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.
Yeah, no shit! As long as they’re not beholden to shareholders that need them to enshitify their platform as much as humanly possible before the users can’t stand it anymore and leave in droves… It’s just impossible to compete with them!
Who would have thought!
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.
So this guy admits that Steam is the best right now…
I would move on if a better alternative emerged. But at this point it’s not just the store, but the utility. Steam lets me add whatever games I want from any source and use their interface to make controllers work, tweak graphics settings, etc. Hell, I’d say I like it better for that use than for the paid games. I don’t see anyone else ever doing this.
In my opinion the quote is wrong. If they played capitalism they would have enshittified and abused their monopoly so hard, they wouldn’t have a monopoly anymore. They have a de facto monopoly because they didn’t abuse it and enshittify as hard as they should have under capitalism.
The reason other companies cannot compete is because they do play capitalism, and it makes them shoot themselves in the feet.
These dudes have no connection to reality. They only understand how to extract. They have no idea how to make anything. The assertion that you could vibe code a steam replacement completely misunderstands what makes Steam work. Sure there is an element of an entrenched market, but Steam sales are famous among their customers. They have mod support built in. Great features like remote play, streaming, social features. They’ve done amazing things for Linux gaming slowly chipping away at Microsofts control of the OS market.
These executives brains are completely rotten.
you could vibe code a Steam alternative in a week
As usual, completely missing the fucking point.
moth supposes they might be correct about one thing. there are so very many Steam users who are rabid fanboys. we’ve all seen the memes of GabeN depicted as a Messiah. there’s a not insignificant portion of the Steam user base which does not want any competition for Steam because they believe in the righteous supremacy of Valve. it gives moth the icks, and as such in the very few occasions when I buy a game instead of sailing the high seas, I buy from other retailers like GOG, Epic, or Itch.io.
