time being.
Makes you think about a works were more huge private companies exist.
Well as a linux gamer, I'm ok with this. Nobody has been more successful at getting linux to be a first class gaming platform.
if by gaming your mean mandatory root kits sold as anticheat
Id software did much more, and much earlier, for linix gaming
Anticheat doesn’t work on Linux (and neither do the games that support them) so I’m not sure what you’re taking about.
Most do. The mentioned rootkits don't.
I know idsoftware ported their key 3-4 titles to linux back in the glory days.
What else did they do?
Releasing the code on GPL was probably notable too.
Notable, true.
But i dont think the outcome is comarable to the TITANIC amount of investment s Valve have been doing in the last 15 years or so.
ah yes, decades of doom running even on toasters... but no, a store and drm daemon is better.
Do you have a better solution for cheating?
Don't play the games that have anti-cheat then? There are so many other games to play.
This is such an incredibly ignorant comment.
Anticheat comes with the game. That has absolutely nothing to do with Steam - you can have games on Steam with or without anticheat, you can have games on Epic with or without anticheat, you can have games sold directly with or without anticheat.
How is this not blatantly obvious to anyone who has ever played a game?
Okay, if steam is holding gaming back, why hasn’t an alternative emerged? Apparently Valve maintains healthy margins after taking a 30% cut. What’s stopping other companies from taking a smaller cut and passing the benefits to consumers. Gamers are notoriously complaining about high costs of games, I’m sure that’s a viable strategy?
Valve also allows non exclusive distribution on PC. Games don’t have to launch on steam exclusively. Why do others not capitalize on that?
Seems like it’s mostly a “grapes are sour” argument pointing to valve and saying they’re not greedy enough to allow us to profit.
PC Gamers literally just don't want to use a second launcher so it doesn't matter what you offer them. See how Epic offered games for free and it still didn't matter.
I used Epic Launcher for a while, and very seriously used their store. Their free games did bring me over initially but I was happy to spend money..
Except that the experience just sucked. It was mediocre. My biggest gripe is that launching games was really slow, the store was kind of painful in lots of little ways and it was sort of annoying to deal with them in general.
Maybe they fixed those issues but it was too late to retain me. I literally repurchased the games I was still playing on steam which didn't have those issues.
At some point, in the early days, Steam was a bit rough. I remember a summer where occasionally steam would stop launching and you had to reinstall it (back when it was a blocky dark green app). But Steam got over those teething pains and has been really high quality since.
Itch.io is great, I don't use their launcher (just haven't tried it) but I use them and enjoy them. Their checkout experience is fairly sane. It's not as if I refuse to use other platforms.
But Epic just lowkey was not a great platform.
There's a relevant point that Valve dogfooded Steam for 2 years (2005-7?) before adding third party titles. Two years is a lot of polish.
There's a little more to it than "just a launcher." My Steam account dates back to the release of Half-Life 2. Loads of games, thousands of dollars spent, and a service that's been reliable for over 20 years. Why would I use a different service? I'm not unique, everyone else using Steam is in the same boat, just with less time invested.
They've undoubtedly locked us all in, but they've shown themselves to be trustworthy and reliable.
> PC Gamers literally just don't want to use a second launcher
Is that true? And if it is true, why is that?
Pointing to free games on Epic and non usage tells you that people don’t want Epic. Doesn’t tell you why. Nor does it tell you whether people continue to stick with Valve. And that is the point in my original comment.
If Valve isn’t good, you can’t just say people won’t go for another better option “just because”.
I know for me personally, I don't want a second launcher. Steam does everything I need it to. I can't think of a single feature that would make me switch, there's simply no reason to.
If 50% of the games I want to play in the future decided to move to a different store front and launcher that was incompatible with Steam that would honestly be a worst-case scenario.
It's not that they don't want to, it's that they can't. They would lose their library by switching clients.
No reason why both can’t exist
They both exists, most people would only pick one.
i manage to have netflix, disney, and prime. I'd pick one, but it's not an especially heavy lift to use the roku remote to switch from one to the other, or to youtube.
That's expensive and something that everyone hates. Everyone will want to have a single streaming service, which is why piracy is on the rise when Netflix splintered.
This is trivially false to anyone who has ever played a video game.
One doesn't "switch" clients like they do operating systems.
You can install more than one at once. They're not mutually exclusive.
People don't like more than one, they want one for everything. Isn't this hacker news where technically inclined people gather? Feature creep is the thing that most users want. They want a tool to do everything, that includes a single client!
What point are you trying to make here?
I want a million dollars and a DGX Spark. That's not a point, that's just a personal desire or opinion, which isn't an argument.
I already made my point in the first comment, people are arguing my point. What point are you trying to make?
> I already made my point in the first comment
I already explained how this is false as my point: "I want X" is not an argument. Your desire is not an argument.
Valid points include things like "I think that users should be able to pick the client that they run a game from." That is an argument.
So, again: what is your argument that you are making?
> It's not that they don't want to, it's that they can't. *They would lose their library by switching clients.* <<<< THE POINT I AM POINTING TO
Are you even reading the thread?
It's already been pointed out that the entire concepts of "switching clients" is totally irrelevant here. You can run multiple clients at once. This is so simple a child can understand it, and it was already stated above at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50348205 - the person failing to read the thread is you.
It's really not hard to understand that if you want to keep your library, you just don't delete your Steam account.
Your "POINT I AM POINTING TO" is exactly as stupid as someone saying "if I drove my car into the river, my car would be destroyed". That's correct, and the solution is trivial: do not drive your car into the river.
Yet again, you haven't made a single coherent argument.
This need is being filled by launchers that integrate multiple libraries, so this is not a sufficient explanation.
Which is why I in a early comment said that it should be mandated to be protocol agnostic that every store implements. Kinda of USB for stores (btw, this could also be used in mobile stores as bonus points)
>And if it is true, why is that?
Because they already have 100+ games in Steam because of the early head start.
> If Valve isn’t good, you can’t just say people won’t go for another better option “just because”.
Never said that, I said people don't want the hassle of running 2 game launcher apps with fragmented libraries.
See also how it took Epic like five years before they implemented adding more than one item to your cart at a time. And how they have no forums, no reviews, barely a friends' list, terrible game integration (always-on unmutable voice chat lol), etc etc. Their product just sucks, simple as that.
The article answers your question in the first paragraph.
First para:
> A former Epic Games developer is calling out Steam users, saying that they wouldn't move on from Valve's store even if a better alternative emerged.
Second para:
> Kiaran Ritchie, former principal animation engineer at Epic Games kicked off discussions surrounding Steam's 30% sales cut last week (with the assertion that "you could vibe code a Steam alternative in a week"). Which in-turn led noted Steam hater Epic CEO Tim Sweeney to assert that "Valve has held gaming back for years" – because the person whose company proudly asserted it had "vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher" knows what's holding gaming back!
Third para:
> Ritchie elaborated on their opinions on the 30% cut in a separate post, with the post saying that while developers are paying 30% in order to access Steam infrastructure, "in reality it is purely to get access to the massive Steam userbase." He adds "PC developers have no option but to distribute through Steam or lose the vast majority of sales."
Curious, where does it answer my question in the first paragraph? Could you elaborate?
I think it's because the claim is purely Epic Games propaganda (as evidenced by those paragraphs you quoted), so the problem doesn't actually exist - which is sort of an answer to your question, in a way.
Once you have a sufficient good solution that you like, you will not switch to another sufficient good solution unless you are highly motivated to switch. It can not be just 5% better or 10% better, it needs to be meaningfully better so that you are motivated to undergo the switching cost.
Part of that switching cost is your purchased game library only works with the platforms you purchased it from. A fact that currently greatly benefits mostly Steam on desktop platforms.
So I do expect that a court case in the future will be Epic Games suing Steam in order to have "game portability" between game platforms.
Research has shown us that it is not quite like that. People rarely change for something better, they switch if they believe they are getting something worse. Note that I use "they believe" explicitly here. Most consumers change habits not when they see a new competitor, but when their preferred choice is significantly worse. And what users care about is not the store but their library. The only way to break into the PC games shop market is to mandate an unencumbered protocol, so that any client and any shop can implement it and the library moves with the user
I think there's not a lot of value in "launchers", at least to the end user. Like I might play a game for hours but spend at most a minute in the launcher.
I mean, I really appreciate how Steam Big Picture gives me a console like experience on my PC and how the Steam Deck works like a PS Vita or a Nintendo Switch. But really if I had to click on a desktop icon to play a game or find it the same way I find other applications on Windows, Mac or Linux, I'd just do it.
So I guess you could make a better launcher but there's only so much upside!
I'd say though it's a very San Francisco mindset to be obsessed with things like launchers: like wanting to have some space you can colonize to interpret everyone's experience. Next thing you know it is stuffed with ads and "discovery" in the store would be all about paid discovery, users would be trained that it's a terrible idea to go browsing for things in the store, like it is on Apple, etc.
I like this quote:
which points to Steam's ability to respect the gamer experienced because it's run by a gamer. Any company run by accountants is going to endanger that sweet 30% cut by eating the seed corn to get another 1%.Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at research and analyst firm Newzoo told GamesRadar+ that "As long as Valve is independent and not a publicly traded company," it looks impossible for Steam to be overthrown as the de-facto PC gaming marketplace.The best launcher, unless you’re using something like Steam Big Picture mode with a controller, is the Windows Start Menu.
Preferably using shortcuts that launch game executables directly, not through a launcher (or, worse, two or more launchers in sequence, as is the case with, e.g., EA games launched through Steam and games with their own launchers offering equal access to the game itself and other options you’re likely to use once or twice, if ever).
But in the absence of this, leaving one bloated storefront launcher running in the background is better than leaving two or more bloated storefront launchers open in the background, and Steam’s is the best of a bad lot.
This comes across like a really bitter whinge.
Valve have the market share because they were good enough, early enough. Half Life 2's launch onboarded hundreds of thousands of users, with many getting the game for free with component and PC bundle-deals. The number of games doubled for the next few years while the traditional development model (fixing bugs before shipping) died. The DIY updaters died with a solid online distribution. The sales went up. The costs bottomed out.
Tim Sweeney could have done all this at Epic in 2004 too. He's said he thought everyone thought it was malware, completely blind to what people thought of in/pre-game updaters and all the other redist crap that shipped with his own games.
Valve's only moat is the software industry being unwilling to count a license on one platform as a license on another. If we started requiring license migrations between accounts, guys like Epic would stand a chance of actually taking some long-term business.
You think so? I thought Steam is the only "storefront" that provides substantial value added over the others.
If I had to choose solely on features, I would definitely choose Steam.
I don't think you're wrong currently, but which of those features do you think are a moat for Valve? What couldn't just be cloned if there were ever the hope of wresting legacy licenses from Valve?
(To be clear, I understand migrating licenses generates cost for the assuming platform - but if I did want to migrate away from Steam, that means I'd probably make more new sales on the new platform too)
Somebody in this thread posted the list and to be fair, it's larger than you think. On the top of my mind I would want:
That is pretty large from my perspective.- Dedicated gaming OS (I use it portable and on tv) - linux support - workshop for mods - controller bindings - friend list with chat integrated for invites - reviews and review aggregation - streaming - recording - remote play (solo and with friends) - fast download speed - multi language support (for games) - game tagging from users - library tagging - family sharing - parental controlsOf course if somebody sold me "ownership", that would be interesting, but right now the company I would trust the most to deliver that is indeed Valve.
No, not GOG, people keep thinking they are closer to ownership, they are not. Since ownership is a purely legal concept, Valve at least allows sharing my games with my family, while GOG does not (again, from a legal perspective. From a technical perspective you can do everything you want with both)
> "Even if an alternative were objectively better, by whatever metric you care about, it would still be of no interest to Steam users,"
I don't think that's necessarily true. If there was a launcher that was at least as good as steam in every aspect, and also had access to more games it would stand a chance of competing. Especially if its store also had lower prices.
> "Even if an alternative were objectively better, by whatever metric you care about"
Agreed, I also would care about a Steam replacement if it were better. Metrics I care about and my perception:
- Hasn't rug-pulled my games or publishers in a significant way.
- Has contributed back to the community in a number of ways.
- Spent the last 20 years being (mostly) solid and reliable.
> Valve could easily lower the distribution fee while maintaining healthy margins.
I'm sure that's true, but Steam did reduce their take for games making over certain thresholds: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/03/valve-changes-revenue-shar...
Presumably, that was a response to other storefronts/launchers appearing, which means the competition did force them to change behavior. Companies don't give up revenue without cause.
NGL, I do think that was kinda backwards of Steam. I get why they did it they way they did (incentivise big games to come to Steam), but it does kinda shaft the Indies, which need that money the most.
The criticism is right in a vacuum, but suppose that Epic Games got their way and successfully replaced Steam. Then what? We'd just end up with a new corporate landlord over PC gaming, albeit one that is also a private company and maybe charges lower fees, but has somewhat less proven reputation than Steam to not make future greedy changes to needlessly screw over users.
A lot of it is just how good the Steam launcher is. I hope the companies understand this. The only reason I use Steam over GOG or Epic or any alternative is because the launcher just works. It's fast. The Epic launcher, when I was forced to use it to play Borderlands 3, felt excruciating to use. GOG Galaxy is the same.
It's not even about wanting other stores to fail, which I don't. That's an unproductive line of thinking for anyone, I believe.
My Steam account is old enough to drink. I've had it for some two-thirds of my life, not even adult life but life entirely. All of my games are already there. It's like if a friend invited you to come play video games in 1989 but he doesn't have the cool NES games you want to play, they're all back at my place. What, we're gonna play Clu Clu Land all day? Give me a break.
Even if I was to switch to Epic, outside of the supposed altruism of "We take less of a cut from developers!" what is the benefit for me as a gamer, or as a consumer? The Epic Games Store has very few games I can't get elsewhere, even on console, and the experience compared to Steam is just lackluster. It just is. Valve has had a lot of time to iterate on it, and Steam was absolutely despised for the first several years of its life, but the experience of using the two platforms could not be more different. Beyond that, if I do switch, I still need to have Steam installed because all like seven million of my games are already on Steam, and they can't be moved.
Steam can absolutely be replaced if they fuck up. The thing is, they don't. Even GOG (which is my prefered platform for oldies) and itch.io (which is my prefered platform for indies), which are smaller and thus have less bloat and should iterate quicker didn't manage to install interesting feature Steam has added over the years. Remote play especially, as someone who bought in ~2019 128GB or RAM and a titan RTX (yeah, bad investment at the time, though i'm happy now when i see the cost) for his server and want to play on another computer, on a different room, was the best thing that ever happened to me.
And of course as a primary 4X multiplayer gamer, the "join game" button on steam profile is something every platform should look to implement (once they have a correct mod workshop equivalent).
The issue is all the "replacements" are very studio specific. If they really were smart, they'd pull together resources, launch a new company under the competing studios support, and give themselves better pricing for games sold. They'd get more into their pockets, and a small cut to keep the new platform sustainable.
They'd probably also get some comparisons to the Phoebus cartel.
If game publishers discovered fully downloadable games so the users could store them and not worry about being rugpulled, I think they would be able to compete with Steam without that 30% cut.
I would not want to run or pay for the datahoarder setup it would need. At least with not modern games by publishers. Size of games is rather big nowadays. Storing them and then storing incremental patches if those are wanted sounds like absolute pain I don't want to go into anymore. Whatever ownership perks it gives.
Steam just functions amazingly well with modern software release and use cadence.
> "you could vibe code a Steam alternative in a week"
I don't know much about the person who said this, but it strikes me as missing the point of what we do when we build products: you could vibe code Steam the program in a week, sure. You can't vibe code the trust Steam has in a week, nor can you vibe code the two-sided ecosystem they've built in a week.
Steam is not a monopoly.
Other competitors have made attempts, but they were so poor quality and terribly made, it was no wonder they bowed out.
Want to complete? Compete.
On the other hand every single time everyone is glazing over the unregulated gambling market created by Valve which is available to everyone regardless of their age and location. The whole empire is running on the Steamweb API and Valve could shut it down any single day if they want but they don't because... we know the answer.
I'm not a fan of that, either. But they have made gaming on Linux move from the Tux Racer days to the current state of almost every game I want to play is playable on my favorite OS, so I can cut them a little slack for previous obviously bad decisions. Compared to almost any other corporate overlord we might have had, they seem to me to be by far the best that we could reasonably have hoped for.
It is a problem yes. And usually whataboutism doesn't matter, but in this case it really does: have you looked at the microtransaction gambling in Epic properties? It's far, far, far more invasive, omnipresent, and required to play (like Fortnite). You can completely ignore the microtransactions aspects of Team Fortress 2 and it's great. You can't (literally, you can't) ignore the microtransactions and gambling in Fortnite.
> It's far, far, far more invasive, omnipresent, and required to play (like Fortnite)
Did they do something to Fortnite that I don't know about? I thought the only thing Fortnite did was allow pay-to-win in their community games (just like Roblox), otherwise the main game is still cosmetic only like Valve's games.
Did they do something to Fortnite that I don't know about?
Yes, probably. I bought Fortnite for $40~ when it was a completely different game; a cooperative player vs. environment building game with wave attacks. This game was entirely about microtransactions and gambling. After every round/storm passage you'd be sent to an unskippable screen with it.
Then Epic saw how well PUBG was doing with the Epic engine and turned Fortnite into a PUBG clone. In this new PUBG clone called Fortnite the gambling and microtransactions were just as bad as in the original Fortnite. Over time as the new PUBG clone called 'Fortnite' became a world sensation it both faced more scrutiny and had other monetization options with IP licensing. They massively dialed back the gambling/microtransactions but still face many court cases about it today.
You probably have only played the modern versions after they were changed it to avoid further consequences for their actions. Valve never went nearly as far and so it's lesser gambling system still exists to this day.
And those cosmetics are also only from battle pass and a FOMO rotating store. Not gambling lootboxes like Valve's.
Epic even removed lootboxes from Rocket League after purchasing the developer.
Steam can be replaced. Doesn't mean it will be anytime soon. And probably not by Epic.
Steam can absolutely be replaced. There's lots that could be improved in the process of sifting through tens of thousands of games to find the ones I want to play. I have Epic's store installed on my gaming PC as I still play Fortnite. It has none of the things I want improved over the Steam experience. Literally none.
Put up or shut up Epic. I'm unemployed so you can hire me to do it for you, but I'll bet you'd rather just whine about it.
Epic doesn't care about the store, they only care about trying to force companies to host Fortnite without getting a cut of any money spent through their platform.
I've never seen a large business whine as much as Epic does, and they pick fights with their biggest partners all the time, too. If anything capitalism seems broken because they remain around.
Epic has second place, copy cat syndrome (quake vs unreal, id tech vs unreal engine, steam vs epic store)
If it wasn't for fortnite they'd be gone
How is Id Tech vs Unreal second place? Unreal became a nearly de-facto standard for triple A games, who ever used Id Tech outside of Id?
At least a handful of companies, including, incidentally, Valve: the Half-Life engine was a heavily modified version of the Quake engine.
>who ever used Id Tech outside of Id
every single call of duty game
All I read in that article was another bunch of whinging from EPIC again. If they want to displace Steam, than they are going to have to put in 110% effort to at least make the same thing Steam is, or better. So far they haven't tried hard enough and failed miserably. Saying you can replace Steam with a quick bit of vibe coding really misses the point in what Steam covers.
Here's a few things Steam does: - Digital store - Cloud features for saving, achievements etc.. - Multiplayer and social tools. Discussions, guides etc.. - User workshop for mods, which is just amazing for the games that support it fully - Streaming and remote play - Library sharing with the family - Offline access - Mobile access - Steamworks for developers - Proton for Linux, just fantastic, and how I use the ecosystem today
There are probably more things I have missed, but I don't know of any other platform that does the above?
If Tim and his team spent as much time on making their platform better than on whinging they might have something to compete with. He could have had another draw card with UT4 but he killed that, for his cash cow Fortnite. He put all his eggs in one basket and realises he doesn't have enough for an omelette now.
I would love another competitor and I think that is GOG, if they can keep up the momentum and stick to their difference, encouraging studios to release DRM free games. I use both platforms and I am happy with both.
They are probably right though, why would I move to another platform, when my whole library is already with Steam. I am not going to waste that money to use another platform, and I don't need or want the fragmentation that currently exists for streaming content. There is probably room for another successfull platform, Steam really does need proper competition to keep them on their toes.
dunno how to bullet list...
I don’t know if other services couldn’t have done that. I think the important bit is that I never feel shafted when I’m using Steam. Ever since the beginning I’ve been able to click purchase, and have a game downloadable within minutes to hours (depending on size). All the extra nonsense they’ve added has never stood in the way of that core experience.
Wow. What propaganda. People use Steam because Valve isn't evil. It's as simple as that.
Epic is evil. They're at the bleeding edge of in-game gambling with microtransactions. And they actively compete with their customers. Epic has even used their position with the Epic engine to clone a business customer's game and release it for free in their walled garden. As a gamer Epic stole the game Rocket League from me after I purchased the native linux version from the company Psyonix. Then Epic bought Psyonix and said there'd be no changes to Rocket League. 6 months later and no linux or mac clients people bought could play the game. Epic just buys game companies and puts their games behind it's app store and/or gives them away for free to try to lock people into their app store. They're abusive and exploitive and they constantly lie and make things worse for every game they buy.
People don't like that kind of behavior from Epic so they chose not to use their products and app store. This is just crybullying from Epic.
I'm in other comments defending Steam/Valve, this is in no way meant to support Epic, but do you really think Steam isn't at the bleeding edge of in-game gambling? TF2 invented loot boxes, CSGO skins are an entire asset class at this point....I'm sure Deadlock will contain some sort of boxes...
Not to mention the absurd chance that anyone who does successfully innovate on a payment model is paying royalties to Steam. I <3 Steam with all my heart and can't get enough Deadlock, but let's not pretend they aren't making money hand-over-fist too
The same could be said about any social media or content hosting and discovery platform.
It's not cool that they successfully made themselves a rent seeker on PC game installation because gamers below a certain age didn't want to learn how to click on setup.exe. We needlessly gifted them a closed platform where it had previously been open in a way that Playstation (for example) is not.
You're completely missing the fact that they established themselves as a trusted e-shop, with consumer friendly policies, in a day before people trusted PayPal. It had a lot less to do with 'not wanting to click setup.exe' and more 'Mom trusts Steam because her coworker told her it's safe' to a generation of kids without CCs.
I think Roblox, Minecraft, WoW, LoL, and Fortnite all prove it's fully possible to operate outside that closed platform and see success, as well.
> with consumer friendly policies
Only up to a certain point. Valve still doesn’t recognise inheritance and people dying as a very real thing.
They expect families to just throw away dad’s login details because he died.
I understand that this is most likely the licensing legalese they have in place that forces it this way, but it really is time that someone in the EU took Valve to court to test this.
I'm in no way trying to white-knight them or say they're perfect. Valve might literally be the origin of Loot-boxes in video games, a mechanic that's essentially a slot machine in disguise, and packages it to children.
I just think they're currently top of the class, all things considered
I forgot, I think the most important part, they had Gift Cards at Game Stop(EB Games, whatever your local chain was). Even before people really trusted online transactions, a Steam Card could be purchased in a store where you were fairly confident you weren't being scammed.
>because gamers below a certain age didn't want to learn how to click on setup.exe
launching the installer/game is probably one of the least impactful components of steam, and certainly not why it got popular
Difference here is that absolutely nothing is stopping you from still distributing your game that way. You are not forced into the Steam marketplace nor must you to be successful (ex. Starsector), it's simply generally good business to do so.
As a small game developer, the steamworks SDK takes care of so many things I no longer have to care about. I don't have to run NAT punching infrastructure, I don't have to run a presence server and matchmaking services, handle user PII, cloud saves, workshop mod hosting (which can get very large with texturing and media), etc etc. It has an attractive value as a game developer too, not just as an end-user.
People use steam because they actually like the software. It isn't a big mystery.
> rent seeker
Well, it's clear now that you've neither used Steam nor developed a game yourself (or, you have, but you're engaging in propaganda), because the value that Steam provides for someone either playing or developing/selling games is insane.
Local currencies, regional pricing/payment methods, gift cards, Steam Wallet, game gifting, product keys, wallet/credit system (Steam wallet), bundles, DLC, complex storefront (topics/labels, discovery queue, wishlist, sale notifications), user reviews, game refunds, CDN, a really good download/update system, player metrics, shader pre-caching, shared runtime management, cloud saves, game management across multiple drives, LAN downloads/updates, beta/release/build management, DRM and anticheat, game collections, developer updates, forums, Big Picture/Steam Deck UI, Proton, Steam Input, a complex social system (friends, text chat, voice chat, add codes, profiles), social integration with games, account 2FA, and many, many, many more things. (go and ask a LLM and I'm sure it'll be more than happy to give you a far longer list :)
They have refunds only because they were sued and lost.
They also run a huge child gambling ring. A big NFT market. Popularized lootboxes , microtransactions and paid battlepasses.
This is an attempt to shift the goalposts from an argument about value to an argument about morality.
It's also committing whataboutism.
The funny thing is even with those fallacies, it's still wrong.
> They also run a huge child gambling ring
Where are they specifically targeting children? Citation needed.
> A big NFT market
Where's this "Valve NFT" you're describing? I've never seen it.
> microtransactions and paid battlepasses
I have no issues with either of those.
Two bad things (lootboxes and refunds needing legislation, that are far exceeded by most of their competitors) out of the dozens of good things they've done.
> Where's this "Valve NFT" you're describing? I've never seen it.
That's not an NFT. You're trying to redefine words that have extremely well-established meanings to push a political agenda. That's evil.
People of certain age remember just how much pain the whole CD/DVD process was. Finding patches, having annoying DRM later... And then early download stores or having game specific launcher for every single game... Some of which worked okay... Some of those games don't even work anymore...
There is clearly user experience reason why Steam gained and hold so much ground. Things really were not better without it.
Like many other terms, "Rent seeker" has lost all meaning. A company providing an innovative and superior service is now "rent seeking".
The largest games of all time never came to Steam - Minecraft and Roblox. but their launchers are light and accessible - Pretty close to Steam in terms of experience, even though they are filling with ads and bloat more recently. GTA V took forever to leave the awful Rockstar launcher and suffered for it.
Having played through literally every era of PC gaming, back to typing "mode co80" to play Zaxxon on my IBM PC... this is bunk. Steam is fantastic, and the first place I go to for most gaming. In fact, I get annoyed if I can't go to Steam in some cases.
> "Even if an alternative were objectively better, by whatever metric you care about, it would still be of no interest to Steam users," Ritchie says,
The metrics to win over Steam gamers aren't hard - and it could be done with another well-funded and like-minded CEO. The problem is that the metrics that Steam wins with are for users, not board members, not C-suite, not investors, not shareholders. Valve is no saint, but they are pretty damned close to as close as a capitalist can get.
You couldn't get a competitor financed.
Steam created a platform that works for developers, gamers and the platform itself. It is managed well. They pushed Linux gaming. They are not perfect and monopolies are dangerous but currently they are beneficial for the gaming community as a whole. They have not won capitalism they just have a consistent product that they didn’t enshitify to squeeze out ever short term earnings they can. I only fear that at some point someone greedy takes over and ruins it. Epic failed to create a proper alternative even with a good example and many many years of time to iterate on it.
>Epic failed to create a proper alternative even with a good example and many many years of time to iterate on it.
not to mention the money (hundreds of millions) spent on securing exclusive launches.
Steam got its userbase by sheer vendor lock-in implemented on copies of Half-Life sold in brick and mortar locations.
No free market invisible hand here.
I don't want a Steam replacement. I just want it to go away.
Gamespy was better.
How Steam started is utterly irrelevant.
The fact is that, right now, there are multiple digital storefronts that directly compete with Steam, including offering some of the exact same games, and you can create accounts, install, and use multiple stores simultaneously.
Yet consumers choose to use Steam even when the game is available on other storefronts.
This is the most "free market" mechanism possible, and it shows extremely clearly that Steam is the best option available.
I am extremely glad that your highly irrational desire to make one of the best platforms in existence (among a wasteland of highly abusive ones) go away will not be realized anytime soon.
Valve "played capitalism so well" refers to the past tense. That makes Steam's inception relevant, despite your attempt to place the goalposts where they might make it seem that Steam's success is merit-based. (If you place your starting point yesterday, Steam seems an overnight success.)
In most cases consumers do not choose to use Steam. They are obliged to use Steam because they can't get the game without it. Here[0] is where you can learn about vendor lock-in.
I repeat, I have experienced video gaming without and with Steam. The former is superior. Steam is no better than the alternative "launchers", it just happens to have the strongest vendor lock-in.
I'm glad you're (extremely) glad. Perhaps if you were to call me irrational at greater length (without bothering to show as much) it would make you all the more glad. It doesn't cost anything so don't hold back. At least we can agree that Steam will not vanish soon enough.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in#Lock-in_types
> Valve "played capitalism so well" refers to the past tense. That makes Steam's inception relevant, despite your attempt to place the goalposts where they might make it seem that Steam's success is merit-based.
By your logic, every company that still exists today does so because it started off well (including those that were only founded recently), and every company that does not exist today does not exist because it didn't start off well (including old companies that existed for many decades or even centuries).
This is, of course, utterly delusional. A company continuing to exist and be liked requires ongoing effort and investment, and it's extremely obvious to anyone who non-casually plays (or develops) games that Valve is absolutely making that investment and doing very well along basically every axis (including user satisfaction).
So, yes, Steam's success is merit-based.
> They are obliged to use Steam because they can't get the game without it.
This is not Steam's fault. This is the publishers' and developers' fault, because Steam doesn't do exclusivity agreements, unlike other platforms like the Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store. So - are you proposing that we write a law compelling publishers to release on multiple platforms? If not - then this isn't something that involves Steam, any more than a soda company choosing to only sell in particular stores (without an exclusivity agreement) is the fault of those stores.
> In most cases consumers do not choose to use Steam.
There's more than ample evidence that, when a game is present on multiple platforms (assuming identical pricing etc), users choose to use Steam over other platforms because it's simply better.
So, to summarize - when there's no choice, it's not Steam's fault, and when there is choice, users prefer Steam. Your point is null.
> I repeat, I have experienced video gaming without and with Steam. The former is superior.
Literally hundreds of thousands (if not tens of millions) of people would disagree with you. I, too, have played games with and without Steam, and Steam is far better.
> Steam is no better than the alternative "launchers"
This is more-or-less factually false. There are no launchers that provide more than a fraction of this set of features that Valve does:
Local currencies, regional pricing/payment methods, gift cards, Steam Wallet, game gifting, product keys, wallet/credit system (Steam wallet), bundles, DLC, complex storefront (topics/labels, discovery queue, wishlist, sale notifications), user reviews, game refunds, CDN, a really good download/update system, player metrics, shader pre-caching, shared runtime management, cloud saves, game management across multiple drives, LAN downloads/updates, beta/release/build management, DRM and anticheat, game collections, developer updates, forums, Big Picture/Steam Deck UI, Proton, Steam Input, a complex social system (friends, text chat, voice chat, add codes, profiles), social integration with games, account 2FA, and many, many, many more things.
> it just happens to have the strongest vendor lock-in.
Again, factually false. Steam, unlike some of its competitors, doesn't do exclusivity agreements, nor is there anything preventing you from running multiple launchers at once.
> Perhaps if you were to call me irrational at greater length (without bothering to show as much)
As I already wrote - perhaps you missed it:
> highly irrational desire to make one of the best platforms in existence (among a wasteland of highly abusive ones) go away will not be realized anytime soon.
The vast majority of people who play video games agree that Steam is the best platform available. Your desire to destroy something that society has collectively deemed "good" is, plainly, either irrational or straight-up malicious. I'm assuming the former out of charity.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in#Lock-in_types
That section is almost entirely without citations. It's an opinion blog of Wikipedia editors. It means nothing.
I'm not inclined to engage with attrition argumentation. Just to correct one of your errors:
> Your desire to destroy something
I did not express a desire to destroy Steam. I only said I want it to go away. Furthermore, since nothing lasts forever, I will be (extremely) glad to see it go; the more so given its use was forced on me in the first place to continue using software I already purchased. As is also true of most of Steam's users at its inception.
> I'm not inclined to engage with attrition argumentation.
This is rhetoric designed to conceal the fact that you simply don't have any good arguments. I debunked every single one you made.
> I did not express a desire to destroy Steam. I only said I want it to go away.
Pure pedantry, because the point is exactly the same - it doesn't matter if you want to destroy something that the vast majority of your society justifiably considers to be good, or if you merely want it to go away - you're either irrational or malicious.
> given its use was forced on me in the first place to continue using software I already purchased
Exactly which games did you buy before Steam existed, that you then had to install Steam in order to continue playing them?
I think that, realistically, the first step to real competition to Steam in the PC digital storefront space is the inevitable IPO of Valve software. It's only a matter of time.
I recently switched to 100% pirated games (I own copies) on a permanently offline Win10 box. I started to enjoy gaming again when I did. Everything just works, no bullshit.
Previously I used Steam. I have ~700 games in my library. I now purchase from my phone.
That being said. This is a Microsoft forced solution. I refuse to use Win11 or online Windows anything.
Epic, which used to receive my business, changed the privacy rules to access my purchases and was blacklisted on my network as a result. Sunk cost be damned.
Anything can be replaced. Epic went out of their way to be blacklisted and Steam did not.
One basic economic law is that the market tends to concentrate into monopolies and regulation has to work against it. So it's kind of what Capitalism does best and it's in its genes.
Sweeney has himself said that Epic is catering to Publishers and not consumers/gamers. Why the fuck would anyone want to participate in that when the competition is just infinitely better? They don't even have proper reviews for fuck's sake, because letting users review games obviously makes publishers sad when they can't get away with scams.
Cheating capitalism by having a great proven track record that builds trust in your platform and helping advance VR gaming and gaming on Linux ? By creating 2 of the biggest e-sports games in history ? Cheating capitalism by treating your users right is the most heinous crime a corporation can commit. Think of all the other poor corporations that are now forced to do the same. /s
The biggest moat of Steam is not being greedy assholes.
GOG is doing fine. itch.io is good enough.
Epic is just crap and it shows.
And it isn't even a "moat" - you can install Steam and GOG and Itch and Epic!
I wouldn't recommend you install Epic, though. Steam and GOG and Itch are happy to coexist - Epic eagerly weaponizes exclusivity agreements and sinks millions of dollars into anti-competitive practices.
> Sweeney has himself said that Epic is catering to Publishers and not consumers/gamers.
Exactly. I bought Portal and Half-life on GOG. Oh wait..
Did you respond to the wrong comment? Yours is completely unrelated to mine.
Forgot to add to my own post, but itch.io is fantastic too for all the other indie stuff I want. Does feel like Steam, GOG and itch cover off most things required across the ecosystem.