I mean, they’re not really wrong. Valve has a monopoly on game distribution the same way that Google has a monopoly on Internet search. Alternatives exist, but they aren’t really competing with Steam.
Valve has so far been pretty pro-consumer which is how they got to where they are, but yhat doesn’t really change the fact that they essentially get to set the rules for digital distribution of games.
It’s also a big risk, as they could always enshittify. It’s a good platform now, but if Gabe dies or decides to give up his leadership position, that could all change very quickly.
Really? Has Valve abused their position to specifically further entrench their monopoly or other anti-consumer behavior?
There was a time I would have agreed with that comparison but Google has sucked for a while.
from the overall pool, 75% of respondents were senior managers
So… not developers, but businessmen.
I read this as senior managers at valve…
First line of the article seems fairly contradictory to that.
Wait now I’m even more confused
Game distribution platform Rokky has just released the results of a study it conducted with 306 senior managers of PC game developers (all from the US or UK)
There’s nothing in this article that suggests that they polled more than just senior managers.
Yeah, who do you think is best equipped to examine the sales and financials?
From what I’ve seen and heard, probably not businessmen.
Irrelevant - the title and graphic says “developers”.
It’s only a monopoly in that it’s so much more popular than everything else that’s come along, and the main reason for that is because it’s better than competitors. Most others are just publisher stores, and almost all have functionality that users disagree with.
In the OP article, the game distribution platform Rokky is also apparently a publisher store, having recently bought the rights to distribute Chinese games in the west.
Turns out if you invest in making your platform not suck it ends up paying dividends. Figure it out dumbfucks.
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Haven’t even bothered making an account on epic for the free games or what ever they are offering. I just don’t care, steam is so much better. Got a few games in GoG too but I wish they did a little better in the Linux support side of things.
I’ve been gaming on Linux for a year now and I have (and run) way more games from GOG than Steam.
Historically I avoided Steam because of the whole “you don’t own the games, you just license them at full price” nature of the “phone home” validation they have for most games, so I had a much larger collection in GOG than Steam to begin with since I would only get from Steam the really interesting games which I wouldn’t find in GOG (plenty of games I simply did not buy because they were Steam only).
That said, running GOG games in Linux is as least as simple as Steam games, thanks to me using Lutris which does all the heavy lifting of properly configuring Wine and VKDX to run my games and even integrates with GOG to directly download the installers: in practice I have about the same chance of success with click-and-play installing and running a game in Linux from the Steam Store via the Steam App as I do from GOG via Lutris.
Then on top of that, because I’m a techie, I actually prefer Lutris + Wine because it’s so much more open for configuration than Steam and to figure out yourself how to run games for which there are no pre-made configuration scripts, such as pirated ones - for example, for one of my Steam games I couldn’t at all find a way to run the official version of the game in Linux via the Steam App, but I could get the pirated version of that game to run just fine via Lutris.
I even have a default setting in Lutris which will run my games inside a Firejail sandbox with networking disabled plus a bunch of other security settings, something I can’t do in Steam (were I can only do it for the entire Steam App, which won’t function with disabled networking).
Many of my favorite games don’t have drm, and you can just copy the install folder and boom, you own a copy
Yeah, but the store doesn’t actually tell you which is which when you’re looking to buy a new game, now does it?!
Further, will that copy of an install folder work if you copy it into a new machine? Maybe, but probably not (it depends on things like how the game handles missing registry keys and/or the graphics card changing whilst there’s already a shader cache for the previous graphics cards).
When you’re making a purchasing decision, if that factor is very important to you, Steam’s possibility that maybe it can be done in an unofficial non-supported way, but you don’t get told upfront if it does work, and you’re not sure if it will work if you change machines, doesn’t count as a real “I get to keep the game no matter what” feature - it’s a hack, that sometimes works, usually doesn’t.
In GOG that feature is standard.
This wasn’t a “hey this is ok because you can sometimes do it in a jank way” comment, more of a “hey in case you didn’t know you can go make copies to preserve what you like” comment
Ah, cheers!
It’s always good to inform people.
it’s just not worth the trouble even free
for me, it all boils down to this. The best DRM is making garbage. I won’t even sail the seas to find it, I just will never use it.
Epic has offered quite a few decent games for free but their forced client/launcher is such shit that its not even worth installing. I absolutely wouldn’t be surprised if people pirate games even after they’ve gotten them free on epic just to not have to deal with that bullshit.
https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
Works on windows, Mac and Linux. Connects to GOG, Epic and Amazon.
absolutely spot on write up, thank you
Game distribution platform Rokky has just released the results of a study it conducted with 306 senior managers of PC game developers (all from the US or UK)
Unsurprising that they find this, since that’s what their business is about.
MAXIMIZE GLOBAL GAME SALES WITH ROKKY
Expand sales of your PC game beyond Steam. Sell game keys to 200+ global storefronts simultaneously with Rokky. Enjoy revenue increases of up to 100%.
Nailed it, this is an ad for their company, that’s all the poll is, and of course it backs up the purpose of the company, almost like they set out from the beginning to create a poll with the results they wanted. Once they did that, they fired up their email (or hired a PR company) and spammed every news outlet they could to get them to cover. Steamdeckhq was dumb enough to take the bait, literally advertising this company for free, and OP continued that idiocy by posting here.
Bullshit. There are many other PC games stores and launchers. Only reason they don’t have lot of users is because they are just not very good. In my view, Valve is not actively trying to establish any monopoly, their competition is mostly incompetent, especially EGS. Of course, I understand that if devs want their games to succeed, they have to play by Valve’s rules, but let’s face it, that’s where customers are. This is not by some trickery of Valve. It’s because Valve happens to be very pro-consumer. So, I don’t agree with the assertion that Steam is a monopoly.
Epic games store could have been great and yet, Epic’s disdain for gamers has caused it to fail. Now EGS is just a glorified Fortnite launcher for the most part.
I am not saying that Steam or even Valve is perfect. They are not. They are just leagues better than their competition.
I will also say is that major reason why Steam has an monopoly is that they have invested their resources to streamline the PC gaming experience and also make gaming on Linux better as well as Steam controller which also allows us to remap control layout.
None the alternative does that and are just another DRM-Storefront. That’s my major pet peeve with Steam alternative like Epic Games Launcher. Closest we have is GOG for to be able to download offline installer and most the games are DRM-free. Otherwise, I just would rather buy games on Steam as it just works for me… 🤷
Valve is “de facto” monopoly, bit the actual monopoly potential is in Microsoft hands. Microsoft is for PC gaming industry what Google is for the web browser one. Sure, there may be other cool web browsers, but it’s Google that (through Android base) decide whic web browser will be delivered with the next billions of Android mobile device: some elderly people on smartphone don’t even know what is a web browser (“oh, you mean when I Google? I don’t know: I just Google”).
All future new PC will be sold with Microsoft Store and Xbox junk ware: Microsoft has been exceptionally shitty for not being the actual monopoly in the PC gaming industry. But that’s a very feeble protection: break Valve business is just a mandatory “security update” away to happen. They can break Steam little by little (such as suggested by Tim Sweeney) or just a big blow by sheer monopolized manipulation (such as Google not allowing adblockers to chrome to feed their advertising business)
Remember when Ubisoft came crawling back to Steam?
If only all monopolies were so user-positive.
I suspect what’s unique in valve’s case is that they don’t have investors and board members and other stakeholders to lead them toward short-term profit maximization.
I dread the day where GabeN is leaving valve
meh, IDK. it won’t change the basic facts of the company, there will still be no stakeholders.
Depends. Whoever will follow up, can charge the company into a public one
certainly possible. I just think Gabe isn’t the only Gabe who works at valve.
If only all monopolies were so user-positive.
All monopolies come into being super user-positive: it’s the moment they need to make money that shit hits the fan.
Is: Google Chrome is an overly appreciate, open source, web browser… then they came to shut down ad blocker “we gotta got +80% web browser share, what are you gonna do about it?”
I laugh when i see this shit.
Imagine creating a platform which is so feature rich, and costs nothing for consumers to use, that other distributors want to legally force you to separate it from your store so they have a chance to sell the consumer the same game, for the same price (or more), but on “an equal playing field”.
Game distribution platform Rokky has just released the results of a study it conducted with 306 senior managers of PC game developers (all from the US or UK), and it makes for some interesting reading.
This study has a chance of being reasonable, but this article is junk. No word on methodology. I’m sure(/s) that the 306 managers aren’t skewed because they’re known by a non-steam platform.
In one sense yes they are a monopoly. But there are alternative game stores. However Valve has earned their cut of money by actually trying to make a platform that works for game developers, game players and themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, they have a high risk of turning bad and extorting the market they have captured. But the truth is that every equally or greater sized competitor (Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA, Epic) has already skipped to the extortion part of the cycle and Valve simply hasn’t, and hasn’t really expressed any intention to do that. Being a privately owned company, Valve is allowed to sit back, enjoy the money they do make and not have to constantly ask for more, and develop what the staff feel like making without strict deadlines.
The smaller competitors are still great even if not as feature filled (GOG, itch) and you should support them too. So while I reject that Valve is the big bad, I also reject that Valve could never enshittify. My position is that Valve has earned a trust no one else has (even itch had to cave to Credit Card companies), and that trust is Valve’s to break.
I feel like steam entered the market for online distribution pretty early. It initially started as a way for valve to update their own games and morphed into a digital distribution platform. They have had way more time to generate good will. My experiences have been very positive with steam, why would I leave a platform that works for me, to go to other companies that have already fucked me as a consumer prior to releasing digital storefronts? If the wagon ain’t broke don’t fix it.
What makes Steam so compelling for consumers is that it’s more than just a digital storefront and launcher. They’ve expanded into so many different areas: Steam Input, Steam Remote Play, Steam Friends, Steam Workshop, Proton, Steam Marketplace, etc.
There is so much they do that it’s not really just a store anymore – it’s an all-in-one platform. Most competitors do not come close to equal in any of these features; they usually just have basic launchers and maybe decent friend systems.
In my opinion, GOG is the best competitor yet because of their DRM-free installers and GOG Galaxy on windows which allowed you to have all your games in one place.
They really need to split all those things off.
Are they a store? A launcher? A forum?
They should pick one thing and let other people do the others.
